Major John F. Merlin, U.S. Army Air Corps, had always been a careful man. That was also one of the reasons he joined the U.S. military—a stable paycheck for 20 years in a peacetime military, followed by a nice little consulting job in the end. Seeing the fate of many risk-takers in the world—Napoleon, Caesar, Alexander—when he graduated from the United States Military Academy, West Point, his only goal was to play safe. That's why he didn't try too hard to get into a fighter squadron, a reconnaissance squadron, or any of that—he thought bombers would be a safe bet for his career because positions were plenty and the bomber fleet was growing fast. He qualified for the B-17D as a first lieutenant because he thought it would get him up quick. Now because of his excellent record of playing safe—abiding by protocol, a clean slate on his record and being a straight razor instead of a curved sword—the Air Corps thought he was one hell of an officer. When the Japs attacked Pearl Harbor, the army thought, because he was one hell of an officer, to bump then-Captain John F. Merlin USAAC up one rank and turn his bars into oak leaves, and because of that, he was now here in a battle he could barely win, against an enemy that had never tasted defeat for most part in the last decade.
The 77th Provisional Bomber Squadron, a U.S. Army Air Corps unit flown to Java from Australia, was his responsibility, and everything he needed to have in order for that responsibility to be done thoroughly was outrightly denied to him. There was never enough fuel, bombs, ammunition, spare parts—now, posted in Jogjakarta Airfield in central Java, he surely had a job to do, but the Army seemed like they didn't let him do his job. He'd lost men and planes all because of that, and when Lieutenant Farley, one of the squadron's radio operators, came to him with news of a request to airlift wounded personnel from Java, he told him to wait for him to think. With orders just coming in right from General MacArthur's staff that all bombers were to pull back to Port Moseby—the only safe airfield left all over the East Indies and New Guinea—he was already packing, but when this call came, he stopped and think.
He'd never play his hand all his life and look at what happened there: men getting killed, missions getting compromised. He had proven himself as a good peacetime officer, but he sure as hell was a shit wartime officer, and that meant a rear-end job for the rest of his career. Right then and there, he decided: I ain't playing safe no more.
"Lieutenant, let's get those boys out of there."
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Last Flight of the Buffaloes - a World War II Story on the Fall of Java
Historical FictionMarch, 1942. The Japanese have conquered most if not all of Southeast Asia - save for one island, Java, in the Dutch East Indies. As the Allies scramble all resources to hold this vital and final stronghold, Lieutenant Francis Drebbel, a mixed-race...
