As the bombers departed, Gunner Hamas called his men back from the bush, and set out to resume delivery of hand grenades. As he neared the airfield, though, he stopped to help wounded men board a truck that had escaped destruction. Then, he continued his journey and finally returned to Camp 1, where he found more civilian employees arriving to join the military effort. Earlier, as they had returned to the vicinity of Wake at about noon, Kinney and Hamilton had been descending through the broken clouds about three miles from the atoll when the former spotted two formations of planes at an elevation of about 1,500 feet. He and Hamilton attempted unsuccessfully to catch the formations as they retired to the west through the overcast. Kinney and Hamilton remained aloft until after 1230, when they landed to find the destruction that defied description. Neither Elrod nor Davidson had seen the enemy. In the wake of the terrible devastation wreaked upon his squadron, Putnam deemed it critical to the squadron’s reorganization to keep the remaining planes operational. Since his engineering officer, Graves, had been killed, Putnam appointed Kinney to take his place. “We have four planes left,” Putnam told him, “If you can keep them flying I’ll see that you get a medal as big as a pie.” “Okay, sir,” Kinney responded, “if it is delivered in San Francisco.” Putnam established VMF-211’s command post near the operations area. His men dug foxholes amidst brush and all of the physically capable officers and men stayed at the field. Putnam ordered that pistols, Thompson submachine guns, gas masks, and steel helmets be issued, and also directed that machine gun posts be established near each end of the runway and the command post. Meanwhile, the ground crews dispersed the serviceable planes into revetments, a task not without its risks. That afternoon, Captain Frank C. Tharin accidentally taxied 211-F-9 into an oil drum and ruined the propeller, reducing the serviceable planes to three. Captains Elrod and Tharin (the latter wounded superficially in the attack) later supervised efforts to construct “protective works” and also the mining of the landing strip with dynamite connected up to electric generators. Contractors bulldozed portions of the land bordering the field, in hopes that the rough ground would wreck any enemy planes that attempted to land there. [Illustration: Author’s Collection _1stLt John F. Kinney (seen here circa September 1941), became engineering officer for VMF-211 upon 1stLt Graves’ death on 8 December, and, along with TSgt William H. Hamilton and AMM1c James F. Hesson, USN, kept Wake’s dwindling number of battered Wildcats flying throughout the bitter 15-day siege._]