Baa Baa Black Sheep (18 page)

P-38

With this for a memento we were sent back early to Espiritu, for at this time the last of the Wildcats were being replaced by the swift Corsairs.

There had been some doubt as to whether our squadron would be sent on the usual “week’s rest and recreation,” as it was termed, for we had had only a very brief, no-action tour in the combat zone. However, we managed to luck out, and away we went to Sydney, Australia, many miles down under.

When the book
Snake Pit
came out, after my return from the war, I kept wondering to myself where I had heard
the word before. Or in what connection. And then I remembered, and it had nothing to do with flying. It had to do with the lobby of the Hotel Australia … and what seems now long, long ago.

After our six-week combat tours were up, the flyers were sent back to a rear area where they were given malaria smears.

If they did not have malaria, they were permitted to go down to Sydney by transport aircraft and spend one week of what was termed on the books as rest and recreation.

I sometimes doubted that the terms were appropriate, because when the poor boys were loaded back on the planes at Sydney they had to return to the combat area to get rested up.

But just the same, on these trips down to Sydney the first thing we did (we got down there just about dawn) was to take our clothes to the cleaners and have all the mildew and tropical rain sponged out of them and have them pressed. Then we would go to breakfast and have fresh milk and eggs, something we did not have up in the islands.

Then we would get into the clean uniforms and we would go down to the lobby of the Hotel Australia, known as “The Snake Pit.” Or sometimes even “The Passion Pit.”

But in this lobby would always be about a hundred girls, and practically any one of them you asked would be willing to stay the whole week with you.

Some of the boys didn’t stay in the hotel. Some of them preferred flats because they could raise a little more hell in the line of parties.

Also, every time we went down to Sydney, we would get an extra-large table at either one of the two night clubs in town, Prince’s or Romano’s. Some of the fellows couldn’t make these night clubs every night, but they usually averaged about five nights out of seven in getting to those squadron parties.

It was common saying then, even around the United States, that the Australian girls seemed to go a lot more for the American boys than for the Australians. And I think this is true, and that the reasons given for it are true; namely that American boys were more lavish with their money and we all had a good time down there. I guess the girls had a good time likewise, because they all used to write us back in the combat
zone and tell us what a good time they had had, wondering when we were coming back again.

But even now, on thinking about it, I don’t care to go into comparing American women with their Australian sisters. The Australian girls didn’t have anything on the girls back home except that—well, except that what the Australian girls
had
they had there.

And in defense of these women I feel that it is necessary to say that most of their virile men were away fighting in Europe and elsewhere. But somehow I was happy that I didn’t have to stand in line for my women or my drinks.

About the only disconcerting part of the week was that U.S. Navy Intelligence kept looking us up and asking all natures of questions. And we kept trying to avoid these officers and enjoy the fun. Their concern was to try to find out how everyone in Australia knew about Admiral Yamamoto and the code being broken. They wanted to find out who was talking about it. Everyone from Guadalcanal was suspected.

On the long trip over the ocean returning to our base weight was a very important factor, and the pilot of the DC-3 told us that we could take back with us nothing we hadn’t taken down there. We had answered: “I certainly hope you are correct, my dear captain.”

“No, you know what I’m referring to,” he said, pointing to several cases of beer and a few bottles of whisky we had lugged out to the airport. So, to comply with our captains wishes, we were able to get rid of our precious cargo all right by simply drinking all of it before we flew out of Sydney.

Back in Espiritu we got acquainted with our new planes. We hoped the combat tour coming up would prove more exciting than our last brief tour.

The Corsair was a sweet-flying baby if I ever flew one. No longer would we have to fight the Nips’ fight, for we could make our own rules. Here was a ship that could climb with a Zero, only with a more shallow angle of climb, and one that had considerably more speed.

We flew by day if weather permitted, and the evenings were taken up by outdoor movies, as the mosquitoes were a thing of the past. A public-address system would come on during intermissions at the movies, and we would hear newscasts from the rest of the world as well as home.

The actor Errol Flynn was having a lengthy session in
court concerning his amours at the time with some young things aboard his yacht. And a blow-by-blow account of the trial was woven into these newscasts. I’ll never forget those few hundred lonesome lads under the coconut trees at Espiritu, chanting as one, “Get that God-damn’ war news off the speaker! We want to hear about Flynn.”

I wonder if Flynn realized how much entertainment he was providing the troops overseas. Anyway, I give him a vote of thanks for this, and for that expression that still stands, “You are in like Flynn.”

Those of us who drank, and most of us did, would spend some of these nights drinking and singing up to a point, then wrestling bouts seemed to come in fashion. This happened to be my strong point, for I dearly loved to wrestle, being a former intercollegiate wrestling champion in my day. I also loved to drink. I used to say I provided this form of entertainment, as an excuse of course, to keep the pilots from getting lonesome and thinking of their mothers.

It was just prior to 222’s going back to the Canal in our new planes, and I had been one of the participants in a free-for-all when somebody tackled me from the side in the darkness with a shoestring tackle. My anklebone had snapped audibly like a twig, and the following day found me with my leg in a cast up to my knee. If fate didn’t get in my way … then I got in hers.

The next thing I knew I was being assigned to a room aboard a hospital ship on its way to Auckland, New Zealand. I was to remain in Auckland until I was physically fit. Next to my bunk was a pilot who had lived to tell how one can spin in from one thousand feet in a Corsair and still live, but this poor pilot was in cast clear up to his chest.

The pilot’s jaws had been broken also, and his teeth were wired up solid, so he was forced to take his nourishment through a straw at mealtimes. A corpsman came into our room before the ship left and handed this fellow a pair of mechanic’s pliers. As I had taken over the detail of doing the talking for the pilot, I asked: “What are these pliers for, corpsman?”

He answered: “We are shorthanded, and if the going gets rough, he is to yank his own wires out—before he strangles to death.”

As the speedy light cruiser that had been converted into a hospital ship pulled out of Espiritu, I thought to myself, “Man, oh man, you have loused up the detail now!” It was beyond the realm of possibility to get into a squadron again, for, owing to my age and rank, a CO spot had been my last chance, and now that was gone, with 222 on its last combat tour without me.

June of 1943 found me parked safely in Mobile Six, a naval hospital at Auckland, and it was wintertime down there. This was a far cry from the excitement of Sydney; however, I was to find the New Zealanders very hospitable. Whisky was at a premium. But I had taken this into consideration when I took the precaution of having a huge cardboard box of cartons of American cigarettes shipped with me.

Of all the mediums of exchange American cigarettes, I believe, were the best. It wasn’t entirely because their tobacco was rationed; they truly preferred our cigarettes to their own.

The hospital fixed my leg with a walking cast, but it wasn’t too satisfactory, and I had to depend on my crutches to get anywhere in a hurry. My shoulder muscles developed rapidly. In no time at all I could walk quite a distance without tiring or getting sore arms. I used to practically run on my crutches to the Navy Club in a downtown hotel about three miles away, so I would be able to stack up drinks, which were served from five to seven each evening.

While in the hospital I received a few letters from the boys in 222, telling me how they had struck pay direct on their last trip. The Japanese had made an all-out air effort when the Marines had gone into New Georgia. During this action the Jap aircraft came so steadily 222 had been ordered to fight until out of fuel then land in the ocean. This was
about the only real action 222 had, but they helped save the day by getting thirty Jap planes, which many an outfit would like to have on their record.

A few of the boys who weren’t picked up by our destroyers came back later with coast watcher Kennedy’s natives. Kennedy was a large, florid-faced Australian who had stayed on in the islands during the war because, for one thing, he was one of the few who could speak the native language. His native boys would paddle out in their canoes and pick up pilots after air battles before the Japs could reach the pilots in the shore boats. This coast watcher had seen to it that over a hundred of our boys had gotten home safely, so Kennedy was finally persuaded to come to Guadalcanal, where they intended to pay him homage. The purpose was to present some reward, but our headquarters got nowhere with Kennedy as he wanted nothing.

One general said: “Mr. Kennedy, we want to at least present you with a medal of some kind for your heroism.”

“Thanks, no, give the medals to the chaps doing the flying.”

“But there must be something you want,” the general insisted.

Kennedy then laughed and said: “If you really insist upon wanting to know what I want, then I guess I’d better tell you.”

“What would you like, Mr. Kennedy?”

“After thirty-six months in the bush, I would like to have thirty beautiful chorus girls arguing over my drunken carcass.”

One day at the hospital I heard swearing coming from the bathroom. Upon investigating I was to find Sam Logan, a pilot from one of the last Canal engagements, and he was having somewhat of a workout in a bathtub. He had bailed out of his flaming plane, and a Zero had made repeated attacks on him as he was descending in his parachute. When the Nip had finally exhausted his ammunition, he dove his Zero into Sam, cutting his ankle so the foot had to be amputated.

“Can I help you?” I asked.

Sam answered: “No, I’m okay. It gets a little awkward holding this stump out while I bathe. I’m used to taking showers, you know.”

I ran into Sam Logan again after the war, and he informed me that he had been the first American to obtain permission to fly with a store leg in the service.

Another young pilot, Gilbert Percy, was in bed but extremely cheerful, so I asked: “What’s your trouble?”

“I got a broken pelvis.”

“How did it happen?” I asked him.

“Oh, I bailed out at two thousand feet, and my chute didn’t open.” And I knew he wasn’t kidding because I had heard about this.

“I never did get the dope on you. Just what exactly did happen to save your life?”

“My chute was trailing but it hadn’t opened when I crashed into the water. I had never heard of anyone surviving, so I thought I was dead. But all of a sudden I tasted salt water, so I opened my eyes and saw a bunch of bubbles around me. I knew then I wasn’t dead, so I started to swim.”

This hospital seemed full of miracles. But the Navy Medical Corps captain in charge of Mobile Six was damn certain of two officers who didn’t come under the miracle category.

A long-time friend of mine, a gravel-crunching colonel, was in the hospital also, and in addition to never being around for muster, like myself, the colonel insisted upon keeping his dog under his hospital bed when he was there. The dog was an odd-looking character that had been smuggled from the United States in a barracks bag, and the colonel and the dog had been together through the Canal battles. The dog had been named “Snafu” by the colonel’s troops, and it stuck. The last time I saw Snafu he was dressed in a man’s collar and bow tie at a dinner party at the home of this colonel in Coronado, California. The dog would hide his face with his paws or run when the colonel showed us some of his collection of firearms after dinner.

Anyhow Snafu’s illegal entry in the naval hospital finally caused my friend to be placed ten days under official arrest by the captain in charge of the hospital.

I had been in a few poker games with some of the older inmates and was fortunate enough to win over a thousand pounds. Because of this and other reasons the executive officer of Mobile Six had called me into his office, and said: “Boyington, some of these fellows aren’t as well off as you. They have coronary conditions.”

“What’s all this got to do with me?”

“Some of those bets you made involved considerable sums of money, and as a medical man I am responsible for the patients. I have already had to treat a recurrence.”