Alaska (143 page)

Since the generals remained at Dutch Harbor overnight, LeRoy had time to visit with Sandy, who was even more exciting than Nate had said. That evening the two Krickels, Nate and LeRoy borrowed the cabin of a civilian engineer in charge of putting together the gear that would be required for the airstrip, and with food assembled from various sources they prepared themselves a satisfying meal, during which it became obvious that LeRoy was already smitten with this girl of the islands who alternately fended off his unspoken approaches and encouraged them.

In the morning the generals wanted to see Adak from the air, and they insisted that Ben Krickel fly along to point out the features of the island as he remembered them from once having leased part of it for his run of ordinary red foxes. It was a turbulent day, with vast winds sweeping in from Siberia, and it seemed unnecessarily daring for three senior officers to be taking such risks, but LeRoy had learned that General Shafter, at least, was truly afraid of nothing, and he assumed the two other officers were of the same breed.

It was Ben who yelled from a back seat: 'Steady her up!' but that was impossible.

However, LeRoy found some comfort from the fact that two heavier military planes, bombers no doubt, had joined up and were flying wing positions. But now, when the planes passed in and out of heavy clouds, and 869

then ran into violent rain, he said to no one in particular: 'Be safer if they went home.'

At Adak they saw very little, for storm clouds hung low over the island, 'a foretaste,'

one of the generals said, 'of what our boys will face when they try to land.'

'When they land,' General Shafter corrected, and the three officers, bouncing about as they tried to peer down through the clouds, laughed. Not Krickel. He called forward: 'I'm gonna be sick,' and LeRoy called back: 'That's your problem. Rule is, you got to clean it up when we land,' and Ben proceeded to be very sick.

Disappointed in the flight, one of the generals, who was going to be personally involved in leapfrogging out the Aleutians, suggested: 'Could we fly around a bit? Maybe there'll be a break.' LeRoy studied his fuel reserve and wished that he could consult with his wingmen, but radio silence had to be observed, so with hand signals he indicated to the man on his left flank that he was going to drop lower and circle, and the other pilot signaled: 'Okay.'

It was lucky they did, for after a tedious quarter-hour a break did come in the lower clouds, and for about ten minutes they had relatively clear flying over their target, and now Ben Krickel gathered himself together and shouted out the characteristics of one site after another: 'Yeah, here's where the flat land begins beachside. Up here, better elevation but not so long. I don't recognize this, must be lost. You can see the rocks over there, stay clear. Yeah, this is Adak, all right. You found the right island, pilot.'

The third general, not an airman, wanted especially to see the beach areas, and in the fleeting glimpse he was allowed he saw all he needed: 'Another hell spot. Wade ashore and hope the other side didn't get here first.' To some senior officers the enemy was invariably

he, to others the enemy, and to this man, a football player at Navy, it was the other side.

They remained at Dutch Harbor that night, completing plans, and while they huddled with Krickel over maps, LeRoy and Sandy had a long talk together, and then a longer walk in the August moonlight, at the end of which they knew that they were joyously close to falling in love. He could see that she was as desirable as Nate had indicated in his letter, and she had already been convinced by her Lapak discussions with Nate that LeRoy was a serious young man from a good family and with unusual ability as a pilot. At the conclusion of their walk they embraced, and Sandy was so happy to have found a man she liked and would increasingly respect as she got to know him better, she lingered in his arms and whis-870

pered: 'You flew in here on a kindly wind,' and he whispered back: 'In these islands there are no gentle winds. I learned today . . . the hard way.'

In the morning, as the visitors were preparing to leave, the army general delivered some bad news: a Seattle review board had reclassified Sandy Krickel as a designated Aleut, so she had to be evacuated with the rest. No appeal. She would be sent to where a large collection of island people had been gathered. 'There are four we can choose from,' the local commander explained. 'All in the southern part of Alaska, what the natives call the Banana Belt. Good climate.' And as he rattled off the unfamiliar names, LeRoy stopped him: 'Did you say Totem Cannery?' The commander nodded. 'On Taku Inlet?'

'I think so.'

Turning to Sandy, LeRoy cried: 'I know it. Big. Not a bad place. I'll come see you there.' But when the plane was about to take off, General Shatter said: 'If the girl's leaving, why doesn't she fly to Anchorage with us?' and within a few minutes Sandy collected the few things she had in Dutch Harbor, kissed her father farewell, and headed for what would actually become an American version of a concentration camp.

DURING THE LAST WEEK OF AUGUST 1942 THE AMERICAN high command received so much solid intelligence that the Japanese were about to invade Adak Island and use it as a base for bombing mainland Alaska that they issued peremptory orders: 'Grab Adak immediately, rush an airstrip, and we'll bomb them instead.'

In less than an hour after the receipt of those instructions Captain Ruggles and his team were rushed aboard a destroyer, which plunged into the heaving waters of the Bering Sea, tossing about, Ben Krickel said, 'like a drunken walrus trying to find his way home.' Seasick and feeling his way cautiously ashore through knee-deep waves, Nate was afraid even to ask in whispers 'What now?' but Ruggles, like an eager Boy Scout, actually shouted: 'This way!' and he led them scrambling up a muddy incline to higher ground, where in one blazing instant gunfire erupted from all sides, with tracer bullets etching pathways through the darkness.

They had run into a Japanese team of four equally daring scouts who had been engaged in their own reconnaissance, and an intense, totally confused gunfight ensued, during which the enemy conducted a disciplined retreat to a different beach where a submarine awaited them. Ruggles, now

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free to probe about the island, rushed everywhere, and shortly after daybreak encoded the message which would authorize a massive invasion fleet to set sail: 'No Japanese on Adak. Locations Able, Baker or Roger eligible for bomber strip.'

Two days later they stood on an Adak promontory to greet an immense landing force as it streamed ashore with gigantic construction bulldozers that swarmed onto the island like an army of ants, and ten days later, when the first heavy bombers flew in on their way to bomb Attu, the three scouts stood at attention as medals were pinned to their tunics 'for heroic actions which speeded the capture of Adak Island.'

That night Ruggles and his men hit the hay early, exhausted by the fight and the following days of exertion, but before they fell asleep Ruggles said: 'They repeat brave words and hand out medals, but I wonder if they have any idea what it's like to climb up a slippery bank at midnight, not knowing if the Japs are waiting at the top?' and Krickel said: 'It ain't difficult. You take three deep breaths, plow ahead like a dummy, and when you see them . . .' He made the rat-tat-tat of a machine gun, after which the captain said: 'If I'm ever assigned to hit another beach, I want you men with me,' but Krickel cried: 'Don't volunteer!'

When the Americans had Adak operating as a powerful forward base, the Alaska Scouts had nothing immediate to do, so Nate Coop was assigned temporarily as driver and helper for a most unusual mana thin, irascible civilian with the rank of corporal, a heavy black mustache, snow-white hair that stood upright in a butch job, very large glasses and a wry wit. One look at the informal way he dressed or one sound of his rasping, sardonic voice would have assured anyone that 'this one was not intended for military duty.' A wizard on the typewriter, which he banged with an odd assortment of fingers, he edited the mimeographed newspaper published for the troops, and Nate was responsible for driving him around to the various installations where he picked up news. He was in some ways difficult to work for, but in other ways it was a privilege to be with him, for he could see humor or contradiction or downright insanity in even the direst development.

What interested Nate was that wherever this unusual reporter went, there would be some one or two soldiers or airmen who knew him by reputation, and they would pester him with questions, listening attentively when he deigned to answer, which was not often. From these conversations, Nate concluded that this Corporal Dashiell Hammett had once

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worked in Hollywood, but since Nate had never even seen a movie, he obviously did not know what the man did.

'Is he an actor?' he asked some airmen as they finished talking with Hammett. 'No,'

they said. 'Even worse. He's a writer.'

'What did he write?' The airmen thought it strange that a kid Nate's age had never heard of Hammett, so they rattled off the names of some of the films which had given him the reputation of being the hottest writer in town: 'Tough ones The Glass Key, The Thin Man, The Maltese Falcon 'Never saw them.' The men were so astonished that they called: 'Hey, Mr. Hammett, your driver says he never saw The Maltese Falcon.'

The idea that this young fellow who had been so close to him for more than a week had not known who he was or what movies he had made, had not, indeed, ever seen one of them, fascinated Hammett, and during the remainder of Nate's assignment with him he probed the boy's background, and when he saw that Nate was semi-illiterate but also basically intelligent, he took a fatherly interest in him: 'What do you mean, you didn't go to school?'

'Back in the woods, the mines . . .'

'You say you've already landed on Lapak and Adak?”

'Yep.'

Hammett stepped back, looked at this taut, intense fellow just twenty, and said: 'I write 'em, you live 'em.' He asked if Nate had a girlfriend, and was surprised when the young man replied: 'I got a wife.'

Then Hammett became deeply interested in the problems that Nate presented of a half-breed marrying into one of the Matanuska families, and after this had been explored he wanted details about the valley's economic and social life, and when Nate proved ignorant of both, Hammett said: 'Jack London would have loved you, Nate.'

'Who was Jack London?'

'Never mind.'

Hammett accepted Nate as an authentic rough diamond, but when he saw some of Nate's notes, he exploded: 'Can you read? I mean big words? Can you write?' He excused Nate from work so that he could study materials the army provided its illiterates, and under Hammett's whiplash Nate began to learn ten new words a day and stand with his hands at his side and speak uninterrupted for five minutes on topics like 'How My Uncle Found a Gold Mine.' Belatedly, he was getting an education.

When Nate disappeared for two days, Hammett was furi-873

ous: 'Where in hell you been?' But he was mollified when Nate explained: 'They're detaching me, Corporal.'

'What for?'

'Don't know. But maybe closer to Kiska. Maybe Amchitka.'

'Of course it's Amchitka. Everyone knows that. What's that to do with you?'

'Maybe me and Ben Krickel, scout again. Amphib landing.'

Hammett was appalled: 'Good God, you've scouted two islands. A man's luck runs out.'

In a low fury he went to complain to the commanding officer, but was sharply rebuked for sticking his nose in where it wasn't wanted.

Nate saw this mercurial corporal only once more; when he was about to be sent off for intensive training regarding Amchitka, Hammett came to him and said gruffly: 'You have a real set of balls, Nate. I wouldn't have the guts for one expedition like yours, and you'll be going on your third.'

'Guess that's what us scouts are for.'

As Nate trained for the new task, he sometimes wondered why, if Dashiell Hammett was as bright as the younger airmen claimed, he was only a corporal, and he never found an answer to his perplexity. But then, in the second week of January 1943 he forgot Hammett, for his old team was reassembled Captain Ruggles, Ben Krickel, himself and once more they rowed out in a rubber boat to a waiting destroyer escort, which dodged through Aleutian storms till it reached the long, low, flat island that would provide a splendid airstrip for the bombing of Kiska and Attu, if the Americans were able to occupy the island before the enemy did.

Since Amchitka was only sixty miles east of the major Japanese air base at Kiska, the three scouts had to suppose that the enemy would be boating in his own patrols, and that proved to be the case. For three perilous days and nights Nate and his team moved about the island, hearing the Japanese at times and trying to avoid contact with them. In howling storms, with snow and hail whipping their faces, the Americans protected themselves while they scouted the island's beaches, and one night as they huddled in darkness Captain Ruggles said: 'The snow falls in Siberia, but it lands in Amchitka . . . parallel to the ground . . . eighty miles an hour.'

They faced the extra danger that came from the Japanese scouting planes which raked the island, bombing any spots where American spies might be hiding, and once when the three had to scramble to escape attack, they rushed shock-874

ingly close to a camp occupied by seven Japanese scouts. Gingerly, hearts pounding, the three Americans crept back and escaped detection.

It was difficult warfare, in its way, as difficult as any being conducted throughout the world: heaving seas, whipping blizzards, endless nights, and always great storms lashing at the beaches where any invader would have to land. But resolute men, American and Japanese alike, clung to Amchitka and sent their messages back to their headquarters.

Said Ruggles in code: 'Jap aircraft overhead constantly. Will pose serious threat to landing craft.'

Nate was on lookout when the American armada approached the island, hundreds of ships of all sizes, and he expected Japanese planes to strafe them mercilessly, but now the storms became so violent that no planes could fly, and painfully the great ships moved close to shore. But even though the enemy planes were absent, the landing was hell. The