Returning to the field, with no other desire than to flop upon a cot and sleep, the pilots were informed to refuel and take off again, perhaps to drop medical supplies or food at some temporary base, hundreds of miles away and to return before daybreak.
The long, constant grind, the terrible hours spent in the air and the days that passed without sleep, had worn most of the airmen and their observers down to almost human skeletons. They stumbled around, silent, nerve-wracked, mostly in a dull stupor, haggard looking with large, black circles under their glassy, tired eyes. There was little time to eat, much less to shave, and some of the boys had gone the full three weeks without shaving or washing off the grime and dirt from their hands and faces.
War to them was a business and their purpose as part of the government’s great machine of action was to obey silently until their legs gave way from under them or else their brains snapped under the terrific strain.
No one complained and there was no discord, no more than there has ever been known to be in the long history of the Marine Corps on land, sea or in the air. It was a man’s game they were playing and each man played his hand to the last card without a question, though it seemed as if the deck had been stacked against them.
Personal grievances, hurts or questions of safety never entered the minds of any of those men from the major, commanding the squadron, down to the rawest of the ground men. They were a part of a grand and glorious fighting organization, the oldest in the service of their country and their unit would not be the first to besmirch the colorful traditions of the service through placing personal safety above duty.
Long before dawn, Panama had been sent out alone to search the jungle for a company of men missing for more than a week. Hours had passed and no sign of the absent Marines came to light.
The sergeant, before turning in, made one last attempt. He put the stick forward and the nose of the plane went downward, flying only a few hundred feet from the ground.
Haggard and with a chalk white, grim complexion, he straightened out the ship, intently studying the lay of the land, his eyes eagerly searching every nook and corner beneath for a sign of human life.
As he went a little farther north, flying between two dangerous crags that imperiled the safety of the plane, his eyes became fixed upon something just a little to the west. His taut features softened in an expression that was intermingled with both hope and anxiety.
There, along the shore of a winding river, just at the edge of a jungle, a group of Marines rested, most of them lying exhausted, flat upon the ground. On a panel spread near by, facing upward, was the code signal of the Marines, “V—V,” meaning: “Have Casualties.”