Baa Baa Black Sheep by Gregory Boyington

Author:Gregory Boyington [Boyington, Gregory]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
ISBN: 978-0-8041-5079-8
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2013-08-07T04:00:00+00:00

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*For an exciting authentic biography of this famous Marine general read Marine! The Life of Chesty Puller by Burke Davis. Another Bantam military book.

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20

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The most tired and rundown herd of Black Sheep anybody ever wanted to see landed in the DC-3 on the fighter strip back at Espiritu Santo just before sunset. It was dark before we were given a lift by truck to the group mess, which had been open for this late arrival of ours. Many of the pilots were too pooped to enjoy good food now that they had it, and plenty of it for a change.

The lot of us were either too tired or sleepy—just plain lazy in my case—to bother to make up our bunks, piling into them as best we could. One thing was for certain: we weren’t going to be bothered with routing out a quartermaster sergeant at that time of night to get bedding and mosquito nets. Besides, after the outstanding work by the Army Engineers, mosquitos had become a thing of the past in Espiritu long before November. So most of us fell asleep in our skivvies as soon as we peeled off our clothing.

It must have been close to midnight when I was awakened by a very bright light, shining squarely into my face, blinding my eyes so much I couldn’t see anything. I tried to turn my head to get away from the glare, but the light seemed to follow me whichever way I turned, so I could not see who was holding it.

A gruff voice came from behind the light, one that was only too familiar to me—and not pleasantly familiar, either. The farthest thing from my sweet dreams was there breaking up my sleep, none other than Lard himself.

At first I naturally assumed he was sore about my disregard for the orders concerning drinking, like they were so much confetti—because I’d witnessed these orders being torn up by another colonel up the line. But during the ranting about I soon discovered what this was all about as he kept mumbling: “Netting,” among other things, to be written down by the capable executive who was always standing one pace behind Lard.

“Don’t you know, Boyington, that there is an order against anyone sleeping without a mosquito net?”

“Yes, sir,” I answered, but I thought: “This fat son of a bitch really had to dig deep in the old records to come up with this one on nets.” There were no mosquitoes then, and besides, we had taken atabrine while in the combat zone until we were almost the same color as the Japs, just so we wouldn’t miss a trip to Sydney. I don’t believe this joker ever destroyed an out-of-date order for fear he might have some use for it some time.

As he and his stooge with the pad and pencil moved away in the darkness with the flashlight, Lard was also mumbling something about restricting the lot of us from making the trip we had so dearly earned.

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