Of Men and War

by John Hersey

  Hutchins tried desperately to get the ship to the rendezvous, which was set for dawn. He gave the order to lighten ship. Everything that could be was thrown over the side: both anchors and their chains, ammunition, machine guns, torpedoes and their huge mounts, depth charges, the searchlight, range finder, fire director, and hundreds of smaller things. A hole was cut in the lifeboat and it was let over the side to sink—for it had the number 215 on it, and if left afloat it might identify the Borie to the enemy.

  During this process Storekeeper First Class Joseph San Philip came to the bridge holding in his hand the Title B Book, which contained a list of things aboard ship for which the captain had had to sign his personal responsibility. Storekeeper Philip said, “Sir, who’s going to sign out all this Title B stuff we’re throwing away?”

  Without saying a word Lieutenant Hutchins took the Title B Book from the storekeeper’s hands and dropped it, too, into the sea.

  DAWN broke overcast: The Card’s planes would have a hard time finding the Borie. The emergency gasoline generator for the radio had used up its fuel, so the destroyer was now silent.

  The officers sat around the radio room, wondering what to do. Someone took out a cigarette and lit it with a lighter. Lieutenant Robert H. Lord remembered having seen some lighter fluid on another officers desk. Word was passed through the ship to send all lighter fluid to the radio shack. The generator worked long enough on contributions from the crew for Radio Operator Cameron G. Gresh to send: “Can steam another two hours. Commencing to sink.”

  At 9:00 A.M. so much salt had built up in the turbines that the blades locked, and the destroyer went dead in the water.

  The only hope now was that planes from the Card would find the Borie. If the Borie could send out radio signals the chances of their doing so would be much better. Someone thought of the alcohol in sick bay, and after it had been cut with kerosene it worked the generator all right. Radioman Gresh sent out: “Getting bad.” Then he sat tapping out three dots and a dash—the letter which in all Allied lands had come to stand for Victory. A plane rode that letter in and found the Borie.

  THE Card, the Barry, and the Goff steamed up at about noon. The Card inquired by signal light how things were going. Hutchins replied, “I want to save this bucket if I can. Give me a few hours.”

  But things went from bad to worse. Executive Officer Brown inspected the ship. This took as much courage as the battle itself had taken. He forced himself into most of the ship’s compartments, never knowing which hatch would be the last he opened. His reports indicated that it would be hopeless to try to save the ship.

  Toward dusk the Card and her escorts returned. It was too rough for a rescue ship to go alongside the Borie, and there would not be time for men to be transferred by breeches buoy. There was nothing to do but have them get into the bitterly cold water and cling to rafts.

  After his men were off, Hutchins went to his room and found a flashlight. And then the young captain went, alone and miserable, through the various deserted compartments of his first ship—into the fire-rooms and engine rooms, the commissary stores and messing compartments, into officers’ country and the wardroom, and finally back to his own domain, the skipper’s cabin. The ship was all dark and silent. All hands had abandoned her. So the captain went out on deck and, with the battle flag of U.S.S. Borie under his arm, slipped over the side into the frigid water.

  NOT a man had been lost in the fight; twenty-seven were lost in that water. For those who died it must have been much as it was for Gunnery Officer Dietz, who was nearly lost. A slender man, he had never thought himself strong. When he first hit that breathtaking water he thought it would quickly kill him, but he managed to cling to a raft until the Goff drifted down on it. He grabbed a life line and pulled himself up so that his hands held the edge of the deck and safety. But his hands were so cold that he could not hold on, and he fell back into the water. He slipped along the side of the ship, held up by his life belt—a mere rubber tube under his arms. Life lines caught at his throat. The Goff’s frame-like propeller guards hit him in the head and pushed him under. He thought, “I must get away from this and wait.” He pushed away from the ship. But when he tried to paddle back, his arms would hardly move. His mind refused to admit defeat and kept shielding him from fear. “They’ll come after me,” he kept saying to himself. He fainted. Luckily for him his head fell backward instead of forward. A few minutes later hands pulled him aboard the Barry.

  The margin of luck was not quite so wide for those who drowned. Ensign Richard E. St. John had pulled himself halfway up a life line onto the Goff when he dropped back into the water to help four men who were too far gone to help themselves. They made it. Ensign St. John was caught under the destroyer and drowned. Engineering Officer Brown, who had tried bravely alone to keep the Borie’s engines going in water that was, near the end, up to his waist, was lost. So was Ensign Lord, who had probably saved many lives by thinking of fluid for the radio. The enlisted men who were lost were: Alford, Blane, Blouch, Bonfiglio, Cituk, Concha, Demaid, Duke, Fields, Francis, Kiszka, Lombardi, Long, McKervey, Medved, Mulligan, Pouzar, Purneda, Shakerly, Swan, Tull, Tyree, Wallace, Winn.

  Lieutenant Hutchins could not stand up when he was taken onto the Goff in the darkening evening. Later he took a hot shower and shook under the steam. Then he had a rubdown, some hot chocolate, a sip of brandy, and a little exercise. He spent most that night on the bridge, waiting for dawn and a glimpse of his ship.

  At sunrise the Goff made a last sweep for survivors. She found ten men face down in their preservers. Then she went to the Borie. The destroyer had drifted several miles and had settled badly.

  Hutchins stood on a strange bridge and watched his ship as a Grumman Avenger attacked with a heavy bomb and missed. A second plane hit her amidships. A third holed her again, badly. The Borie, her back broken, lifted her protesting bow and then settled fast.

  FRONT SEATS AT SEA WAR

  This is the story of a Patrol Torpedo-boat squadron that fought in the Solomon Islands in the first year of combat against Japan in World War II. This was, indeed, the first American torpedo-boat squadron to have actual fighting duty—not just occasional guerrilla actions sneaking in on anchored shipping, but real brushes with warships, night after night, for months. The squadron of which Lieutenant John F. Kennedy was a member followed this one into the Solomons area.

  The three boat captains who told the story to me—Lieutenant (j.g.) Leonard Nikoloric, Lieutenant Henry Stillman Taylor, and Lieutenant Robert Searles—had the humility to realize that the real heroes of PT boats, of the whole Navy for that matter, were the enlisted men.

  That is why this story is told in the first person plural. There was no one hero in this squadron; no three or four men stood out above the others. The squadron was its own total hero.

  WE FORMED up in Panama.

  Most of the men figured Panama was their last chance at civilization. There was a lot of time spent enthusiastically on drinking, gambling, and women. Legg, Nik’s quartermaster, who was one of the finest navigators any of us had seen, would get dressed up in the evening, all in his dress whites, and he would disappear by himself. Later we would find him sitting all alone at some bar drinking beer. He was diffident, and if we offered him a drink he would be shy about accepting it. He would have six or seven beers and then go back to the base, still alone. Before retiring, while still feeling high and benign, he would tidy up his boat from top to bottom.

  The men got acquainted with the boats and each other. Beed worked like a fanatic on his engines. Bracy cooked great pies. Der talked tough. Wisdom groused. Legg helped Nik on navigation. Kuharski cleaned his guns. Crosson discussed Plato and Schopenhauer, and Nale discussed the girls back home.

  After the Solomons campaign began, we all figured we’d be out there sooner or later. We heard that the Marines, when they were being shelled from the sea night after night, had wondered why it couldn’t be sooner rather than later.

  Fin
ally the time came. We went in two sections, four boats to a section, about ten days apart. Every PT boat comes with a cradle. They just settled the boats into their cradles and then slung boats and cradles and all right up on the deck of a cargo ship, by crane. We lived in the boats, perched up there twenty feet above the deck. It was peculiar, but it was handy for working on the bottom. We spent the whole time shining up this and that, and when we got to the South Pacific the boats were like a bunch of 4,500-h.p. Swiss watches.

  During the trip Monty got pneumonia. Monty was our commanding officer—Lieutenant Commander Alan R. Montgomery, of Warrenton, Virginia. Some commanding officers are unreasonable men, but he was far from that; he was the fairest Navy man we ever knew. Most of the boat captains used to kid Monty, because he had gone to Annapolis, by referring to him as a “trade-school man,” and by saying he “went to some academy—what was the name of that academy?” He would take it in stride, and he gave as good as he got, too. Monty was terribly sick on the way out.

  Everything was snafu when the first section reached the rear base in the South Pacific. Apparently no one had figured in advance how they would get the boats off the ship. Those boats weighed fifty tons. When we arrived, the Seabees were at work on a huge floating crane, and still it was three weeks before the boats got into the water. No one seemed to know where we were supposed to go, where our base would be. We had to wait, and so did the Marines, for the admirals to make up their minds.

  We heard about how Japs were coming down every night and shelling Guadalcanal, and we talked about how we would sink the whole Japanese fleet. The Japs were starting down from an island called Bougainville, so we used to say, “We’ll derail the Bougainville express.” We were pretty cocky then.

  The first section’s trip north to the Solomons was tough. We went in tow behind two old four-pipers converted to be Marine transports. There were two boats behind each can, and it was up to us to keep our helms over and keep clear of each other.

  It took a real man to make us fast again when one of the towlines broke. On Stilly Taylor’s boat, for instance, Wisdom always did it. Hobert Denzil Wisdom, Stilly’s torpedoman, was a great hulk of a fellow, well-built and tough-looking, with a slight paralysis of the face which gave him a queer, ugly look. He was the squadron’s champion growler; the other men always expected him to jump in first with the gripes. He grumbled like hell about fixing those towlines, but he did the job. The towline had to be made fast through a towing eye right at the chine, the point at the forefoot where all the plane surfaces of the bow met. Wisdom had to go over the side in water that wasn’t too warm, and he had to work down there with that huge hawser where the bow was pitching and pounding on the seas. Stilly had to keep the boat almost nuzzled against the port quarter of the tow ship, so there was a chance of Wisdom’s getting crushed like a beetle between the boat and the ship.

  When he finished he was always black and blue and grunting mad. “That’s the damnedest job I ever had to do,” he’d declare, “and I won’t ever do it again.” But the next time Stilly’s boat broke away, he’d be the one to volunteer to do the job.

  The only joy on the trip was the food that Bracy cooked. There was only a tiny oven about the size of a breadbox in the galley, but he would bake custard pies and lemon-meringue pies that made you think of mother. Henry Duff Bracy was one of the happiest guys that ever rode a boat, and his everlasting bad joke was that he was itching to make mincemeat out of some Japs.

  By the time we got to Tulagi, on October 12, Monty was thin and weak. He’d had so much sulfa drug that he had water blisters all over his skin. The very first day he went ashore over on Guadalcanal and spent all day talking with people—getting the word. We based ourselves—and braced ourselves—in Tulagi Harbor.

  We didn’t have to wait long.

  OUR first attack came the night of October 13—the night after we arrived. We encountered more than our share of the Japanese Navy that night. There were probably three cruisers, one battleship, and about eight destroyers, which came down to give the airfield and the Marines one of their worst pastings.

  PT boats ought to be manned by cats. Cats might have been able to see what was going on that night; we couldn’t. All we could see was the flash of gunfire in a tight formation which was moving down from Cape Esperance to Lunga Point at about twenty knots, swinging out and around and back again—and the tracers arching ashore.

  We were eager. We closed with the enemy—fast. Wisdom was standing at his battle station by an aftertorpedo tube with a mallet in his hand, ready to fire by percussion in case the electrical impulse didn’t work. All of a sudden he looked up and you could hear him cursing. Stilly had taken the boat incredibly close to a Jap destroyer without even seeing it.

  Being that close was bad, because there wasn’t time to square away and fire a torpedo, and the Japs picked up the boats in their lights. Monty got off his torpedoes, Tom Kendall was fired on, Bobby tore over to help us, and everything was confused.

  Bobby saw a target loom up. He fired—and a terrible clatter began, like that of a car running with a burnt-out bearing. One torpedo had shot away all right, but two of the torpedoes had stuck halfway out of their tubes and were having hot runs. Torpedoes have to run a certain distance through the water before a little mechanism up in the warhead “arms” them so they will explode. Ordinarily in hot runs the fish don’t get armed, but if the boat is running fast—as Bobby’s soon had to run—spray can get up in there and arm them, so that after that a seven-pound blow can kiss the boys good-by.

  When Beed, Bobby’s elderly engineer, heard all the clatter, he thought the boat was under machine-gun fire. He clamped all the engine-room hatches shut so as to make the engine room light-tight, whipped out his flashlight, and began checking his engines as calmly as if they were still in Panama. He soon had them singing and the boat made its getaway out of the searchlight beams. Fortunately the fish did not become armed.

  Soon the Japs lit out and chased our boats. The poop about PT boats making fifty knots was strictly Hudson River stuff. Under battle conditions we seldom got them going that fast. And the Jap destroyers could sometimes keep up with us. Monty, who as CO was riding in a boat with Bobby’s brother Jack Searles, had a nightmare of a time. He was chased all over hell-and-gone. Finally he crept inshore and Jack cut his engines and they lay doggo. First thing they knew, the waves were driving them ashore. They were finally beached and helpless. Luckily the Japs didn’t get them in their lights again.

  Well, that was our first night of it. So far as we knew, we had got zero Jap ships plus one helluva scare.

  ABOUT a week later Robbie, the second-in-command, came up from the rear base. Then Monty practically collapsed and had to be evacuated; it broke his heart to have to leave. Although only a twenty-seven-year-old lieutenant, Hugh Marston Robinson took over the squadron and from then on did all the administrative work and tactical planning.

  The tension of running patrols night after night, working all day, not knowing what was coming next, was severe at first. Robert Charles Barnard, a machinist’s mate on Stilly’s boat, was so nervous on some of the first patrols that he had to go out on deck and turn handsprings and somersaults. After a while, though, we began to be able to relax a little and think about our comforts. For instance, Nik’s shoes wore out, and he found time one day to go over to Tulagi to get some new ones. He came on a Marine who’d been evacuated from the Guadalcanal beachhead with malaria. Nik asked him where he could get a pair of those nice soft Marine shoes.

  “You want some lucky shoes?” the Marine asked.

  “Sure do,” Nik said.

  “I’ve got some for you. They ain’t new. They’re lucky though. You better take ‘em. They belonged to a pal of mine—he got killed. He went out on patrol after patrol and he killed a slew of Japs—as long as he wore these here shoes. But one day he went out in another pair. He came on a Jap dugout, and he jumped in and pulled the trigger of his Reising gun, but it just went click. H
e should’ve worn his old shoes. You want ‘em?”

  Nik took them and wore them every time he went out.

  NIK was glad to have his lucky shoes on October 28. That was when the second section had its first serious action.

  Some of the first section happened to be out that night, too. The two brothers, Bobby and Jack Searles, were riding a boat together, doing some spotting. Stilly had the same assignment. Brent Green was up the line in Jap territory trying to “lead” a reported force of eight or ten Jap destroyers in to us—in other words, he was tracking them, so we could attack them at an opportune place and time.

  We of the second section were fat, dumb, and happy that night. We couldn’t wait to bore in there and make an attack and get baptized. All the men were in high. John Der, a tough and audible character from Akron, Ohio, who had the most patriotic eagle tattooed all the way from his shoulders to his belly button, kept running up to Nik’s bridge and saying, “We’ll sink ‘em. We’ll sink ‘em all. Don’t worry, Skipper, we’ll sink ‘em.”

  The Japs came in under the front of a big black cloud. We couldn’t see them. There were flares and shots fired toward the beach, but every time we ran toward them there wouldn’t be anything there.

  The Searles’s radioman, Stevenson, suddenly came up on the radio and said, ‘We’re being chased by William. Hurry, hurry, hurry.” At that time “William” meant enemy ships.

  Nik decided to run in and take the heat off the Searles brothers. Legg said, “Skipper, you can’t go home and face Mrs. Searles if both those boys get it tonight.” Nik opened up wide and plunged into the smoke screen Bobby and Jack had left; the boys on his boat expected to see the whole Jap Navy on the other side of the screen.