Reluctant Warriors (9 page)

“Meine Haus liegt hinten dem Walde,” Vandelmann blurted drunkenly, pointing toward
his plantation.

“Shithead says his house is over there,” Ketchel said, not looking up. He was leaning
against a tree.

“Yeah, I'd like to send him back to his house,” Osborne added, looking at him with
a hateful glance. “How about on the end of a torpedo, jackass?”

“Der Alte aber verlor sein ganzes Geld!” Vandelmann insisted.

Ketchel translated, “Ah, the asshole says he's a poor old man who's lost all of his
money.”

Several of the men chimed in at the same time, “Ah, drop dead! We're just crying
our eyes out for ya!”

The German looked at Ketchel and said, “Å°bersetzung?”

“Ja.” Ketchel sounded irritated. “Translation, ja, ja, I'll translate for you. Though
I bet you understand everything in English just fine.”

Harry, Osborne, and Polavita all looked at each other. He wondered if they were thinking
what he was thinking. The Japanese were on the island. By now, they had probably
guessed what was going on with Vandelmann, and maybe guessed that some Allied force
was on the island as well.

The wind had started coming up since dawn. Could both rafts get off the island and
through the Cauldron? It remained to be seen. If they pulled out now, but were swept
back in, the enemy might be waiting for both. The patrol would be captured and the
mission would become a disaster. The orders were still there, hanging over Harry's
head, and it was obvious what had to be done.

“All right, Duke, you know what to do! Get that machine gun of yours and set it up
over there on that rock or some other place with a good field of fire. Did we get
the three hundred rounds?”

Osborne nodded, then walked over to the trunk of a palm tree about fifteen feet away
and picked up the Browning automatic rifle that stood against it.

“Polavita, sprinkle Ketchel and Minton around with those Springfield rifles and a
lot of ammo. Duke will tell you where. Then come back here.”

“Yes, sir!”

Men didn't use “yes sirs” and “no sirs” on board
Bluefin
. But this was an emergency,
and they all knew that discipline might save their lives.

In a moment, with the men placed, Polavita came back.

Harry bent down with Osborne and Polavita. “Tony, you need to make good on this .
. . ”

Several voices swept their way: “Sir, look!”

Everyone stood. Harry picked up a pair of binoculars and could see a truck rounding
the end of the island. The three bent down again.

“This mission is going to succeed or fail depending on if you can get through the
surf with that German right now. Take Botel, Czarik, and the big raft. That will
give you three men paddling and the German and Howie lying down in the bottom for
ballast. It ought to keep you from overturning.”

“Sir,” Polavita said, “I hate to leave you with Phoebe. He's just a kid and he's
afraid already.”

“That can't be helped. I'm sorry to give you only three paddlers, but it's the best
I can do for you and still hold this place. If you can't get through, don't get drowned,
get swept back in.”

Polavita nodded. He could see it was the only way.

“Go now, and we'll try to hold them off with the gun. Send up a flare when you make
it. I need Duke here with me.”

The three men stood. “Okay, Harry, we'll get you off this damn place,” Polavita promised.

Harry watched them take off at a run, pulling the cart and its bound prisoner. Then
he glanced toward the enemy, now with three trucks but still a long way away. He
noted that the men were getting the big raft ready.

Then he picked up the blinker light again. The surf was up from when they had come
ashore the day before, but he aimed the Morse light out to sea anyway and signaled:

JAPS COMING UP COAST ROAD. SURF HIGH. SENDING ONE BOAT WITH HOWIE AND GERMAN.

Harry felt confident that with the periscope up as high as it would go, and the lens
turned to four-power, the message would get through. He
wondered if the reply, sent
from the bridge, would come through. But in only a minute he saw the response clearly,
one word:

ROGER.

As the raft shoved off, Harry looked up the road. The Japanese were clearly in view
now, about three-quarters of a mile off.

He could hear Vandelmann's loud, drunken voice trailing away as the boat moved off:
“Nach und nach.”

Harry looked at Ketchel, who was at his post with his Springfield rifle close by.
He rolled his eyes and translated for the last time, “The asshole says ‘little by
little,' sir, whatever the hell that means.”

Harry picked up the field glasses and turned toward the advancing enemy. The three
open trucks were packed with men, the lead one with a machine gun over the cab on
some kind of a swivel track. Several squads of men followed the trucks. Harry estimated
the total to be perhaps one hundred, to his four!

Osborne had the gun set up on a rock that stood up about four feet high. The other
two men, Ketchel and Phoebe, had bolt-action Springfield 1903 rifles. Harry first
picked up a Springfield himself, but then set it back against a tree. It would be
better, he thought, to hand the gun's magazines to Osborne.

“Maybe we can hold 'em up for awhile,” the fifty-eight-year-old chief said.

“Yeah, let's hope long enough.” Ketchel nodded. They looked toward the raft. It had
cleared the surf and was almost out of sight. They knew that if the raft got out
and a flare went up, they could scramble to get out, but that would take an hour
and the Japanese would be in front of them in twenty minutes.

The thought was too much for Phoebe. The young radioman began to sob. “We ain't never
gonna get outta here, are we? I know it's my fault. I'm sorry. I'm real, real sorry!”

“Shut up now, boy,” Ketchel responded blandly.

Sullen looks spread across the four Americans' faces as they watched the overpowering
enemy force approach. Then, they were startled by a new,
approaching sound, increasing
in volume. It came from behind them and instantly passed over and toward the Japanese.

The Americans ducked instinctively. Then a tremendous explosion hit in the water
about fifty yards from the first truck, now about five hundred yards off. It was
so unexpected that it took a second for them to realize that it was
Bluefin
's deck
gun!

Before they could react, another shell soon cascaded by. The Japanese, now puzzled,
never moved after the first shot. Then the second hit in the palm grove on the other
side of the Japanese and they began to scatter. The third shell hit almost directly
under the first truck and blew the vehicle violently end-over-end, fifty feet into
the air. Harry and the others yelled and screamed and jumped.

Other shells followed into the enemy formation, blowing up the other two trucks and
forcing the enemy into the jungle. Standing and now rather quiet, one word of gratitude
played on the men's lips: “Phelps!”

Harry thought:
That's the second time that gun has saved my life!
The submarine,
unseen beyond the surf, could see right into the lap of the enemy with the periscope
extended.

With no more targets, the great gun ceased. The periscope could not see the enemy
moving through the jungle. Harry figured the numbers were now halved: maybe there
was a chance. As he examined the ground in front of them, he thought better and better
of their chances. Osborne's position was a commanding one, with a terrific field
of fire.

He spoke to the boy. “Phoebe, get my glasses, go over here behind us, and look for
the flare. Soon would be a nice time to get out of here.”

“Okay, sir.”

“Duke, have you looked at this setup?”

“Yeah, not bad.”

In front of them was a completely open area of about 250 yards that the Japanese
would have to cross. It was a giant basalt formation, gray color rock, smooth. In
some previous millennium, lava had spewed forth under the sea from an underwater
volcano and formed the massive formation of pillow basalt. It domed slightly about
fifty yards away from the Japanese side.

“How many you figure they still got, Harry?” the old chief asked.

“Forty, fifty.”

“Harry, those men will have to come across that open area to get to us, and they
can't do that.”

It was easy enough to agree. They had the submarine's one heavy rifle. It had the
gun power of a machine gun, but nearly the accuracy of a Springfield rifle. It could
fire a twenty-shot clip in as little as five seconds. The chief pointed at the dome
of the basalt.

“They can't set up a machine gun against me in the jungle because it's either too
far away down the coast road, or that dome is in the way. They'll have to come out
in the open on that dome. I'll shoot 'em before they can do that.”

“Yeah, unless they have a mortar,” Ketchel said.

Osborne shook his head. “My guess is they don't have one. Or maybe Red just blew
it up.”

Harry looked over at Phoebe. “You see anything?”

“No, I don't see no rafts or flares, Harry.”

“You watch that real good. That's our ticket out of here. We can't get out of here
until they reach the sub.”

“I know.”

God
, Harry prayed silently,
let us hold this place so that our crewmen can get away,
not only the ones on the first raft, but us as well.

These were good men, like family to Harry. He had known of Chief Osborne by reputation
for years. Red Phelps had tried hard to get Osborne to come over to
Bluefin
for many
months. Finally, after several official attempts, Phelps had seen him at a bar near
the Royal Hawaiian Hotel in Honolulu. “If I buy you a couple of beers, will you come
over to us?” Phelps had asked.

The Duke quickly retorted, “I thought you'd never ask!”

With amazing dispatch, only possible with thirty-five years of Navy connections,
the transfer papers had come through in six days! Osborne had been worth it too.
Any difficult-to-acquire supply item, whether important or trivial, left in his hands
never failed to arrive in less than a week. His understanding of everything on a
submarine, from keeping the vessel from
broaching during silent running to the finer
points of torpedo technology, went past that of anyone on board.

Harry knew Mike Ketchel too. He claimed to be a nephew of Stanley Ketchel, the Australian
light heavyweight boxing champion of the early part of the century who had assembled
one of the great records in boxing history. No one knew where he had grown up, or
if he had any family. Never a letter or postcard came for him that anyone saw. When
leave came, he just sort of disappeared, and no one had any idea where he went. But
in a pinch like this, he was a good man to have on your side. He had handled the
German well. Slender of build, perhaps 150 pounds, he had the reputation of being
stronger than any man on board except Tony Polavita, who weighed about 200.

Then there was Phoebe Minton. He was an orphan from Bayonne, New Jersey. Every boy
who passed through that particular orphanage wound up joining the Navy, because there
was a priest there who loved the service. The boy talked about the priest daily,
because he was the closest thing he had to a father. His real name was Peter Minton,
but with his slight build he was usually called Petey growing up. That all changed
the day he came on board
Bluefin
and was brought around to every part of the ship,
as Red Phelps demanded of every new man. The After Engine Room was going through
an overhaul and the old chief, a man named Porcel, could not understand the boy's
pronunciation of “Petey” with the engines at full blast and finally settled on “Phoebe.”
It stuck, and the boy never seemed to mind. It was an appellation denoting the affection
the crew had for him, and he had never had much of that before.

Phoebe didn't write well, so Harry handled his finances every month. Five dollars
went to the priest, fifteen to a savings and loan in Princeton, New Jersey, and the
rest Harry gave to Phoebe. He never gave him all of the money at once, because Phoebe
was a soft touch for every sad story by every moocher on board. Phoebe was a good
little man, and Harry had no intention of letting him or any of the others down.

It was high tide now, the perfect time to get away. But with no rescue from the submarine,
Harry's men were stuck. There was no part of East
Point more than six feet out of
the water. Suddenly, a group of four Japanese soldiers appeared, climbing over the
basalt formation and onto the dome with a Hotchkiss machine gun.

Osborne watched as the men hurried out onto the basalt in plain view two hundred
or so yards away. One was carrying the weapon, one the tripod, one a twenty-five-shot
aluminum tray, and the last a box of ammo. Before they could even sit down, Osborne
began to shoot.

The gun, with its distinctive deep-throated BUP, BUP, BUP, BUP, BUP, BUP, sounded
and the men fell. As if in a strange dance, four more took their places, pushing
their comrades out of the way, and sitting down at the weapon. The gun sounded again,
BUP, BUP, BUP, BUP, BUP, and again the gunners were lying motionless on the rock.

Four more men ran out, Duke fired, and again the enemy tumbled over like bowling
pins. Osborne then targeted the gun itself. He must have damaged it in some way,
because the enemy gave up on it. There it sat, bodies all around it.

“How many they got left now, Harry?”

“Good stuff, Duke, thirty to forty.”

“Look,” said Ketchel, “they're trying to swim over here!”

Looking back up the coast, Harry's men saw four or five soldiers running from the
jungle, across the coast road toward the surf. At 250 yards, Ketchel, with his Springfield
propped up perfectly on a boulder, shot the first man just as he reached the water.
In the crystal clear water, the others made easier targets. One by one, Ketchel took
care of them too.