Dave Dawson on Guadalcanal

by Robert Sidney Bowen

"And then, sir?" Dave persisted.

"For military reasons, Dawson, I'm afraid I didn't hear you," the senior officer replied. "Count on it for something interesting, though. And not easy by any manner of means. Fact is, all this may be simply the beginning of a very costly waste of time, and effort."

The Chief of Combined U.S. Intelligence spoke the last while staring flint-eyed out over the rail, and as though he were repeating his own thoughts aloud to himself. A million questions piled up on the tip of Dave's tongue. And it was the same with Freddy Farmer. However, neither one of them spoke for fear it might stop the Colonel from saying more. However, they were both out of luck. The senior officer grunted, shook himself a little, and turned to them with a smile that showed his even white teeth even in the gloomy light.

"Well, I wish I had time, now, to get a first-hand report from you boys of that trip to Chungking you made," he said. "And your experiences with the Flying Tigers. However, I only popped out for a breath of air. There's still a lot of paper work for me to do. I'll be seeing you soon, though; don't worry. A lot of you, probably, as I'll be aboard your carrier, the Carson. Until then, good luck!"

Dave groaned, but not loud enough for Colonel Welsh to hear as he walked away.

"Even him!" Dave sighed. "Good luck to you, and good luck to you—and nuts! If anybody should suddenly say, 'Bad luck' to me just once, I think I'd keel over in a dead faint!"

"Oh, come off it, Dave!" Freddy grated. "What do you expect folks to say? Man, but you're getting to be a testy blighter! So we are going to a carrier task force, eh? Well, I'll have to admit that for once you were right. But I certainly wish he'd told us more."

"And you can repeat that!" Dave grunted. "And all this may be simply the beginning of a very costly waste of time and effort. That, my little friend, did not sound so nice to me. It didn't even sound close to nice."

"Quite," Freddy said with a little sigh. "But nothing's nice about this blasted war, you know. So we might just as well make the best of it. And—"

The English youth choked off the rest as the alarm horn sounded aboard the destroyer, and the craft seemed virtually to spin around to port the length of her keel, and then fairly streak across the water.