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Short Stories Horror The Patrol
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The Patrol |
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| Written by J. Brown | |
| Saturday, 12 April 2008 | |
| Last Updated ( Sunday, 13 April 2008 ) |
DAY
ONE:
He was thinking about peaches, to tell the truth. He'd slid the canopy of his F4U-4 Corsair
back as he flew over the South Pacific at 1,000 feet in the early afternoon; it
was just too nice to keep it closed. He was well behind friendly lines, much
more likely to die from a mechanical or stupidity rather than the Japanese. But
peaches were on his mind as he cruised along, making his way back to his strip.
He'd grown up on a peach farm, and had fresh peaches every morning during the
summer, picked right from the tree and as many as you wanted. He'd been in the
South Pacific for three months now, and he was beginning to think he'd slap Admiral Bull Halsey himself across the face if he could only have a peach. Just
one.
He was flying back to his island, a small sliver of land that was strategically
placed along the Solomon Island chain. They were a support squadron, placed on
their island to fill a gap in the lines that the Japanese could otherwise
exploit while the American forces were 'island hopping' their way to Japanese
held territory. That morning they had tangled with some Japanese Zero's and his
plane had gotten torn up. He had diverted to a closer base instead of trying to
limp back home, but one of his Corsair's tires had taken a round and was flat.
He'd ground-looped his Corsair, the shot-up wheel coming apart and dropping him
on his gear, snatching the plane around violently. The Corsair slid to a stop
beside the runway in a cloud of dust, on one wheel and a crushed wingtip, prop
blades bent to hell as well. He'd gotten out cussing. He'd liked this bird,
she'd gotten him four kills and never been a moment's problem.
It was rapidly sorted out for him, though. The head mechanic took him around a
corner to another Corsair, shiny new, one of the newer number ‘4' models with
the bigger radial engines and a four-bladed prop. The pilot had simply flown in
two weeks ago and climbed out onto the tarmac, pulled his pistol and shot
himself in the head, falling into a heap in front of his plane. They didn't
know what to do with it, as it was so new it didn't have unit markings. The
mechanic, a crotchety older fellow with ‘Bubb' on his nametag, told him to take it, so he checked the fuel
and ammo only to find it already full of both, thoroughly checked it over with
an exhaustive pre-flight, and flew it out. It was almost disorienting being in
a new plane, where EVERYTHING worked like it should. As he cleared the island
after take-off, he put the plane through some simple aerobatics to get a feel
for her, and was suitably impressed. He laid in a course for home, the rest of
his squadron would complete the patrol and be there at least three hours before
he would. And he wanted to show them his new bird.
He made it back to his strip about 15:00, and set the Corsair down just as
gently as if he had been on rails. His squadron greeted him with cheers, he'd
gotten shot up taking a Zeke off their CO's tail that morning, and he was the
daily hero. His new bird got him even more pats on the back. The CO told him
that the Corsair would have to be approved through official channels no matter
what the original pilot did, but he had a gleam in his eye when he looked at
the plane, and new equipment was hard to come by. The Corsair was his, he knew.
That evening the CO ducked his head into the tent he shared with two other guys
and told him that he could paint the plane. It was approved. Gleefully, he ran
to the storage shack and grabbed the paints they had for the planes, and
painted both his name and the unit markings on her. Under the pole-mounted
lights that the mechanics used at night, she gleamed like murder. He went to
bed satisfied.
DAY TWO:
They awoke to the scramble siren, a hand-wound screamer that meant RUN. They
were instantly out of their bunks and running, putting gear on as they moved.
The Japanese base at Bougainville had both bombers and fighters that could
reach them with extra fuel tanks, and sometimes the siren meant that you were
under attack. Sometimes it meant that something had stumbled into their range.
It was the same message to them either way: get the planes up, now. He slid on
his Mae West flotation vest and made sure his pistol was loaded as he ran. The
CO was at the end of the strip, and told them simply to form up on the west
side of the island. He ran on to his plane, and clambered up. He had a leg
swung over into the cockpit when he looked at his hand on the edge of the
canopy area and froze. It was resting on cool, blue metal that looked as though
it had come fresh from the factory.
It was the same metal that he had painted his name on last night.
Confused, he started to look back at his vertical where he'd painted the unit
insignia, but then the CO hopped into his plane and there was no more time to
think about it. He clambered into the cockpit and fired up the big radial
engine. Time to fight.
The CO led him and the rest of the stragglers to the rendezvous point beyond
the west tip of the island, where the squadron formed up. He found his lead
flight and formed up, and they slid into their slot in formation. Once the
formation was complete, they turned and headed west. The CO announced that
island watchers had spotted bombers headed their way, and the squadron was to
intercept. Twenty minutes later they spotted the bombers, and the formation
broke up to make their attack runs. The bombers were Betty's, slow and big, but
with plenty of machine guns around it for shooting down attacking fighters like
his, and so they climbed high above the bomber formation and dove down on it,
making high speed attack runs to make it harder for the machine gunners on the
bombers to hit them.
It was on the second pass that he saw it happen. He and his flight lead had
banked around for another pass, and he was concentrating on making his run when
tracer rounds from the top gunner position of the Betty they were targeting
reached out and found him. He threw the plane over, but not before he saw
several rounds go through his right wing, right through the fuel tanks. He
heard the rapid thunking of rounds hitting his airframe. He dove out of the top
gunner's line of fire, then looked over at his wing, trying to estimate the
damage. There wasn't any. No holes, no trailing fuel, nothing. Then his lead
flight came over the radio, claiming that he'd been hit. Lead was going in,
trailing fuel and smoke. He righted his plane and began to frantically search
the sky for his lead flight, and when he found him, lead existed for just long
enough to see that he was trailing fuel from the right wing. Exactly where he'd
been hit. Then his lead flight's plane disintegrated into a ball of fire and
smoke, the biggest piece to come out of the explosion was the engine, tumbling
the thousand feet to the waiting ocean below, followed by the rest of the
pieces of plane. He flew along stunned for a second. There was no way that lead
flight could have taken fire. They had been side-by-side, and the only gun that
could have targeted them had been putting rounds into him at the time. Hadn't
it? He looked again at his right wing, shining and pristine.
He shook off the feelings of unease, and throttled his engine up, climbing back
into the fight that raged above him. Another five minutes, and the remaining
bombers turned back, over half of them trailing smoke as they packed it in for
the day. The squadron had downed six planes, a great day's work by the Allied
standards. Six bombers that could no longer harm them, and maybe even a couple
of the ones that were shot up would end up grounded and used for parts, too.
The CO gave out compliments over the radio on the way back home, but he hardly
heard him as he looked at the empty position off his left wing, and the
pristine wing to the right side of his cockpit. And his radio was acting up,
too, throwing out sharp bursts of static that hadn't been there until recently.
Radio checks confirmed that he was the only one receiving them, so he shut up
and told no one. They landed without incident, but as soon as he was on the
ground, he hopped out and looked his plane over thoroughly. There was not a
single bullet hole in the right wing, nor a scratch, nor anything at all wrong
with his plane. The painting that he had done the previous night was equally
missing, not a hint that paint had ever been applied, nor was there sign that
it had been painted over as a joke. The Corsair sat in the South Pacific sun
like it had just rolled off the showroom floor. It gleamed like murder. He got
out the paint, and repainted the plane with the unit insignia and his name. He
stared at the plane long and hard before going on about his business.
That night the CO popped his head into their tent and told them to get to sleep
early. The next day they would be on a combat patrol over the Japanese fortress
of Rabaul, located on the island of Bougainville. Everyone knew what that
meant. Bougainville was lousy with anti-aircraft, known as AA, and it swarmed
with fighters. Rabaul itself was horrible, the massive main Japanese base for
the entire South Pacific. The news cast a pall over the evening's limited activities
of hanging out and playing cards. They'd killed off the rum the night before
after their victory. Mostly they took their CO's advice and went to sleep as
soon as the heat of the day died down. The pilot was so preoccupied with the
events of the day that it never occurred to him that he'd gotten his fifth
confirmed kill that day and made ace in the astounding period of two months of
combat time.
Later that night, when the maintenance crews made their rounds with fuel and
ammo they were surprised to find his bird already full of both. They surmised
that the pilot had done it himself for some reason, and continued on about
their business. One of them remarked that it was odd the kid hadn't bothered to
paint his plane yet.
PATROL DAY:
They were up before dawn, eating breakfast quietly and getting themselves
together before the mission. At 5:00 AM the rumble of the big radial engines
split the night for the first time, and when he looked at his plane, he was
dismayed to find that the second paint job was gone just as completely as the
first had been. He was suddenly very afraid, but there was not time to try and
explain the situation to the CO. The squadron was starting to taxi, and so he
climbed into his plane with dread and fired it up, sliding the canopy shut
sounding much like the lid of a coffin to him this morning.
Besides, if he told what he suspected, they would not believe him. They would
ground him and write his rantings up as combat nerves. The Corsair would be
given to someone else. It was his plane by fate, even though it petrified him
now. With that thought in mind, he lifted off the runway and slid into the
darkness of the morning, the first hint of dawn riding the horizon at their
backs. It was so dark that they formed up on each other's exhaust pipes,
glowing softly red at the edge of the engine cowling. The CO got the heading
and turned them towards Bougainville, and the fortress Rabaul.
He was only ten minutes into the flight when the radio began acting up on him again, bursts of static that sounded like someone far away trying to get through. He asked for a radio check and confirmed that it was only him again. His CO told him to have the radio checked when he got back, sometimes new equipment had bugs. He wanted to tell his CO that he had no idea how bad the bugs could be. He complied and fell back silent, listening to the explosions of sound in his earphones, wondering what it could mean.
They flew for two hours through the increasing daylight, formed up tight and keeping checks on their fuel consumption. The CO figured that they had fifteen minutes over the target area before they had to turn back, and he wanted every drop of fuel to count. The bursts of static were increasing, and he was certain that he could hear a voice behind it, but still couldn't pick out who it was, or what they were saying.
They spotted the island just a few minutes prior to eight in the morning, creeping out of the early-morning mists like some ancient and hungry behemoth. The CO came over the radio with some last-minute instructions to watch each other's backs and keep aware, and then he dropped them low and they raced over the coastline, low enough to give the AA gunners on the island a hard time hitting them as they wove through the mountainous terrain over the island, trying to keep out of Japanese radar coverage. He was getting more and more nervous the whole time, as he knew that any hits to his plane would mean the death of one of his squadron mates. He thought about radioing that he had engine trouble and turning back before it was too late, but the mechanics back at base would find the airplane in great shape when they examined the plane. Perfect shape, to be precise. And again, he would get written up for combat nerves, the plane would get flown by someone else, and nothing would change. He couldn't find a way out, and then suddenly they topped a rise and Rabaul was laid out below them, and it was too late. The CO lined them up on the harbor, calling out designated targets among the Japanese resupply vessels that were anchored there, and they dove in, hot and fast.
The first pass, as almost always, was a milk run, the Japanese AA gunners were still racing to their stations, and the guns that were manned hadn't gotten them zeroed in yet, firing wildly into the sky around them. He saw the flight ahead of him take some fire and veer off, and he swerved around the ‘hot zone', lining back up on a tanker ship. He judged his distance carefully, taking his time to line up the shot, then pickled his bomb. He felt a lurch as the 500 lb bomb released from the centerline rack on his plane, and he snap-rolled to the right to avoid any fire that had been coming his way due to the long, straight trajectory that they had to fly to get an accurate bomb hit. As he veered off, he heard a sound like thunder behind him, and a shockwave shook his plane and died off, indications of a fuel tanker going up. He spun his head around, quickly taking in the fireball that had been an intact ship seconds before, then flung the plane over in another direction to throw off the gunners again. More ground fire and AA was beginning to come up, reaching out for the warplanes racing over the harbor. Then the worst happened: a bandit call came over the radio, momentarily drowning out the strange static-y calls that had become almost constant since coming over the island. He looked to the indicated vector, seeing scores of black dots on the horizon, Jap fighters coming to do battle for the harbor. The Corsair's advantage over the Zekes was armor and speed and heavy firepower, whereas the Zekes were supreme in a turning fight. For the Corsairs to have the advantage they must also have altitude, and the Zekes were going to catch them low and slow. The CO ordered them to turn into the fighters and break up the formations before they turned tail, and the squadron banked around and began to form up.
AA fire was getting them zeroed in, flak guns firing explosive shells that were beginning to burst all around them. He felt his plane thump with a close round, hearing shrapnel tear through his airframe, and a plane off to his right began trailing heavy smoke, then rolled over and began to spin in. Frantic calls to the pilot over the radio produced no results, and the plane splashed into the harbor not far from the tanker that he had scored a kill on. He flew on, unscathed. Another plane took a hit and began trailing smoke, falling out of formation. Gunners on the ground began to target the crippled plane, and soon it too was falling in a death spiral. Then they were nose to nose with the Zekes, and the AA gunners quit firing for fear of hitting friendly planes. There were at least thirty of the enemy fighters, coming in two waves, all of them head-on and guns winking fire as they cut loose with their guns. Another plane went down, not trailing smoke but showing shattered holes in the cockpit, and a second exploded from the mass of fire that it took. He was taking rounds at the same time, and didn't know if one of the planes was his fault or not. Three Zekes from the first wave went down as the two groups ripped through each other, so close they could have spit on each other, and then they were nose-to-nose with the second group.
He saw a line of rounds cut across his canopy, two feet in front of him, shattering the plexiglass, and his eyes closed out of reflex. Seconds later, he opened them, only to find his canopy intact. He hammered the trigger on his stick, blasting the Zeke in front of him with his six .50 caliber machine guns, tearing it to shreds, shouting with the adrenaline rush as it fell from the sky in front of him. He looked around, doing a quick count. They had lost another three planes from the second fighter wave, four more were trailing smoke. A confused cry was coming over the radio, someone was going down and couldn't tell where the enemy fire was coming from. He closed his eyes as the plane hit the ground, the radio call cutting short with the impact. Now there were six planes left of the squadron, three of them trailing smoke. The Zekes were turning in pursuit, but the climb up to face them had given the Corsairs the altitude that they needed, and the CO ordered them to run, and they nosed over and gunned their engines, gaining speed as they descended, trading altitude for the airspeed that they needed to get away. Ground fire began tracking them again, taking out the Corsair on his right in a fiery flash, then thumps began hitting his own plane again. The CO went down with a scream, then the plane that had flown the CO's wing flipped over and spiraled in. He snap-rolled out of the line of fire, finding a Zeke diving on him from altitude, one that he hadn't seen. As he rolled out of it's way it flashed by him, going too fast to stop. He rolled back onto his heading and raced to catch up with the other three planes from his squadron. But the turn was his undoing, it had put him just in range of the pursuing fighters from the two main waves, and again he felt rounds beginning to plink at his plane. He saw one of the other Corsairs, already trailing smoke, vanish in a flash, and then the one most directly in front of him began to shed pieces as though it was getting hit, even though the rounds were hitting his own plane. He watched in horror as the rudder finally snapped off and the plane spun in, falling out of the sky in front of him. The fire from behind was getting lighter and lighter as he raced away from the enemy fighters, nose down and gaining speed, but tracers were still flashing by close enough to do damage, and with funereal precision, a line stitched its way across his left wing and vanished. The left wing of his last squadron mate folded up and came apart, flashing past him as the plane fell out of view.
He was alone. Except he wasn't. When the last plane hit, the static on the radio vanished, replaced by his CO's voice. Confused, he looked around, certain that he had seen the CO buy the farm, but hoping against hope that he'd made a mistake. But he hadn't. The CO's voice over the radio began to blame him for his death, telling him that he knew his plane was cursed and he had flown the mission anyway. He had known. He had known.
The pilot, tears streaming down his face, cleared the island of Bougainville with the Japanese fighters still in pursuit but falling back rapidly as his superior airspeed pulled him steadily away. The voice of the CO was rapidly replaced by his flight lead from the day before, telling him that he'd KNOWN the plane was cursed every since the pilot had seen him go in, why had he flown the mission and doomed the rest of the squadron?
His nerves frayed to the breaking point, the pilot reached down and snapped the radio off, to no avail. The voices continued. He checked his fuel and saw that he'd used too much to return to his home base, so with the voices of his dead comrades still in his ears, he plotted a course to the emergency strip where he'd ground-looped his first plane. When he was done, he ripped his flight helmet off and threw it to the floor, but the voices continued, seeming to come from nowhere, everywhere, all at once. He pulled his pistol from his Mae West ad shot the radio, pulled the trigger three times. When he was done, the radio was still intact, the voices in the cockpit laughing at his futile efforts, at his audacious attempts to shut them out when he had been the cause of their deaths. Tears rolling down his face, he climbed back to cruising altitude and headed for the alternate strip.
Two hours later, Staff Sergeant Stan ‘Beezer' Bubb heard the roar of an engine as a plane came in on approach. With a severe grin plastered across his face, he got out of his chair and walked out onto the tarmac, watching his favorite plane land and roll to a stop in front of the hanger. The pilot got out, his face slack, drool coming from his open mouth and dripping off his chin. His eyes were glazed over as he climbed down the wing, dropping to the ground and making his way in front of the plane, not really looking at anything. He reached into his Mae West and pulled out his pistol, thumbing off the safety clumsily and putting the barrel in his mouth. There he hesitated for a second, as though he was having second thoughts, then there was a bang and a flash, and a fine red mist hung in the air as the pilot's body fell in a heap in front of the plane. ‘Beezer' was so delighted that he almost forgot to put a horrified look on his face as he looked at the dead pilot, other people running over to find out what the gunshot was. He looked down the plane, for he was the only one that could see it for what it was, taking in the hundreds of bullet holes, the missing rudder, the ten names that had been painted under the lip of the canopy. War made his job so easy, he thought. Everyone else wondered why the pilot had done it, and they couldn't see the damage to his favorite plane.
The Corsair, to them, sat pristine and new on the runway, so new that it didn't even have unit marking on it yet. It reflected the midday sun off it's shiny new factory-fresh paint. It gleamed like murder.
Comments (4) |
 04-12-2008 13:38, Interesting story. Enjoyed it more for the perspective on the pilots job at this time and place more so than the horror component. » Reply to this comment...  04-12-2008 15:54, great story..kept my attention to the end » Reply to this comment...  04-13-2008 15:15, Very authentic, I read a lot of bigglesworth stories growing up, and I found your war terminology to be accurate. Beezer bub, i laughed when i realised what that meant » Reply to this comment...  04-13-2008 16:33, i love the war terminology, and you seem to know how a plane works. this story was very entertaining. 5 stars. » Reply to this comment... |
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