Michener, James - The Bridges at Toko-ri

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James A. Michener  THE BRIDGES AT TOKO-RI

In a field three miles from a village, Brubaker lay hiding in a rice paddy. What was

he doing here, he wondered. Why wasn’t he at home in Denver tending to his law

practice, having dinner with his wife and daughters. He looked up and saw the

enemy soldiers closing in ...

James A. Michener  THE BRIDGES AT TOKO-RI

Also by James Michener:

Fiction

TALES OF THE SOUTH PACIFIC*

RETURN TO PARADISE*

SAYONARA*

SELECTED WRITINGS

THE FIRES OF SPRING*

HAWAII*

CARAVANS*

THE SOURCE*

THE DRIFTERS*

CENTENNIAL*

CHESAPEAKE*

THE WATERMEN THE COVENANT*

SPACE*

POLAND*

TEXAS*

LEGACY*

ALASKA*

JOURNEY CARIBBEAN*

THE NOVEL*

MEXICO

Nonfiction

THE BRIDGE AT ANDAU*

RASCALS IN PARADISE*

JAPANESE PRINTS: FROM EARLY MASTERS TO THE MODERN

IBERIA: SPANISH TRAVELS AND REFLECTIONS*

MODERN JAPANESE PRINT: AN APPRECIATION

PRESIDENTIAL LOTTERY: THE RECKLESS GAMBLE IN OUR

ELECTORAL SYSTEM

SPORTS IN AMERICA*

KENT STATE: WHAT HAPPENED AND WHY*

THE FLOATING WORLD

*Published by Fawcett Books

James A. Michener  THE BRIDGES AT TOKO-RI

THE

BRIDGES

TOKO-RI

James A. Michener

FAWCETT CREST y NEW YORK

James A. Michener  THE BRIDGES AT TOKO-RI

Sale of this book without a front cover may be unauthorized. If this book is coverless, it may have been reported to the publisher as “unsold or

destroyed” and neither the author nor the publisher may have received payment for it.

A Fawcett Crest Book

Published by Ballantine Books

any form. Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by

Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.

ISBN 0-449-20651-3

This edition published by arrangement with Random House, Inc.

All the characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Manufactured in the United States of America

First Fawcett Crest Edition: April 1973

First Ballantine Books Edition: June 1982

Twenty-seventh Printing: September 1993

James A. Michener  THE BRIDGES AT TOKO-RI

To MARSHALL U. BEEBE

Jet Pilot

James A. Michener  THE BRIDGES AT TOKO-RI

Contents

Contents......................................................................................................................6

SEA ............................................................................................................................7

LAND.......................................................................................................................25

SKY..........................................................................................................................40

About the Author .....................................................................................................68

James A. Michener  THE BRIDGES AT TOKO-RI

SEA

THE SEA was bitter cold. From the vast empty plains of Siberia howling winds

roared down to lash the mountains of Korea, where American soldiers lost on

patrol froze into stiff and awkward forms. Then with furious intensity the arctic

wind swept out to sea, freezing even the salt spray that leaped into the air from

crests of falling waves.

Through these turbulent seas, not far from the trenches of Korea, plowed a

considerable formation of American warships. A battleship and two cruisers,

accompanied by fourteen destroyers to shield against Russian submarines, held

steady course as their icy decks rose and fell and shivered in the gale. They were

the ships of Task Force 77 and they had been sent to destroy the communist-held

bridges at Toko-ri.

Toward the center of this powerful assembly rode two fast carriers, the cause of

the task force and its mighty arm. Their massive decks pitched at crazy angles,

which for the present made takeoffs or landings impossible. Their planes stood

useless, huddled together in the wind, lashed down by steel cables.

It was strange, and in some perverse way resolutely American, that these two

carriers wallowing in the dusk bore names which memorialized not stirring

victories but humiliating defeats, as if by thus publishing her indifference to

catastrophe and her willingness to surmount it, the United States were defying her

enemies. To the east, and farther out to sea, rode the Hornet, whose predecessor of

that name had absorbed a multitude of Japanese bombs and torpedoes, going down

off Guadalcanal, while the inboard carrier, the Savo, would forever remind the

navy of its most shameful defeat in history, when four cruisers sank helpless at

Savo Island, caught sleeping by the audacious Japanese.

Now, as night approached the freezing task force, the bull horn on the Savo

rasped out, “Prepare to launch aircraft!” And it was obvious from the way her deck

was arranged that the carrier already had some planes in the skies over Korea, and

every man who watched the heaving sea wondered how those planes could

possibly get back aboard.

The bull horn, ignoring such problems, roared, “Prepare to launch helicopter!”

and although the deck pitched in abandon, rotors began to turn, slowly at first and

then with lumbering speed.

Now the great carrier struck a sea trough and slid away, her deck lurching, but

relentlessly the bull horn cried, “Move jets into position for launching,” and the

catapult crew, fighting for footing on the sliding deck, sprang swiftly into action,

inching two heavy Banshees onto the catapults, taking painful care not to allow the

James A. Michener  THE BRIDGES AT TOKO-RI

jets to get rolling, lest they plunge overboard with some sudden shifting of the

deck.

“Start jet engines,” roared the insistent bull horn.

The doctor, who had to be on deck in case of crash, looked at the heaving sea

and yelled to the crane operator, “They may launch these jets, but they’ll never get

’em back aboard.”

The craneman looked down from his giant machine, which could lift a burning

plane and toss it into the sea, and shouted, “Maybe they’re planning to spend the

night at some air force field in Korea. Along with the ones that are already up.”

But at this instant all ships of the task force swung in tight circles and headed

away from the open sea, straight for the nearby cliffs of Korea, and when the turn

was completed, the deck of the Savo mysteriously stabilized. The effects of wind

and sea neutralized each other, and planes returning from the bombardment of

Korea now had a safe place to land.

But before they could do so the bull horn cried eerily into the dusk, “Launch

helicopter!” and the crazy bird, its two rotors spinning so slowly the blades could

be seen, stumbled into the air, and the horn cried, “Launch jets!”

Then, as the great carrier rode serenely amid the storms, the catapult officer

whirled one finger above his head and a tremendous, almost unbearable roar arose

and twin blasts of heat leaped from each Banshee, burning the icy air more than a

hundred feet aft. Now the officer whirled two fingers and the roar increased and

white heat scorched the deck of the carrier and the twin engines whipped to a

meaningless speed of 13,000 revolutions a minute and the Banshee pilot, forcing

his head back against a cushion, saluted and the catapult officer’s right hand

whipped down and the catapult fired.

Nine tons of jet aircraft were swept down the deck at a speed of more than 135

miles an hour. Within less than 150 feet the immense Banshee was airborne, and

by the time it reached the forward edge of the carrier, it was headed toward its

mission. Four times the catapults fired and four times heavy jets leaped into the

darkening sky and headed for the coastline of Korea.

As soon as they had left, the bull horn wailed, “Respot planes. On the double.

We must recover the Korean jets immediately.”

When this announcement was made thirty old-fashioned propeller planes were

already lashed down on the after part of the flight deck in precisely that area

needed for landing the jets which now appeared overhead. The prop planes had

been stowed there to permit catapult take-offs, and now they must be moved

forward. So on the wooden deck, swept by icy winds, hundreds of young men in

varicolored uniforms sped to the task of clearing the landing space. Men in green

stowed the catapult gear so that no remnant of the powerful machine was visible.

Other men in yellow leaped upon the deck and began to indicate the course each

James A. Michener  THE BRIDGES AT TOKO-RI

plane must follow on its way to forward stowage. Dozens of tough young men in

blue leaned their shoulders against the planes, swung them laboriously into

position and pushed them slowly into the biting wind. In blazing red uniforms

other men checked guns or fueled empty craft while plane captains in brown sat in

cockpits and worked the brakes to prevent accident. Darting about through the

milling, pushing, shouting deck hands three-wheeled jeeps of vivid yellow and

lumbering tractors in somber gray hurried to their jobs, while over all towered the

mighty arms of the enormous black and sinister crane. Behind it lurked two weird

men in fantastic suits of ashen gray asbestos, their faces peering from huge

glassine boxes, ready to save the pilot if a crashed plane should burn, while in back

of them, clothed in snowy white, the doctor waited, for death was always close

upon the carrier deck.

So in an age of flight, in the jet age of incredible speed, these men pushed and

pulled and slipped upon the icy deck and ordered the heavy planes with their bare

hands. Upon trailing edges burdened with ice they pushed, their faces open to the

freezing wind, their eyes heavy with frozen salt and the knuckles of their hands

covered long since with protecting scars. And as they moved, their bright colors

formed the pattern of a dance and after they had swarmed upon the deck for some

minutes the Savo was transformed and from the lowering shadows the jets

prepared to land.

This intricate operation was guided by one man. From the admiral’s country he

had directed the task force to run toward the communist coast. The last four jets

had been dispatched at his command. He had placed the ships so that the

operations of one would not trespass the allotted space of the other, and it was his

responsibility to see that his carriers faced the wind in such position that smoke

trailed off to one side rather than directly aft and into the faces of incoming pilots.

Now he stood upon his bridge and watched the mountains of Korea moving

perilously close.

Admiral George Tarant was a tall narrow man with a sharp face that was sour

and withdrawing like those of his Maine ancestors. Battle-wizened, he had fought

the Japanese with his own carrier at Saipan, at Iwo Jima and at Okinawa, where his

austere and lonely presence had brought almost as much terror to his own fliers as

it had to the enemy.

He was known through the navy as George the Tyrant, and any aviator who

wanted to fetch a big laugh would grab a saucer in his left hand, a coffee cup in his

right, lean back in his chair and survey the audience sourly, snorting, “Rubbish.”

Then the mimic would stare piercingly at some one pilot, jab the coffee cup at him

and growl, “You, son. What do you think?”

But men who served with Tarrant soon forgot his tyranny and remembered his

fantastic skill in operating a task force. His men said flatly, “He can do it better

James A. Michener  THE BRIDGES AT TOKO-RI

than anyone else in the world.” He knew the motion of the sea and could estimate

whether a morning swell would rise to prevent recovery of afternoon planes or

subside so that even jets could land freely. He was able to guess when new gales of

bitter Siberian air would rush the line of snowstorms out to sea and when the snow

would come creeping softly back and throw a blizzard about the task force as it

slept at night. And he had a most curious ability to foresee what might trouble the

tin-can sailors serving in the remote destroyers.

He fought upon the surface of the sea and in the sky. He sent his planes inland to

support ground troops or far out to sea to spot Russian submarines. His was the

most complex combat command of which one man’s mind was capable and on him

alone depended decisions of the gravest moment.

For example, the position he was now in, with mountains closing down upon

him, was his responsibility. Early that morning his aerologist had warned, “Wind’s

coming up, sir. You might run out of ocean by late afternoon.”

He studied the charts and growled, “We’ll make it.”

Now his navigator warned, “We can’t hold thus course more than sixteen

minutes, sir.” The young officer looked at the looming coastline as if to add, “After

that we’ll have to turn back and abandon the planes.”

“We’ll make it,” Tarrant grumbled as his ships plowed resolutely on toward the

crucial hundred fathom curve which he dare not penetrate for fear of shoals, mines

and submarines. But he turned his back upon his problem, for he could do nothing

about it now. Instead, he checked to be sure the Savo’s deck was ready and in

doing so he saw something which reassured him. Far aft, standing upon a tiny

platform that jutted out over the side of the carrier, stood a hulking giant, muffled

in fur and holding two landing-signal paddles in his huge hands. It was Beer

Barrel, and if any man could bring jets surely and swiftly home, it was Beer Barrel.

He was an enormous man, six feet three, more than 250 pounds, and his heavy

suit, stitched with strips of fluorescent cloth to make his arms and legs easier to

read, added to his bulk. He was a farmer from Texas who before the perilous days

of 1943 had never seen the ocean, but he possessed a fabulous ability to sense the

motion of the sea and what position the carrier deck would take. He could judge

the speed of jets as they whirled down upon him, but most of all he could imagine

himself in the cockpit of every incoming plane and he seemed to know what tired

and jittery pilots would do next and he saved their lives. He was a fearfully bad

naval officer and in some ways a disgrace to his uniform, but everyone felt better

when he came aboard a carrier, for he could do one thing. He could land planes.

He could reach out with his great hands and bring them safely home the way

falconers used to bring back birds they loved. In the Pentagon they knew he broke

rules and smuggled beer aboard each ship he served upon. Carrier captains knew it,

and even Admiral Tarrant, who was a terror on navy rules, looked the other way

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