Free Once They Were Eagles by Frank Walton

then shoot myself.”
    Emotionally drained by the strain of nursing his crippled plane 100 miles over unfriendly territory, shaken by the parachute drop, wet and cold, he was a forlorn figure as he resolutely stood his ground, his .45 in his hand, as the craft moved along the shoreline.
    â€œThen I heard one of them say, ‘The son of a bitch is around here somewhere; there’s his parachute,’ and it was our Seabees! They were using the Japanese scow as a garbage boat.
    â€œI hollered, ‘Over here, fellas’. As they came toward me, I saw I only had the one flying boot. Realizing one boot was worthless, I threw it out into the water and walked along the beach to be picked up.”
    As he waded out to board the boat, he saw his other boot in the shallow water. But he couldn’t find the one he’d flung away.

 
9 | I Got That Old Feelin’
    â€œI got that old feelin’,” Quill Skull Groover told me on the morning of 23 September, as we were discussing the day’s scheduled strike on southern Bougainville.
    Groover’s “old feelin’” was as sure a forecaster as your grandpa’s rheumatism. This Georgia boy’s “feelin’” forecast aerial combat action, and we had already come to respect it.
    This morning, he must have had the feelin’ pretty strong. Only two and a half hours later, with a broken right arm and leg, he fought his bullet-riddled Corsair 150 miles back to our base and landed it raggedly on the coral strip. He was helped out of his bloody cockpit, stained from the flow of a dozen wounds along his right side.
    Groover was one of nine Black Sheep flying high cover on a joint Army, Navy, Marine, and New Zealand strike that day. The Black Sheep attacked 40 Zeros that were snapping at the heels of Army Liberators returning from the strike.
    As the fight began, Big Bob Alexander, who was on Stan Bailey’s wing, reported his engine was missing. Bailey directed him to return to base, but just at this point, three Zeros attacked Bailey.
    Instead of returning to base, Alex guided his limping plane about the sky to protect his division leader. He soon had the three Zeros on his own tail and enemy tracers whistling past his ears. He went intoa dive, and his engine quit. The Zeros, fortunately, turned away.
    Bob managed to get his engine going spasmodically and headed for home, losing altitude all the way. He radioed in to the uncompleted Vella Lavella strip, instructing them to prepare for an emergency landing. As he came over the ridge north of the field, clearing the trees by only five feet, he saw the runway covered by trucks and bulldozers and men working. He had no choice now, so he put his plane down to one side of the strip, kicking right and left rudder, dodging trucks and bulldozers as he rolled along at nearly 100 miles an hour.
    His plane hit a huge ditch, bounced, struck something solid, and turned over on its back, crushing his Plexiglass canopy.
    Alex was lifted out, unhurt, by a naval officer, who looked at his face and said, “Jeez, aren’t you from Davenport, Iowa?”
    He was a Seebee ensign and a hometown friend.
    Bailey, in the meantime, was playing sieve again: the three Zeros got in several hits before he could shake them. He tried to join up with other Corsairs, but kept running into Zeros, which made passes at him from all angles.
    He finally headed back and climbed over the tail end of the returning bombers. Two-thirds of the way home Bailey saw six Zeros strafing a parachute in the water. He pushed his bullet-damaged plane over and attacked, driving them away from the helpless pilot.
    He brought his Corsair safely into Munda with four 20-millimeter shell holes and 30 machine gun holes in it.
    Black Sheep John Bolt, separated from his division in a cloud, came out in the clear and climbed into the sun to 20,000 feet. He attacked the last of a flight of six Zeros, opening fire at 200 yards. The enemy