Baa Baa Black Sheep (35 page)

Even thoughts of Lard could not keep me awake forever, and I finally fell asleep on the board bunk in my cell. In my sleep I somehow gathered an impression that I must have been dreaming all this.

Daylight brought me to my senses: this was real, all right, and I had not dreamed about being shot down. The harsh commands, which I could not understand, appeared to be getting the Japanese and prisoners alike into two formations outside of the buildings. Judging by the expressions on the faces of the prisoners I was able to see through my window, I felt that this had all the prospects of becoming a permanent nightmare.

I remained seated upon the edge of my bunk, waiting for something to happen to me, whatever it might be, because I had no idea of what came next. The joker in the breechcloth entered my building, jabbering like a parrot, the same one who had pounded me for talking the night before. Part of his pidgin-English conversation was referring to me, I was positive, and the reference was: “Number Ten Man this, and Number Ten Man that.”

Trying to figure just how I came to be linked up with the numeral ten had me licked. And I don’t mean maybe, for no matter how I counted, after first edging my way over to the open door of the cell and counting in every direction I could think of, neither the cells nor the prisoners added up to ten from where I was situated.

Number Ten Man, I soon discovered, was to be my new name for the time being, and was used by the guards and other prisoners while they were talking about me. Suyako finally enlightened me: everything in pidgin English is graded from one to ten; one is the very best, on down to ten, which is no good. The degree with which one was incapacitated, or banged up, stamped me as a Number Ten Man, just in case I didn’t already know. This was quite a twist, I thought, because, although I had made a number of people’s lists in
my day, never had I made one without casting the main reference to my character in some way.

From here on in I was to feel the daily and nightly force of Allied bombs only too many times. In the daytime we could see our own aircraft dive-bombing, but during the night we were only able to listen and hope.

After ten days the Japanese finally permitted someone to clean me up and take care of my wounds for the first time. This was done by Hugh Wheatley, a doctor who had been captured at Munda when the Japanese had occupied New Georgia. The doctor was a half-caste who had been educated in the islands. He knew his medicine, I am positive, but he had little or nothing to work with as far as medical supplies. Hughie, as we called him, had to draw out infection by the application of steaming, salt-water compresses made of rags.

The Japanese always confiscated all the prisoners’ medical gear when they captured them. They had taken mine too. And we were not allowed so much as a drop of iodine to place on our wounds.

Before the six weeks I was to spend at Rabaul were over, I had lost a great deal of my numerical seniority, as some of the newer captives brought into camp were in horrible condition. About the only way a person could maintain seniority was to go on living. If one were to go past Number Ten, they buried him. I had dropped down to Number Five Man before long, and for this drop I was damn happy, believe me.

Each day for this six weeks I was called into the interrogating room, tied and blindfolded, driven in by truck, and they asked some of the doggonedest questions. Of course, the others had gone through the same thing, but I didn’t fully realize that at this time the Japs thought I was important.

The questions would go on and on like this:

“Have you ever been in San Francisco?”

“Yes.”

“When were you in San Francisco?”

“1941.”

“How many ships were there in the harbor?”

“I don’t know.”

“You must have some idea. Make an estimate of how many.”

So I would guess. Of course, I didn’t tell them I spent
two weeks in bars while waiting for a ship to take us to the Flying Tigers, and never went near the damn docks in the meanwhile. But I plumb neglected to tell them anything about this part of my life, for I felt that it would be legal for them to kill me if they found out I had been a man fighting without a uniform.

Then came the joker of all jokers.

“Who were the commanding officers of these ships?”

They asked me questions about our wings and groups and squadrons, but these had become so mixed up by that time that even our own high command couldn’t possibly keep them straight. I have mentioned previously that the job of straightening out the paper work for a series of squadrons had almost driven me nuts, even when I had all the necessary data for figuring things. Anyhow, the Japs kept insisting that I would think of the answers sometime. But I haven’t to date.

Man, oh man, I was told so many times by the interpreter, and by those who were interrogating me through the interpreter, that I was awfully stupid for a major. And I felt at times like saying: “What’s more, sport, there are those back at my base, who will agree with you, too.”

While lying in this infested cell I came down with malaria. During the daytime I was not allowed to close my eyes, even though wounded and suffering from malaria. I had to sit up on this boardlike affair in my cell. Every time a guard came by and saw me closing my eyes, he would come in, grab me by the hair, and hit me in the face with his fist.

During the night they put handcuffs on me, which made it almost impossible to sleep. But I soon was able to take care of this situation okay, for I bent a nail in my teeth that would lock and unlock them. The only trouble I had was when I failed to awaken in time one morning, and do you know, I had one hell of a time convincing that stupid guard that there must have been something wrong with the way he closed the cuffs the night before. He finally believed he had made an error somehow, but he ended up kicking hell out of me to save face. A guy just couldn’t seem to get ahead in this league.

There was a jealousy that existed between their army and navy that was beyond all competition. This was carried right down to the lowliest man in each service, or even to the
horio
(a special prisoner, not a prisoner of war, the lowest form of life in their book), and I happened by chance to fall in that category.

This
horio
category was one I had hopes of graduating from, becoming a prisoner of war at a later date, so that the Red Cross would notify my family that I was living. But my hopes were never fulfilled, for I was to remain a
horio
until the bitter end, along with a few others.

But the Japanese army was more powerful than their navy politically, so I was lent, as many others before me, to the army interrogators for one week. Their army kept me in a cell downtown for the silly questions, which continued day and night. It seemed that the army wanted to get their money’s worth in the short time they had been allotted. True, I got beaten up a bit, but things didn’t seem too bad, for the army didn’t begrudge one’s lying to them a little.

Our diet, which I turned down for the first few days, became damn tasty all of a sudden, and as my appetite developed I began to eat everything I was offered and was looking for more. We were fed the leftovers from their officers’ mess; soup, rice, and a multitude of things all mixed together. We called it chop suey.

After ten days or so, when the Japs were permitting Hugh Wheatley to treat my wounds, I thought I had a greater problem than my wounds or the war, and said so:

“Say, Doc, I’ve got a problem.”

“What is it?” The little fellow smiled.

“No, I’m serious, Hughie. I haven’t had a crap for ten days or more, and I’m just beginning to get a bit concerned about it. Have you got any physic handy?”

“I have, but I’d prefer not to give it to you.”

“How’s that?”

“Because I have nothing to stop diarrhea. The reason I hesitate is that we have lost a few fellows from this but none from constipation.”

Maybe this condition added to my orneriness, I don’t know, but one day, when they had me in town questioning me, something happened. Suyako came running into the interrogating room, out of breath, and said: “You are going to
have
to recall the commanding officer’s name at your base, or the commanding general is going to have all of you shot.”

“How come, Suyako?”

“Last night one of your bombers hit the entrance of the old man’s private shelter with a bomb, not more than a second or so after he’d crawled into it. You never saw anybody so mad before.”

“What in hell good will a name do him?”

“He also wants to know where he sleeps.”

I had not lied when I told Suyako I didn’t recall, for the C.O. of Vella Lavella was a brigadier general in the New Zealand forces, and I have forgotten the name. I hadn’t even had the pleasure of meeting the man, for that matter, and he had nothing to do with aviation in the true sense. Previously I had evaded all conversation pertaining to him and his job, because I knew he was located down the coast from the Vella strip in the middle of thousands of gallons of one-hundred-octane gasoline. Although the dump was hidden in the jungle, it was a thing I didn’t dare talk about.

But Suyako had given me a break, so I thought I should pretend to return the favor, in a way, so nobody would get hurt in the bargain. I said: “Suyako, I finally remembered the C.O.’s name.”

“Great, great, what is it?” He seemed very excited and looked as if a heavy load had been removed from his shoulders.

“It’s funny, I don’t know why I never thought of it before, Colonel Living Lard.”

“Good, now where does he sleep?”

“Will you get that aerial photo you were showing me the other day? And a very sharp pencil, please?”

I was thinking of the clear picture that must have been shot on a cloudless day from forty thousand feet or better, showing every little detail on our field with remarkable clarity. Of course I knew that one of their night bombers had about one in a thousand chances of ever getting past my pal, Gus Woodhelm, and his night fighters. But if it were possible, the Japs might just as well throw a scare into the right person without doing any serious damage.

Suyako dug out the photo, and stood there beside me sharpening a pencil, as I pretended to be studying the picture in great detail. The object I was looking for, at the foot of the hill and in the center of the strip, showed up like a sore thumb, Lard’s fortress. I thought that perhaps there was
a small chance of getting a laugh from my side of the fence, so I said: “I know a little bit about dive-bombing myself, you know. So if you can’t get through—”

“Don’t you worry, we’ll get through.”

“Okay, okay,” for he didn’t realize I was for him in this, “then lob one off about halfway down this hill. Sort of skip-bombing, if you understand what I’m driving at.”

Suyako could be contained no longer and rushed out of the shack, so I smiled to myself, thinking: “I would love to see that no-good son of a bitch’s face if it is at all possible for them to get through.”

“Betty”

I never did find out whether they had been able to drop this bomb near Lard, and I’m afraid to ask now.

One evening in the middle of February, Suyako came out to our camp and told six of us prisoners that we were leaving by air the following morning for Tokyo. He didn’t mention what kind of plane or where our stops en route were to be.

My five traveling companions, whom I had met in prison camp in Rabaul for the first time, were to be stuck with me for the duration of the war. There were two Australians, Brian Stacy, pilot, and Brown, radioman; Air Corps P-38 pilot Captain Charles Taylor; PBY pilot Commander John Arbuckle; and Major Donald Boyle, another Corsair pilot.

It is an amazing thing, now that I look back on it, how you can practically read each other’s minds under circumstances such as these. I know I could. And I found others could read mine, at least as far as recognizing pure insanity.

For a long time to come I was to feel a deep regret over something we possibly could have done after taking off in “Betty,” one of their famous twin-engine bombers.

This doesn’t refer to the first time we took off, but to the second, for the first time they put us into the Betty and took off, we got I don’t know how high when we heard air fire coming around us. The next thing I knew, we landed very abruptly on some airstrip close by. I don’t know where it was. We were taken out of the plane, our blindfolds removed, and were herded into the woods. It seems that our own boys had come over early this morning and found a few planes in the air. But this Betty we were in had gotten away from them.

The next morning the bomber, with us six prisoners back in it, tried again. According to the time by the sun, which we hazily could estimate even through our blindfolds, we appeared to have flown long enough to reach the island of Truk. And this estimation later proved to be correct.

But what still made me so disappointed until recent years—and I could wake up at night and get mad about it all over—is the disappointment in not having had five of my own Black Sheep with me there as captives in that plane instead of the boys I did have. For during that plane ride in that Betty from Rabaul on up to Truk, our Black Sheep would have had the opportunity of a lifetime. And later, while sitting in some bar daydreaming, I yearned and dreamed over what we could
have done. Perhaps all of us have regrets like this, regrets over “what we could have done” at sometime in the past. But my regrets, in this instance, were, I felt sure, the biggest.