CHAPTER SEVEN
ORDERS TO REPORT
Scoot Bailey read March’s letter and grinned.
“So flying’s easy, he says?” he muttered to himself. “He should havebeen here going through what I’ve been through! Aerodynamics, engines,controls, meteorology, gunnery, navigation, bombing, figure-eights,barrel-rolls, spot landings!”
He shook his head and looked at the row of textbooks on the desk beforehim.
“He’s right, though,” he said. “I do begin to feel like a flier. Atfirst, before I’d ever been up in a plane, I thought I was one—one ofthose so-called natural fliers, only there isn’t any such thing. Thenwhen I first flew I realized I didn’t know much of anything. Next, whenI got so I could handle the trainer pretty well, with the instructorright there, I decided flying was pretty simple after all.”
He sat back and recalled the day that had changed his mind about that.
“But when he finally told me to take it up alone—boy, oh boy! There Isat in that flying machine with no teacher there to hold my hand.That’s when I thought I didn’t even know what direction the stickmoved, I didn’t know which way to push the throttle. What ever gave methe nerve to give her the gun and take off I can never figure out. Butwhen that was over and I was still alive and in one piece, I’d got overthe worst of it.”
He realized that a submariner had no equivalent of soloing in a planeto go through. He’d have to remember to write that to March.
“After that I straightened myself out,” Scoot’s thoughts went on. “Iwasn’t too cocky and I wasn’t too scared. I just knew that I hadlearned to fly a little bit, that there was still a tremendous amountto learn, and that if I worked hard enough I could learn it and turnout to be a pretty good pilot.”
Scoot was on the advanced Navy trainer now, a fast ship that camecloser in speed and maneuverability to the fighters he would eventuallyfly.
“In another week I’ll be heading for the training carrier,” he saidwith a glow of satisfaction. “I’ll get my wings and I’ll be a real Navypilot, but I’ve still got a lot to learn. Taking off from those heavingdecks—and landing on ’em again—is going to be quite different from thesame moves on these nice flat Texas plains.”
As Scoot thought about it, about the work March had been doing, herealized that there was a great deal in common in their fields. Flyinga plane wasn’t much like handling a submarine, but both of them gotaway from the normal positions of most people. The flier got away fromthe earth’s surface in one direction. The submariner got away from itby going under. They both handled craft that could travel in athree-dimensional sphere, not just over the surface like a tank or abattleship.
“March practices coming up with a Momsen Lung,” Scoot told himself,“while I practice coming down with a parachute. That Lung’s just a sortof underwater parachute.”
A plane was just a vehicle to get explosives into position for firingat the enemy and so was a submarine, Scoot concluded. And sometimesthey even handled the same explosives—torpedoes!
“Now if someone would just invent a flying submarine,” Scoot thought,“March and I could get together again. But I guess that’s not verylikely outside the comic strips. When you think of the terrific waterpressure a sub has to stand, you can’t very well imagine hooking wingson to something that heavily plated with steel. And think of thebatteries! No—I’m afraid March and I will be separated for some time.It seems a shame, though, sub and plane ought to make a mighty fineteam.”
The next week, as Scoot started off from Corpus Christi for thetraining carrier off the shores of Florida, March was setting off onone of the most important underwater trips of his training. It was atrip of two days on which March was to act throughout as navigationofficer, still his specialty despite his training in every other job onthe ship. March knew his navigation thoroughly while he was still onsurface ships, but with the intensive extra study he had gone throughat New London, especially on dead reckoning and “blind” navigation forunderwater travel, he was a master.
During the trip, on which Stan Bigelow also acted as engineeringofficer in charge of the Diesels and motors, they got the real feelingof being on patrol. They simulated traveling through enemy waters andso ran submerged most of the daylight hours, the Skipper taking a lookaround occasionally with the periscope.
Numerous drills were also rehearsed during the voyage—fire drills,man-overboard drills, crash dives. They simulated a chlorine gasdanger, acting as if the sea water had got into the batteries to giveoff the deadly fumes. Gas masks were out in a hurry and the batteryroom was sealed off with only two “casualties.”
“The only thing we haven’t tried on this trip,” March said at mess thefirst evening, “is some of the first aid we’ve learned.”
“Well, if someone will volunteer to simulate appendicitis,” the Skipperlaughed, “I’m sure Pills will try an operation. But you forgotsomething else we haven’t tried—a depth-charge attack.”
“I’d just as soon skip that, sir,” Stan said, “at least until the realthing hits me.”
“No way of simulating it, anyway,” the Captain commented. “But it’sabout the only thing we leave out in this training.”
“There’s one big difference,” March said. “In training, if you make amistake, why you just get a bad mark from the teacher. In realsubmarining in war time, you’re likely to get—dead. And carry a lot ofothers along with you.”
“What do you mean?” the Skipper asked. “That’s true at the beginning,of course, but not now. You’re really navigating this boat, Mr. Anson.Nobody else is doing it, and nobody’s checking up on you. If you do itwrong, we’ll pile up on Montauk Point!”
March gulped. And Stan looked a little worried.
“What’s the matter, Stan?” March asked. “Are you scared? Think I’m nota good enough navigator?”
“No, I was just wondering,” Stan said, “if the same thing applied tome—if I’m really totally responsible for all these engines on thistrip.”
“Of course you are, Mr. Bigelow,” the Skipper smiled. “And I’m sureyou’ll handle them very nicely, just as I’m confident Mr. Anson willtake us just where we’re supposed to go. You are not allowed to takeover these duties until you have proved conclusively, in your previouswork, that you could do so.”
As darkness descended over the waters of Long Island Sound, thetraining sub surfaced and found herself just where she was supposed tobe at that time, much to March’s relief. Hiding behind a point of landnear the end of Long Island, they charged their batteries, while askeleton crew stayed on watch. Most of the others went to bed for a fewhours’ sleep in the bunks which lined the walls of most of the rooms.March and Stan shared a tiny cabin, but were not in it at the sametime, as their watches followed one another.
Before dawn the next morning the sub set off from its cove, submerged,and followed the next course under water. Sending up the periscope atabout ten o’clock, the Skipper saw the target boats at the designatedspot and the sub went through a series of simulated attacks on enemyshipping, crash diving to get away from “destroyers” attacking them,lying on the bottom with all motors shut off for a spell, then sneakingaway at a depth of two hundred feet in a circuitous course to outwitthe enemy waiting for them.
During all the trip the Skipper and Lieutenant Commander Sutherlandwere closely observing, without seeming to do so, the actions of Marchand Stan, and of the student diving section which had shipped with themfor this special trip. They were interested in seeing not just whetherthe men could handle their jobs, but _how_ they did it—if calmly orwith too much tension. On occasion one or the other of the two seniorofficers would give a conflicting order or misunderstand somethingreported by Stan or March, just to see what happened. Not once did Stanor March become upset, and the two older men smiled at each othermeaningly.
_The Sub Set Off and Submerged_]
“Two good officers,” the Skipper said. “I wish I coul
d get out onpatrol again and take along a couple of new young men like that.”
“I’d go anywhere with them myself,” said Sutherland. “Why do we have tobe so old, Skipper?”
“Didn’t you have enough action in the last war?” the Captain asked.
“No, sir, and neither did you!”
“Well, men like Anson and Bigelow will have to do it for us this time,I guess,” the Captain said. “And I suppose we’re doing an important jobif we help at all to make them such good pigboat officers.”
“They’re ready to be assigned now, don’t you think?” Sutherland asked.
“Yes, without a doubt. They can’t learn any more except through actualexperience. They might as well start getting it right away.”
March and Stan felt sure that their training was coming to an end. Sofar as classes were concerned, they knew that they had covered justabout all the work that the school had to give them. They had studiedso hard that they felt mentally exhausted.
“I don’t think I could cram one more fact into my head,” Stan said.“It’s going to take some time for the facts I’ve been putting in thereto assemble themselves and settle down in some orderly fashion.”
“We’ll be leaving before long,” March said. “But there’s one thing Iwant to do before I leave. I want to see Winnie and Minnie.”
“Oh—in the escape tower?” Stan exclaimed. “Of course—we’ve never madethe hundred-foot escape.”
“We don’t have to, but just about everybody does,” March said. “Want todo it with me tomorrow?”
“Sure, if there’s a group going through,” Stan agreed. “By the way,what happened to that fellow Cobden who flubbed the fifty-foot escape?”
“He made it,” March said. “And he’s already done the hundred-footer,too. The psychiatrist found out what was bothering him. When he wasjust a kid he was swimming with a gang and one of ’em ducked him andheld his head under water a bit too long. He got some water in hislungs, passed out, but they revived him. He’d forgotten all about it,really—except underneath, of course. He said that later when he made uphis mind to learn how to swim well, it took a lot of grit to makehimself do it. He didn’t know why it bothered him, but he had the gutsto fight it out and really learn how to swim. Never did any diving,though—didn’t like being completely under water.”
“And after all these years that old experience pops up!” Stan exclaimed.
“It just goes to prove that all these tests are so sensible!” Marchsaid. “What if he hadn’t found that out until he got in a sub on dutysomewhere? His going to pieces then might have wrecked it, or causedplenty of trouble.”
“He’s all over it now?” Stan asked.
“Sure,” March said. “As soon as the doc got the story out of him andexplained it, Cobden just laughed and said he felt foolish. Went rightover to the fifty-foot level and did the escape. He even joked with theChief and said that he shouldn’t hold his head under water—it mightmake a neurotic out of him.”
“That’s swell!” Stan commented.
“Yes, and he insisted on taking the hundred-foot escape right away,too,” March went on. “But they were smart. They wouldn’t let him. Theythought he might be acting under a temporary fit of courage and bravadoand the old fear might come back on him later. So they made him wait acouple of weeks. It went fine, though.”
Before going to the escape tower the next day, March looked up Scott,the radioman, and reminded him of their date to look at Winnie andMinnie together. So Scott and March and Stan went to the hundred-foottower together that afternoon, donned their swimming trunks, theirMomsen Lungs, and stepped under the metal skirt in the water at thebottom. As March started up the long cable leading to the surface, herealized that the hatch and platform there were made exactly like thetop of a real sub. And there on the walls were the two beautifulmermaids, Winnie and Minnie, smiling at him. He could not smile back,because of the Momsen Lung mouthpiece, but he waved at the girls andwent slowly up past them.
At the fifty-foot platform an instructor swam out and around him,waving his arms to indicate that March was moving up at the correctspeed. As he broke the surface he felt fine, as if one of the last actsat New London had been accomplished. Stan and Scott followed himquickly, and then the three of them were presented with the specialdiplomas, decorated with pictures of Winnie and Minnie, stating thatthey had made the hundred-foot escape.
As March and Stan walked back to their quarters, March said, “Now Ifeel ready for anything!”
And waiting for him were his orders—to report in two weeks toBaltimore, Maryland, for duty aboard the new submarine, _Kamongo_.
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March Anson and Scoot Bailey of the U.S. Navy Page 8