W.E.B. Griffin - The Corps IV - Battleground

And even if the plane made it to the meadow, the odds that the dropped radio would survive the shock of landing were slim. If, indeed, he could find it at all.

All the same, he was not surprised on 6 June to hear the sound of the twin engines of a Royal Australian Air Force Lockheed Hudson transport. Five minutes later, he saw the Hudson make a low level pass over the meadow. As it passed, four objects dropped from the aircraft. A moment later these were suspended beneath white nylon parachute canopies.

He was surprised when he made out human forms beneath two of the parachutes. He had mixed emotions about that. On one hand, it probably meant they were sending him people who knew something about how the sodding wireless and its sodding generator worked. And that, of course, would be helpful.

But on the other hand, it would mean he would have to care for two men who had probably never in their lives been out of Sydney or Melbourne, much less been in a jungle. How can I feed them? he asked himself. More important, how can I conceal them from the sodding Nips?

And then when he made his way to the first one, what he found was a sodding American Marine-a boy!-wearing, in the American way, the upside down stripes of a sergeant. The other one turned out to be an American Marine officer, a lieutenant. That one managed to go into the trees, breaking his arm in the process. These two were the first Americans Sub Lieutenant Reeves had ever met. It didn't take him long to conclude that they were an odd, childish lot.

When he reached the boy sergeant, Reeves told him there were Nips snooping around the area, and that they would, unfortunately, have to count as lost the one who landed in the trees.

"We're Marines," the boy told him. "We don't leave our people behind."

It never came to a test of wills; for one of the girls found Lieutenant Howard. As far as Reeves was concerned, that was fortunate. For he not only subsequently grew rather fond of the boy, Steve Koffler, but at the time Reeves was reasonably sure that Koffler would have insisted on looking for his lieutenant even to the point of turning his submachine gun on Reeves.

Not long after that, they found they had to get rid of a Nip patrol who'd heard the Lockheed and probably seen the parachutes; and Koffler did what had to be done then with skill and courage. But the boy threw up when it was over... after he looked down at the corpse of a Japanese he'd wounded, and then, because it was necessary, killed.

Later, when Lieutenant Howard explained the reasons for their coming to Buka, the explanation made enough sense to Reeves that he put aside his earlier fears and objections about them.

According to Howard, Reeves's observation point was considered vital. With the three of them there, the odds that it could be kept operational were made greater.

Meanwhile, some weeks before, a small detachment of U.S. Marines was attached to the Coastwatcher Organization. When word that Reeves's wireless was out reached Commander Feldt, Feldt decided to send two men from the Marine detachment to Buka, together with the latest model American shortwave wireless. Koffler was chosen to go because he was not only a radio operator, he was a highly skilled technician as well (he'd been an Amateur Radio Operator before the War), while Howard had once taught courses in recognition of Japanese aircraft and naval vessels. Because of that, and because Koffler couldn't tell the difference between a battleship and an intercoastal freighter, Howard was asked to join him.

The village looked like a picture out of National Geographic magazine: A clear stream, about five feet wide and two feet deep, meandered through the center of a scattering of grass-walled huts. The village was populated with about twenty brown-skinned, flat-nosed people, most of whom had teeth died blue and then filed to a point. Cooking fires were burning here and there; chickens were running loose; and bare-breasted women were beating yamlike roots with rocks against other rocks. Most of the men and some of the women were armed with British Lee-Enfield rifles; and many carried web ammunition bandoliers.

Sergeant Stephen M. Koffler, USMC, of East Orange, New Jersey, and Detachment A of Marine Corps Special Detachment 14, had been eating bacon and pork chops and ham and sausage for most of the eighteen years and six months of his life; but if it were in his power he would never do so again.

He had never given pork much thought before. It had always been there in the refrigerated meat display of Cohen's EZ-Shop Supermarket on the corner of Fourth Avenue and North 18th Street, ready to be wrapped and taken to the cash register. All you had to do was pay Mrs. Cohen, who worked the register, and then take the bacon home and put it in a frying pan.

He had spent most of the morning watching the conversion of a living, breathing, squealing, hairy, ugly pig into edible meat products; and he hadn't liked what he had seen at all.

The pig had been brought into the village shortly after dawn by a visibly proud and triumphant Petty Officer First Class Bartholomew Charles Dunlop, Royal Australian Navy Volunteer Reserve. Petty Officer Dunlop, who was known as "Charley," was a native of the island of Buka. When he brought in the pig, he was wearing his usual uniform. That consisted of a brassard around his upper right arm, onto which was sewn the insignia of his rank, and a loin cloth. The loin cloth was something like a slit canvas skirt; and the brassard was placed just below two copper rings. His teeth were black and filed into points. And there were decorative scars on his forehead, his cheeks, and bare chest.

Petty Officer Dunlop was carrying a 9mm Sten submachine gun, two Lee-Enfield.303 Caliber rifles, and a two-foot long machete. The rifles belonged to the other two members of the detail, who were actually carrying the pig. They were uniformed like Dunlop, except that they had no insignia brassards. Canvas webbing ammunition belts, however, were slung across their chests.

They carried the pig, squealing in protest, on a pole run between his tied-together legs.

"Roast pork tonight!" Petty Officer Dunlop announced triumphantly. "And would you look at the size of the bugger!"

Petty Officer Dunlop had been educated at the Anglican Mission School on Buka, and spoke with the accent of a Yorkshireman.

Steve Koffler had not seen many pigs, except in photographs, but the one Charley seemed so proud of didn't seem as large as the ones Steve was used to. It was about the size of a large dog.

"It's beautiful, Charley," Steve said.

"Where's the officers?"

Steve shrugged and nodded vaguely toward the jungle.

How the hell am I supposed to answer that? Out there in the bush someplace?

"I didn't go with them," Steve said, explaining: "I've got to make the 1115 net call. They weren't sure they'd be back in time."

"Well, we'll have a jolly little surprise for them when they do come home, won't we?"

The women of the village, beaming, quickly appeared and watched as the pig was lowered to the ground and the pole between its legs was removed. A length of rope appeared, and this was tied to the pig's rear feet. The pig was then hauled off the ground under a large limb.

A woman produced a large, china bowl and carefully placed it under the pig's head. It looked to Steve like one of those things people put under their beds before there was inside plumbing.

Then with one swift swipe of his machete, Charley cut the pig's throat. The squealing stopped, and arterial blood began to gush from the pig's throat as the pig jerked in its death spasms.

It was only with a massive effort that Steve managed not to throw up. He had to tell himself again and again that he could not humiliate himself, the Marine Corps, and the white race by tossing his cookies.