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| PBY wreckage at Kaneohe NAS on December 7th 1941 |
Silence
settled over Kaneohe as the sound of the departing Zeros faded into the distance. Dick leaned tiredly on the machine gun, his
eyes still on the sky. I sat slumped in
the hatchway, my bloody hands still gripping that last belt of ammunition. Acrid burned gunpowder fumes swirled about us
and the empty hot brass cartridges filled the bilge to my ankles. Almost in slow motion, I folded the belt into
an empty magazine and placed it in the rack.
Our dungaree shirts were soaked with sweat and a mixture of sweat and
angry tears streaked my cheeks.
Incongruously, in the sudden total silence, except for the guttering of
flames in the burning airplanes and hangar, I heard a bird start to sing in a
small tree across the road.
Many
chaotic thoughts flashed through my mind as the rush of adrenalin
subsided. I recall ironically thinking
that this was not the way war should be.
During my young years in the Ozark hills, I had thought of war being a
glorious experience—charging into battel with flags flying and destroying the
enemy. This was not that way. This war was a mélange of incalculable noise,
dirt, fire, blood, and dead shipmates laid in a row on the concrete ramp. I stared dully at the hands resting on my
dugareed legs. They were bloody. One of them was still oozing dark red
blood. I wrapped my handkerchief around
it and heaved a tired sigh.
Dick
stirred and spoke over his should, “You all right?”
“Yeah,
I’m all right—you?” He nodded and I went
on, “Down to our last two magazines—we gonna need some more ammo if they come
back.”
“What’s
the matter with your hands? They’re
bloody.”
“Nuthin’
much—cut ‘em a little on the ammo cans.
Be all right.”
There
was movement outside as people started coming out of ditches and moving around
to assess the damage. One of the
squadron CPOs hailed us from outside the airplane, “Hey, how many dead and
wounded in there?”
Dick’s
voice was hoarse and he had to clear his throat, “Nobody dead or wounded,
chief,--just me and my brother up here.
Need some more ammo.”
“For
Christ’s sake,” the CPO said angrily, “get the hell out of there and find a
protected place for that gun! They’ve
shot that airplane to pieces around you—lucky you ain’t both dead! That aluminum skin is about as much
protection as tissue paper! What the
hell did you get in there for?!”
Dick
answered him, “Dang it, we needed a gun mount!
Can’t fire a fifty from the hip, you know. What’s the score, chief?”
“Don’t
know yet, but I reckon it’s the Japs one—us nuthin”. Guess they pounded Pearl pretty good. Heard a rumor that they got some battleships
and the OKLAHOMA turned over. Lots of people
killed. The bastards may be back any
time—we don’t know.”
The
CPO shook his head and his gaze travelled over the shot-up airplane again. I heard him mutter as he turned away, “Dumb
sons a bitches—got more guts than good sense!”
(In
retrospect, the chief was absolutely correct.
All we had thought of was that the airplane had no gasoline and would
not burn around us. What the Japanes saw
after all the rest of the airplanes were burning—only three Kaneohe PBYs
survived and they were out on patrol that morning—was one airplane not on fire
and tracers were coming from it. That is
why they kept strafing us repeadedly and it no doubt frustrated them. We were truly a couple of dumb country boys
and I have always thought that Somebody Up There had a hand on our shoulders
that morning.)
“Well,”
Dick finally said, “we might as well stretch our legs and get some fresh
air.” I followed him down the short
ladder to stand in the shade of the wing.
The
wing shadow was not solid. I looked up
and saw that the fabric trailing edge of the broad wing had been shot to
ribbons. The whole airplane except that
narrow area where we had been was literally a sieve. The big beaching gear wheels on that side
were flat so that the airplane listed drunkenly. I later stood directly in front of the gun
mount and stretched out my arms. Dick
counded thirty-six bullet holes within the span of my arms.
It
was inconceivable that neither of us was wounded. The nearest we came was that Dick spotted two
holes in the slack of my shirt. The tug
I had felt when I bent over to pick up the magazine had been a bullet passing
thought my shirt. Had I been sitting
upright the bullet would have gone through my chest from side to side.
[I
have to pause here as the above sinks in.
Weather you think it was dumb luck or divine intervention that saved my
father that day, it is powerful to think of all that would have never happened,
including me, and how my grandmother would have suffered if he would have been
sitting up. Of course, as news of the
attack reached the states, she would suffer, not knowing if her two oldest were
dead or alive.]
Reaction
set in now that it was over for a while.
We started to light cigarettes from a crumpled green pack of Lucky’s in
my shirt pocket. It took both hands to
steady a match and get it to the tip. I
do not know how I looked, but Dick’s face was grim and his blue eyes were
bleak. Our world had suddenly and
traumatically been turned upside down.
We would never again be the same as before. (I was to realize later that something in my
young mind died that morning. Never again would I have sudden surges of joy and
carefree ebullience. I may have even
lost he capacity to truly love. In the
future I would accept events good and bad almost phlegmatically instead of with
beating heart and soaring spirits for the good and quick anger for the
bad. It is trite and banal to say that
we had aged in a short hour from boys to me, but I guess that is true.)
While
we waited for further instructions about what to do with the machine gun, I
walked out away from the airplane in the direction from which the Zeros had
come. The brass and belt links from
their wing guns just fell free. I picked
up three 7.7 casings and belt links.
Later, in the bilges of Number Four, I found two spent Japanese 7.7 bullets,
one a bent, soft-cored brass one and the other the steel core of an
armor-piercing bullet. I still have
them.
