“Pegasus four-three, this is Vishnu-one. We have two more sections of Gnats with rockets and napalm waiting up here and lots of 30-mike-mike. We can’t stay too long but we’re here if you need us.”
“Thank you Vishnu-one. Hot day’s work, what?”
HMAS Tobruk, entering Rosario Harbor, Surigao del Sur, Mindanao
“I see the locals have come out to welcome us.”
“I think they’re actually watching to see if we’ll run aground Number One. Bump a pebble on the way in and they’ll have a line on us and be claiming salvage you mark my words.”
The heavy lift ship nudged into the tiny harbor. It was a hard approach, the channel was deep but sloped sharply either side, there would be little warning if they strayed out of the proper line. And, to make matters worse there was a 90 degree bend in the channel and a river running in from one side. The pilot bringing them in seemed to have forgotten about it and Tobruk was heading for the other side of the channel with dismaying speed. It seemed as if Tobruk, her crew and the battalion combat team on board her were steaming at six knots to catastrophe. They were already passing the mouth of the river when the pilot suddenly extended his hand and Tobruk wheeled neatly into the final approach. The pilot took the turn off before the Navigating Officer had expected and ordered starboard wheel. Tobruk was perfectly lined up on the unloading ramp with ten degrees of starboard wheel on.
The Navigating Officer let out the breath he’d been holding. The Philippine pilot grinned at him “The river current really messes things up when the tide’s ebbing. Quite strong here.”
Tobruk nudged up to the dock and let down her bow ramp. The harbor was quite well equipped by local standards, there was a quay they could unload cargo onto by crane and a slipway for the heavy vehicles. First ashore were the artillery, a battery of six Nulla self-propelled guns, their long barrels waving as they crested the ramp and moved into the shore. Based on the Monash tank chassis, they had a modified 3.7 inch anti-aircraft gun as their prime armament. It wasn’t used as an AA weapon of course, instead it was been modified into a medium artillery piece. The Monash had been too small for a 155, a shortcoming that had turned out to be serendipitous. The 3.7 fired a small shell, one short on destructive power, but it fired the shell a long, long way. The American 155 had a range of 14,000 yards, the Russians were proud of their 130 that could reach out to 24,000. But the Nulla could reach a stupendous 32,000 yards, more with supercharges. It wasn’t just reach, the gun was accurate, even to such unthinkable range.
The battery positions were already prepared, pits dug, ammunition dumps in place, all the standard fittings. Rosario was a Christian town, one that had been carefully chosen as one of the starting points of the campaign. It would be a fine base for operations. The Nullas here could reach far inland, so the infantry patrols hunting the terrorists could call on fire support. As they drove deeper into the mountains and jungles of Mindanao, more firebases would be established, more Nullas would be moved up so that the whole province would be covered in an interlocking network of artillery fire. The Australian troops would drive out, their deep penetration patrols pushing forward to find, fix and destroy the terrorists.
“Mister Shane. A few words please.” “Sir?”
“Once the battalion has unloaded, I would like you to accompany me to meet the town authorities and take a trip to the hospital. There is an old lady there, a Graciella Ortega, we need to speak with. She may have information that can help us get started. Where’s my interpreter?”
“Here Mister Golconda Sir.” The young man almost tripped over his own feet in the hurry. The cause of the urgency was obvious, a police officer had come down to the unloading area. A very senior police officer and in the Philippines very senior police officers were not to be trifled with or kept waiting.
“Please tell this distinguished officer that I am Lieutenant Colonel Golconda, in charge of the Australian forces here. I am very pleased to meet him and look forward to working with him.”
The interpreter spoke in Tagalog and the officer smiled in a confused sort of way. Seconds stretched to minutes and it was obvious nobody understood anybody. Then, a man in a business suit emerged from the onlookers and joined the group. “Perhaps I can help sir? I am Mister Acaragua, manager of the Philippine National Bank branch here.”
“Thank you Mister Acaragua. I was just introducing myself but we seem to have a problem, my interpreter can’t make himself understood.”
The bank manager started speaking and suddenly everybody started laughing. The police officer seized Golconda’s hand and pumped it vigorously. Mister Acaragua wiped his eyes. “Colonel Golconda sir, your interpreter speaks English and Tagalog, indeed he speaks both very well. But this is Mindanao and here we speak Visayan not Tagalog. Until you speak our language, you will need an English-Visayan interpreter. I have a cousin who can help perhaps.”
Golconda looked at the group and chuckled. Trust the army to send the wrong interpreter. Well, it was a better start than the Burma Campaign had.
Forward Messdeck, USS Austin LPD-4, Eastern Mediterranean
Even at sea, training never ended. The younger seamen, the ones on their first deployment were green, knowing even less than they thought they did about the world they had just joined. It was the Chiefs who were giving their professional education its final polish. Of all the Chiefs, the Senior Chief was renowned as the best and most competent tutor of them all. Later in their careers, seamen discovered that their notebooks of his lectures were more detailed and complete, not to mention easier to read, than the official textbooks issued by the specialist departments.
Even officers attended his sessions, officially to supervise training, in reality to pick up insights into practical skills gained from a lifetime in the Navy and also to enjoy the anecdotes that summoned up the spirit of a battleship Navy that had died in the 1940s. It was those anecdotes that gave the new seamen a glimpse into their future and the information they needed to make a success of their lives. It was information not written down anywhere, but vital nonetheless. The correct facial expression to wear while waiting for an officer to make a difficult decision, the appropriate words of condolence for a shipmate who had lost a relative or been passed over for promotion and the deadly dangers that lay in wait for those who mixed the malt and the grape. The Senior Chief gave freely of his own experience, gained bitterly by trial and error.
“When you see a light at sea, the first thing you do is take a bearing on it. Don’t worry if its Shiloh on a collision course or a drunken seagull. Get that bearing before you do anything else. Then you take action, inform the officer of the deck, whatever is appropriate. You there, the dopey looking one. Yes, you, not the one you hope is behind you. What do you do when you spot a light?”
“Err, take a bearing Senior Chief?”
“Right. Now for the different types of light. Navigational lights can be red, white or green. No other colors are allowed. If you see a ship showing yellow, purple or blue lights it’s probably the Staten Island Ferry or some demented DEMOCRAT. Now, look at these slides, they show a whole series of examples of lights. As we run through them we can see that they are quite logical. You, over there, they are logical aren’t they?”
“Yes Senior Chief.”
“So you see a 150 foot vessel aground on a reef at night having just been streaming minesweeping parvanes to port and acting as plane guard for Big E with a DEMOCRAT as Captain. What will she be showing?”