The Queen of Shangri-La

Since I was virtually lethal to anybody standing on or near the firing range, the Army had to come up with an alternative. Of course... it would be silly to think they would send me back to my happy small-town life with an apology. Instead, the Army "repurposed" me.

The owner of our town garage had always told me that I was the best mechanic he'd ever seen. His regular assistant was Clifton Blaylock, who was a couple of bricks short of a load. So, I never took that as much of a compliment. Nevertheless, I scored off the end of the chart for technical aptitude on the Army General Classification Test... which was news to me.

Once the Army discovered that I could spin a wrench, they changed my MOS from self-propelled bullet stopper to general-purpose, all-around grease monkey, and shipped me off to Keesler airbase in Mississippi to be trained to service airplanes. And THAT was how I became a member of the Army Air Corps.

I wasn't a hero pilot, like Jed Sharpe. But for every Jed Sharpe, there are four or five mechanics in the background keeping him flying - and that was where I came into the picture. It was backbreaking work, totally lacking in glamor. But it was important to the war effort, and it was my humble contribution. My parents and Patsy were proud.

I wrote to Patsy every chance I got, and she always replied in her childish cursive. It was humble news from home, but it kept me going. At the same time, the military routine had become bearable once I got used to it. But I longed for my small-town life and my girl back home. Patsy had become very important to me.

Then, in the early summer of '44... one of Patsy's letters gave me the bad news that Betty and Duke had gotten together. I had two thoughts. One was that Betty wasn't as strong as she had hoped... because she'd settled. Worse, I was sure that Betty knew it. And she also probably knew that she would live to regret it.

I hoped that the bad news didn't take Jed's eye off the ball. Pulling the rug out from under a soldier in a war zone is a terrible betrayal. My second thought was that I was lucky to have Patsy. Patsy was staunch and loyal. She made me feel loved. I'd learned that life is hard and cruel. But it was a lot easier with Patsy in my corner.

I got my duty assignment around the same time the news about Duke and Betty broke. I was going to be a replacement mechanic in the 312th bomb group which was operating on the north coast of New Guinea. I had no idea where New Guinea was. But I was pretty sure that it was a long way from Wisconsin.

The trip was an all-expense paid cruise on the good ship Lurline, which was a classic instance of a slow boat to China. It was miserable. Me and four thousand of my closest friends were crammed into racks high enough that you had to climb a ladder to get to the top bunk. It was sweltering in those holds and monotony wrestled with tropical disease to see what could make us more depressed.

The ship spent two months meandering from San Francisco to Noumea, then Milne Bay, Oro Bay, and eventually Hollandia. That was where I got off. The Lurline had been disgorging whole units of replacement draftees along the route. So, there were a whole lot fewer passengers by that time it arrived in New Guinea.

The trip was incredibly boring. I wrote letters to Patsy - which I knew wouldn't be mailed until we reached a port. I read aircraft maintenance manuals. That gives you some idea how much shipboard entertainment there was. Still, there was plenty of daily PT on the deck. You should try jumping jacks on a ship that is pitching through Pacific rollers.

The sun was incredibly hot. But we didn't run into foul weather until we reached New Caledonia. Then we were treated to a tropical typhoon. I was berthed in the forward hold with a couple of thousand fellow sufferers. All you could do was lie in your bunk and pray that you wouldn't vomit.

A lot of the guys did, so the smell was indescribable - even after the storm died down and we went to work with the mops. You live in the moment when you're in a situation like that. It's the only way you can survive without going totally nuts. I supposed that most of the old gang back home was somewhere doing the same thing and I wondered how they were faring.

I knew what Jed was up to. The last word from Patsy was that he was flying Marauders down in the Mediterranean theater. Mags had told Patsy that Ace was a war correspondent and Heinrich Dorf was a sailor, which was a different occupation than the farmer he had been in his previous life.

Booby Dooly was a different story. He had been drafted along with me and shipped to the Big Red One. Where, he was almost immediately killed in the bocage of Normandy. Patsy told me that his parents were devastated. He was the only son among six daughters. His folks were Irish - you know. So, they had a big family. Now the name wouldn't continue.

I stepped off the ship in Hollandia on a sunny day at the end of December 1945. It was a week after Christmas. But the ambient temperature hovered around 88 degrees and the humidity was easily one hundred percent. Sweating was the normal state of affairs in New Guinea.

The climate along the New Guinea coast is hot and humid, there's no dry season. The meteorologists call it equatorial, which is fitting since Hollandia is only about 300 miles south of the equator. MacArthur seized the deep water port at Humbolt Bay because it was an excellent staging area for his next hop, which was the Philippines. Mac had run away from that place back in '42. Now... he wanted to go back.

It was always hot and wet, and I don't mean that in any fun sort of way. The monsoon season is from May to October. So, the annual rainfall is 80 to 160 inches, depending on where you were. If you're mathematically challenged... that's roughly seven to thirteen feet of water falling on your head. It was so fucking ridiculous that I actually got used to the sensation of rainwater running down the crack in my ass

The moment we arrived, we were herded into a deuce-and-a-half and hauled out to the Sentani Airfield, which was the largest American airbase in the Hollandia area. The 41st Division had liberated it from the Japs earlier that year and we were the new occupants. I was bunked in with the other mechanics, in platoon size Quonsets.

Sentani was a big complex with two long runways and fifty-one bomber revetments all connected by taxiways. The burned-out hulks of Bettys and Helens had been dragged out of the revetments and left to rot, and there were a lot of patched up craters in the runways. But the Seabees had worked their magic and the 312th had already begun operations, flying patrols and close air support.

The 312th flew Douglas A-20's, which was why it was nicknamed, "The Roaring 20s." The A-20 was a twin-engine light bomber called the "Havoc." It was small by bomber standards, no more than 48 feet, with a wingspan of 61 feet. By comparison, a B-17 was almost twice as long. So, instead of a ten-man crew like the Flying Fortresses, the Havoc only had two occupants - a pilot, and a rear turret gunner.

The Havoc had a top speed of 339 miles per hour, which made it the fastest bomber in the US inventory -- faster than a lot of the fighters. In fact, it was even used as a night fighter in some theaters. But a hotrod like that requires a lot of maintenance.

It was powered by two air-cooled, supercharged, Wright Twin Cyclone radial engines, each rated at 1,600 horsepower each. My original assignment was the care and feeding of the twin Wrights. I'd change the oil and spark plugs for all eighteen cylinders in breaks between missions. Sometimes I would change out the entire engine.

The Havoc packed a knockout punch. There were six forward-firing.50-caliber Browning machine guns in the nose and another two.50-caliber guns in a rear facing turret. Those needed a lot of ammo, which I'd help load.

The narrow profile made the Havoc fast. But it limited the bomb load. So, most of the time, the Havoc just carried a couple of 500-pound bombs on hardpoints under each wing. That's because the A-20's forte was skip-bombing. Skip bombing was particularly deadly for the Jap troopships and their accompanying destroyers.

The A-20 pilots would storm in at 200 feet and release their 500 pounders with a five second delay fuse. Those would "skip" over the water like a stone plinking over a pond and then slam into the side of the Jap ship. Meanwhile the pilot kept the crew occupied by hosing down the target with the six Ma Deuces in the nose.

Thanks to our Havocs, the Japanese lost thousands of valuable troops trying to reinforce New Guinea. Then... after the Japs gave up on that lost cause, the A-20s made life miserable for the Jap ships trapped in the harbor at Rabaul, across the Bismarck Sea, on New Britain.

Rabaul was too well defended for us to take by direct assault. So, we bypassed it and moved on up the Bismarck Archipelago - while the Air Force amused itself taking doing skip-bombing practice in Rabaul's big harbor. The ships there were sitting ducks.

I was given a third stripe and promoted to Crew Chief about three months after I arrived. My crew was responsible for maintaining Captain Bill Bunting's A-20. Bunting was kind of an asshole when it came to his plane. But I wasn't the one facing antiaircraft fire at 200 feet. So, I gave him everything he asked for - including painting some lurid nose art on his aircraft... which he'd nicknamed the "D cup."

I was also the aircraft's armorer, personally threading nine yards... twenty-seven-foot belts of armor piercing and tracer ammo into each hungry gun. I'd also double-check that the 500-pounders on the hardpoints were properly fused and that the release cables were well-greased and ran free. Responsibility for the aircraft was ingrained in me.

During the time that I was in New Guinea I lived mostly in my head. It was a self-defense mechanism I'd adopted after I was drafted. Living in my own world made me seem aloof to everybody who knew me. But a fella has to do what he has to do to cope. And daydreaming about my girl and my happy home helped me survive in the distinctly alien environment that I was in.

These days - sociologists would call me "alienated." I didn't think about it that way. All I knew was that I didn't give a shit about anybody or anything. I only paid attention to the stuff I needed to do to ensure that D-Cup was the best maintained A-20 on the flightline -- even if I had to spend extra hours working on it, long after the rest of my crew had knocked off.

Perfection was the dominant influence in my life. I think I was that way because of the place where I was raised. Back then, rural Wisconsin was full of Germans and Scandinavians, and those folks value orderliness and precision above all things. My attitude fit well with the military mindset and so, I advanced quickly in the ranks.

I never had much interest in drinking and raucous jaunts to the entertainment areas. So, I rarely went off base. Call it arrogant if you like. But I had no intention -- or perhaps I was incapable -- of being one of the boys. I lived for the rare V-Mail from Patsy.

My outward detachment might have caused a problem with the rest of the crew. But I simply didn't share their interests or values. Still, I was always fair with my guys, and they never gave me the kind of grief that they usually handed out to loners like me.

Sentani wasn't Manilla. There were perhaps 10,000 local residents scattered around the whole area and if you counted the American servicemen, it was closer to 30,000. So, the off-base ambiance was more like the spots around Benning, and Keesler, meaning a lot of bars and bar girls. Many were beautiful Asians, just trying to earn a living, if you catch my drift.

MacArthur had established his headquarters on a hill above the main airbase. He always liked looking down on people. And of course, MacArthur had a staff of thousands. So, a new phenomenon began to appear in the off-base areas... American WACs.

The WACs were the women's branch of the Army. Most WACs were based stateside. But a courageous few were stationed in places like New Guinea. Those brave women sacrificed their comfortable lives, just like I had, and endured the hardships of service in a shithole like New Guinea. But, unlike me - every one of them had volunteered... not been drafted as I was.

WACs did the secretarial and staff support duties of male enlisted men. They were clerks, switchboard, and radio operators, even air traffic controllers. Their contribution freed men up for combat duty... eight divisions worth according to Eisenhower. Which had one hell of an impact on the war effort.

The old farts in the military hated the sight of women in uniform and since scandal sells newspapers, the tabloids back home, began to circulate the scurrilous rumor that WACs were either dykes, or sluts out looking for a good time. And the morals of the WACs became a topic of general discussion back home. That was a disgrace. But that slanderous shit was out there, no matter how noble those women were.

It pissed me off. Every WAC I'd ever met, was there to do their duty, nothing more. We were all young, horny and a long way from home. So, of course, there were twenty-year-old hijinks - romance and probably some broken hearts. But those women were no different than the girls in every American small town and portraying them otherwise was lying and deceitful to the point of being unpatriotic.

MacArthur, who always saw things through the lens of what was good for him, called the WACs "my best soldiers." Which was why he had so many of them serving at General Headquarters Southwest Pacific. And it was the reason so many American women were in that steamy hellhole.

There was a particularly popular watering hole just outside the gates where a lot of us enlisted gathered. It had a genuine Wurlitzer juke box that played Miller, Goodman, and Shaw. So, you could dance. Better yet, the alcohol was plentiful because the Papuans distilled it out behind the building - from two-year-old bags of rice that the Japs had left behind when they'd skedaddled.

The booze at Rosie's had a knockout punch. But that was why we were there, trying to forget where we were and what we'd left behind. That was particularly true for the flight crews. Twenty-year-old Corporal Jimmy Forbes was the gunner on Bunting's plane. And because I was his crew chief, we would occasionally drag me over to Rosies.

I had been closed off and anti-social since I got my draft notice. Jimmy, on the other hand, had had the opposite reaction. His parents were members of some snake handling, evangelical sect way up in the Appalachians. So, all the females Jimmy grew up with were either members of his church, or a relative. Most of the time, they were both. Hence, incest was a real possibility.

Accordingly, Jimmy's lustful teenage urges were chained to the wall by the flinty stares of disapproving family members -- all fifty-eight. And naturally, that kind of restriction only wound the spring up even tighter in Jimmy's loins. So, when he realized that the females around him weren't potential relatives, he turned into a total man-slut.

The drinking establishments in Sentani were palm-leaved huts built from the coconut trees surrounding the base. Rosie's was notorious as the joint where both liquor and the bar girls were cheap. So, Jimmy's head was always on a swivel when we visited that place. Probably more so than when he was sitting in his turret looking for Japanese Zeros.

We were in Rosie's one night when a group of WACs walked in. WACs wore baggy, rayon and cotton, olive drab uniforms that could never be described as attractive, or flattering. Nonetheless, these were American women, even if their outfits were butt ugly. So, forty males rose from their seats and started circling the girls like a flock of seagulls chasing a fishing boat.

The women paused, looking tentative. There were six of them altogether. One was tall and rather plain. The second was clearly older. The third was plump and puppy-dog cute. The fourth and fifth were the girl next door. But the sixth was an absolute stunner.

She was perhaps 5-foot-1 and 100 pounds, with long luxuriant honey blond hair twisted into a bun and a face like an angel. She had huge eloquent eyes in a perfectly proportioned face, with high cheek bones, a pert nose, and a downright lascivious mouth - which she kept quirked in a knowing, sarcastic smile.

A wave of men crashed around the WACs like the monster rollers that break on the Milwaukee Pierhead Light. Jimmy, who had vanished the instant he spotted the WACs, was leading the charge. Me? I just sat there at our table, which was actually five small tree stumps arranged around a much wider one. All the tables at Rosie's were that way.

The only light was from strings of Edison bulbs wound around the eaves. But even if the lighting was dim, it was bright enough to illuminate a feeding frenzy that a pack of sharks would have been proud to participate in. Jimmy, who was very good-looking, emerged from the maelstrom leading two of the WACs, the older one and the beautiful one. It was clear which woman I was going to get.

Jimmy and the beautiful one, whose name was Maggie, were already flirting. The older one and I sat there staring off into space. The awkwardness finally got to be too much. So, I turned, stuck out my hand and said, "Erik." She got a look of relief on her face, which I'd noticed was pretty -- lovely eyes, very smooth skin, and dimples. She said, "Laura." And that was how I met Laura Besley.

Laura was a Staff Sergeant, one rank above me. She was a couple of years past thirty and she supervised the typing pool for one of MacArthur's administrative units at GHQ-SEPAC. She had nut brown hair in a pageboy and dark, eloquent eyes underneath her bangs. She also had a playful sense of humor, and her figure was trim and neat, not voluptuous - not skinny... just right.

Jimmy was working on Maggie, and she was giving it right back to him in spades. It was like watching two heavyweight boxers in a title fight. Laura said to me conversationally, "Mags has been around. She knows how to handle your friend."

Maggie was like women are nowadays, totally free spirited and independent. She had been a secretary in Manhattan prior to enlisting and she was a couple of years older than Jimmy and me. Meaning she had been around the barn a few times. She'd never married. She'd told Laura that it was because her exceptional good looks guaranteed that she didn't ever lack for male companionship.

Laura said that the two of them regularly double dated to blanket parties, and midnight swims, which were a staple of Sentani social life. I raised my eyebrows and Laura said indignantly, "Don't you dare judge us. We're no different than the girls back home. Neither of us are easy. We do a little making out and petting - that's all. We just have a lot of men to select from."

I thought about Patsy's and my love life and I could see that Laura had a point. Whatever was happening was harmless flirtation. I raised my hands in a surrender gesture and said, "I wasn't implying anything - really. I was just surprised that there was so much social life here in Sentani. Because I rarely get out of the hanger."

Laura looked at me intently and said, "You're a good-looking guy. How come you don't go out?" That was when I told her about Patsy and how much I missed her. It took fifteen minutes, and it, no doubt, sounded creepy and maudlin, even for a homesick G.I., but I'm utterly lacking in social skills.

Laura gave me a pitying look and said, "Do you actually BELIEVE that your girl back home is sitting there, doing nothing but waiting for your letters? Patsy sounds like a normal healthy female, to me. Plus, she isn't getting any younger... at least if she's one of those girls who's only interested in making babies."