Once They Were Eagles Read Free Page A

Moore, Assistant Commanding General of the First Marine Air Wing. The Wing was based at Espiritu Santo in the New Hebrides, some 600 miles south of Guadalcanal. A Marine fighting squadron, VMF 214, had just completed a combat tour during which its commanding officer had been killed. Its pilots were off to Australia for R and R (rest and recreation) and were to be scattered to other assignments. For that reason, the squadron number was available. Why not staff the number with new people and send them into combat at once?
    A sufficient number of replacement pilots fresh from the States and several combat-experienced casuals were available to man the squadron.Still required were a commanding officer, an executive officer, a flight surgeon, and an intelligence officer.
    The key position was the commanding officer.
    Major Gregory Boyington, a hard-drinking former Flying Tiger, was causing a furor around the fighter base on the other side of the island, demanding an assignment as a squadron commander.
    Boyington was born at Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. His parents had been divorced when he was a year old, and his mother had married E.J. Hallenbeck when Greg was three. The boy had thought Hallenbeck was his father.
    Greg “Hallenbeck” graduated from the University of Washington, where he was a middleweight wrestler. By 1935 he was married and bogged down in a dull job as a draftsman at Boeing Aircraft. Marine Aviation offered him a way out of his doldrums. The only problem was that Marine Aviation would not take a married man. It was at this time that Boyington learned that his natural father was Boyington, not Hallenbeck.
    So it was as Gregory Boyington, an “unmarried person,” that he signed up for the Marine Corps. All through his training period he had kept his family hidden. In doing so, he managed to acquire sizable debts, as a young lieutenant would who was trying to maintain two residences, one at the base Officers’ Club and one off-base for his wife and children.
    By mid-1941 his marriage was failing; he was deeply in debt and in danger of being cashiered by the Marine Corps.
    Then he was offered a solution to his situation. General Claire Chennault was forming an aviation unit to be called the American Volunteer Group, whose members would fly as mercenaries for the Republic of China against the invading Japanese. The pilots were to be paid what was a handsome salary at that time: $500 per month plus $500 for each Japanese plane they shot down.
    These were the Flying Tigers.
    The recruiter assured the prospective candidates that the plan had the full approval of the U.S. government, including President Roosevelt. Their papers would be kept in Washington. Upon their return, they would be reinstated in their respective services without loss of rank or precedence.
    Along with a number of other Marine, Navy, and Army pilots, Boyington signed up.
    Many people think that the Flying Tigers were shooting down Japanese planes before the United States entered the war, but thefact is that they never got into action until after Pearl Harbor.
    Boyington claimed six Japanese planes between December 1941 and June 1942 during his service with the Flying Tigers. Becoming disenchanted with Chennault (some say the disenchantment was mutual), Boyington returned to the States.
    There he ran into a bureaucratic foulup: he couldn’t get back into the Marine Corps! While the U.S. desperately needed trained pilots, it appeared that no one could find his records. He took a job as a parking lot attendant while he was awaiting action.
    In desperation, he sent a long telegram to the Secretary of the Navy, Frank Knox, spelling out the whole situation, including the details of the secret agreement between the U.S. Government and the Republic of China for the Flying Tigers. This telegram got results. He was reinstated in the Marine Corps and sent to San Diego. On 5 January 1943, Boyington was one of a group of 19 pilots ordered to