A Dawn Like Thunder Page 10

  There had been an accidental drowning death there a few years earlier, but most people had forgotten it. Not Vic. While other boys would plunge into the water and swim straight across, he would cautiously swim around the edge of the pond.

  Few things could stop him when he set his mind to something. One Christmas Eve, the unplowed snow in Randolph was four feet high on the streets. Vic skied to the Episcopal church for the evening service, standing the skis up in the snow outside the door. He was one of the few people who made it.

  Vic was raised on the virtues of tolerance and open-mindedness. His father, Maurice, was Jewish, and a traveling salesman for American Safety Razors. His mother, Serena, was Swedish Protestant.

  Vic met Anna McGrory at Stetson High School, and they liked one another immediately. When they began dating, Anna’s parents were less than thrilled with the match. Strict Catholics, they did not countenance her possible marriage to an Episcopalian, much less one whose father was a Jew. Yet they couldn’t help but like him.

  Vic and Anna continued dating all through college. In spite of her parents’ objections to marriage, the two agreed they would work it out somehow in the future.

  Flying had always intrigued Vic, but it seemed to go against his cautious nature when he announced to the family in January 1941 that he had applied to join the Navy flight program. During flight training, he was judged to be a good pilot, but one who always flew by the book.

  After Vic had been assigned to Torpedo Eight at Norfolk, an incident occurred that changed his outlook on life. He was flying a training mission in an old Devastator. The plane had rubber flotation devices installed inside each wing so that if the plane was forced to ditch in the ocean, the flotation bags would automatically inflate and keep the aircraft on the surface long enough for the crew to escape.

  The training mission called for Vic to drop twelve one-hundred-pound bombs on a practice target. His takeoff from Norfolk’s East Field was routine, but as they climbed out over the sea, the plane began to yaw wildly to port. Machinist’s Mate Bill Tunstall, who was riding in the middle seat, called out to Vic on the intercom that one of the flotation devices had burst free from its compartment and inflated.

  Without hesitating, Vic kicked hard on the left rudder and dove toward nearby Chambers Field. As they came in for an emergency landing, Tunstall saw that a high sea wall protected the runway from the sea. Getting over it was going to be close. The unstable plane cleared the seawall by inches.

  When the Devastator dropped to the runway, one wing slammed into the tarmac, dislodging the bombs from their racks as the plane skidded to a stop just short of several parked aircraft. After climbing down from the cockpit, Vic glanced around at the scattered bombs.

  “Well, I’ll be damned,” he said.

  Bill Tunstall and the other crewman came over to thank him for saving their lives. From that day on, Vic Lewis was no longer the young man who swam around the edge of the pond.

  On the other side of the Midway encampment, someone told Bert Earnest that they were selling beer over at the Marine supply shack. Before turning in, he and Charlie Brannon decided to find out.

  The little ramshackle structure was nothing more than framing timbers covered with plywood. It was lit by two naked lightbulbs hanging from coated wire. Inside, Brannon’s head almost brushed the ceiling.

  A group of Marines were standing at a wooden slab countertop. Behind the counter were shelves with standard issue personal items like toothpowder, soap, razor blades, and socks. Several cases of warm beer were stacked along the back wall.

  Right then, even warm beer looked good to Bert and Charlie.

  “Two beers,” said Bert.

  “You got to have chits . . . sir,” said the flat-nosed Marine behind the counter.

  “I’ve got cash,” said Bert. “Isn’t that good enough?”

  “I can’t sell you beer without chits . . . sir,” said the Marine.

  “What is a chit?” asked Charlie.

  Bert shook his head at the absurdity of it all. Here they were out in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, a thousand miles from nowhere and about to go into battle, and some young jarhead was giving him this bullshit.

  “You got to buy a chit . . . sir,” repeated the storekeeper. “Then I can give you a beer.”

  Bert glanced around at the other Marines. These boys weren’t pilots. They had to be part of the defense battalion, Carlson’s Raiders from the look of them. He realized this was probably their way of giving the Navy pilots a rib. In the Navy, the standing joke about a typical Marine’s social ambitions consisted of getting “screwed, brewed, and tattooed.”

  He had no idea how much each chit was worth. Pulling out his wallet, he said, “Give me five bucks’ worth.”

  The Marine counted out an inch-thick stack of coupons and handed them over.

  “A beer costs one chit,” he said.

  Heading back outside, the two young pilots stood in the darkness and took their first sip of beer. It smelled like warm piss.

  “It’s a long way from the Top of the Mark,” said Charlie.

  On their last night in San Francisco, the two of them had gone to the Top of the Mark on Nob Hill, the traditional farewell spot for Navy officers heading overseas. After sipping ice-cold cocktails and watching the sun go down over the Golden Gate Bridge, they were about to go back to the ship when a group of businessmen came in. One of them struck up a conversation. After learning that the two pilots were shipping out in the morning, he offered to take them to a private nightclub in the city. It was called Cat’s Eyes, he said.

  When they got there, Bert and Charlie understood why. Tucked away in a discreet apartment building, the place was filled with high-class hookers. Although they were both offered the free services of one of the girls as a parting gift, Charlie laughed and said the offer had come a little too late. He had just gotten married, and Dorothy wouldn’t approve. Bert added that he wasn’t planning to do anything he couldn’t tell his mother about, at least not yet. After watching the action for a while, they reported back to the Chaumont.

  As they finished their beers outside the Marine shack, Charlie talked about Dorothy, and how she had given new meaning and importance to his life. Until he met her, he had had no idea what to do with his life when the war was over. Now he knew. He planned to go into business with his father in Montgomery, just as the old man had always hoped. Although they had only been married for two months, he hoped Dorothy was pregnant.

  Bert still had no idea what he wanted to do. Jerry Jenkins said she would wait for him, but he didn’t think he felt the same way about her that Charlie felt about Dorothy.

  After deciding that one warm beer was enough for them, the two friends split up to go back to their bunks.

  Charlie was sleeping in a tent with two other Avenger pilots. Bert had been invited to sleep on a real mattress in one of the permanent ready huts shared by Marine fighter pilots near the field.

  He was walking along the edge of the runway under the pale moon when he happened to look down and saw what looked like a dollar bill lying on the surface of the hard-packed coral. He stopped and leaned down to pick it up.

  Looking more closely, he saw it was actually a two-dollar bill. He had never seen one before. They sure didn’t make very many. Maybe it was a good omen. Folding it up, he put the bill in his wallet.

  He That Shall Live

  This Day and See Old Age

  THURSDAY, 4 JUNE 1942

  USS HORNET

  TORPEDO SQUADRON EIGHT

  0130 *

  Tex Gay awoke to the stabbing beam of a flashlight aimed into his eyes.

  “Reveille, sir,” came a disembodied voice from the darkness.

  Through the open doorway, he could hear the other pilots being wakened all along the passageway. Sitting up, he realized he hadn’t taken off his uniform before climbing into the bunk. Bill Creamer was getting out of the upper berth as Tex went down to the head to wash.

  Most o
f the pilots were still groggy from interrupted sleep when they began trudging down to the ready room. A few detoured to the Hornet’s wardroom to revive themselves with a cup of coffee from the big urn near the door.

  Once they were all there, no one seemed to have much to say. The big square reflector screen over the Teletype machine at the front of the room remained dark. They knew the Teletype keys would start chattering as soon as anything important happened. In the meantime, all they could do was wait. Whitey Moore immediately reclined the backrest of his chair and went to sleep again.

  Japanese and U.S. Force Dispositions, June 4, 1942

  Tex noticed the tactical formation plan for the upcoming attack posted on the blackboard at the front of the room. He went up to see if anything had been updated from the Skipper’s original orders on May 28. Nothing had changed.

  They would be flying in two divisions. Waldron would lead the first one, which consisted of eight Devastators in four two-plane sections. Lieutenant Raymond “Moose” Moore was next to him. Bill Evans would be flying behind the Skipper in the second section along with Hal Ellison. Lieutenant Jeff Davis Woodson and Bill Creamer formed the third section. Whitey Moore was in the last section, next to Jack Gray, a big Missourian with a fondness for Richard Wagner’s operas. He often tortured his roommates by playing them on his portable phonograph.

  The second division, seven planes, would be led by Jimmy Owens. Rusty Kenyon would be flying on Owens’s wing, followed by George Campbell and Bob Miles, the tall, taciturn enlisted pilot who had been chosen to replace Frenchy Fayle. The third and last section consisted of Abbie Abercrombie, Grant Teats, and Tex. As navigation officer, Tex was bringing up the rear so he wouldn’t have to waste time trying to stay in formation as he consulted his charts.

  Tex felt calm, almost relaxed. Across the warm room, some of the pilots were talking in low voices about how close the Hornet needed to be to the Japanese fleet before an attack could be launched. Tex wasn’t worried about it. Thankfully, that decision rested with the wise men up on the bridge.

  Like the others, he knew their PBY patrol planes were spread out for hundreds of miles to the northwest of Midway searching for the Japanese striking force. When it was sighted, the Teletype keys at the front of the ready room would start clacking like mad. Having had less than three hours’ sleep, he dropped into his cushioned chair, reclined the backrest, and dozed off.

  Tex woke again to the sound of raised voices, and the realization that a few of the pilots were getting increasingly restless. Where are the goddam Japanese? Why was it taking so long to find them? At 0300, Jimmy Owens stood up and announced that they could go down to the wardroom for breakfast in groups of two or three.

  EASTERN ISLAND, MIDWAY ATOLL

  TORPEDO EIGHT DETACHMENT

  0335

  Bert came awake in his bunk to the rumbling blast of radial aircraft engines. Lying there in the hut, he decided they must be the B-17 Flying Fortresses warming up in their revetments across the airfield.

  A few minutes later, he heard the Marine pilots getting up from their bunks and putting on their flight suits. Bert followed them out into the darkness. Checking his watch, he saw that it was almost 0400, about a half hour before dawn. The sky was full of stars. There was a light breeze coming off the sea.

  While the Marine pilots headed over to the mess tent to grab some coffee, Bert decided to go straight to his Avenger. Although he hadn’t eaten anything since the previous evening, he wasn’t hungry or thirsty. When he got to the plane, Harry Ferrier and J. D. Manning were doing last checks on their weapons and equipment.

  After carrying out his own preflight routine, Bert climbed up into the cockpit. Turning on his instrument lights, he went through the same steps he had automatically performed hundreds of times since leaving flight school, setting the fuel selector, confirming that the altimeter and the elevator tab were set on zero, adjusting the rudder tabs, moving the rudder with his feet, feeling the ailerons respond to the control stick in his right hand. Everything felt right.

  When he was ready, he fired the engine, checking to make sure the oil pressure came straight up to its normal gauge setting, then feeling the familiar set of vibrations as the engine slowly began to steady. In the starlight, he could distinguish the outline of the Avenger ahead of his on the flight apron as its crew went through the same routines.

  On one of the three runways, a B-17 was revving its engines in final preparation for takeoff. Letting go of the brakes, the giant bomber slowly gathered speed until it took off and disappeared into the dark sky. It was quickly followed by another one, and still another, until sixteen of them were gone.

  Bert glanced at his watch again in the glow of the instrument lights. 0415. When it was obvious his engine was warm, he cut the power, and settled back in the cockpit to wait. One by one the rest of the Avenger pilots shut down their engines until things were quiet again. They would take off as soon as the Japanese striking force was spotted.

  In the cockpit of the last plane, Darrel Woodside settled back, too. He was the only enlisted pilot flying in the detachment, and Darrel had mostly kept to himself since they arrived on the island, checking and rechecking all of the systems and equipment on his plane.

  Until a year earlier, he had been a machinist’s mate, just like the men who serviced the airplane now. In some ways, he felt like he was still one of them. Even though the officers in the squadron treated him as an equal, he often felt ill at ease around them. They were all college men. Darrel had barely finished high school.

  After the Depression hit, he had often thought of quitting school to help out his family, but there weren’t any jobs, at least not in rural Clearfield, Iowa, population one hundred seventy.

  One morning he had come to school smelling like skunk. One girl noticed it as soon as he came through the door of their homeroom. Then they all smelled it. No one said anything. The girls knew that Darrel was trapping small animals to help put meat on the family table, and then selling the tanned pelts for whatever he could. Every family in Clearfield did what they had to do to keep going.

  The Woodsides’ old frame house had no electricity or running water. No one else in Clearfield had it, either. Darrel’s father, Leo, had been a wizard when it came to repairing small engines, but with almost everybody out of work, few people could afford to pay him for it.

  After graduating from Clearfield High School in 1937, Darrel joined the Navy. Like his father, he had an almost instinctive sense about engines, small or large, and he was quickly promoted to aviation machinist’s mate. After a year, he was recommended for flight training, which was extremely rare. The Navy had chosen well. After earning his wings, Darrel wrote home that he would rather fly than eat.

  Darrel also had a secret he hadn’t shared with any of the other pilots. The only guys in the outfit who knew about it were Billy Bragg and William Magee, two enlisted men back with the rest of the Avenger crews at Pearl Harbor. The only reason they knew was that they had been traveling with him when he was ordered up to the propeller school at Providence, Rhode Island.

  That’s where the singer Darrel was dating had been appearing with her band. Her name was Norma Egstrom and she often performed with the Benny Goodman orchestra.

  At first it didn’t seem possible to Darrel that she really liked him, but it turned out that she came from the same kind of family he had, and they just seemed to click. At twenty-two, Norma was a year younger than he was, and had grown up dirt poor on the plains of North Dakota.

  Darrel thought he might be in love with her. He knew he wasn’t alone. A lot of guys were in love with her. Her stage name wasn’t Norma Egstrom. Somewhere along the line, it had been changed to Peggy Lee.

  In the lead cockpit, Lieutenant Langdon Fieberling was wrestling with the most important decision he had ever made in his life. It involved the plan for their mission that had been finalized by Lieutenant Colonel Kimes, the Marine air group commander on Midway.

  Under Kimes’s
plan, the Avengers, the B-26 Marauders, and the mixed force of Vindicator and Dauntless dive-bombers were all going to rendezvous above Midway and then proceed out together in joint formation. Once the Japanese fleet was located, the combined air group would make a coordinated attack.

  Langdon Fieberling had serious doubts about the wisdom of the strategy. Sitting in the darkness, he was weighing the consequences of disobeying orders against his belief that Kimes’s plan would almost guarantee failure.

  For one thing, the group formation would be going out without fighter protection. Midway’s fighters had been ordered to defend the islands against the incoming Japanese air strike that would inaugurate the battle.

  Without fighter protection, the single advantage his Avengers had was speed. If they were going to have any chance to penetrate the enemy fighter groups that would be protecting the Japanese fleet and get in close enough to launch their torpedoes, speed was essential. The dive-bombers, particularly the old fabric-wrapped Vindicators, were as slow as molasses, and in any case they would be attacking from a much higher altitude.

  Over the previous two days, Fieberling had gone back and forth on the subject with Kimes and his deputy, Major Verne McCaul, at the air operations bunker. At one point, Fieberling had been ready to concede the issue, and had informed the other Avenger pilots that they would all be attacking together. Now that he was facing the reality of it, he wasn’t sure.

  Fieberling wasn’t the only one concerned about Kimes’s ability to make sound tactical decisions. General Willis Hale, an Army Air Force brigadier who was sent to Midway to help plan the air defense, privately believed that Kimes was breaking down under the stress of preparing for the battle. Hale thought Kimes’s deputy, Major McCaul, was in no better shape. It wasn’t a good situation.

  Once they found the Japanese fleet, Fieberling had told his pilots, he would lead them toward the carriers. If there was only one, they would divide into two formations. Fieberling would lead one and Ozzie the other. One formation would aim for the carrier’s port bow and the other, the starboard bow. Regardless of which way the ship turned, they would have a good chance to hit her.