Valuable Commodities

"It's against my nature, Lieutenant," there was fire in his voice, and I knew why, "to turn my back on these dirty SOBs... especially with those fellows up on Luzon, who are never going to get out of that trap." His tone was dripping with tension and fury at the situation. He was thinking of the fellows in the squadron still in the PI, and, too, of the FOURTH Marines. The American position in the Philippines was going down the toilet, and the entire FOURTH Marine Regiment and all the rest with it. "You're right, however...," his tone was clipped and decisive, "as usual. Besides, we've got," and his voice mellowed quickly, "that sweet young girl to think about now as well."

He paused briefly and then looked at me.

"It's always hard to mix love and war, sir, but... I'd have done just what you did up there. She's a first class lady... and those damn Jap soldiers would have...." He stopped short, and we just looked at each other, thinking the same thing, and the fire was back, smoldering just under the surface. Back in the PI in November, as we met some of the FOURTH as they arrived from duty in North China, we gathered a lot of information. They had seen for several months how the crude and obnoxious Japanese soldiers treated Caucasian women in Shanghai and other places, some of the White Russian girls for instance.

Not pretty.

He made only the briefest pause and then grinned, his attention shifting, "And, if I may make a casual observation, Flags," he would only seldom use my Navy nickname to my face, and then only when he wanted to drive home a point, "she thinks the world of you, you lucky stiff!"

"Thanks for your support, Will, from a good friend that means a lot."

"I'll get this fueling completed and we'll be on our way. This would be a hell of a time to let those Jap bastards catch now." He turned away to get on with the business at hand.

Thinking about the situation, I figured we were probably beyond the range of Japanese fighters, but they used their twin engine bombers for recon work, too, and one bomber making a strafing pass could turn ol' Number FOUR into a funeral pyre, and we didn't need that.

The BPM man was surprised, but understood quickly what I meant to do. I asked for some food supplies to take with us and he said there would be no problem. It made sense for me to check in with operations, and it was evident that Annaliese was anxious about remaining with the plane if I left... actually, she was shy and felt very ill at ease without me around, so I took her with me. I waved to Will, now with his own sandwich and beer in hand, and he estimated an half hour max to complete fueling, and we were off.

At the Ops shack, while I checked on weather and such details she gathered up the bread and a couple of liters of fruit juice, water, a can of marmalade, and six bottles of beer, and fresh fruit that appeared from somewhere.

Weather was really rather bad; heavy rain and low visibility over Makassar Straits most of the way, but the latest from Makassar Town, our next stop at the southwest corner of Celebes, was four-tenths cloud and wind at fifteen knots from the east, holding the weather front off the coast. If it held, that would do just fine. I checked on radio freqs for the Makassar controller, and minutes later were headed back for the plane.

The two of them had the fueling completed and the bowser passed us on the way out. Wolfing down Annaliese's sandwiches and enjoying another Heinekens, they were keeping one eye peeled for any aircraft overhead. Nothing so far.

Corporal Tracy, mouth still working on the last of his second sandwich, maybe it was his third, made a comment about how the food on this flight was better than anything that was served on the Pan American Clippers, and Annaliese smiled sweetly at him in appreciation. No Marine – no sailor either, for that matter - is above having his heart melted by the shy smile of a pretty girl, Corporal Tracy among them.

"Hell, Sergeant," he turned to Will with a swagger, pulling out his sidearm, his .45 automatic, and waving it the air wildly for effect, "I can lick the whole Japanese Navy now! Let's go get 'em!"

Farewells and preparations were brief. Tracy was to check in with ops on 2716 for departure and weather updates, then shift later to 3206 for Makassar field. She handed each of them a bottle of the beer and we climbed aboard, I got my princess settled in her seat next to me and we stowed the food. The Maryland's electric starters worked well, and the BPM man waved us out onto the field as I completed my preflight. Tracy let me know Ops had given us a green light to go. We were off. Our ETA at Makassar was 1630, with two hours of daylight remaining beyond that.

Up forward in the nose Will would be doing most of the navigating. We had agreed we would angle southeast across the Straits to hit the Celebes coast and then turn south for Makassar, mostly because we expected the weather to be less violent along the coast.

She didn't like wearing the extra headset, especially since she knew that anything she said to me or I to her would be heard by the other fellows. She sat quietly beside me and, as the temperature dropped with the wind and altitude, she snuggled up in her pillows and blankets to keep warm, pulling the two blankets tightly around her legs. When she looked up at me her blue eyes were bright, and she smiled at me lovingly.

"There's a ship off to the right ahead."

It was Will's voice; I could see it now too, well ahead and off to the right maybe a mile off our course. We were well out over Makassar Straits then, just where the shipping might be expected in the deep water channel, but there was little chance of the ship being enemy. We were too far south for that.

"Let's take a closer look!" I adjusted our course slightly to pass closer. We were only about four thousand feet, with heavy thunderheads to our right and off yet a ways. "I'm comin' down to deck level." We would get our best look close to the water and I planned to make one pass astern to get her name if possible. Will would have his glasses ready.

The ship was not a large one, probably an inter-island steamer. She hoisted her Dutch ensign as she saw us approaching and turned her stern to us. We zoomed by with the ship on our right and I motioned to Annaliese to look out her little window. She watched the ship and then turned to me with a smile. That smile made my heart soar!

Will said he got her name, and I pulled the nose up to gain some altitude. Within a few minutes Will had passed the ship's name, course and estimated speed and our position back to Corporal Tracy and he was busy keying out our report on his radio to the U. S. Navy headquarters in Java, using the same radio circuit the Navy boys in their PBYs used to make their scouting reports.

The rest of the flight was routine, and we were soon on the field at Makassar, picked a place on the apron to park and shut 'em down for the night. The Dutch officer in Ops estimated that they would get some rain during the night and probably most of the next day. Accordingly, we planned a dawn take off, rain or no, to get clear of the weather as well as the Japanese.

Sergeant Mulvane made a gallant proposal, that if I were to accept the responsibility of caring for "our" passenger – he emphasized the plural possessive pronoun – he and the corporal would attend to the plane, suggesting a 0600 take off for Penfoi. I accepted, and in the car that was available to us, directed the driver to the Grand Hotel, leaving him instructions to pick up the crew in an hour.

Once at the hotel, I tipped the one Dutch fellow we knew from earlier visits and asked him to send out some of their best food and some beer to the crew of the American plane at the field, and a nice dinner order and some fruit juice to our room. I checked us into a nice room, signing for it for the first time in my life as Lieutenant and Mrs., and the first time ever with a girl in my company. It felt both incredibly wonderful and a little strange at the same time. We were alone together for the evening and able to relax and eat and talk like we had been unable to do in the plane.

"Teach me something new," she begged in her dainty voice, as we sat together eating. Her trusting, tender manner just flooded my being with love and joy and, I rose, took her hand in mine, and led her to the large bed.

Now all the barriers had dissolved away.

She was my wife!

It may not yet be clear whether this is a story about a girl... or about airplanes and men at war. Well, at the time things were pretty intense and mixed up. Those who have not experienced the stress and constant terror and continual change and uncertainty that accompanies armed conflict, on both sides, probably won't relate to that entirely. I was having a hard time myself as the two major emotional demands on my being made themselves so very proximate and incessant when I hardly thought I had resources to handle one at a time.

Sixty Marines had been scraped together at San Diego and shipped to the Philippines in November 1940 with fifteen aircraft scrounged from a French order taken over by the British and then repossessed by the USA. There was a move afoot at the time to move the entire Second Marine Air Group to the Philippines embarked in the aircraft carrier YORKTOWN, and, probably, the formation and movement of the squadron was part of that. Then the policy changed, the Asiatic Fleet would not be reinforced, the carrier and the Second MAG move was scratched, but the freighter that carried our planes and personnel arrived in January.

There was no supply pipeline for the planes, and the only way for the squadron to manage was to hold three of the crated planes and engines for spares and replacements. Someone decided to attach the unit to the Navy's Patrol Wing TEN and thus, alongside VP 101 and VP 102, Navy patrol squadrons flying PBY Catalina flying boats, the orphaned Marines were commissioned as VMSB 103 – a Marine Scout Bomber Squadron. So, there we were, twelve Martin light bombers... there was never an official designation, and we only supposed the Navy would get around to calling them SBM-1s someday, e.g. Scout Bomber, Martin, first model, in the typical Navy/Marine Corps pattern. I'm not aware that they ever did. We soon just called them by their sequential squadron number, ONE through TWELVE.

To assist the Marine major in command, Patrol Wing TEN assigned one naval aviator officer as squadron liaison... thus one Navy lieutenant was tossed into the world of sixty wild and wooly aviation Marines... me. Plane Number FOUR soon became mine, and my observer / navigator / plane captain / crew chief was Sergeant Will Mulvane, a skilled a dedicated navigator and aircraft mechanic of extraordinary talents, of which I was often the benefactor. Back after rode the radioman / gunner. Another young Marine was originally assigned, but later Corporal Tracy replaced him.

The Asiatic Fleet took an odd turn with VMSB 103. The squadron's planes were intentionally left unmarked except for the single numeral on the fin. As such, the Admiral sent us on all manner of strange missions to places where, in the pre-Pearl Harbor political environment, an American military plane might otherwise have been, well, too obvious. The Dutch and Australians themselves welcomed us; it was the Japanese operatives in the Indies that would have reported us, and probably did anyway. Tokyo, someone thought, would have been upset. Whether they ever were, we never knew. Anyway, our twelve SBMs made numerous survey flights throughout the southern Philippines, and then south into the Dutch East Indies and to several fields on the Australian coast. As a result, the Asiatic Fleet's knowledge of airfields and local conditions was many times better than it would have otherwise been.

FOUR made three flights altogether that took us via Tarakan on various assignments in the pre-war months. When war came all that changed. We loaded real ammunition for the guns and painted white stars on the planes... the ones that were left.

OK, that's the background on the war stuff. Here's the dope on the girl, some of it.

She was just seventeen, and one might have thought her still a child. Of course, she was... had been in many ways. She was also a blossoming young woman eager for the adventures of life that awaited her, though she had only a vague idea of what those might be. She had blossomed quite dramatically through our first night together as man and wife.

We arose early in order to keep our scheduled departure for Penfoi, and I thought her beautiful and fresh and enchanting as we showered and dressed and had a quick breakfast in the hotel, but I was too enthralled myself to perceive the changes in her I had witnessed through the night together.

Sergeant Mulvane was not.

He and Tracy had gone out to the plane earlier and sent the car back for us. When we arrived all was pretty much in readiness. Tracy was in his place and Will was waiting for us. The storm was rolling in off the sea now and the day threatened to bring some serious rain, and we wanted to be away to avoid that. I helped her from the car and took her bag, and as she emerged and stood at my side Will was visibly impressed, and his mouth seemed to be paralyzed for a moment. He smiled pleasantly and then greeted her with a warm and friendly word, complementing her on her beauty, welcoming her aboard as our fourth crew member to assist the pilot. It was a playful bit of gallantry meant to ease her concern, and he was good at such glibness, but through that shown also, at least to me, that he saw her now as she had blossomed... she was no longer just a young girl, she had become a young lady in the fullest sense.

Will and I had talked of women and girls at length, and we understood each other, though we perhaps each had very divergent standards. What he saw that morning in my wife of one whole day was not the girl we had known in and brought with us from Tarakan, but a gracious and feminine young lady that inspired his greatest respect and highest regard.

"Good morning, Will." Her voice sweet with friendliness in response, and she handed him the chocolate bar from the hotel cantina she had brought especially for him. "Where's Corporal Tracy?" she inquired brightly, a second bar in her hand for him. Will wheeled and led her to the side of the plane and tapped on Tracy's little window for him to open up.

She handed him her gift daintily, smiling at him. She had, indeed, changed. She was still shy and reserved, but her movements showed us too that now she felt confident that she belonged with us. She was a picture of exquisite feminine beauty!

"It'll be raining very soon, Lieutenant, and the weather-guesser is predicting a downpour; all's ready, sir."

I lifted Annaliese up onto the wing and then tossed her bag up beside her. Will and I did a quick preflight around the plane and discussed the engines. The port engine was beginning to burn a little oil, he said, but nothing serious.

Before he climbed up into the nose he turned to me, with a somber, fatherly tone – he was a year older than I at thirty, "You did well by her, son,she's glowing this morning. I have never seen a more beautiful girl in all my life!"

More pleased with myself perhaps than any man has a right to be, I thanked him and told him to get aboard and quit wasting time, we had to get off ahead of the rain. I ducked under and then climbed up myself onto the wing, we got Annaliese settled into her seat, and, as I was getting settled myself, I looked down at her. Shewas glowing as she looked up at me with adoring big blue eyes. I leaned over to kiss her and she reached up to me, wanting my kiss.

The patter of the first heavy raindrops on the metal airframe caused us to draw apart, and she was gasping for breath. The canopy above my head was still open and a few drops fell on her upturned cheeks, rosy and warm from our kiss, and I swept them away lightly with a fingertip. I could not imagine a more beautiful girl.

Turning my attention to our airplane, I pulled the canopy closed, checked with the fellows, started the engines and we were soon off for Timor.

Now, as we headed for Penfoi, the field near Koepang, Dutch Timor, these two deeply personal interests seemed to be at cross purposes.

Though I was piloting an American warplane across the Indies, my heart and head were reeling with the delight of the previous nights experiences. My experience with women to that point had been, shall we say, circumspect,i.e. less that fully intimate physically. That's right, I was a virgin. I'd never had a girl before. That ultimate experience was something special in my book, and it was to be with one girl and only one. I expected I would find one that would feel the same and save herself just for me.

I had.

During the previous night, two who had held themselves in waiting, dropped all pretense and reserve and, in the solitude of the rather nice room in the Grand Hotel in Makassar, we consummated our marriage... gently, patiently, tenderly, and then with greater confidence and desire and passion for each other. It was, how can I say it, a magnificent experience! I wanted very much to make it memorable for her, and for us both it was an earthquake-like, before-and-after demarcation in our lives.

The fellows were quiet during the flight, their thoughts probably dominated, as were mine, by the magnificence of having a young lady like Annaliese with us in the plane.

The flight was neither long nor exhaustive. Penfoi was about 400 miles, and Darwin another 500 beyond that. We might have done it in one hop, but there was no sense in straining things. We cruised at 230 mph south and east, topped off at Penfoi and chatted with the RAAF fellows there about recent developments and got the latest operations dope on Batchelor Field at Darwin, stretched our legs a bit in the sunshine, and during the fueling Annaliese produced from her picnic basket fruit and delicious sandwiches made on the spot. She was very clever in this department, and Will and Tracy were both impressed and delighted. So was I. We had never before eaten this well on a flight.

The Australians fellows gathered around us like flies... around her, actually, happy to have a pretty girl in their midst. They playfully begged a sandwich or two, and after a moments hesitation, with Corporal Tracy having stationed himself protectively by her side, she responded playfully, in her limited English, that her sandwiches were for "authorized crew members only." The cobbers, of course, thought such an uproariously funny comeback, and promptly volunteered for service in the U. S. Marines. Corporal Tracy, joining in the banter, allowed as how few of them could pass the requirements... and more uproar followed.

Most of the revelry missed Annaliese, as her English was too elementary to catch the gist of the Aussie humor. Just as well, as some of it got rather bawdy and suggestive. But what I noticed, too, was that Tracy seemed to know when to break off the party and get her back to the plane. They arrived, several Australian fellows still trailing along behind like puppies, as the fueling bowser was disconnecting. I concluded that Will and Tracy had been signaling each other somehow. The corporal waited with her next to plane for me to come and lift her up onto the wing. Several would have been willing to do that, but he knew me and wanted to respect her in this way. I was impressed with his awareness of things and skill in handling people like that.

I had been talking with the senior Australian sergeant in charge of the fueling bowser, and watching the progress of things, finally signed the chit for the fuel, and, for the benefit of the watchers, turned to the others in my best Yankee western drawl, "All right, saddle up, boys, we're headed outta here.!"