by Herman Wouk
Aaron smells it, strong, chokingly strong, the disinfectant smell, but far more powerful. It is coming from the iron pillar. The first whiff burns, stabbing into his lungs like a red-hot sword, shooting alarm through his frame, racking him with cramps. He tries in vain to shrink away from the pillar. All is howling chaos and terror in the dark. He gasps out a deathbed confession, or tries to, with congesting lungs, swelling mouth tissues, in breath-stopping pain: “The Lord is God. Blessed be His name for ever and ever. Hear O Israel, the Lord our God is One God.” He falls to the cement. Writhing bodies pile on top of him, for he is one of the first adults to go down. He falls on his back, striking his head hard. Naked flesh presses on his face and all over him, stilling his contortions. He cannot move. He does not die of the gas. Very little enters his system. He goes almost at once, the life smothered out of him by the weight of dying Jews. Call it a blessing, for death by the gas can take a long time. The Germans allow a half hour for the process.
When the men in stripes pull apart the tangled dead mass, the sea of stiff human nakedness, and uncover him, his face is less contorted than others, though nobody notices one old thin dead body among thousands. Jastrow is dragged by a rubber-gloved Sonderkommando to a table in a mortuary where his gold-filled teeth are ripped out with pliers and dropped in a pail. This process goes on wholesale all over the mortuary, with the search of orifices and the cutting off of the women’s hair. He is then loaded on a hoist which is lifting bodies in assembly-line fashion to a hot room where a crowd of Sonderkommandos is busily at work at a row of furnaces. His body on an iron cradle, with two children’s bodies piled on top of him because he is so small, goes into an oven. The iron door with a glass peephole slams shut. The bodies rapidly swell and burst, and the flames burn the fragments like coal. Not until the next day are his ashes carted to the Vistula in a big truck loaded with human ash and bone fragments, and dumped into the river.
So the dissolved atoms of Aaron Jastrow float past the river banks of Medzice where he played as a boy, and float all the way through Poland, past Warsaw to the Baltic Sea. The diamonds he swallowed on the walk to the crematorium may have burned up, for diamonds burn. Or they may lie on the river bed of the Vistula. They were the finest stones, saved for an ultimate extremity, and he had meant to slip them to Natalie on the train. Their sudden parting prevented that, but the Germans never got them.
94
THE turning earth brings the same bright moon over a low black vessel cutting through rough waters off Kyushu. Spray glitters up over the bridge as the Barracuda speeds toward a dawn attack on a Leyte Gulf cripple; a big fleet tanker screened by four escorts, crawling at nine knots and down hard by the bow. An Ultra dispatch has vectored the Barracuda to this limping ship, and the new captain’s test of fire is on. Tankers have become prime targets. The Japs cannot fight on without oil, and it all comes in by sea. Hence four escorts. A tough shot! Byron has rescued downed airmen, helped a grounded submarine free itself from a reef, and patrolled all during the battle with no results. He has yet to conduct an attack.
He and his exec are getting soaked by the cold spray. Lieutenant Philby wears foul-weather gear, but Byron has come topside for a look around at midnight in his khakis. He does not mind; the salt shower is cheering. On the sharp moonlit horizon the tanker is a smudge. The escorts are invisible.
“How are we doing?”
“Okay. We’ll be on station at 0500, if he doesn’t change course.”
The exec’s tone is reserved. He wanted to try a stern chase and a night attack up-moon. Had they done that they would now be in the approach phase. Byron doesn’t regret his decision for an end-around run; not yet. The enemy is holding course. If the sky had clouded over the night attack would have been chancy. Carter Aster always favored an approach on the bow with good visibility.
“Well, I’ll turn in, then. Call me at 0430.”
The skeptical squint on the exec’s wet face all but shouts, Who are you kidding? Sleep before your first attack?
“Aye aye, sir.” A faint note of disapproval.
Byron is unoffended. Philby is a good exec, he has found. He hardly sleeps, he is getting ashen as a dead man, and he has the ship up to the mark in all departments. On torpedo maintenance and readiness he is red-hot. How he performs in an attack and holds up under depth charging is the real question. That will probably soon be clear.
Shucking off the wet uniform, Byron lies down in his cabin facing pictures of Natalie and Louis taped on the bulkhead. Often he no longer notices them; they have been there too long. Now he sees them afresh: the snapshots from Rome and Theresienstadt, and a studio photograph of Natalie. The old aches throb. Are his wife and son still in the Czech town? Are they even alive? How beautiful she was; how he loved her! The memory of Louis is almost unbearable. Frustration has turned the love he felt for that boy to a festering grudge: at his father for driving Natalie to Europe, at her for her funk in Marseilles. And Dad’s involvement with Pamela Tudsbury…
Profitless thoughts! Out goes the light. In the dark Byron whispers a prayer for Natalie and Louis, something he used to do every night, but has been forgetting lately. His father was right about that, at least; command has proven a distraction and an anodyne. He falls asleep almost at once. What was a joke about him as a junior officer is an asset in command.
The steward brings him coffee at 0430. He wakes nervily confident. He is no Carter Aster, never will be, and twenty things can foul up in an attack, but he is ready to go. That is one hell of a target out there. Rough weather; his second cup sloshes over the wardroom table. Topside, the tossing dark ocean is flecked with whitecaps in stormy dawn light; a strong wind blows. Visibility way down, the tanker not in sight. Philby still mans the bridge, his rubber clothes streaming. Radar has the target at fourteen thousand yards, he says, heading 310 as before, target angle zero. The Barracuda now lies ahead of its prey.
Submerging for his approach, Byron sees the screen vessels appear through a misty dawn, coming straight on: four frigate types, gray small ships like American DEs. The station-keeping is ragged; inexperienced reserve skippers, no doubt. On the zigzag a gap opens to port, and Byron heads through it, undetected by the pinging, toward the huge listing tanker. Attack phase: range closing to fifteen hundred… twelve hundred… nine hundred yards… “I like short ranges,” Aster used to say; greater peril, but a surer shot. Byron and Philby work smoothly together, and the sailors and officers in the conning tower are all old hands. In the tension of the hunt and the technical torpedo problem, Byron loses all sense that this is a debut. Many a time he has manned the scope during Aster’s attacks. It is old stuff, scary and thrilling as ever. He has the last word on firing; only that is new.
When he calls “Up scope!” for a final bearing, the tanker hull looms ahead like the side of a stadium, a pathetic gigantic victim. How can he miss? He is so close he sees swarms of Japs repairing bomb damage on the steeply slanting deck.
He shoots. The submarine ejects four torpedoes, the slower and more reliable electrics. At this short range only a minute elapses. Then, “Up scope! HIT, by God!” Three white splashes leap high at the tanker’s side. Earthquake rumblings shake the Barracuda. Cheers break out in the conning tower. Byron whips the scope around and sees the two escorts he evaded turning toward him.
“Take her deep! Level at three hundred feet!”
The first depth charges fall astern, thunderous jolts that do no harm. At three hundred feet the submarine creeps away, running silent, but a sonar picks up the trail. The pinging grows louder, and shifts to short scale. Screw noises approach, pass overhead. The seasoned sailors in the conning tower wince, crouch, hold their ears.
A pattern of depth charges drops all around the Barracuda: a perfect shot, a barrage of explosions. The vessel takes a sharp down angle and sinks like a rock, the lights going out, clocks, gauges, other loose objects flying around, anguished voices jabbering confused damage reports in the sound-powered telephones. Emergency lights show depth increa
sing alarmingly: three fifty, four hundred, four hundred fifty feet. Four hundred is maximum test depth. Never down this deep before, the submarine still descends.
Philby goes staggering down the ladder to check on damage, while Byron fights to arrest the plunge. The exec shouts up from the control room that the stern planes are jammed on hard dive. The steering planes are jammed too. At five hundred and seventy feet, Byron is dripping sweat amid gray-faced sailors, in a conning tower half-lit by emergency lights and awash to his ankles. Philby has reported the hull dished in by sea pressure and leaking in several compartments, many hull fittings and valves spurting water, air and hydraulic systems out, electrical control panels shorting, and pumps not functioning. Byron blows the forward high-pressure group, his emergency reserve of compressed air, his very last resort, for an up-angle. That arrests the dive. Then he blows the after high-pressure group, and he has buoyancy.
Powering up to the surface, he orders all hands to battle stations as soon as they can crack the hatches. When the quartermaster opens the conning tower hatch, an astonishing waterspout rises through the hole, and for a long minute nobody can get up to the forward guns or the bridge. The diesels catch and roar, a welcome sound. When Byron does reach the bridge the enemy ship, about three miles off, is already firing, pale yellow flashes from guns that look like three-inch fifties, kicking up misses well astern of the partly disabled submarine. The other escorts are far off, rescuing survivors around the foundering tanker. The Barracuda fires back with its four-inch bow gun, and the escort stands off, peppering away. Its gunnery is poor. For fifteen minutes Byron avoids being hit, twisting here and there, while Philby roams the ship below, trying to restore diving condition. As things stand, one square hit on the thin old hull can probably finish the Barracuda.
The low-pressure blowers start up, and the submarine slowly rights a list to port. The jammed stern planes are freed. The steering planes are made to work by hand. The pumps begin to master the flooding. All this time, the gun duel goes on; and at last Philby comes up and tells Byron that the hull has been dangerously weakened. The submarine cannot dive again, probably not until major repairs are made in a Navy Yard. So the Barracuda is stripped of its chief defense, the safety of the deep.
All this time the frigate captain has not called for help; no doubt he wants sole credit for the kill. As Philby shouts his report between salvos of the bow gun, Byron keeps his eye on the Jap through the cloud of gunsmoke tumbling over the bridge, and sees him speed up and turn. Black smoke pours from the two stumpy stacks. He has surmised, it seems, the trouble the Barracuda is in, and has decided to ram. At about four thousand yards, closing at twenty knots or more, he will hit in a few minutes. A foaming bow-wave flies as his sharp antisubmarine prow cuts the sea. His outline swells.
The exec is at Byron’s side. “What do we do, Captain?” he says, in a reasonably concerned tone, no note of hysteria.
A good question!
So far Byron has acted from experience. Aster too once had to blow his high-pressure group, on the third patrol, when depth charges jammed the controls and unseated a hatch, and the flooding Moray went down past five hundred feet. But that time they surfaced at night and Aster escaped into the darkness. Aster never faced a ramming.
Byron’s best speed now is eighteen knots. Given time, the engineers can probably restore full power, but there is no time. Flight? A stern chase will gain time, but then the other frigates will pursue. The Barracuda will probably be outgunned and sunk.
Byron seizes the microphone. “Now engine rooms, this is the captain. Give me all the power you’ve got, we’re about to be rammed… Helmsman, right standard rudder.”
The helmsman turns startled eyes at him. “Right, Captain?”
The order will turn the submarine toward the charging gray frigate.
“Right, right full rudder! I want to clear and pass him.”
“Aye aye, sir. Right full rudder… Rudder is hard right, sir.”
The submarine surges forward and turns. Both ships, smashing toward each other through high green waves, are throwing up curtains of foam. Byron shouts to Philby, “We’ve got him outgunned with small calibre, Tom. I’m going to rake him broadside. Let’s have continuous fire from the AA while we pass him. Tell the four-inch to aim for the bridge!”
“Aye aye, sir.”
The enemy captain’s reaction is slow. By the time he starts his counter-turn to port the submarine’s stern is slipping past his prow. The Barracuda sails down the frigate’s port side scarcely fifty feet away, the seas noisily splashing and spiring between them. The sailors over on the other deck are visibly Japanese. From the submarine there bursts a rattling din, a blaze of gun flashes, a cloud of smoke. Red tracer streams comb the frigate’s deck. The four-inch blasts away, Crumpp! Crumpp! Crumpp! The frigate’s guns stammer in reply, but by the time the Barracuda has sailed past the stern they have fallen silent.
“Byron, he’s dead in the water,” says Philby, as Byron orders a hard turn away. He is now heading straight toward the settling tanker and the other escorts. The tanker is on its side, its red bottom scarcely visible above the swells. “Maybe you killed the captain.”
“Maybe. We’ve got three other captains to worry about. They’re turning this way. Lay below to the maneuvering room, Tom, and bend on every possible turn, for God’s sake. This is it.”
Philby produces a speed of twenty knots. After a twenty-minute chase the Barracuda disappears from its pursuers into a broad black rainsquall. Soon the three escorts drop from the radar screen.
A tour of the damaged compartments convinces Byron that the Barracuda is no longer seaworthy. The dents in the pressure hull from the deep-sea squeeze are serious; the malfunctions beyond repair by the crew are many; the pumps are working full-time to keep the water out. But there has been no loss of life, and only a few injuries.
“Let me have a course for Saipan, Tom,” he tells the exec, on returning to the rainy bridge. “Set the regular watch. Post a one-in-three standby watch for damage control. Tell the chief of boat to draw up the bill.”
“Yes, sir.” The word sir resonates with new respect.
In his cabin, taking off wet clothes, Byron says aloud to the photograph of Natalie, “Well, I guess I can command a submarine, if that proves anything.” In the aftermath of the battle, to his own puzzlement, he is deeply depressed. He dries himself with a towel, and sticky with salt tumbles into his bunk.
Late that night, he and Philby are compiling the action report in the wardroom. Philby scrawls the narrative; Byron draws neat charts of the sinking and the gunfight, in blue and orange ink. At one point Philby looks up, dropping his pen. “Captain, can I say something?”
“Sure.”
“You were magnificent today.”
“Well, the crew was magnificent. I had a pretty competent exec.”
The long white face of Philby turns bright pink. “Captain, you’re a cinch for a Navy Cross.” Byron says nothing, bent over his chart. “How do you feel about it?”
“About what?”
“I mean your first sinking, and then that great fight?”
“How do you feel?”
“Goddamn proud I was part of it.”
“Well, as for me, I hope we get sent all the way back to Mare Island. And that the war ends before our overhaul does.” He laughs wryly at the disappointment in Philby’s face. “Tom, I saw hundreds of Japs walking around and working on that tanker. Killing Japs always gave Carter Aster a big charge. It leaves me cold.”
“It’s the way to win the war.” Philby’s tone is injured, almost piously so.
“This war is won. The agony may drag on, but it’s won. If I had my choice, I’d sleep the war out on dry land. I’m not a professional naval officer. I never was. Let’s finish the report.”
Byron got part of his wish. The Barracuda went back to San Francisco, and the overhaul took a long time. For a Navy Yard captain swamped by destroyers, carriers, even battleships crowding
in with kamikaze damage, an old crippled submarine was a low-priority customer. Nor was ComSubPac screaming for the Barracuda’s return. New submarines were out on patrol in a flock. Targets were actually becoming scarce.
At the end of the overhaul an experimental undersea sonar called the FM was put aboard, and Byron was ordered to test it in dummy mine fields off California. A mine picked up by this fancy short-range sonar set off a gong in the ship; in theory, therefore, a submarine so equipped could gong its way in the undersea dark through Japanese mine fields and into the Sea of Japan, where merchant traffic was still thick. ComSubPac was very high on the FM sonar; think of all those nice fat juicy targets still skulking in the Sea of Japan!
Byron had his doubts because the sonar was erratic; he bumped many a dummy mine on his runs. His crew, good submariners all, were appalled at the notion of nosing through rows of Jap mines with an electronic gadget. They knew Navy gadgets. Most of them had sweated through two years of dud torpedoes and BuOrd excuses. The chief of the boat warned Byron that he would lose a third of his crew by transfer requests or desertions if he sailed on an FM probe of the Sea of Japan.
But Byron was not sure he would ever leave the West Coast. In San Francisco the end-of-the-war feeling was marked. The blackout was over. Cars were crowding the streets and highways. The black market had made a farce of gasoline rationing. There were no food shortages. The headlines of Allied advances and Axis retreats were becoming boring. Only reverses made news: the kamikaze campaign, and the German last gasp dubbed the “Battle of the Bulge.” Byron cared about Europe mainly because a German defeat might uncover news of Natalie. As for the Pacific, he hoped that the B-29 raids, the submarine blockade, and MacArthur’s advance through the Philippines would bring a Jap surrender before he went gonging into their mine fields. How much longer could the agony really drag on?
His was a not uncommon American view of this peculiar phase of the war. Staggering events were being pureed by journalism into a pap of continuous victory. Surely the thing would end any day! But a war is easier to start than to stop. This one was now a worldwide way of life. Germany and Japan were resilient, desperate great nations under firm totalitarian control. They had no plans for quitting. The Allies had no way to make them quit but by more and more killing. Everything conspired to produce unprecedented military butcheries; while Byron (more or less oblivious to the horrors) pottered with the Barracuda’s machinery and the FM sonar.