Whip Read Free Page B

telling you about the crews. You've flown out of Seven-Mile, right?"
    Whip pictured one of the main airfields in Papua, the southern half of New Guinea.
    Seven-Mile Drome lay seven miles outside the harbor town of Port Moresby on the south coast of New Guinea. "Yeah, I've been there, Lou."
    "Then I don't have to say anything about it, do I." It was more a statement than a question.
    "No, Lou." They both knew the score about Seven-Mile and the other fields around Moresby, where everyone was a lot closer to the enemy. Seven-Mile was also the advance combat base through which Australia-based bombers staged for refueling on their way to strike at Japanese targets. Crude and rough were kind words for the field which the Japanese used for target practice several times a week, day and night. What Whip thought about, and he knew his thoughts were shared by Lou Goodman, was that as bad as it was for the men who flew, it was sheer murder for those who patched and fixed and worked to keep the Marauders and Mitchells going.
    The world in all directions from Seven-Mile was a bitch. In the summer the grass burned into brittle straw, and the only thing worse than the hordes of insects were one special breed — the Papuan mosquitoes, which were numberless and maddening by day and by night. A man couldn't accustom himself to the weather, because he had to endure the weird combination of choking dust from the airstrip and dank humidity from the surrounding jungle and the sea. Yet this was only the backdrop to the real problems.
    Men can endure almost any type of weather or terrain, but they've got to have a fair chance at their game.
    Not at Seven-Mile. When the Mitchell bombers, and others, went to Seven-Mile, it was usually to stage out of the airstrip for a series of swift and hazardous strikes against the Japanese. They had to be swift because of enemy attacks against Seven-Mile, which were always extremely hazardous because of the quantity and the quality of the enemy's fighters. The pilots and air crews knew their chances for survival left much to be desired, but few of them would have willingly exchanged places with the men who kept their battered machines in the air.
    The ground crews knew an existence limited strictly to bone-weary sleeplessness from work day and night. The groggy state into which they fell while they worked was broken only by the shriek of Japanese bombs or the stutter of cannon fire from Zeros sweeping up and down, strafing at treetop height. It didn't do their morale much good to see Japanese fighters in tight formation performing loops and other aerobatics directly over the field in a nose-thumbing challenge for the American or Australian fighters to come up and do battle. Which, wisely, the pilots who flew the P-39s or P-40s refused to do. There are few ways to commit suicide faster than to try to fight a Zero from below.
    Whip Russel recalled one time in particular when they came back from a mission.
    Taxiing down one side of the runway he saw two Buddhalike figures in the parched grass on the far side. There, two of his mechanics — Sergeants Charles Fuqua and William Spiker — were sitting perfectly upright. Their legs were crossed beneath their bodies, and they were sound asleep. These two men, and the others who worked with them, if luck proved to be on their side, might average three hours' sleep a night when the raids increased in tempo. They considered five hours at any time a delectable luxury.
    Whip shook his head. For this moment he had shifted from the rough jeep ride to the north, beyond Australia and across the Coral Sea to Papua and that triple-damned operations area of Port Moresby. Those mechanics…
    "Lou, you know what's worse than all this?" Whip waved his hand to take in all the wretchedness and scrubland and rotten facilities. "Here, and at Seven-Mile, and wherever else we've been in this godawful country?"
    "I think I do," the colonel said warily, "and when I think about it I get