Pat Hickey
Chorito is the name of a cliff overlooking the Asan beaches on Guam. In 1944, the 3rd Marines assaulted Chorito Cliff and Bundeschu Ridge. A Hog Leg is the nickname for an 1860 Colt .45 Revolver.
Within the carnage of battle is a war pitting a young man, Tim Cullen, against his battalion commander over the possession of an 1860 Army Colt .45 Hog leg revolver which can be traced back to Capt. Myles Keogh who died with Custer. The last owner is the doomed Lt. Jack Buck of Giddings, TX. Buck will be killed in the taking of Bundeschu Ridge, but Jack Buck had exacted a promise from Pvt. Tim Cullen of his platoon to keep it from the hands of Major Lucas Opley, an up from the ranks Marine of legend, and return the Colt to his family in Texas.
Parallel to Cullen’s ordeals and suffering on Japanese occupied Guam are movie house operator Juan Cruz and his family, as well as an exiled Japanese American Dentist and his movie star wife. Exacting the cruelty is the oafish Boson Otayama and the American educated Lt. Kato. Awaiting liberation are also such historical figures of Guam’s history as Father Duenas and Pastor Sablan.
The revolver, in its shoulder holster, will be taken from Lt. John A. Buck’s body by Cullen at an aid station on Guam’s Red Beach 2 and cause Cullen no end of problems. The Battalion commander wants the Colt Hog-leg. Cullen hangs on to the weapon but never uses it and is repeatedly ordered by Maj. Opley to hand it over. Opley wants it for himself. This through-the ranks career officer will undo himself through his own devices and be sent home under a cloud after years of service to the Corps after the Guam Campaign.
Pat Hickey is proud to have been of some service to Leo High School for many years. As Development Director for Chicago’s Leo High School, Hickey developed his first book and the main character of The Chorito Hog Leg, Books 1-2, Tim Cullen. A graduate of Loyola University of Chicago Undergraduate (Bachelor of Arts –English) and Graduate (Master of Arts – English) Schools, Pat Hickey has spent most of his life as a high school English teacher .
A native Chicagoan and a career educator, Hickey taught at Bishop McNamara High School, in Kankakee, IL and La Lumiere School, LaPorte, IN. In 1990, he began doing fund-raising work which he continues at Leo High School. Hickey is a free-lance writer for GAR Media, Capitol Fax Blog and is a member of the Society of Professional Journalists. His first book Every Heart and Hand: A Leo High School Story has been a Chicago favorite.
In the Fall of 2007, the second book of The Chorito Hog Leg story will follow the adventures of Tim Cullen through the mopping-up actions on Guam, the Iwo Jima Campaign, the sinking of U.S.S. Indianapolis, the Atomic Bombings of Japan, the beginning of the War Crimes Trials on Guam and return Cullen, through the great Pacific Typhoon of 1945, to Chicago. Again, the author will employ the ‘intrusive narrator’ technique used by William Makepeace Thackeray in his 19th Century historical fictions.
Pat Hickey, widowed (Mary) in 1998, is the father of Nora, Conor and Clare Hickey. The Hickey’s live in St. Cajetan’s Parish in the Morgan Park neighborhood of Chicago.
Finally Watson saw the old Nakajima torpedo plane and identified it according to Allied Code –‘Kate!’ ‘Quiet!’ commanded Ike who took aim on the torpedo plane that had picked out LST 448 and the nearly 400 men aboard for killing. The gooey green camouflage paint became visible at one thousand yards and the pilot of the bomber was adjusting his approach to the relative speed of Capt. Higgins’s command. The bow .40mm and the stern 5.5” gun loudly reported on the approach of the plane. He had yet to drop his torpedo! What was that Nip doin? Every Marine on deck was shouting Get the Fucker! Splash him! Kick Him in the Nuts! And – the Jap plane released its torpedo right over the heads of the mass of troops on the deck and twenty feet from Gun Tub # 4 which continued to hose .20, mm rounds into and near the green speeding plane – every man a board could see the three Japanese heroes in the long cockpit – the gunner in the rear was mangled and dead, the torpedo/radioman bleeding from the eyes but calm and the pilot fixed and determined. As the plane and the loosed torpedo darted portside the bleeding man in the middle, the radioman, waved to everyone, like a homecoming queen!
The torpedo was not meant for LST 448 but the large Attack transport to port and three times the men aboard that ship would now die as the torpedo porpoised into the sea. An LCI(G) witnessing the desperate attack weaved its path into the torpedo some two hundred yards abaft of LST 448. The six boys in starboard Gun Mount #4 never witnessed the impact of the torpedo on the LCI(G) but heard the horrific blast and rendered steel. The impact tore open the bow of the gunship and every man in every forward gun position on that ship was obviously dead. . . .
