The Winds of War

to him, all I was doing from then on was trying to stay alive. The way those fellows came diving — zowie -”

“Hold still, honey.”

“Sorry. I tell you, it was rough, Jan. The SBD’s a good dive bomber, but these Jap Zeroes! The speed they’ve got, the maneuverability! They can turn inside you — whoosh! It’s no contest. They do acrobatics like birds. You can’t shake them and you can’t hold them in your sights. The pilots are hot, let me tell you. I don’t know if the F4F’s a match for them, but one thing’s sure, an SBD against Zeroes is simply a dead pigeon. All I could do was keep turning and turning to evade. They got De Lashmutt right away. He almost broke my eardrums with a horrible scream on the intercom. And then he yelled, ‘Mr. Henry, I’m pouring blood, I’m dying,’ and he moaned and that was all. There was nothing I could do. They kept coming at me. They were so eager, one of them finally overshot, and hung for a second or two, in my sights, turning. I let go with my fifties and I could swear he started smoking, but I can’t claim anything. I lost sight of him. Tracers started from three sides, right past my windows, these big pink streaks, zing, zing, zing — and then, goddamn it, our own A.A. opened up! Why the hell they shot at me I’ll never know, the silly sons of bitches — maybe they were gunning for the Japs and missing — but the flak was bursting all around me. I still don’t know whether they got me, or one of the Japs did. All I know is my gas tank caught fire. Poor De Lashmutt, I yelled and yelled at him, till the flames were coming up around the cockpit, but he didn’t answer, he certainly was dead. So I popped the canopy and jumped. I didn’t even see where I was until the parachute opened, I just saw water. I was out over Honolulu Harbor, but the wind took me inshore. I almost got hung up in a palm tree in a little park oft Dillingham Boulevard; then I cleared it and got down. I grabbed that cab, but I had a time with that fellow. He saw the chute draped all over the tree, he saw me unbuckling he stopped to watch and he still wanted fifty dollars to take me home. A patriot, that one!”

“I’ve got the bleeding sort of under control, sweetie. Just sit quiet, will you?”

“Good girl. One thing I want to do before this day’s out is get at a typewriter. I may file the first combat report of this war on Zeroes. Hey? How about that?… You should see the sights downtown!” Warren crookedly grinned at his wife. “People out in pajamas, nightgowns, or less, yelling, running around gawking at the sky. Old people, kids, mothers with babies. Damn fools, when A.A. shrapnel was raining all over the place! The only safe place was inside. I saw this beautiful Chinese girl — Anna May reminds me of her — go galloping across Dillingham Boulevard in nothing but a bra and pink panties, and I mean small transparent panties — really a sight -”

“You would notice something like that,” said Janice. “No doubt you’d notice it if your arm had been shot clean off.” With his good arm, Warren gave her a rough intimate caress, and she slapped his hand. “All right! I’ve got this wound plastered down. Maybe it’ll hold for a while. Your ear is all right too. I still think you should see a doctor at the Naval Air Station.”

“If there’s time, if there’s time.” Grimacing as he moved the arm, Warren put on his shirt and sweater and zipped up the suit. “I’ll have a look at Vic. Get out the car.”

He emerged from the house a few moments later and opened the car door. “Why, the son of a gun’s sleeping peacefully. He feels cool and he looks like he’s grown twice as big.”

“Maybe the fever broke.” Janice paused, hand on the gearshift. The car radio was broadcasting an appeal from the governor to keep calm, with assurances that fleet damage was slight and that the attackers had all been driven off. “Warren, that cab driver said the Japs were landing at Kahuku. Do you suppose there’s any danger of that, and -”

“No, no, get started. Landing? How the hell could they keep a beachhead supplied from four thousand miles away? You’ll hear all kinds of crazy scuttlebutt. This was a hit-and-run raid. Christ, the high brass on this rock must be cutting their collective throats about now. Of all the sucker plays, a Sunday morning sneak attack! Why, it’s been a routine battle problem for years.”

On the ridge sightseers stood in the grass beside parked cars, chattering and pointing. Heavy black smoke boiled up out of the anchorage and mushroomed over the sky, darkening the sun to a pale ball. Janice stopped the car. Through the windshield, Warren swept the harbor with the binoculars.

“Good God, Jan, Ford Island’s a junkyard! I don’t see one undamaged plane. But there must be many left in the hangars. Lord, and there’s a battlewagon capsized. I’ll bet a thousand guys are caught inside that — hey! Jesus Christ! Are they coming back?”

All over the harbor guns began rattling and flaming, and black A.A. balls blossomed again in the blue. Warren peered skyward. “I’ll be goddamned. There they are. How about that? Those sons of bitching Japs are sure betting everything on this one, Janice! Well, that means the carriers are still in range anyway, waiting to recover them. Great! Move over. I’m driving.”

Speeding made Janice nervous when she wasn’t at the wheel, and Warren knew it, but he whistled down to Pearl City like an escaping bank bandit. After a few moments of fright, his wife began to enjoy the breakneck ride. Everything was different on this side of time, the side after the Japs attacked; more adventurous, almost more fun. How handsome Warren looked, how competent, how desirable, handling the wheel with a relaxed touch of his unhurt arm, puffing a cigarette in his taut mouth, watching the road through narrow eyes! Her boredom and irritability were gone and forgotten. The black puffballs were far thicker than before, and through the windshield they saw one Japanese plane after another burst into flames and fall. Each time Warren cheered.

The fleet landing was a mess and a horror. Sailors with blistered faces and hands, with skin hanging in yellow or black scorched pieces from bloody flesh, were being helped out of whaleboats or lifted off in stretchers and loaded onto hospital trucks by men in red-smeared whites. Wounded and unwounded alike were bawling obscenities, unmindful of the women crowding the landing and gnawing their fingers as they scanned the faces of the hurt men; unmindful too of the children who played and joked around the women’s skirts — those not old enough to stare with round eyes at the burned sailors. The coxswain of a whaleboat full of sheeted bodies was trying to come alongside, and a fat old chief in khaki kept cursing at him and waving him off. Over all this noise rolled the massive thumping and cracking of guns, the wail of sirens, the blasts of ships’ horns, and the roar of airplanes, for the second attack was now in full swing. There was a heavy smell of firecrackers in the air, mingled with a sour stink from the black oil burning on the water all around Ford Island and sending up clouds of thick smoke. Hands on hips, cigarette dangling from his mouth, Warren Henry calmly surveyed the terrible and spectacular scene.

Janice said, in shaken tones, “I don’t know how you’ll ever get across.”

He nodded absently, then strode to the end of the landing to a long canopied boat. Janice hurried after him. “Coxswain, whose barge is this?”

The immaculate sailor at the tiller flipped a hand to a white hat perfectly squared on his close-cropped head. Big-jawed, bronzed, and tall, he eyed Warren’s gory life-jacket curiously, and drawled, “Suh, this is Admiral Radburn’s barge.”

“Is the admiral on the beach?”

“Yes, suh.”

“Do you know how long he’ll be?”

“Negative, suh, he just told me to wait.”

Glancing back at the milling boats along the landing, Warren said, “Well, look, here’s how it is. I’m Lieutenant Henry, off the Enterprise. I’m a dive bomber pilot.”

“Yes, suh?”

“I flew in this morning, just when the attack started. The Japs shot me down. I have to find another plane and get into this fight, so how’s for taking me over to Ford Island?”

The coxswain hesitated, then straightened up and saluted. “Come aboard, suh. The important thing is to get those sons of bitches. Excuse me, ma’am.”

“Oh, quite all right,” Janice laughed. “I want him to get those sons of bitches too.”

Hair stirring in the wind, bloody lifejacket dangling open, Warren stood in the stern sheets, hands on hips, smiling at her as the barge pulled away.

“Get them!” she called. “And come back to me.”

“Roger. Don’t drive back till these bastards quit, or you may get strafed. Be seeing you.”

He ducked as a red and yellow Japanese plane passed right over his head, not twenty feet in the air, its motor noisily coughing and missing; then it turned sharply and flew away across the channel, over the capsized crimson hull of a battleship. Warren straightened, still grinning. Janice watched the admiral’s beautiful barge, all new gray paint, shiny brass, snowy curtains and cordwork, carry her bloodstained husband away to the flaming