DUNN, WILLIAM C 1/LT USMCR ONE (1)

HALLOWELL, GEORGE L 1/LT USMCR TWO (2)

KENNEDY, MATTHEW H 1/LT USMCR (2)

B. FOUR (4) ZERO

DUNN, WILLIAM C 1/LT USMCR ONE (1)

MCNAB, HOWARD T/SGT USMC (2)

ALLEN, GEORGE F 1/LT USMCR ONE (1)

C. IN ADDITION, SHARPSTEEN, JAMES CAPT USAAC 67 USAAC FS DOWNED ONE (1) KATE

STRAGGLER.

6. MAG-21 LOSSES:

A. ONE (1) F4F4 CRASHED AT SEA. PILOT RECOVERED.

B. ONE (1) F4F4 CRASHED ON LANDING, DESTROYED.

C. THREE (3) F4F4 SLIGHTLY DAMAGED, REPAIRABLE.

7. DUE TO CLOUD COVER REMAINING ENEMY FORCE COULD NOT SEE HENDERSON FIELD, BOMB LOAD

DROPPED APPROXIMATELY FOUR NAUTICAL MILES TO WEST. NO DAMAGE TO FIELD OR EQUIPMENT.

DAWKINS, CLYDE W LTCOL USMC COMMANDING

=TOP SECRET=

[FOUR]

Henderson Field Guadalcanal,

Solomon Islands

0615 Hours 12 October 1942

As the Douglas R4D (the Navy/Marine Corps version of the twin-engine Douglas DC-3) turned smoothly onto its final approach, the pilot, who had been both carefully scanning the sky and taking a careful look at the airfield itself, suddenly put his left hand on the control wheel and gestured with his right to the copilot to relinquish control.

The lanky and (like nearly everyone else in that part of the world) tanned pilot of the R4D was twenty-eight-year old Captain Charles M. Galloway, USMCR-known to his subordinates as either "The Skipper" or "The Old Man."

The copilot was a twenty-two-year-old Marine Corps second lieutenant whose name was Malcolm S. Pickering. Everyone called him "Pick."

As Pick Pickering took his feet off the rudder pedals, he took his left hand from the wheel and held both hands up in front of him, fingers extended, a gesture indicating, You've got it.

I didn't have to take it away from him, Charley Galloway thought as he moved his hand to the throttle quadrant. His many other flaws notwithstanding, Pickering is a first-rate pilot. More than that, he's that rare creature, a natural pilot.

So why did I take it away from him? Because no pilot believes any other pilot can fly as well as he can? Or because I am functioning as a responsible commander, aware that high on the long list of critically short materiel of war on Guadalcanal are R4D airplanes. And consequently I am obliged to do whatever I can to make sure nobody dumps one of them?

He glanced over at Pickering to see if he could detect any signs on his face of a bruised ego. There were none.

Is that because he accepts the unquestioned right of pilots-in-command to fly the airplane, and that copilots can drive only at the pleasure of the pilot?

Or because he is a fighter pilot, and doesn't give a damn who flies an aerial truck, all aerial truck drivers being inferior to all fighter pilots?

Galloway made a last-second minor correction to line up with the center of the runway, then flared perfectly and touched down smoothly. The runway was rough. The landing roll took them past the Pagoda, the Japanese-built control tower, and then past the graveyard. There the hulks of shot-up, crashed, burned, and otherwise irreparably damaged airplanes waited until usable parts could be salvaged from them to keep other planes flying.

Where, Galloway thought, Pickering can see the pile of crushed and burned aluminum that used to be the Grumman Wildcat, his buddy, First Lieutenant Dick Stecker, dumped on landing... and almost literally broke every bone in his body.

Galloway carefully braked the aircraft to a stop, then turned it around and started to taxi back down the runway.

"You still want to turn your wings in for a rifle?" Galloway asked.

Pickering turned to look at him.

He didn't reply at first, taking so long that Galloway was suddenly worried what his answer might be.

"I was upset," Pickering said, meeting his eyes, "when I saw Stecker crash. If I can, I'd like to take back what I said then."

"Done," Galloway said, nodding his head. "It was never said."

"I did say it, Skipper," Pickering answered softly. "But I want to take it back."

"Pickering, they're short of R4D pilots. I'm an R4D IP"-an Instructor Pilot, with the authority to classify another pilot as competent to fly an R4D. "As far as I'm concerned, you're checked out in one of these. I'm sure there'd be a billet for you on Espiritu Santo."

"If that's my option, Captain," Pickering said, "then I will take the rifle. I'm a fighter pilot."

"It takes as much balls to fly this as it does a Wildcat," Galloway said.

"More. These things don't get to shoot back," Pickering said.

Galloway chuckled, then said, "Just to make sure you understand: I wasn't trying to get rid of you."

Pickering met his eyes again for a long moment.

"Thank you, Sir," he said.

[FIVE]

Corporal Robert F. Easterbrook, USMCR, was nineteen years old, five feet ten inches tall, and weighed 132 pounds (he'd weighed 146 when he came ashore on Guadalcanal two months and two days earlier). And he was pink skinned-thus perhaps understandably known to his peers as "Easterbunny." Easterbrook was sitting in the shade of the Henderson Field control tower, the Pagoda, when the weird R4D came in for a landing. It had normal landing gears, with wheels; but attached to all that was what looked like large skis. None of the other Marine and Navy R4Ds that flew into Henderson were so equipped.

"Holy shit!" he said to himself, and he thought: That damned thing is back! I've got to get pictures of that sonofabitch.

Twelve months before, Corporal Easterbrook had been a freshman at the University of Missouri, enrolled in courses known informally as "Pre-Journalism.''

It had been his intention then to work hard and attain a high enough undergraduate grade-point average to ensure his acceptance into the University of Missouri Graduate School of Journalism. Later, with a Missouri J School diploma behind him, he could get his foot on the first rung of the ladder leading to a career as a photojournalist (or at least he'd hoped so):

He would have to start out on a small weekly somewhere and work himself up to a daily paper. Later-much later-after acquiring enough experience, he might be able to find employment on a national magazine... maybe Collier's or the Saturday Evening Post, or maybe even Look. It was too much to hope that he would ever see his work in Life or Time-at least before he was old, say thirty or thirty-five. As the unquestioned best of their genre, these two magazines published only the work of the very finest photojournalists in the world.