The Hooligans by Deutermann P. T

Author:Deutermann, P. T. [Deutermann, P. T.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Historical, War, thriller
Amazon: B0818Q5Y8G
Goodreads: 48848299
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Published: 2020-07-28T07:00:00+00:00

FIFTEEN

Thus began a brand-new chapter in the existence of the Hooligans. We learned that our new boss, after his séance with Commander Cogswell, had gone to see one of his classmates, someone medium high up in the headquarters, with a proposal for doing something very different from ferrying army patrols around the still-bleeding remains of the Guadalcanal battlefields. The key concession as the price for our independence was that we would put an officer on the staff of whoever was running the show as the fleet went north. His job would be to coordinate our activities with the deep-water Navy so that we wouldn’t mutually interfere with each other.

Our mission would be to terrorize Jap logistics, drive up in the night to shoot up their shore installations, rescue any of our pilots who’d gone down in waters too dangerous even for the Catalinas, drop off frogmen to do whatever frogmen did to Jap facilities, conduct hydrographic sounding sweeps in areas where the bosses might want to land troops, lay the odd minefield, and carry wounded from the front lines to the nearest medical facilities. In short, we would strive to become extremely useful, with that all-important proviso that we wouldn’t do anything until our warm body on Halsey’s staff made sure we wouldn’t be screwing things up. His classmate had told Rackham he’d see what he could do.

The first order of business was to find a home on or near New Georgia Island. The planners on Halsey’s staff suggested we go look for someplace suitable actually on New Georgia Island, unless of course we thought the island was too hot, in which case they’d pick somewhere a bit safer. I suspected that somebody down there knew exactly how a guy nicknamed Bluto would react to that. He told them via message that he would select a spot near enough to be no more than one hour from whatever was going on. We found out that the next Allied objective was a large airfield at a place called Munda, on the west coast of New Georgia. That island was heavily garrisoned, its forces augmented now by the evacuees from Guadalcanal. The plan apparently was for the Army to occupy the much smaller Rendova Island, which was a short four miles across a strait from Munda. Once taken, Rendova would provide a perfect place for a battalion of Army heavy artillery to subdue the Japs across the strait holding the Munda airfield, which was the ultimate objective. Once we took Munda, our bombers would be within practical range of Simpson Harbor at Rabaul, where all the Jap ships in the Solomons were based.

Once again, I tapped the coast-watcher headquarters, and they recommended a tiny island named Bau, which was located inside the main harbor on Rendova. Bluto agreed.

I was dealing with a sudden surge in malaria while all this was going on. It was the scourge of South Pacific battlefields, requiring the troops to take toxic pills which they often quit taking.

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