Wingmen (9781310207280) (8 page)

Fred Trusteau
stayed up later than usual that night. He was reading the War
Diary.

“
19 March 1943
: Edward R.
Castel, Lt., USN, DFC, DSM, failed to return from routine training
flight near San Clemente Island this A.M. Aircraft involved in
search operation included Divisions One, Five, and Six from this
squadron and patrol craft of PatRon 34 based North Island NAS.
Search continued until approximately 1800 hours local time and
broken off due to darkness. Officially listed as missing and
presumed dead.”

After reading
through the twenty or so pages of the Diary, Fred decided that
writing it would be a snap and give him good reasons for seeing the
skipper often. He finished reading around midnight and slid it
quietly under the bed. His sleeping roommate snored soundly away,
but Fred didn’t feel tired. He turned off the desk lamp and went
outside. A huge summer moon had risen while he was reading the
Diary.

Finding a small
bench near the street, Fred sat down and leaned back, drinking in
the fresh tropical air. He was thinking for some reason that it
would really be great if the skipper came out and sat down beside
him. They could light cigarettes and talk for a while, kept company
by the moon and the blazing stars.

After ten
minutes of solitude, with the moon providing enough light to see
by, a figure lurched up the street and spied Fred sitting on the
bench. When the figure came closer, Fred saw that it was Lieutenant
Brogan. Without invitation, the lieutenant fell down on the bench,
fumbled for a cigarette, and accepted a light from Fred.

“You know,
Trusty, you’re all right,” Brogan said. Booze and sweat wafted
through the air to Fred’s nose, but he didn’t find it an especially
unpleasant odor.

“Thanks,” said
Fred. He had never learned the lieutenant’s first name and wasn’t
about to call him “Lieutenant” under these conditions.

“You know?”
said Brogan, “I had
friends
once.” He slurred his words just like a
movie-comedy drunk.

“Yeah?”

“Let me tell
ya, Trusty. They were the best. Yeah,” said Brogan, his unseeing
eyes fastened on a spot on the ground in front of Fred’s shoes.
“One of ’em, his name was Billy.” Brogan struggled to get the words
out. “He got shot down.”

“I’m sorry,”
said Fred. “Where?”

Brogan thought
for a moment. “I forget,” he said. “There’s this other guy, I
forget his name. We used to be the acey-deucy champs of the whole
fuckin’ air group.” The drunk smiled and laughed a little, perhaps
remembering some good times. “He came back one day, you know? And
landed all right, but then he wouldn’t get out of his plane, and
then they went to see what was wrong, and you know what?”

“What?”

“He was shot
all to pieces, this great big hole right in his guts, the goddamn
cockpit—this full of blood.” He indicated the depth of the blood
with his hands. “And god damn it if they didn’t assign that plane
to me the next day—and it always stunk like hell, all that blood
and all. They just couldn’t get the stink out, not that they tried
that hard and all. That old crate is still flying around out there
somewhere.” Brogan waved an arm through the air, trying to indicate
“out there” for Fred.

“Where did that
happen?” asked Fred.

“Beats the
shit,” said Brogan. He belched quietly. “Out of me.” He clutched at
his crotch and struggled to his feet. “Gotta take a leak,” he said,
but before he left he tousled Fred’s hair and said, “You’re all
right, Trusty, but I gotta tell you.” He shook a finger in the air.
“Don’t get too friendly.” He turned away from Fred as though he’d
already forgotten him and disappeared up the short walk and the
small flight of stairs leading into the dark BOQ.

“You bet,” said
Fred.

He sat on the
bench in the dark for another fifteen minutes, half expecting
Brogan to come back out and tell him about his friends. But no one
came to join him. Finally he gave up and went to bed.

FROM: Commander
Air Group Twenty

TO: Mister
Hardigan

SUBJ: Attached
Officer Fitness Reports

These fitness reports
are unsat and therefore not acceptable.

Do over.

Buster
Jennings, Commander, USN

It was typical
of CAG, thought Jack Hardigan, the way he worked subtle insults
into otherwise harmless memos like this one. Officially, it is
quite proper to address a lieutenant commander as “Mister,” but it
is avoided so as not to imply junior officer status. CAG always
called Jack “Mister,” even in written memos when it was almost as
easy to write “Lt. Comdr.” And the closing. Even casual
correspondence requires an “R”—short for “Respectfully”—when it is
addressed to an officer of lesser rank. Jack pulled up a plain
white note pad and uncapped his fat red fountain pen.

FROM:
Lieutenant Commander Jack Hardigan. Commanding Officer
VF-20

TO: CAG-20

SUBJ: Attached
CAG memo

The attached reworked
fitness reports are resubmitted as per prior instructions.

Respectfully,

Jack Hardigan,
VF-20

Jack attached
the new note to the stack of fitness reports and slid the packet
into his “Hold” tray. In a couple of days, just before the weekend,
when CAG would be gone until Monday morning, Jack would forward
them into his “Out” tray. They would arrive at CAG’s desk and sit
there for a few days until he found them. It would then be too late
to send them back again and the entire matter would be
forgotten.

FROM: Commander
Air Group Twenty

TO: Mister
Hardigan

SUBJ: Attached
Memo regarding nonarrival of three (3)

new pilots
assigned to VF-20

Why the hell wasn’t I
kept informed of this condition earlier?

What are you doing to
rectify the situation?

This matter is
IMPORTANT. Reply ASAP.

Buster
Jennings, Commander, USN

FROM:
Lieutenant Commander Jack Hardigan. Commanding Officer

VF-20

TO: CAG-20

SUBJ: Attached
CAG memo

Original memo
regarding this condition was forwarded to CAG two (2) weeks prior
to attached memo.

Personnel Officer,
NavSta Pearl Harbor and Personnel Office, NAS Ford Island have been
informed and are currently working on the problem. Their estimation
of situation concludes that all three were diverted to another
command possibly in the States without proper procedures being
followed. They have promised an answer and replacements as they
become available.

It should be noted
that replacement of one (1) pilot was provided for Ens. Carruthers
who was recently detached pending outcome of court-martial
investigation of rape charges.

Respectfully,

Jack Hardigan,
VF-20

Correspondence
from CAG invariably came in spurts, usually on Friday morning,
which probably meant that the son of a bitch worked late on
Thursday clearing his desk so he could leave early on Friday. Rumor
had it that he was screwing a local product named Suzy, who had
been a dancer at one of those fancy luaus thrown for the brass at
the Moana, and that he was brown-nosing his way into the circles of
higher-ups on Admiral Nimitz’s operations staff. The man was
insufferable. Even his golf game was bad.

FROM:
Commander Air Group Twenty

TO: All
Squadron Commanders

SUBJ: Officer
Personnel Jackets, Photographs of Officers

All squadron
commanders are reminded that regulations require the inclusion in
every officer’s personnel jacket of a three (3)-by-five (5)
photograph of that officer in a dress uniform.

Squadron commanders
are requested to comply with this regulation ASAP.

Respectfully,

Buster
Jennings, Commander, USN

Jack Hardigan
read through the memo once, then wadded it up, and threw it away.
His first inclination was to ignore it completely. Then he decided
that it would be best not to give the bastard free ammunition; it
really wouldn’t be all that difficult to take care of. He drafted a
note to Duane Higgins saying that the pilots were, without
exception, to bring with them on the following morning a white
cover and their dress white blouse with awards. The purpose of
this, he said, would be head and shoulders pictures for personnel
jackets. Also, Schaeffer was to bring his camera and two rolls of
film.

Jack was
beginning to feel more comfortable with his job. He was catching up
on the paperwork, the new pilots were working their way into the
fabric of the squadron, major problems with the new aircraft had
been few. He had a gut instinct that the squadron was shaping up
the way it should. He made a note to develop a briefing or two on
shipboard organization and procedures, but decided to wait until he
had met with CAG and the
Constitution
’s executive officer so that he could
obtain a copy of the ship’s operational manual. Scanning his desk,
Jack decided everything could wait for a few hours. He wanted to
get in a little flight time, so he gathered up several more CAG
memos and shoved them into the “In” box, tidied up the pencils and
paper clips, and carefully pushed his chair up to the desk.

Jack was in the
ready room, picking up his flight gear, when Fred Trusteau found
him.

“There you are,
sir,” said Fred, coming through the door. He was carrying the War
Diary under one arm.

“Yes,” said
Jack, “here I am.” He pulled on a yellow Mae West.

“I read the War
Diary last night. You said to see you this morning sometime.”

“You think you
can handle it? When we get into combat—” He realized suddenly that
yes, all this would end one day soon, and they would go back to the
war, with himself responsible for their lives. “When we get back
into action, it might take up a bit of your spare time.” He buckled
the throat mike and left the loose end dangling.

“Yes, sir, I
understand. I still want to do it.”

He was so
sincere, so polite, thought Jack. “Spell ‘receive.’”

“
I
before
e
except after
c
.”

“The job is
yours.”

“Thank you,
sir.”

“Check with
Yeoman Sweeney for old training schedules and bring it all up to
date. I want an entry for every day. And don’t thank me for extra
work.”

“Yes, sir. Was
there anything else you wanted?”

Jack picked up
an inflatable seat raft and headed for the door. “You flying
today?”

“This
afternoon. Some gunnery with a target sleeve.”

“Good. Until
then, get busy with the Diary.”

“Yes, sir.”
Jack left him, still standing with the War Diary under his arm, and
walked through the aircraft maintenance area, past his squadron’s
Hellcats getting gassed and oiled, torn down and put back together,
loaded and armed. He climbed into the plane with the number two
painted on the fuselage aft of the cockpit and on the forward
panels of the landing gear doors, and allowed an affable chief to
help strap him in. Fifteen minutes later he was back in his own
element: the sky.

Jack knew the
waters and skies around Oahu as well as he had known the back yard
of his boyhood home in Portland, Maine. He had flown into and out
of Ford Island in Pearl Harbor more times than he could count, both
during wartime and before it. At that time the Navy had kept half
of its carrier strength, meager though it was, in the Atlantic
Ocean. He had been there, in the Atlantic, when
Hornet
was first commissioned
in October, 1941, two months before the war began, and he had seen
the awful destruction wrought in the Navy’s greatest anchorage a
month after it had occurred. Since that time, during the desperate
months immediately following Pearl Harbor, when the
Hornet
’s sister carriers
succumbed one by one to brutal attacks by the Japanese, Jack had
watched Pearl Harbor clean itself up, raise its sunken
battlewagons, and go right on fighting.

The second from
the last battleship to be raised from the mud was the
Oklahoma.
It was below
him, up the channel that leads from the harbor mouth. He circled in
from the seaward side, fascinated as always by the Lilliputian-like
workings around and on the capsized ship. First, giant wooden
frames (they reminded him of the Tinker Toy he had played with as a
child) had grown up around the red keel that had faced up toward
the sky. Then, cables had been stretched from the shore at Ford
Island—one hundred yards distant—to the landward edge of the ship’s
main deck, over the top of the frames. Then, in a logical though
gargantuan effort, they had simply pulled the huge hulk into an
upright position. During the weeks that VF-20 had been on Oahu, the
main deck and mangled upper works, with the big guns the only
recognizable portion, had risen from the murky waters. Now the ship
was upright, though resting on its bottom. From a great height, the
blackened ruins of her superstructure were invisible, and she
looked like any other ship at anchor, waiting for the tide of war
to carry her back to dangerous waters.

Jack circled
the harbor once, noting the ships gathered there. He found the new
Constitution
berthed on the opposite side of Ford Island. Clusters of destroyers
dotted the western anchorage. Cruisers and deadly-looking new
battleships were everywhere. Two carriers he had never seen before
were anchored near the
Constitution.
It was a marked contrast to the days
of 1942, when the
Hornet
went into battle accompanied by two old heavy
cruisers and a small group of destroyers.

Below him, a
small, bi-winged seaplane buzzed in and landed on the Ford Island
airstrip, its shadow racing with it across the ground, catching up
the instant the craft touched down. Far to his right the black
specks of fighter planes (probably Army, he thought, from Bellows)
tangled in slow-motion aerobatics; a single slow-flying SBD
approached from his left at the same approximate altitude. The
skies these days were as crowded as the harbor below. Jack pushed
the throttle forward and headed up, turning to the left to cross
the SBD and head out to sea.