Quite a Beach

by TOM LEA

You get about half lonesome at that rocket ramp like this afternoon writing those equations with the dust blowing and it feels like it never did happen. None of it. You get about half tight like now and seems like it’s still going on.

At one time it seemed like it would be going on forever. Nobody could figure the end to it.

Coming in seeing that slick trailing southeast. Homing on a slick, Hying out to the end of it, with my wing man gone. I was trying to stretch out my gas, homing on the slick. I knew that much oil couldn’t be from anything else.

She looked queer ahead there in the haze trailing the slick, taking planes aboard. She looked damn good brother. Coming in on the circle I mushed up alongside starboard, bugging my eyes looking for hits and didn’t see anything wrong until I got down and crawled out on the deck. I could smell the smoke. My legs were wobbly. The doc and two corpsmen had to get my rear-seat, man out and we put him in a basket.

They buried twenty-eight at sea next morning. Those were the early days and I never had seen it done except before the war in the old Pennsy once we made a special cruise dropping an admiral over the side with the marines wearing red slripes and firing salute. The morning we pulled out trailing that big slick with the Combat Air Patrol up, it was different.

I’d like to know how Rika Riva is these days. We went in to Rika Riva to get the holes plugged up. I wonder if His Majesty’s Leftenant is still living in that grass shack at the edge of the strip with that canvas-covered flying machine. By now Rika Riva must have mile-long blacktop runways.

The only time I was ever in Rika Riva was in the early days when the Leftenant was there. The Bloody Royal New Zealand Air Force with the flying machine. I say chaps have you seen my batman ?

The whole Air Group, what was left, they got. us off the deck airborne the morning we came in for Rika Riva. We got a gander flying in over the reef: there was a convoy in the lagoon. Lncle was moving in. We buzzed the joint till some silly bastard up the beach made with some puffballs. The old whaleboat and popgun days, those were.

Johnny Fritz was senior squadron skipper, he went down to have a look at the strip. We all went into a circle around Rika Riva, seeing the task force barreling in from the northwest. Damn the water was green and blue from the air, over lagoons. You could see that slick trailing out aft of our old Yak, it was some homing device. You could see it all over the ocean. They had to do something about it before the Japs did. They brought her in through the reef and what they did was get divers and they went down and had a look at the hull.

Funny thing, a Jap from the port quarter, though he seemed like a clean miss, had dived at such an angle his load went down and exploded below surface close aboard. Damn near a torpedo job. Sprung seams and rivets at the fuel tanks. That was the big slick. They found where it was coming from when they got divers in the lagoon. They plugged up the holes with pegs. Whittled pegs and drove them in, down there under the hull, in the lagoon. You can have that.

It took five days. We didn’t know it but Midway was shaping fast on the charts hack at Pearl. There wasn’t any time to be fooling around, but. we didn’t know it then.

Johnny Fritz had a hell of a time with the Royal New Zealand Airdrome. There were big logs dumped all along the strip. Defense measure in case the Japs decided to sit. Johnny had to practically stand on the wing making with an Aldis lamp, trying to get the logs rolled off so we could land, while we all circled and the task force eased in the lagoon and let down the hook.

They finally got the logs rolled off and we all came in and racked up close at the windward end, waiting for the word. There weren’t any dispersion areas, not for an Air Group, there weren’t. We had forty-nine sitting there. First time on a beach since January. It was some palm farm.

No dust, sitting there with the props idling; it rained the night before and there were a lot of puddles, and at the edge of the strip, heavy green like a wall, solid. My God in was still at first, quiet with the hum still going in your head, while we climbed out and felt the ground. The gas stink blew away and you could smell the mud, and then all of a sudden the jungle like wet mustard greens.

Johnny Fritz was talking to the Leftenant when we walked up to the grass shack with what the Leftenant called his veranda, some kind of palm leaves woven in a kind of overhead perched up on poles. It made shade.

We walked under and the Leftenant was shaking hands with the whole Group. He didn’t know what in the hell to do with us. He had been sitting on that palm farm since the Wright Brothers invented aviation. Listening to the coconuts fall while he messed out of a few Royal New Zealand tin cans and waited for the Japs with his flying machine. You should of seen him look over the bunch moving in, more than seventy of us, and then look at the airplanes.

He turned to Johnny. “Well, Commander.” By that time the Leftenant was smoking a Camel. He let the smoke ooze slow through his teeth. “The whole Fleet Air Arm, no less. At Rika Riva. It’s a wizard Avorld, Commander.”

He turned to his f.o. or aircraftsman, whatever he was. “I say, Riggins, will you get old William to blow his horn?”

Damnedest thing you ever saw. Pretty soon this William comes out of the brush. He had gray frizzle hair sticking out all over his head and all he had on was some shorts the aircraftsman must of traded in on a wife, or something. William was about the color of chocolate spilled on a wardroom tablecloth and he was carrying one of those big conk shells on a string around his neck. The Leftenant gave him the palaver with plenty savvy and William walked way out on the strip, sucked in his breath, and let go on the conk.

Saddest moo yon ever heard. He blew it a long time. Same general tone as a beer bottle. It seemed goofy standing there sweating in the shade, numb from our busted deck, listening to this old bird honk. He was passing the word. He brought the whole nation on his conk shell frequency. It wasn’t an hour before they were pulling in logs and weaving palm leaxes. We had xvhat the Leftenant called “quarters” by nightfall, so help me. Overheads, anyway, and they kept the rain off. Most of the rain. The Grass Shack Air Group, courtesy Royal New Zealand Air Force, and William.

You ought of seen that aircraft of the Leftenant’s. He Hew searches in it. By God we saw him do it. A Dee Haviland or something Biplane, clothcovered, with wires between the wings. It had two wooden propellers. ’The blades were kind of curved. You weren’t supposed to turn them up more than about a thousand I think it was, or they flew apart. They had termites. The engines had galloping glitch. That Leftenant was quite a boy.

By 1600 the first afternoon Johnny Fritz and the Royal New Zealand Air Force weren’t the only ones worried about chow. Everybody was. We were hungry. It was some war.

2

ABOUT that time here came a jeep with the U.S. Army, overland from the Port of Rika Riva. An Army commissary officer, that is. with a galley on wheels, pulled by a truck. He rolled it right up to the strip, for supper, like on the Plan of the Day .

He was a captain, and he was a deal, don’t think he wasn’t. He was the Army and Navy Forever. He had beer.

Those days nobody heard of beer between Pearl and Brisbane. Not on our cruise, we hadn’t. We could just barely remember the stuff. Until this captain mentioned it.

He called Johnny Fritz and me, and Hank Casparion, the other squadron skipper, aside, and said he wanted to see us, privately, after breakfast, before we flew our searches, When we got behind the brush the captain lowered his voice and told us there was a ship in the harbor loaded with beer.

The captain was fronting us for a little job of his own, no doubt. He kept saying about the highpriority - combat - personnel - island - defense. That was us. Any how he said he could get us beer. How much did we want ?

“Just the Number One Hatch,”I said. “With a reefer unit. We’ll handle it.”

“You’re not satisfied with beer, you want it cold,” Johnny says, “grateful bastard.”

“I don’t know about cold,” the captain says, “I was offering beer.”

“Beer would be wonderful, Captain. Just beer.”

“But actually, I mean how much beer? I got to requisition, get it signed for, keep records. The stuff’s like Fort Knox, underground. A cun a day for each of your men? Two cans? Three? Four?”

Johnny says, with us drooling, “Two cans a day ought to be about a right ralion. Half a dozen 24can cases a day could do this Group very well —”

“Good God —” Hank said.

“Listen,” Johnny said, “dimwit. It’ll knock us on our own cans, after the dry spell. Five months. You want the book slapped on top of that? This may look like the picnic picture but it says on the paper I got, ‘Condition Able,’and that’s what it’s going to be. We’re flying off this beach. Daily.”

The goddamned Fritz wasn’t named that for nothing.

The captain delivered. That very day six cases in the truck. It was issued, two-can rations, warm, to seventy-one unbelieving goons as soon as the afternoon searches were in, about 1630. The Leftenant and his Assistant Bird Man got a ration too.

The way different guys took it was funny. You could see human nature. Some of them couldn’t wait to get their knives and knock holes; they lost most of the juice gulping at the foam that squirted out. Other guys put the cans in their pockets and stood around looking like they had just made a deal to shack with Lana Turner. A few agents were already quoting prices per can; there were some card games making up, and some dice. The cans felt pretty warm to me. I was saving mine to figure a way to get the most out of them.

Hogan, he was one of my section leaders, was one of the figuring guys. It ought to be cold, Hogan said. Hogan was a great man to figure. He was always worrying to get everything figured. He figured at least we could get the beer a little cooler if we put it in the river that ran about two hundred yards from the edge of the strip. We tied up the legs of an old pair of pants Hogan had in his dittybag, and some of us put our beer in and took it to the river and fastened it with Hogan’s belt. Boy Scouts. Wo set a security watch while we had chow.

I don’t think the river was a hell of a sight cooler than the beer, but we thought it helped. It was dark when we brought it back to the shack.

No lights, except up at the Army truck by the galley, and the Leftenant’s veranda, that’s where people went that wanted light for card games. They hollered a lot. We punched holes in our beer cans very carefully and unlaxed on the grass at the edge of the trees by the shacks. The stars looked hazy. You could see the strip out there dim white and on the other side the black trees and the weather a summer night Stateside, like it might rain. The beach at Rika Riva. With the beer. Hogan took off his shoes and socks, he said the grass felt good between his toes. By the time he finished his beers he was giving the Dance of Spring, barefooted. We were all feeling pretty good.

Next day I flew morning search and when I got down and was walking to the veranda — we were calling it Primary Fly — I saw jeeps. Army trucks. Guys in brown suits. The Army had started to move to the strip. There was some unauthorized personnel around there too. The dogfaces smelled I hat high-priority-island-defense beer from clear down at the Port. They had scuttlebutt that the Navy was getting a case a day per man. I think the whole Motor Pool came out to see what could be promoted. These agents were offering the boys a buck, two bucks, three bucks a can and getting nowhere. They hinted that for certain consideration they could bring real live women out to the strip. More damn speculation and horsetrading mumbled around those grass shacks that afternoon than you ever heard of.

3

HOGAN came in from his search with something on his mind. His heart was not in the prospects. You know what was eating Hogan? Hookworm.

He was afraid he was getting hookworm. He was worrying about being barefooted the night before. Here’s Hogan on the beach for the first time in five months, with beer coming up, and here’s Hogan worrying about hookworm.

It turns out Hogan was remembering the book we read before the Salamaua strike. Written by some missionary, the only briefing about New Guinea we had on the ship. It told about the mountains back of Moresby, some mountains, about snakes and the jungle and the rot, and there was poor old Hogan remembering what it said about those larvae in the ground and you walk barefooted and they go into your skin and then into your blood and up into your lungs and then in your throat and you swallow them back and they go down to your guls and you got hookworms laying eggs in you. Here was Worrying Hogan already full of worms because the grass felt good between his toes.

“Cheer up,” I said. “Hogan, this is healthful Rika Riva.”

“Hookworm’s dangerous,” Hogan says. “There ought to be a sick bay for us while we’re here on this beach. Preventative measures.”

I went up to see the Leftenant, it gave me an idea. He said he didn’t think there were any hookworms and I said we ought to have some fun and give Hogan a little treatment. Make him feel better. The Leftenant thought it would be fine to treat Hogan.

Part of the New Zealand Mr Force gear was a field medicine kit, with a bunch of bottles. We lived up castor oil with some bright pink syrup. A hell of a dose. I went back and gave Hogan the word. The Leftenant had a treatment, that would probably avert hookworm, I said.

Hogan was so busy and then so sick with his slug of castor oil that night he couldn’t drink his beer. He slept with it though, and carried the cans with him every trip he made in the night. He got rid of hookworm and everything else.

I was the dumb guy in that deal. Hogan was so peaked next day he wouldn’t fly. He went back to the Leftenant for more treatment and advice. I had to take Hogan’s search and mine too.

Hogan told everybody about the treatment, and first thing you know, so help me, a whole string of guys are worried about larvae. Getting medicine from the Leftenant, crowding the head, not flying searches.

“Call off your bloody hookworms,”the Leftenant told mein the morning. “I’m out of oil. God knows how I’ll get more.”

“The U.S. Army’s moving in. Leftenant, I told him. “They have plenty of everything.”It turned out they did.

Plenty of everything except the beautiful babes they were going to trade for beer. The dogfaces got discouraged when they saw us getting just luo cans.

There was scuttlebutt of some hush hush out in the brush. Some of the stud horses claimed to have sampled the local dark and tender, and they may have. I doubt it. I didn’t see any.

Somehow the word got tipped about the Royal Rika Riva Hookworm Treatment. Hogan and the rest of the sick call were sore-headed as hell about it. Especially Hogan. He was ready to have a poke at me and the Leftenant both. Hookworm Hogan, they called him.

The last day at Rika Riva the Army was taking over big. At breakfast here on me an Air force Lieutenant Colonel. He ranked us indeed. The big brass. So help me, he had an Aide. He called him his Aide. Lieutenant Colonel with an Aide, bub. He was a wild blue yonder boy if I ever saw one. With a squadron of pee forties. He was Official Island Air Defense. Official. Only his pee forties were still in crates.

He was buzzing around the strip most of the morning in a jeep, with the Aide. Picking “sites,”he told the Leftenant who as the early settler, original proprietor and big wheel, was beginning to get pushed around. The pee forties were anxious to get the Navy the hell out. They were going to fight Japs and fry them for supper, that night. They never asked us a damn thing.

Pretty soon here came Engineers knocking down trees and churning mud. There was a big work party down at the far end of the strip. They were clearing what the Wonder Colonel called his assembly area where he could uncrate and bolt his pee forties together. About noon the High Command went back to the Port of Rika Riva, probably to advise General Douglas MacArthur, a prominent figure in the war.

Hogan flew a search that morning, with a fourbeer hangover. He was still sore but he was in a good humor later in the day. Right after noon chow Hogan happened to be standing by the mud ruts up at the grass shack end of the strip and here came a Army prime-mover and trailer thing loaded with brand-new pee forty crates, big bastards, with the fuselage in one and the wings in others, and behind comes a truck with a boom and tackle.

The driver saw the little pin with two bars on Hogan, lieutenant (senior grade) U.S.N.R., and thought Hogan in his suntans was the Army. He leaned out and asked Hogan, “Captain, can you tell me where to park these boxes?”

Hogan blinked. “Sure,” he said. “You’re right on. Just anywhere around here.”

That afternoon there was a wonderful foul-up of airplane crates. The drivers that followed the first trailer just dumped alongside his load, and nobody ever asked anybody anything else about it. You should of heard the Colonel scream when he arrived about beer time.

“Who in the hell told you to unload in this area ?” Of course he wanted his pee forties down al his assembly “site ‘ at the other end of the strip. Nobody knew who told anybody anything. That Wonder Boy ate the breeches, mud, buttons and all, right off the truck jockeys.

“Where is the stupid captain who told you men to park anything here?”

He put the Grass Shack Air Group shipshape for beer.

His pee forties in crates were still sitting there in the mud when we launched next morning and went out to the deck heading north. No slick.

Our Leftenant and his flying machine were kind of old mates when we pulled out. He was just standing around glassy, watching Rika Riva enter a new era. I bet he kept in Camel cigarettes. He was quite a boy, the Leftenant. So was the Lieutenant Colonel. Rika Riva was quite a beach.

So we went to Midway and our old Yak took the big dive.

Reminds me, coming into Norfolk when I finally made it. Stateside just before Christmas, after VJ. We had orders all the way around to Norfolk.

The names and numbers were painted back again, big and white, peacetime, on all vessels. I never will forget going in on a boat for the beach in the fog, riding by a brand-new can. The last word in DDs. There she was, plain as my hand, the H. H. Hogan. It was the first thing I saw when I got back, the Harold H. Hookworm Hogan, at Norfolk, like my section leader was Admiral Farragut or Reuben James. I saw the clipping, where at the White House Mrs. Hogan got his Medal. Hogan worried good, he was a sweet flier. That was before I ever heard of White Sands Proving Ground or wrote equations at a place called Point Mugu. The blue water fly boys, like it says in old volumes.