Pacific Interlude Page 14

  Feeling restless, Syl walked to the starboard wing of the bridge. The wind on the starboard bow was making up and the short, steep seas were sending spray flying over the stubby bow. With this engine speed they were supposed to be doing eight knots, but he doubted if they were making seven good over the bottom. It would take time to learn how different conditions affected this vessel. Star sights at dawn would tell him how much a breeze like this one, blowing close to fifteen knots, slowed her. He wondered how good a navigator Simpson really was. One could trust God too much. A good navigator was always full of doubts. Buller also had decided he was a navigator, but he couldn’t possibly be any good until he learned that a sextant on a hazy day aboard a rolling ship was a lot harder to handle than a surveyor’s theodolite ashore, even if the mathematics were similar. The sea could always play tricks on even the most experienced navigators, as the wreck-strewn bottom of the oceans could affirm. Until he got a chance to see how the other officers worked out, he should do his own navigation, even if they regarded that as an insult. And they no doubt would.

  Syl checked to make sure the helmsman was on course, left a call for dawn star sights and went to his cabin. Simpson’s light was out. He was no longer mumbling, just snoring, a steady rattle. Two snorers aboard one ship. Maybe Simpson and Wydanski should be put in one stateroom to snore together and Buller could move in—no, God, anything would be better than that.

  Stretching out in his bunk, Syl finally fell into the release of sleep.

  By the time they reached New Guinea, ten days later, the officers of the Y-18 all grated on each other with far more intensity than they could possibly feel for the Japanese and the Germans—after all, they’d never even met those official enemies. There had been no one blowup, no single issue that had done it. They were all just disgusted by the conditions, frustrated by not knowing the future, and not able to cope with their differences. They avoided one another as much as possible, substituting sleep and long sullen silences for the physical privacy that was impossible aboard the ship.

  War was full of little wars—and the enemy was often the man in the bunk next to you. Put that in the papers back home.

  CHAPTER 12

  SYL NOTED THAT the enlisted men apparently got on together much better than the officers. Jammed into triple tiers of bunks in the forecastle “like niggers on a slave ship,” to use Buller’s phrase, they endured the sweltering heat as they approached New Guinea with remarkable good humor. Maybe it was just because they had “established a pecking order,” as Cramer said, and unlike the officers, each did not consider himself the most deserving.

  Syl could not figure out what the enlisted men really thought of him, but it was clear they were united in their dislike of Simpson, their admiration for Buller the Magnificent and a sort of affection for Wydanski. In the heat and unremitting danger from their cargo, the forecastle could at any time be filled by shouts and flying fists, but for the moment, at least, the camaraderie of the sea was more than a fiction. The eighteen men who shared that airless compartment thought that their number, by coincidence the same as the number of the ship, was a good sign. In spite of all the discomforts, they actually called themselves the “Lucky Eighteen.” Some of it was sarcasm, but more of it wasn’t. Buller, the back of his hand to nautical custom, spent much of his off-duty time up there, telling tall stories of bayou country. A regular guy, Mr. Buller …

  Syl’s troubles were swept from his mind when, on the afternoon of October 13, the Y-18 rounded a mountainous New Guinea headland and they saw the great invasion fleet which was anchored in the broad bay at Hollandia. It looked like a floating city about the size of New York with the tall battleships, aircraft carriers and troop transports rising like skyscrapers over hundreds of freighters, tankers and destroyers, almost any of which dwarfed the Y-18. The grandeur and excitement of this spectacle was enough to make almost any man forget squabbles aboard his ship.

  “Hey, that’s enough to make me almost feel sorry for the Japs,” Buller said.

  “Don’t get carried away, yet,” Simpson said. “A lot of ships here won’t last long enough to see Tokyo. I’d rather be aboard this bucket than on one of those big carriers. They’ll be the primary targets and they’re nearly as explosive as we are.”

  Good old fun-and-games Simpson, Syl thought. Did piety have to be so damned gloomy? Of course he wasn’t exactly one to talk … what with his frequent intimations of gloom and doom. But right now, in the midst of this fantastic rendezvous of power, it did seem almost perverse to feel anything but a kind of elation.

  A blinking light on a steel signal tower told the Y-18 to anchor in a small cove a mile away from the fleet—gas tankers and ammunition ships were usually kept away from crowded harbors. When they rounded the end of a small jungle island they saw two of their sister ships anchored alongside each other in the midst of about fifty bigger tankers and freighters, all flying the red “Baker” flag, as the Lucky Eighteen now did. When they steamed closer, Syl saw that one of these vessels, a mirror image of his own, was the Y-22, his old friend Paul Schuman’s ship. The blinker light on its bridge flashed, and Sorrel said, “He’s asking us to nest up alongside.”

  “That’s crazy,” Simpson told Syl. “If one blows, they all go. You’d triple the hazards.”

  Of course he was right, but in the old days Syl had enjoyed the companionship of “rafting up” with similar vessels and he did not like refusing this offer of hospitality from skippers who obviously did not brood so much about safety. Letting go his anchor a few hundred yards away, he had Sorrel signal, “I’ll be over by boat in a few minutes.”

  Before Cramer could get the Y-18’s motorboat landed, a fast outboard skiff put out from the Y-22. As it skimmed closer Syl saw that the bulky officer seated in the bow was his old friend.

  “Syl, you poor bastard, I heard they’d put you on the Eighteen,” Paul Schuman said as he came alongside. “You got here just in time. We got a big convoy conference coming up in about an hour. I bet we’ll be moving up tomorrow.”

  “Nobody’s signaled me anything about a conference.”

  “They’ll get the word to you soon enough. Come on over for a drink and we’ll go in together.”

  After telling Simpson that he’d be aboard the Y-22 until further notice, Syl climbed into the skiff, which was obviously much better for speeding around big harbors than the slow diesel-powered motorboats, standard equipment for the tankers.

  “Where did you get this thing?” he asked.

  “We found it floating in the harbor and salvaged it,” Schuman replied with a grin. “They got hundreds of these things stacked up on the beach in there. They call them assault boats.”

  The big outboard of the skiff started with a roar and delivered them alongside the Y-22 in almost no time. A short, thin lieutenant hurried from the ship alongside. When Syl heard his resonant, deep bass voice he recognized Frank Mostell, another officer he had known on the Greenland Patrol. In the officers’ club in Narsarssuak Fjord, Mostell had been preeminent for leading choruses of “Bless ’Em All.”

  “Syl, you old Eskimo, welcome to Gasoline Alley. Paul, come on over to my ship. I got a much higher class of booze than you do.”

  This open talk about booze in front of the crew surprised Syl a little. He’d thought that if a captain of a gas tanker drank aboard ship at all, he would keep it top secret, but these men obviously had been on tankers long enough to learn to relax. Maybe too much?

  Mostell’s cabin was the same as Syl’s, except he had fixed it up with a big painting of an Adirondack lake on the bulkhead and had removed one bunk.

  “Where does your exec sleep?” Syl asked.

  “I built an upper in the other stateroom and make all three officers bunk in there. They don’t like it, but damn it, a skipper deserves to have a cabin to himself. It’s better for me to crowd my officers up than to kill ’em.”

  He took a bottle of Scotch and three glasses from a locker which had been fixed up as a b
ar.

  “I’ve been two years on this ship,” he said. “I’ve learned that survival is partly a matter of learning how to live half-decent.”

  He called the bridge and ordered a bowl of ice and some potato chips.

  “Frank’s got the right idea,” Schuman said. “There’s no point in wearing a damn hairshirt.” He sat back in a comfortable chair which replaced the missing bunk and loosened his belt. “Of course, I’ve been overdoing it. My trouble is that my supply officer is much too good a thief. We’ve been getting so much steak, turkey and baked goods I’m blowing up like a balloon. I had a great cook in Greenland, but the navy stores there were never like this.”

  In fact it seemed to Syl that his old friend had gained much too much weight, and his face, yellowed by atabrine and mottled by the heat, did not exactly look healthy. Around the officers’ club in Milne Bay Syl had heard that Paul’s wife had written him a “Dear John” letter. The man looked as though he’d been under a lot of strain.

  “Did Paul tell you we’re due for a big convoy conference in about an hour?” Mostel asked, glancing at his wristwatch.

  Before Syl could answer, there was a knock on the door and a tall, dignified young black man in dungarees and a blue shirt came in with a bowl of ice and the potato chips.

  “How the hell did you get a steward’s mate?” Syl asked after the man left. “I was told we don’t rate one.”

  “He’s a seaman, not a steward’s mate—he stands regular watches,” Mostell said. “Haven’t you heard that all rates are being opened up to Negroes?”

  “How’s he working out?” Schuman said.

  “I don’t know yet—he seems like a good man, but he just came aboard. Color doesn’t make or break a good man.”

  “About that conference,” Syl said. “I’ve had no official word on it. Where’s it to be held?”

  “Ashore in the navy operations office. Don’t worry, they won’t leave you behind. They’re sweeping out the harbors from here to Frisco for tankers.”

  “Is there any official word on where we’re going yet?” Syl asked.

  “It’s still a secret,” Mostell said. “Most of the bets are on Mindanao, because it’s closest, but I think old Dugout Doug is too smart for that. The old bastard is a pompous horse’s ass, but with seven thousand Philippine islands to choose from, wouldn’t he be foolish to pick the one where they’re waiting for us?”

  “Some people think we’ll go barreling right into Manila,” Schuman said. “According to the scuttlebutt, MacArthur and his friends damn well own about half that town and they want to get their real estate back.”

  Mostell laughed. “He said, ‘I shall return,’ and I think he will, no matter how many men will have to die to carry the old bastard ashore.”

  Syl was accustomed to the fact that almost every serviceman in the Pacific hated MacArthur and called him “Dugout Doug” because he was supposed to have escaped from the island of Corregidor in a native canoe that carried him to a PT boat. He himself was certainly suspicious of anyone as Shakespearean as the old general tried to be, but right now on the eve of this great invasion, he found he’d have liked like hell to believe in their leader. The man could be an egomaniac and still be smart in his strategic decisions.

  “Personally I’m betting on Leyte,” Mostell said. “Look at the charts. The whole fleet could anchor in Leyte Gulf. It’s still the typhoon season. A protected anchorage is important—”

  Typhoons… In the excitement of looking forward to the battle, Syl had forgotten about typhoons. For the little tankers they could be as lethal as a Jap destroyer. The Great American fleet could protect the tankers from destroyers, but not from typhoons.

  There was a knock at the door and a tall young signalman entered. “Is Captain Grant here?”

  “That’s me.”

  “Your ship just blinked a message for you, sir. You’re to attend a convoy conference at the base at sixteen hundred today.”

  “Please tell my ship I’ll be there.”

  “I didn’t think they’d leave you out of the party,” Mostell said. “Drink up. It’s time we got going.”

  “If we take my skiff, we’ve got plenty of time,” Schuman said. “One more slug of that good Scotch isn’t going to make it hard for me to say ‘Aye, aye, sir’ to the brass and that’s all that’s required at these damned conferences.”

  Mostell poured more Scotch.

  “Even if we do sail tomorrow, they’ll probably have us steaming around in circles at sea for days,” Schuman said. “They won’t move us in until they’ve established a beachhead wherever they’re going and built some airstrips.”

  “They might capture some damn fast,” Mostell said. “If they do that, they’ll move us in right after the first wave, and it’s the second and third that usually catch the most hell. I’ve got a feeling about this one …”

  There was a moment of silence. Then Schuman gulped the last of his drink and led the way to his skiff. As it shoved off Syl saw two black-and-white pennants go up the mast of the ships they were leaving, the “third repeater,” which signified that the commanding officer was no longer aboard. Glancing at his own ship a few hundred yards away, he saw that Simpson had neglected to pay him this piece of respect. He’d have to do something about that—observance of such small formalities, or the lack of it, told the whole harbor how well a ship was run. And what his crew thought of their captain …

  The conference was held in a Quonset hut on a wide road of red mud that was crowded with jeeps and army trucks. A bald navy commander sat at a table near a wall with a big chart of the Philippine Islands. Syl, Schuman and Mostell sat on folding metal chairs. About twenty other officers were in the room, half merchant marine and half navy. There were no other Coast Guard officers.

  “Good afternoon, gentlemen,” the commander began. “This convoy is designated Charlie Fox Able. You will weigh anchor at zero nine hundred tomorrow and rendezvous at Point Able, five miles east of the sea buoy outside of this harbor. Detailed instructions with course and communications dope will be in your written orders. Speed will be eight knots and if any of you can’t keep up, you’ll just have to keep going to Point Baker on your own and wait for radio instructions.”

  Taking a stick which looked like a magic wand from the table, he stood up and pointed to a red mark on the chart about a hundred miles east of the Philippine Islands, about midway between Mindanao and Luzon.

  “That’s Baker,” he continued. “The destroyer Talbot will escort you. We expect that the Japanese fleet will be kept busy elsewhere, but of course a sharp lookout must be kept for their planes and subs. Your orders with charts and pilotbooks will be delivered aboard your ships. Study them carefully. Any questions?”

  “What happens after we get to Point Baker?” a merchant captain asked.

  “You’ll wait for instructions,” the commander said. “I don’t need to tell you that this is a big operation, maybe the biggest in history. There are a lot of complex parts which have to be timed right. Stick to your orders, maintain your schedule, and you’ll have nothing to worry about. Good luck.”

  That was all. As a prelude to battle, the commander’s speech seemed to lack a certain flair.

  “They should work us up with some kind of an Indian war dance,” Syl said. “I could do with a little stamping around to get my blood up.”

  “Let’s go to the officers’ club,” Schuman said. “There will be enough whooping and hollering there for you. And your blood will at least go up in alcoholic content.”

  The officers’ club consisted of five big tents on a platform over the water at the edge of the harbor, where a native village had stood before the army moved it out. This could be reached only by boat and offered the advantage of enabling officers to urinate over the rail into the sea at will instead of waiting in line for more formal facilities.

  Syl and his friends arrived in the middle of the happy hour, when booze sold for half its usual price of thirty cents a shot an
d every officer from the entire invasion fleet appeared to be there, filling the tents like a circus crowd. Extra bars had been set up to take care of this emergency and it did not take the three Coast Guard officers long to get their drinks, but it was so crowded they returned to Schuman’s skiff and in the last rays of the setting sun went skimming like a beettle through the great city of anchored ships to their own tankers.

  As they approached Mostell’s Y-22, which had the nickname “Yankee Yo-Yo” painted on the side of its pilothouse in yellow letters, and Schuman’s Y-22, which carried the white words “Gasoline Alley” on its bow, Syl realized that a party was in progress on the decks of the two vessels, which were still moored together, lying at one anchor. Army officers, corporals and sergeants had joined the Coast Guardsmen. Someone had brought beer. Cigarettes glowed on both fantails, where smoking was allowed, and also on the tank decks, where it wasn’t, but these were discreetly dropped overboard as the officers came alongside. Neither Mostell nor Schuman seemed upset. After waving casually at his crew Mostell led the way to his cabin, where he poured Scotch and ordered more ice from the cook.

  Smelling the Scotch, a major and an army captain came in and were given their share. It was hot in that little cabin, and it was not long before Mostell led the others to the wing of his bridge, where they stood glass in hand, enjoying the night breeze and the glittering lights of the ships all around them, few of which bothered with blackouts. Schuman broke into “Bless ’Em All,” perhaps because he knew that Mostell liked to sing his version of it.

  “The officers ride in a motorboat,” Schuman began in a shaky tenor.

  The captain, he rides in a gig.

  It won’t go a goddamn bit faster,

  But it makes the old bastard feel big.

  Mostell needed no urging to go on from there. He’d borrowed or invented bitter verses for each branch of the military. In honor of the major he began with the army, his basso profundo imposing silence all over the ship when he boomed: