NOW ONLY KlSKA REMAINED, NOT NEARLY AS BIG AS Attu but far more heavily defended: intelligence reports gave twice as many Japanese on Kiska, 5,360, ten times the defensive capability. To subdue the island, more than 35,000 American troops were ferried out the Aleutian chain in by far the biggest, heaviest armada of this front. This time no scouting team was sent in to reconnoiter, for which Nate was grateful; it wasn't necessary; the powerful Japanese installations were visible from the air.
Instead, the 11th Air Force dumped an incredible amount of high explosives on the island, some of the planes flying eastward from the newly activated field on Attu.
Also, from a printing press in Anchorage came a hundred thousand leaflets imploring the Japanese to surrender, but these had even less effect than the bombs, which accomplished nothing. Once again, for the last time in the Aleutians, the Japanese were dug in, and digging them out was going to be the brutal climax of this brutal campaign.
Ten weeks after the fall of Attu, the massive assault force was ready, and once again General Shafter flew to the Aleutians with Leroy Flatch as pilot to participate in the final planning. This time when LeRoy asked for his brother-in-law he found Nate morose and edgy: 'If the Japs start anything, I'm sure it'll be me and Ben to check them out if his arm's okay.'
'Where is Ben?'
'Field hospital. Mendin' his arm.' LeRoy was worried by Nate's listlessness, and asked: 'Anything wrong?' and Nate snapped: 'No! Why?' and LeRoy said: 'Well, all these battles ... and Ben getting wounded,' and Nate said: 'It's a job.'
'Stay with it. Now I got to see Ben,' and they found the tired old fox farmer at a dressing station where final touches were being applied to his wound, and he looked much older than his fifty-one years, for, like Nate, he was bone-weary. But he showed surprise as LeRoy assumed an erect military posture, saluted, and said in formal voice: 'Mr. Krickel, I've flown all the way to this summer resort to ask for your daughter's hand in marriage.'
Years fell from Ben's battle-scarred face and pain from his wounded arm. Staring at young Flatch, he asked in a quiet voice: 'Where is Sandy?'
'In Anchorage. With a good job. I used General Shafter's pull and got her sprung from the concentration camp, and we're getting married ... with your permission.'
When both Ben and Nate began pummeling him in their joy, he stopped them: 'Sandy said she'd never get married without your consent. Said you were her father and mother both.' He looked the old islander in the eye: 'So have I your permission?' and gravely Ben said: 'You have, son. Now let's get stinkin' drunk.'
They were not able to do this, because when a messenger came from the meeting of the generals, both Nate and Ben could guess what it meant. Yes, if Ben was up to it, they were to make one last sortie behind enemy lines: 'The Japs are behaving strangely. We've got to know how tough those Kiska beaches are going to be. You men have never failed us before.' The general in command jabbed at Ben's arm: 'Mended well enough for you to make the try?' and both Ben and Nate knew that even a moment's hesitation would excuse him from this perilous assignment, but the fox farmer said:
'It's ready,' and before dawn these two loyal frontiersmen, these prototypical Alaskans, were back in their rubber boat heading quietly for the waiting PBY that rose and fell on the dark Aleutian waves. With Captain Ruggles dead, they would be commanded by an enthusiastic young army lieutenant, Gray, who told them as they approached the beach: 'You'll get no rank from me. You know far more about this than I do.' Then, as if to reassure them, he added: 'But when you move out, I'll be there. You can count on it.'
As they rowed in darkness toward what might prove to be a blazing confrontation, Gray whispered: 'Wow! Landing on a little island occupied by a whole Japanese army!' and Ben, realizing that the young fellow was trying to maintain his courage, said quietly: 'Kiska's more'n a hundred square miles. Might be hard to find the Japs even if we wanted to.' Then, to ease the tension further, he added: 'Were you on Attu, Lieutenant?' and when Gray replied that he had led one of the clean-up assaults on Holtz Bay, Ben said with great warmth: 'You got nothin' to prove.'
And Ben was right, for in those first perilous moments when the three leaped upon the beach and started running, in those fateful seconds when hidden machine guns might have cut them literally in half, it was Gray who was in the lead, now a man without fear, and kept going until they found themselves well inland. But when they had traversed the beach in miraculous safety, a fearful thing happened. Gray, exulted by the fact that he had done well, turned to ask his adviser: 'What do we do now, Ben?' only to see that the fox farmer who had been so composed in the boat stood trembling not nervously twitching, but shaking as if some fearful blizzard were engulfing him and it was clear to both Gray and Nate that he was so emotionally exhausted he could no longer function as a member of their team.
For just a moment the young lieutenant was bewildered, for he realized that his group was in a hazardous position with one-third of its component immobilized, but Nate hid Ben behind a rock and said in a consoling whisper: 'It's all right. You wait.
We'll be back."Then he sought Gray and said: 'We split, very quiet, circle out and head for that big thing over there, whatever it is.'
With no sense of having had his position of leadership usurped, Gray said: 'Solid idea,' and he was off like a rabbit.
When the men met at what turned out to be a discarded generator, neither was bold enough to voice what was in his mind, but after poking about, Nate had to speak:
'I think nobody's here.'
Very quietly, Gray said: 'Me too,' but then echoes of his training surfaced. 'Men,' a gruff veteran of the first days of fighting on Guadalcanal had warned when he visited Gray's camp in Texas, 'the Jap soldier is the trickiest bastard on earth. He'll fool you in a dozen different ways. Booby traps, sharpshooters tied in trees, buildings left to make you think they're abandoned. You bite on his traps just once, you're dead ... dead ... dead.'
Ominous and lethal, the silent buildings ahead seemed a perfect example of Japanese perfidy, and Gray's knees grew weak. 'You think it's a trap?' he whispered to Nate, who replied: 'We better find out,' and then Gray resumed command.
'Cover me,' and with a bravery few men could have shown, he dashed right at a cluster of buildings that must have been a combined mess hall and laundry, and when he reached it, he jumped in the air, waved his arms, and cried: 'It's empty!'
Before Nate could overtake him he began running about, making a disgraceful amount of noise as he sped from one abandoned building to the next, finding each one vacant.
Then, remembering that he was in command, but so excited that he could barely issue an order, he cried: 'Let's try that one, and if she's empty too, we flash our signal.'
So the two men crept toward what must have served as command headquarters, and when in darkness they found it cavernous and empty, Gray grasped Nate by the arm and asked:
'Dare we tell them?' and Nate said: 'Send the word,' and Gray activated his radio and shouted: 'They're all gone! There's no one here!'
'Repeat!' came the stern voice from the flotilla commander.
"There are no enemy here. Repeat. Nobody here.'
'Verify. Report back in ten minutes. Then return to ship.'
It was a strange ten minutes, there in the Aleutian night with the winds whipping in from Siberia and two bewildered Americans trying to figure out how an entire Japanese army could have slipped off this island while American boats patrolled the seas and American planes the skies. 'They couldn't all escape,' Gray cried petulantly. 'But they did,' and he ran about, savoring this great discovery, but when Nate Coop returned to the beach to sit with Ben Krickel and saw the pitiful condition he was in, he, too, began to shake. Then Lieutenant Gray ran down snouting: 'Ten minutes up! We can verify,' Nate said: 'Go ahead,' but he took no joy in the dramatic news, and during the row back to the PBY he pulled mechanically, not fully aware of where he was.
So a fully equipped American-Canadian army of thirty-five thousand marched as
hore against no opposition, but on the first afternoon an American bomber from Amchitka, having failed to get the news, continued his ordained run, saw what he supposed to be Japanese troops operating without cover below, bombed them. Two dead.
The generals, unwilling to believe that the Japanese had been able to evacuate an entire island while bombers were overhead on inspection flights, sent out heavily armed patrols to ensure that no remote pockets of Japanese hidden in caves were waiting to attack. This caution was advisable and it was carried out with proper care, but the men who had come so far to fight were so eager to do so that when one group heard suspicious sounds coming from another group on the other side of a slight rise, gunfire was begun by a nervous American corporal and returned by an equally nervous Canadian sergeant, and in the wild engagement that followed, twenty-five allies were killed by Allied bullets, and more than thirty were wounded.
That was the final battle of the Aleutian campaign. Japan's attempt to conquer America from the north had failed.
NO SOONER HAD PEACE IN THE PACIFIC BEEN OBTAINED than a war of equal importance to Alaska erupted. To appreciate its significance, one must follow what was happening to the two young married couples in the Flatch family in the months following the explosions of the two atomic bombs over Japan, and the subsequent collapse of the Japanese war effort.
Nate Coop, strengthened and deepened by his war experiences, now astonished everyone by announcing: 'I'm going to take my GI benefits and go to the university in Fairbanks.'
When the entire family seemed to ask at once 'What for?' he said: 'To study wildlife management,' and when they chorused: 'Where'd you get that crazy idea?' he explained cryptically: 'Corporal named Dash Hammett told me: "When the war's over, get off your ass and learn something."' He would say no more, but after the first shock, he was supported by his wife, who remembered Missy Peckham's counsel: 'If you can tame a moose, you can civilize Nate,' and she accompanied him to Fairbanks.
LeRoy Flatch, now a captain in the Air Force, was urged by his superior, General Shafter, to remain in that service, with assured promotions to major and lieutenant colonel: 'After that it depends on the impression you make on your superiors, but I have confidence you could be a general one of these days ... if you get yourself some education.' Despite similar recommendations from his fellow officers, LeRoy opted to retire so that he could resume his career as one of the leading bush pilots, and in pursuit of this ambition he decided to apply his bonus money as down payment on a used Gull-wing Stinson four-seater, total cost $10,000, whose former owner had been a mechanical genius. The plane, as he modified it, had both wheels and skis, permanently attached, which meant that Nate could take off, wheels down, fly to some snow-covered field high in the mountains, activate a hydraulic system, and retract the wheels through a slit in the middle of the big wooden skis. On the return home he could take off on skis, punch the hydraulic button, and feel the wheels come down through the slits. Of course, since the system was fixed, he could no longer attach pontoons for the summer lakes. So, to ensure maximum flexibility, he also bought an updated version of his old Waco YKS-7 which had pontoons, but he was shocked by the price increase. He had paid $3,700 for his first Waco, $6,300 for its replacement, which he kept on a lake near his cabin."
But he now had a wife, and the former Sandy Krickel, accustomed to the free and open life of the Aleutians, especially the field trips with her father to isolated islands like Lapak, did not look with favor on being cooped up in a Matanuska cabin with her in-laws.
Matanuska had proved such a signal success, despite the early negative publicity, that it seemed as if half the people who came to Alaska wanted to settle in the valley, which meant that LeRoy and Sandy could find nothing suitable. Sandy suggested acquiring some land up toward the glacier and building their own home, but LeRoy pointed out that with the purchase of two planes he could not swing a house too.
'Why not buy just one plane?' she asked, and he said firmly: 'Wheels, skis, pontoons, tundra tires, a guy like me has to have them all,' so the possibility of a house vanished.
At this point an old friend, or rather four old friends, helped him make a radical decision, one with which he was going to be quite happy. Tom Venn of Seattle, with his R&R ventures prospering in the peacetime business resurgence, was eager to reestablish himself at Venn's Lode at the side of the great glaciers' issuing out of Denali:
'I want to spend more time there. So does Lydia. And the young ones, Malcolm and Tammy, insist. So, LeRoy, I want you to fly the stuff in and more or less look after the place when we're gone.'
'I'm a pilot, not a real estate agent,' LeRoy said brusquely, and Venn said: 'So you are. But I think that in the years ahead, bush flying is bound to center on some spot well north of Anchorage. Competition from the big planes will kill you if you stay in Matanuska.'
Since Venn had proved many times over that he had an acute business sense, LeRoy had to listen, and he attended carefully to what the older man said as they spread before them maps showing central Alaska: 'It's not badly named, this stretch between Anchorage and Fairbanks. "The Railbelt,"because the railroad, such as it is, ties it all together. This is where the vitality of Alaska will focus in the future, and it's where you've got to focus now.' With an imperative finger Venn stabbed at the Lode: 'Our place is over here by the mountains. Matanuska, your place down here, is too far away for you to service us properly. Fairbanks is way too far north. But here in the middle is a delightful little town, Talkeetna, named after the mountains.
Within easy distance to our place. Lots of mines in the area needing flights. Lots of lakes with one or two cabins along the shore needing groceries. The railroad runs through, but what keeps it good, the highway doesn't. Talkeetna stands off to one side. Quiet. Frontier.'
'You make some good points,' LeRoy said, and the wily businessman concluded: 'I've saved the most compelling for last. Move to Talkeetna and I'll finance your two planes, no interest.'
'Talkeetna has just become my headquarters,' LeRoy said. Then he reflected: 'You know, Mr. Venn, after you've been an Air Force captain in charge of big planes, you start to think big and you want to make something of your life. A wife and all. The best thing I can visualize, a real good bush pilot, master of this whole frontier,' and he spread his hands over the Railbelt, which would henceforth be his terrain, its remote fields, its whiteouts, its hidden lakes, its storms, its wonder.
Snapping his fingers, Venn rented a car and together they drove the eighty drab miles toward the sleepy, false-fronted, wooden-housed town of Talkeetna, population about one hundred, and during the trip LeRoy was apologetic for the bleakness of the land, but as they left the main highway for the Talkeetna cutoff they climbed a short hill, from the top of which there was a superb view of the great Denali range, high and white and severe, the guardian of the arctic, and the sight was so majestic, and so rare considering the clouds that usually prevented any view, that the two men halted the car, parked at one side, and luxuriated in this spectacular revelation of the Alaskan heartland: 'Looks like the mountains are sending you an invitation, LeRoy,' and the young veteran caught a reinforcing glimpse of what life could be like in this area during his mature years.
But even as they sat there on this day that seemed so perfect, a weather front began to scud in from Siberia at a furious speed, and within minutes the mountains were lost, and LeRoy was reminded that in moving his operations to Talkeetna, he was taking on a whole new set of challenges. He would still have to fly to remote lakes where old men lay dying or young women were preparing to give birth, and he would as always run the risk of being caught in sudden storms, but off to the northwest would rise that tremendous range of snow-capped mountains, and if he were to do a real job of flying, he would have to master them: land on skis at eight thousand feet to deliver and pick up mountain climbers, fly at sixteen thousand feet to scout the flanks of great Denali to locate where the dead bodies lay. It was the kind of flying a bush pilot not only accepted as a
challenge but sought.
As the great mountains disappeared, those that would in the years ahead be his white beacons, he said quietly: 'I'll do it,' and Venn said: 'You'll never be sorry,' and the switch to Talkeetna with its earthen strip and convenient nearby lakes was done.
Sandy did not find a house they could afford, but with the loan from the Venns she and her husband were able to build one, and when they were ensconced it was she who volunteered to look after Venn's Lode while her husband did his flying. It was also she who purchased what she called 'this neat little radio job,' on which she could talk to her husband while he was flying out to some remote site or hurrying home ahead of a storm.
The move to Talkeetna was one of the best things LeRoy Flatch ever did, for it introduced him to the heartland of Alaska, the Railbelt that bound the major cities together.
As an aviator he had previously been aware of the railroad only as a line of life-saving tracks to be followed when visibility was otherwise nil, but now, with daily trains stopping at Talkeetna, he occasionally had the opportunity to ride north to Fairbanks.
Then he appreciated the superlative job his Alaskans had done in building this northernmost railbed. And he was especially pleased with the exceptional beauty that enveloped the land during a few trembling weeks in late August and September.
Then shrub alders turned a flaming gold, blueberry bushes a fiery red, while stately spruce provided a majestic green background against the pristine, icy white of distant Mount Denali. It was Alaska at its best, and LeRoy told his wife: 'You can see it only from the train. Looking down from a plane ... just a blur,' and she replied:
'From wherever I stand, it looks pretty good.'
But later, when they flew to the Lode to dine with the Venns, they learned that others had quite different dreams of what Alaska might become.