Dust Devil (46 page)

Somewhere down the row of cots a soldier piped, "Try cleaning your glasses, Spec.”

"Go screw yourself, Omaha,” Spec told the black soldier.

"Speaking of screw,” another soldier said, and the darkness was filled with laughter, "did ya’ll see that Red Cross nurse that came through the base last week?”

"You’re the guy that’s been here too long,” Spec shot back. "The dame was old enough to be your grandmother.”

"Forget the nurse,” Omaha said. "Did ya see the camp’s new laundress that came on base today? Jeeesus Christ! She’s built like the China Wall!”

A Navajo Code Talker, Blue Tail, who was two cots over from Chase, let out a low catcall that could have resembled a war whoop. "My laundry gets dirty just thinking about her!”

Several chuckles erupted in the darkness. Chase smiled. He had seen the young Filipino girl at headquarters during his processing and mentally screwed her half a dozen times himself.

As it turned out the laundress began to flirt with Chase, coyly watching him whenever their paths crossed on the minuscule base, touching his hand shyly when she took and delivered his laundry.  Lelani was petite with almond-shaped eyes and long, thick black hair, and for a while Chase found himself intrigued by her, enjoying their casual companionship, for in some ways her Oriental attitude matched the fatalism of his own ancestors. And he was somewhat surprised that she had not attached herself to one of the officers, which offered her so much more prestige — for, everything taken into consideration, he knew she was just that, a camp follower.

But Lelani, of the swaying hips and straight back, wanted no one else. "All women
— I betcha they have eyes for you, just you,” she told him one afternoon when he had been in the Philippines a little over a month. He was off duty, and the two of them had ferried to the Luzon mainland and boarded a packed bus of World War I vintage bound for the mountain city of Baguio. Uncaring of the disinterested gazes of the other Filipinos on the bus, she had reached over and touched him on the thigh, letting her small, wash-reddened fingers rest near his crotch. "You, Chase, are a man.”

He
had laughed emptily at her impish daring. "I should hope by now you know that.”

Yes, Lelani had been good in bed, knowing all the tricks. And he was certain that after he left there would be other soldiers. But just as Baguio had reminded him much of Santa Fe with its invigorating mountain climate and resort hotels, Lelani, with her saffron-colored skin, had reminded him in a superficial way of Deborah, whose skin was the dusky hue of summer roses. All in all, it was a comparison that made him uneasy to dwell on.

On their return from Baguio he looked up the CBS Foreign Information Bureau in Manila, but all he learned from the one correspondent in the small office was that Deborah was on an assignment in Tokyo, covering the story of the new Japanese cabinet that had taken office and photographing its new premier, General Hideki Tojo. She was due back in Manila about the first of December.

Lying on his cot that night, he took out the picture of Deborah that Will had sent. He missed her more than he thought. She had a way of understanding him, of communicating with him without words, that no one else had. With reason, he told himself. They shared the same Navajo blood and many of the same memories. He told himself he would make another trip back to Manila when his next leave was due, about the fifteenth of December.

But his leave never came. For the Japanese chose the seventh of December, it was the eighth there in the Philippines, to surprise the world by bombing Pearl Harbor.  With the news of Japan’s treacherous attack on Pearl Harbor, Nichols Field was immediately put on alert. On December 8, 1941, the air field was strafed by Japanese zero fighter planes, and Chase was transferred the same day with the 275th Materiel Squadron to the Bataan Peninsula for infantry combat.

The bark of the machine gun emplacements and the whoomph of bombs and anti-aircraft became part of an unbelievably bad dream for the American soldier. But the killing and dying was something Chase had lived with all his life, and the war’s horrors could not touch him. What did was his worry for Deborah that ate away at him like a parasite. Was she still in Tokyo when war broke out in December
— or was she in Manila where the nearby Nichols Air Base even now underwent daily bombings?

Any time Chase was in communication with Corregidor he asked Blue Tail what news there was of the American civilians trapped in Manila by the open outbreak of the war. When the chipmunklike Blue Tail learned that Chase was specifically interested in another Navajo, a female photographer, the Code Talker daily kept Chase apprised of the gossip flowing out of Manila. But always there was nothing about Deborah.

Chase spent the next four months on Bataan’s front line with the walkie-talkie, coding and decoding vital messages out of Corregidor’s rocky fortress, the last holdout of the Pacific fleet now that General MacArthur had withdrawn from Manila.

Because of his special status as a Code Talker, Chase sometimes enjoyed the luxury of an officer’s pup tent during the times he was in communication with Corregidor. But more often he knew the miserableness of a foxhole.

"Man, how do you stand coming back to this dump?” Spec asked when Chase slid into the foxhole beside him. "Did ya ever realize if we had a few more of Hardheart’s stripes we could be enjoying the good life of his cot and mosquito netting ’stead of this Prairie Dog Town?”

Hardheart, Colonel Rabinowitz, was disfigured by a purple, egg-sized birthmark on his left cheek, and Omaha swore the birthmark marked him as the meanest son-of-a-bitch in
the army. The colonel had yet to eat Chase’s ass out, so Chase could have cared less about the man’s infamous reputation.

Chase drew on one of the few cigarettes left of the Red Cross boxes that had been salvaged. All about him phosphorus and occasionally fragment bombs exploded, lighting the night like the Fourth of July. At last he said, "If I get ready to walk out, Spec, I don’t want to have to worry about Colonel Rabinowitz telling me I can’t.”

Spec laughed, his teeth a light in the temporary darkness. "Ohh, come on man.” He swallowed another bite of his beef and stew C-rations and said, "I been thinking about walking outta here, too. Just haven’t made up my mind where I wanna visit next.”

But Chase was not joking. He stayed with the army only because he was drifting. There was nowhere special he wanted to go. It would be a good way to die
— fighting — but he was not ready to die. At least not fighting in a white man’s army.

Toward dawn Chase was roused from the foxhole and ordered to report to the colonel. The man looked like he had not slept since the siege of Bataan began. Worry showed in the eyes rimmed by crow’s feet. For once Chase felt pity for an Anglo. Colonel Rabinowitz rubbed his forehead several times times as if trying to erase the worry. At last he looked up at Chase. "Strawhand, get a hold of Corregidor. Tell them the Nips have moved into the village of Pilar. Tell them we’re retreating for the last time. I want their mortars ready to protect our flanks.”

Blue Tail was a northern Navajo, and his Abathascan speech differed in the nasal intonation from that of Chase’s, but Chase was able to make the message understood above the deafening sounds of shelling before the tent’s equipment had to be loaded up and orders given to fall back.

From then on the retreat became a nightmare for the soldiers, but not the living horror it would be by May, three weeks later. There was little sleep, no food, and last-ditch efforts at fighting an enemy you could not see but could hear as their tanks mowed down the banyan and mango trees like ants plowing over grass blades.

There were simply no supplies left to feed the troops that had been separated from the main troops by the width of the Pacific Ocean. "We’ll ultimately be starved into having to surrender,” Colonel Rabinowitz told Chase when he relayed the last message there would be to Corregidor — Proceeding into guerrilla warfare fighting.

Chase looked at the man, wondering why the officer was bothering to explain it all to him, because he certainly felt
nothing of the colonel’s patriotism. Then, seeing the weary eyes, the hands that twisted the fatigue cap, Chase knew the man was exorcising from his system what he felt to be a failure — the inevitable surrender of Bataan.

"But maybe we’ve accomplished our objective,” Rabinowitz continued. "Maybe we’ve held out long enough to let our troops in Australia build up sufficiently to keep those damned Nips from taking it, too. With the largest harbor and ship facilities in the Orient, Australia is just what those penguins want.”

You poor dumb animal, Chase thought. Do you think it matters to the Great White Father in Washington — or Bug-out Doug in Australia? What’s one more, or a hundred more, or even a thousand more dead men? It’s the system.

Before Chase signed off with Corregidor, he asked Blue Tail if there had been any word yet of Deborah DeBaca. He was hoping against the obvious that she had been able to get out with MacArthur and his troops.

A long pause, then, "Underground reports subject arrested as civilian in Manila. Nothing else is known.”

Chase felt like a hand grenade had gone off in his gut. He saluted Rabinowitz, who understood nothing of the coded communication, and quit the tent. He was ready to fight now.

After that final communication with Corregidor, the order went out to abandon everything but the bare necessities. Explosions followed by leaps of fire meant that jeeps, transport trucks, and the large machine gun emplacements were being destroyed rather than left for the invading Japanese.

It seemed odd to Chase as the various units set out along the jungle trails to hear a soldier complain about the lack of shaving equipment or bedding. For Chase it meant freedom again. He carried his .30/.30 caliber rifle with bayonet, a bandolier of shells, and a .45 Colt automatic along with a water canteen, first-aid kit, and a mess kit with chlorine flakes. The other soldiers loaded themselves down with gas masks, digging tools, blankets, field glasses, and C-rations.

Chase moved easily, unhampered by the mosquitos. The insects did not seem to bother Omaha either, whose black skin camouflaged better with the jungle surroundings. "Just don’t smile,” Chase told him, "and they’ll never see you.”

While Rabinowitz consulted a grid map, Chase showed the other five men left in the platoon how to rub mud on their bodies to protect them from the insect bites and better camouflage their skin
— something the army’s field training had incredibly neglected in its effort to outfit the maximum amount of soldiers in the minimum amount of time.

"Where you go, Red man, I’m gonna go,” Omaha said during one of the few rest periods allotted.

Chase sat with his back against a coconut tree, digging halfheartedly at the tin of Spam and wishing the coconuts were ripe. "Why?”

"’Cause you’re a survivor,” the black man said and swallowed another bite from his #2 can of fruit cocktail. "You don’t let feelings mess up your instincts.”

"Do you think the Japs — or anyone for that matter — really give a big shit about your black hide, Omaha? Or my red one?”

Chase finished off the Spam in silence.

It was the last food the platoon was to have for many days as they were kept on the move constantly. The Japanese intensified their bombardments, but the heavy American mortars on Corregidor were silent for fear of hitting the dense concentration of United States troops which had been forced to retreat to the tip of the Bataan peninsula. Now Chase’s troop was only a couple of miles from the sea and surrender. He could smell the salt in the air.

That night the flash of the batteries turned night into day with a barrage that lasted for two more nights straight. The third night toward dawn a large shell burst near and to the rear of Chase’s column. Everyone scattered into the bushes, looking for a ditch. When Chase waded out, he could not find Omaha. Colonel Rabinowitz, looking worse with a gray, unshaven face and blood trickling down one sleeve, was bent over the black man. Omaha had been hit in the thigh with shrapnel. There was no corpsman with the diminishing platoon, and Chase had no sulfa powder left in his first-aid kit. His face was grim as he bandaged Omaha’s leg.

Within minutes Rabinowitz had them on the trail again with the report that the enemy was within a mile. Chase and Spec supported Omaha between them. "Hey, men,” Omaha wheezed, "don’t be pigeons. I’m holding you back. Come on . .. drop me.”

"We thought about it,” Chase grinned. "But there’s no special place we want to go right now, so we’ll just stroll along with you.”

"Listen, Omaha,” Spec said, laboring under his load, "when we get back to the States — how about putting in a good word for me with those monkeys in Harlem?”

Then, within the space of seconds, there came the crushing sound of leaves and limbs and guns firing, and Japanese burst through the trees, surrounding the seven American soldiers.

* * * * *

Chase and Spec alternated with Rabinowitz in helping
Omaha walk. Four Japanese rode in a 1938 Mercury holding rifles on Chase and the other soldiers of his platoon who marched ahead of the car. There was a continuous column of Japanese troops moving south along the main road — long lines of tanks, cavalry, and infantrymen. Occasionally Chase glimpsed Bataan’s west shoreline.

They had walked about fifteen miles, with other clumps of prisoners swelling the ranks to nearly a thousand, when Chase noticed a supply sergeant who had been at Corregidor lying face down with a gaping hole in
his gut. Nearby, beneath the branches of a banyan tree, lay the nude body of a Filipino spread-eagled on his back. He had been bayoneted just beneath the rib cage, and fresh blood still poured from the open wound.