Fighter Pilot in the Pacific

by LIEUTENANT EDWARDS PARK

MARCH 11, 1943. — For a man with my job, New Guinea is a lovely place. Picture a tropical climate tempered by a constant sea breeze. Your home is a tent perched on the side of a steep little hill, and you look across a shady valley to the brilliant green of a similar hill not 400 yards away — and beside that another, and another. The hills may be 1000 feet high or 200, but the outlook is now intimate and comforting rather than eternal and terrifying. Our hills are blanketed with shining green hay, — no other word for it, just hay, — and shaded with eucalyptus trees. Climb one of them and you will find an exhilarating sight: in one direction the mighty peaks that form the backbone of the island towering 15,000 feet into the clouds, and in another direction perhaps a glint of the sea.
It’s great to be assigned finally to a line outfit — to be a member of an efficient, well-organized little business firm where everything is in its proper place and I have my duties and know how to do them. We don’t work often, but when we do we work hard.

May 2, 1943. — We heard F.D.R.’s speech about the coal miners last night, and the news of the strike was new to us. That sort of thing makes us feel sick and futile. The evening was spoiled for all of us. Morale is a hard thing to define, but I think I know what it feels like to lose it. You hear about half a million men stopping work because their leader wants to force the hand of his government and thus increase his own power. (Or have we got it wrong out here?) Anyway, you suddenly say, What the hell is the use?” and you don’t much care whether you win your particular scrap or not — for those people. You see, we take the war seriously out here. We know how easy it is to lose, and what a lot of work it’s going to be to win. And if people at home don’t take it seriously too, then there’s no purpose in our staying here in the mud any longer.

June 30, 1943. — You have just been writing me about your getting word of my “ debut.” It’s so long ago now that I’m tempted to tell what happened. There was a raid, we intercepted, I got in a few passes at a bomber and must have made him awfully annoyed because he shot the hell out of my crate. He was very lucky or a very good shot. I was very lucky. I landed O.K. We got that particular bomber, which pleased me because I hated the idea of being considered a “probable” by the Nips.
I remember having the feeling that I was impregnable. There was no fear, and not much excitement. Just a good rat-race, lots of fun. It’s fun to shoot at something. After it’s over you think, “How bloody dangerous!” and then only for a moment, and not for a couple of days. I made a lot of mistakes, but that damned Moto was lucky. I hope you are all well and happy and not worrying about little web-foot, because I’m strictly the careful type. It was really not much worse than Dick and I pasting each other with tinfoil slugs from rubber bands. It sounded just like hail on a tin roof. Now please don’t worry; I don’t.

September 8, 1943. — Today I had to ask a lot of that French Prostitute plane of mine, and she behaved so beautifully that I forgave her all the times she has tried to kill me. I am madly in love with her. It’s wonderful to feel as though the wings were your own — and not a good idea to feel it too strongly.
Living conditions are different and, of course, pretty rugged. The jungle is rather fascinating if you make up your mind to be kindly in your thoughts of it. It smells. A smell that could only be jungle. The trees are beauts, 200 feet high or so, and massive and straight, with flying buttress roots. The vines are impenetrable.
Not many snakes, thank God, but they have a cozy habit of sleeping in your cot. Lonely, no doubt. I am still terrified by them.
The jungle is cool and wet. The soil is black, and already we have several Victory gardens starting. The jungle is noisy. There are continuous rustlings, whispers, shrieks, voices. You swear someone is calling your name. It rains frequently and the ground turns to black glue. It is always wet. Out in the kunai (grasslands) it is hotter and a little drier because of winds. It is a bit cleaner, too.
Well, enough of that. We are listening to Radio Tokyo, enjoying the excellent jazz (much better taste in music than we get from the States) and the propaganda. We are always delighted to hear that once again we have been exterminated. It sort of cheers you up.
The Nips are funny little people. Inconsistent, masochistic, seeming to be satisfied with a gesture. Gosh, their planes are pretty, though, — shiny and new-looking and dainty, — and it gives you a curious thrill to see that neat, simple red circle. If there were time to think, I’d think: “In that different plane, behind that different insignia, is a different type of man whose whole pattern of life is on a different dimension from mine. And he seems to believe it is better, because he is directly going to try his best to kill me, so that he can convince my people.” Actually, of course, the only thing I think is: “I hope I’m going faster and appearing more dangerous than I feel.” And the poor Nip probably thinks, “I must fight this Yankee so that I can use up some ammo and report that he was shot down, so that I won’t get hell from the C.O., who in turn won’t be beheaded by the Emperor.” It’s a curious business. We’ll get ‘em, though, sooner or later.

September 19, 1943.—The job is going well. I am learning that discretion is the better part of valor, and am cagier and less hell-for-leather than at the time of my debut. I doubt if it will make much difference in the results obtained, but it may make you happy to learn that I at least try to think twice before attacking singlehanded 500 eager Zeros. Have done a bit of strafing lately, which is glorious fun but deceptively dangerous. You circle high over your target and then peel down on it with a great feeling of speed and formidability. The trouble is that you get so fascinated by the sight of your tracers flashing into (you hope) the target, that you tend to forget how close to the trees you are, and how much you “mush.” I will not forget again.
Our aerial “contacts” are short and sporadic and far between. The Nip is not in an attacking mood right now. Radio Tokyo assures us that Italy’s warriors wall fight on against the vicious invader, that forty or so American planes have fallen to the eagles of Nippon, that people at home are drinking ice-cold drinks and eating ice cream, and don’t we wish we were? So we know everything is O.K., and feel pretty good.

October 6, 1943. — My squadron seems slated for the inglorious but necessary role of “ blocking back.” We don’t see much of the heroics, but just do our dull little job as faithfully as we can, and sometimes we are rewarded by finding ourselves at the right place at the right time, with the chance of showing our mettle. I’m always nervous as a cat at that period when you are pretty sure you’re going to make contact but you haven’t yet. Then when it comes you feel amazingly confident and cool, although you are doing twelve things at once and all in a split second.
It’s astonishing to me that my reactions can be so quick, and at the time can seem so agonizingly slow. Time slows down so much that a second seems to drag interminably. We give our intelligence reports: “Fired a two-second burst,” which seems a most conservative estimate, and then find from the amount of ammo expended that it was only half a second’s burst. I find that after I’ve landed, the momentum of the fast pace carries on. I make a point of trying to act calm and unexcited, but I find myself lighting a cigarette and then throwing it away, and sitting down and getting up, and lighting another cigarette, and so on. But this is all an unusual event with us. Mostly it’s just the “blocking back” kind of work.
I have a couple of souvenirs. In my job it is a novel feeling to see these evidences that the enemy exists as living creatures (or dead, more likely), rather than as a red design on a map, or a shiny, dainty, exotic-looking little aircraft, with flaming red balls on the wings. From what I’ve seen, the enemy appears to live a more or less normal army life, smoking cigarettes, reading pulp magazines, caring for his equipment. But he does appear to be even dirtier than we. Not just grimy like us, but actually stinking filthy. He is a messy person, although probably the stress of his position just before his defeat is largely to blame. The big difference is that in victory or defeat he is stupid. Damned dumb. There is plenty of evidence of the crude hypnotism he is subjected to and hasn’t the intellectual experience to disbelieve. The souvenirs are the belongings of soulless men, and that gives them a repugnance — and a sort of pathos.
Conditions here, the lack of mail, the food situation (very little and very bad), the long hours of hard work, and days off when there is nothing to do (no books, no games) except what we make up — all this we take in our stride and crack jokes about it. When things get very bad the griping stops and we make fun of ourselves.
All this proves conclusively what I’ve always known — that this is a remarkably fine squadron of the finest guys in the world. We are a fraternity more closely bound than any hush-hush club could imagine. I might tell a little more about us. Our average age is about twenty-four, and many of us are married — a few to Australian girls. We come from all over — Texas, California, Colorado, Pennsylvania, Louisiana, and of course New England. The Middle West seems to claim a slight ma jority of us. The North slightly outnumbers the South. The Far West has a good showing. New England proudly claims a fat percentage of the Northerners. Our arguments are violently sectional without ever becoming serious. It would be odd to get serious about the relative merits of our home states when we are out here. Most of us are fairly experienced at the job. A couple have the makings of aces. Sometimes we lose a boy. As I write this I realize that it might be any squadron. But I swear this one is the best.

November 27, 1943. — I have just returned from leave and find your worried cable waiting. First, to ease your mind, I am well and unhurt. In spite of the fact that I’ve been picking the scab of my “wound,” trying to leave a scar, I have great difficulty in finding the place. Doug, Judge Hoyt, Moose Nus, and I got caught out of a slit-trench and the stuff was really flying. We were lying in a little gully clutching the Good Earth to our bosoms — trying in fact to suck ourselves inside it. It turned out to be the wrong gully, right in the middle of the bomb pattern. I still don’t like to think about it, much less talk or write about it. We came very, very close; I never want to go through that again. Moose got a chunk in his shoulder but will be O.K. Judge gouged his calf but is out of the hospital. Doug got treated for a little scratch on his foot, and I discovered later that there was a smear of blood on my right thigh, and a good stiff muscle bruise. I got an alcohol rub at the dispensary, and was thereby officially listed as a casualty, much to my embarrassment.
I am still a little bit jittery about loud noises and swishing sounds, but leave has made a new man of me. That is all there is to it, except that I went to church that night (it being Sunday) for the first time in — disgraceful, isn’t it? The chaplain was a nice young lad who was enthusiastic about being informal with the boys, and kept insisting on chatting with us about K.P. duty, and cussing, and bumming cigarettes, when what I wanted was good solid praying and lots of it. I disregarded him and talked things over seriously with God. Then the next day Doug and I dug the biggest, strongest, bomb-proofest dugout you ever saw. You had a thoroughly scared son that day.
Now about the Distinguished Flying Cross. Again, I must truthfully demur. It was awarded, just as it says, for fifty missions additional to the Junior Birdman’s Badge [nickname for the Air Medal] missions, meaning seventy-five in all. That is all. Period. The missions have consisted of escorts, patrols, scrambles (interceptions); sweeps (where you fly as high and as hastily as possible over an enemy base, supposedly looking for a fight), strafes, and dive-bombs. I have been in a few, very few, fights, and have not achieved any results at all, except one Zero “damaged” — only there is no official credit for “damaged” other than in an intelligence report. I have been shot at plenty in the air, and from ack-ack. I was on one strafe where we reportedly killed ninety Nips. That is the whole story, if it gets through.
I’m sorry to disappoint you again, but this record is slightly below the average for a D.F.C. None of us are actually spectacular, and least of all, I. (Is that correct grammar?) In fact, writing this down it sounds pretty boastful. It literally has been nothing but routine for this kind of squadron. Every squadron does a different type of work, depending on its equipment; and in some of them, when the boys win a D.F.C., it really means something, because it’s harder to last seventy-five missions than with us. In our case it’s simply a question of doing your job, and there is no heroism or outstanding duty involved. This hurts me worse than it does you. I should love to be sent home to sell bonds and make speeches and kiss babies — not too young — and wave condescendingly through clouds of ticker tape. But I shan’t be.
I’m heartbroken to hear about Jock. We get very callous about deaths in our own squadron, but it’s always a blow to hear that someone from home or college has been killed.
Leave was especially fine because I was with Tad. Yet after the third leave you just can’t bo so refreshed and eager as you were after the first. It’s funny to come back. You’re fresh from the land of clean sheets, eggs, steak, milk, fruit, beer, music and dancing, and the thought of going back makes you so blue you are ready to break a leg to avoid it. Then you arrive in this breathless glaring heat, and you meet the gang and are so glad to see them that you forget everything else. We’ve been through such a hell of a lot together, and we know each other so very well. Immediately the old ways, the smelly blankets on your sack, the whining mosquitoes, the day-long snarl of planes — all these seem ageless and part of you, and leave reverts to a blurred idea in the back of your mind.
My only good souvenir is a scarf of a thousand stitches, about five feet long and eight inches wide, with the red stitches representing the Rising Sun. Each stitch is put in by a different friend or relative, and Mr. Moto wears it around his belly or as a turban for luck. Mine has a bullet hole in the dead center. Lots of love to all.
TEDDY