The Final Storm by Jeff Shaara Page B

bulldozers and excavators. The Seabees were continuing to improve the Guam command post, adding buildings and storage areas as the need arose. Nimitz enjoyed watching the massive machines, green steel and black smoke. He knew the Seabees carried a chip on their shoulder for the lack of attention the newspapermen gave them. Just because a man rides a bulldozer doesn’t mean he can’t get shot to hell, he thought. They’ve sure as hell taken their share of casualties too. But if I need an airstrip or a harbor cleared, there’s no one as good at it as those boys. They’re probably pretty sick of getting razzed by the Marines, but any Marine worth a crap who’s watched these boys turn a swamp into a mess hall learns to keep his mouth shut. And if one of those bulldozer jockeys busts a rifleman in the mouth for smarting off about driving a tractor … well, I haven’t put one in the stockade yet.
    He glanced again at the setting sun, heard a storm of barking from the schnauzer, looked that way. He had expected to see Buckner, the army general often timing his frequent meetings to coincide with Nimitz’s afternoon cocktail hour. But the man he saw now was shorter, moving toward him with a hurried determination. Nimitz knew the uniform of the air corps, watched as the man pretended to ignore the dog, who now circled him in a show of temper, neither the man nor the beast allowing the other to intimidate him. Nimitz knew that might be the smartest move his dog could make. The man was Curtis LeMay.
    LeMay walked more toward the pistol target than Nimitz himself, said, “Not bad, Admiral. I hear MacArthur can’t hit the side of a barn.”
    “Good afternoon, General. Care for a little target shooting?”
    “No chance. You’d embarrass me. Won’t stand for that.”
    Nimitz smiled, thought, no, you wouldn’t stand for that at all.
    L eMay was a gruff bulldog of a man, hated anyone’s inefficiency, and had no hesitation spouting off about it. He had spent most of his career spouting off about nearly everything, and if you didn’t agree withLeMay’s manic dedication to the army air force, you were most likely to be disrespected in a way that most senior commanders wouldn’t tolerate. Nimitz knew that LeMay didn’t much care for him at all, probably disliked anyone who had
webbed feet
, the man’s casual insult to anyone in a naval uniform. But Nimitz knew that despite his irritable disregard for anyone else’s authority, LeMay carried a frightening dedication to destroying the enemy. As long as LeMay brought results, Nimitz could care less what the man thought of him, and would ignore LeMay’s utter lack of social graciousness.
    LeMay commanded the Twenty-first Bomber Command, and in the often strange configuration of the American military’s chain of organization, he was the only general officer serving in the central Pacific who was not technically under Nimitz’s authority. It was the ongoing mystery of just how the War Department handled their air force; no one was really sure just who should be running that show, other than the airmen themselves. But the targets for the air force were spread out over the entire theater of the war, from Joe Stilwell’s command in the China/Burma campaigns, over MacArthur’s area throughout New Guinea and the Philippines. It wasn’t a practical solution to have the air force fall under the single authority of anyone on the ground. Nimitz had come to accept LeMay’s independence, knew better than to concern himself with the views of either Stilwell or MacArthur. He had a large enough sphere of authority without worrying about nagging controversies in Washington that never seemed to fade away. From the air force’s first days, there had been outright hostility between those who saw enormous value in airpower and those who considered airplanes a waste of resources. Though the air force was technically under the umbrella of the army, the senior air force commander, Hap Arnold,