Of Men and War

by John Hersey

  They saw nothing. The destroyer had apparently got word that a whole swarm of PT boats was after it and had turned to run. By great good luck it turned so as to make a perfect shot for Brent Green. He fired a spread and the Jap was sunk....

  That was how the battles went. The boys who thought they were going to be heroes didn’t turn out to be. Someone would just be surprised into a success.

  BY this time we were beginning to get our base established. The men hewed out a nook of civilization ashore. Our base was on an island we called Cannibal Isle. The men would find themselves a place to pitch a tent and go to work.

  The only way Wisdom could keep himself from grousing was to be doing something with his hands, so he set up a tent, built a deck for it, and made himself some fancy furniture. Others followed his lead. Some pitched their camp around the bay, others in a settlement on a bluff which they named Snob Hill—three native huts and some tents. The fellows up there kept their place as clean as a town. They had little ditches for drains. They built a bench out in front of their tents which they called the Seat of Meditation. They maintained their own iron discipline; strong-armed Wisdom was the justice of the peace.

  On off nights the men would sit together in a tent, four or five of them together, and play blackjack or checkers or red dog or poker. Mostly poker. But the main amusement was shooting the breeze. Crosson would discuss various historical facts with anyone who would listen, but sooner or later, of course, the discussion always got around to girls.

  Sometimes the men would compare tattoos. Der would explain the fine points of the huge eagle on his chest, and Leon Nale would demonstrate the multicolored lion’s head on his shoulder and show how shaggy it was, as well as the scene of crossing the equator, and the girl, very suggestive, on his forearm.

  This Nale was only nineteen, one of the youngest boys in the squadron, but he was as tough as the thing his name sounded like. He was fresh; called his skipper not “sir” but “Rumdum.” “Say, Rumdum, you sure hacked that one,” he would say after a patrol. For a while he gave us plenty of laughs by trying to raise a mustache. He was so young that it was three weeks before we could even see the peach down except in a strong light. “Ain’t that wonderful, just like Clark Gable,” he would say, cocking his face up. The others finally put him down one day and shaved the fuzz off.

  THE days ashore grew more and more pleasant; the nights at sea grew less and less so. We called November our Hell Month. It really was.

  Early in November the Japanese were making landings on Guadalcanal at Koli Point, to the east of the Marines’ beachhead. This was the first time they had tried to land to the east since August, and it was important for us to interfere with their landings. A typical night was that of November 4.

  We were patrolling off Koli Point. In Nik’s boat Legg had the glasses. Nik could not see a sign of the enemy. Finally Legg, instead of shouting that he had sighted the Japs, quietly said, “Sir, how many of us did you say were out tonight?”

  Nik said, “Two boats, besides us,” knowing very well that Legg knew how many there were.

  Legg said, “Mmm. I count one, two, three, four....Well, sir, I guess this is it.”

  So Nik practically split his throat yelling, “General quarters!” The men rushed to their battle stations.

  The boat turned toward the nearest ship, to get in a good lick. Legg conned Nik in, calling off the enemy’s course and speed. Some of the crew yelled from their battle stations, “What is it?”

  Nik yelled back, “I think it’s a destroyer.”

  They were moving full throttle now, with a good roar. Legg kept saying, politely and quietly, “I suggest you come right a little, sir, now come left a hair.”

  Suddenly Nik saw the destroyer. “Don’t you think I ought to go a little closer?” he asked Legg.

  Legg said, “Excuse me, sir, I think you’re close enough, Skipper. If you want to shoot, shoot now.”

  Crosson had the tubes all set, fanned out at an angle. (Torpedoes have a gyroscopic mechanism that allows them to be shot at an angle, then turns them onto their proper course.) Nik pressed the impulse buttons. The boat shied like a skittish horse. A spread of four fish hissed into the water. All four ran their courses and missed. Pearle, Nik’s radioman, said on the radio, “We missed. The enemy is moving south.”

  Robbie, the commander, could not find the destroyer. He came up on the radio and said, “Where the hell is he? I don t see anything. What are you guys doing, anyway?”

  The next thing we all heard was Cavanaugh, Les Gamble’s radioman. He was practically singing, “We got a hit! We got a hit! We’re heading for the barn. We got a hit....”

  THE enlisted men knew the practical things. They were technicians. The officers were selected for qualities of leadership and were trained in tactical command under wartime conditions. They didn’t have the time to learn the details, but they could give their men confidence and courage. The smartest thing they could do was to rely on their experienced enlisted men. Finally the men became self-reliant, as was proved on the night of November 8.

  Nik’s section was out after the Tokyo Express. (This was the same as the Bougainville Express, only Admiral Halsey called it the Tokyo Express, and who were we to argue with him? ) Nik had no idea of the Jap disposition. He bulled right in because he was determined to be “a lousy hero.” The Japs found him before he found them. They turned two lights on. They straddled the boat with two salvos. The second was so close that everyone on the boat was knocked down—and out, in the case of the two officers. Before Nik came to, this is what happened:

  John Der, the crewman with the eagle tattooed on his chest, got up in a daze off the deck. It ran through his spinning mind that there had been a big noise. Noise meant torpedo. He looked at his. It was still in the tube. Wham! He hit the percussion cap with his mallet. The torpedo made its run and hit a Jap!

  The boat, meanwhile, was racing in the direction of the enemy, becoming a better target every second. Legg stood up, stepped over Nik’s body, took the wheel, and turned the boat around.

  Leon Nale, the cocky nineteen-year-old, had been in the aftercockpit manning the machine gun. He was knocked off his stance over the fuel tanks and right down into the tank compartment. He came to, scrambled up again, wheeled his gun around, and knocked out both searchlights while the PT was in a fast turn.

  Crosson came to, manned the smoke valves, heaved them open, and established a first-rate smoke screen.

  Porterfield and Carner teased the engines so the boat made its best speed.

  Pearle, the radioman, had done his job, so he dived into an empty torpedo tube.

  Then Nik came to. While he had been listening to the birdies singing, his half-dazed men had executed a successful attack, broken off, and conducted a retreat.

  Yes, we were busy those nights. The men were losing a lot of weight. Yet no one slacked off. Take Bracy. Most of the cooks were moved ashore into the base force, but Bracy refused to leave the boat roster. He would cook pies and cakes all day, and we would eat the stuff out on patrol, while Bracy stood lookout. He had wonderful eyes and was always spotting something. The men said he could see through a keyhole at twenty feet.

  THE great sea battle of Guadalcanal, November 12 to 15, was the turning point of the war in the South Pacific. We fought part of it, and we watched part of it.

  The squadron had been in action almost continuously for ten days, and we knew the Japs were making their big attempt to reinforce their beachhead on the island. Everybody was tired and had the shakes, both officers and men. On the night of the thirteenth, there were only five boats left in condition to patrol, and one patrol had already been out, so that left only three boats running. But a big Japanese battleship had been reported hanging around all day with a flock of destroyers, so we took our three rigs out against it.

  First we had to screen one of our crippled ships that was being towed in. Then they sent us over for the big game. The Japs were lying over there shelling
Henderson Field. They had put a flare up over the Marines, which lit things up nicely for us. One ship appeared heavier than the others; it looked like either a battleship or a heavy cruiser. Stilly got on a collision course, approached to twelve hundred yards, fired a spread, and moved away without ever having been seen. At least one torpedo found its target. Then Jack fired and got two hits on one of the screening destroyers. Our best results came from what seemed to be the easiest attacks, like this one.

  We fired eighteen torpedoes that night. Every time we fired a spread, we used to think, “Golly, there go forty thousand bucks.” This night we spent one hundred eighty thousand dollars. But we figured we cost the Japs much more than that.

  When we came back in, there wasn’t a fish left in any one of the tubes. Assembling and mounting torpedoes is a mean job. The way that task was handled the next day, so that three boats could go out with fish in them by night, was certainly a triumph for the base force.

  The soul of the base force was embodied in a chief torpedoman named Long, whom we called Shorty. Shorty was a small, quiet, self-effacing man who had been in the Navy for more than twenty years. In no time at all, Shorty Long and his sidekick, another chief named Wing, had organized a respectable torpedo shop. Shorty would visit machine shops on various ships, and he would come out with his clothes bulging with tools, rope, and gizmos—then he’d say he just couldn’t think how those things had got in his pockets. Malaria and dengue fever knocked Shorty out badly for a while, and he looked sixty-five when we came out, though he couldn’t have been more than forty-five.

  Long and Wing went to work before the sky turned from black to gray on the morning of the 14th, and they didn’t knock off until it was too dark to see a thing; three boats were ready.

  No torpedoes were fired that night, but for those who were out it was the most terrific night of the whole campaign.

  At the port director’s office that evening we were told that a Jap invasion fleet—not just a task force; this time it was an invasion fleet—was on its way. The Japs had destroyers, cruisers, at least one battleship, possibly two, and a whole bunch of transports.

  The briefing officer also said, “We may have a battleship task force, Admiral Lee’s outfit, coming up to meet the Japs, but we’re not sure. Even if they do come, we don’t think they’ll get here in time. We want you fellows to sift through the destroyers and cruisers and get the transports.”

  It sounded like certain suicide. Nik, for one, was dripping with sweat when he left that office. He had never been so scared. He didn’t expect to live through the night.

  When Nik went aboard his boat, the crew clustered around and asked for the dope. He didn’t have the heart to tell them. He said, “I don’t know for sure, I think some Japs are supposed to be coming down. I’m not sure, maybe we’ll get the word on the radio later.”

  We started out on patrol and ran up and down like frightened terriers. Finally Robbie picked up the Japs. His radioman came up with a dull voice and said, “Here they are.”

  Robbie came on himself, just as dull, with, “Well, let’s see what we can do.”

  We turned, and there, just west of Savo Island, we saw them. Counting the mirages our frightened minds conjured, there were a thousand ships spread out before us. It was the greatest show of force any of us had ever imagined, much less seen. Even our boats seemed to tremble as we deployed for what we knew would be our last runs.

  Just then a cheery, lilting voice, not one of ours, came up on the radio. It said, “Boys, this is Ching Chong China Lee. Do you know who I am?” We all knew that it was Admiral Lee, who had spent several years on the China station.

  Robbie’s deep voice boomed out on the radio, “Yes, sir, we sure do!”

  The Admiral came back, “Get the hell out of the way. I’m coming through.”

  You have never seen three PT boats move the way ours did. We almost took on some altitude.

  We withdrew northward, and as we did, we saw Lee go by with his force. It seemed small to us, compared with what we had seen of the Japs, but it looked like mama to us little babies.

  We stopped our engines. Porterfield went below and made some sandwiches and coffee. We all went up and sat on the foredeck, and half an hour later we were all sitting there eating tuna-fish sandwiches, sipping coffee, and watching from a front-row seat one of the great battles of World War II. It was just like sitting at the Polo Grounds. Only different.

  We sat there for a time and nothing happened. Then somebody dropped a number of flares. We don’t know which side. The destroyers opened fire first with some small stuff, over near Savo Island. Ships exploded. Each explosion gave off some daylight. First we’d see a ship explode, then there’d be a huge burning for a minute or so; then there would be another explosion, then there would be the burning again.

  Then the battleships began.

  There would be a little flash. Three red balls would then go into the sky, up, and over, and down, and then whoomp! A ship would blow up. It was unbelievable.

  The two groups of ships were operating about five miles apart. We just sat there and watched the tracers cross the sky, and the explosions, and the fires. Those three red balls would go up and seem to hang there in the sky, and they seemed to go very slowly; then they would fall.

  This went on for an hour, or maybe two or three.

  We just sat there on deck the whole time. We were so impressed and amazed at the sight that nobody spoke for many minutes after the thing died down. Finally one of the men said, “My God, what a sight, what a sight.”

  It was the terrible power of the thing that got us. You could guess what was happening there in the ships, the human lives destroyed, the men being hurt, the groans, the sunk ships, the survivors and the flotsam in the water.

  As we talked it over, we spoke unnaturally, stiffly. We couldn’t help it. One man said, “What a terrible loss of equipment and men we have witnessed in an hour.”

  When it was surely over, we sat around awhile in the dark night and talked about the damage big ships could do, and then we went home to our base.

  AFTER that night, things tapered off a bit. The Japanese had suffered a great reverse. Toward the end of the month we occasionally had a job nobody liked. That was to stay out after dawn and strafe stores that the Japs would float off destroyers on oil drums. We had become a bit feline by now; we liked nights best. Dawn made us uneasy. Men like Nale and Wisdom would say, “I don’t think we ought to stay for the weekend, Skipper,” or, “Hell, Skipper, I’m so hungry, let’s go home before I start eating rags.”

  A little later on our effectiveness fell off a hundred per cent. We had had enough; we were no good any more. All of us had had malaria or dengue fever or dysentery. We had all lost ten to thirty pounds and were terribly nervous. We weren’t closing properly with the enemy any more. Every time we reported in before a patrol we would be wringing with sweat. We prayed that the Japs wouldn’t come down. We were no good any more. About the only thing that held us together was Robbie Robinson’s leadership and understanding.

  We had been incredibly lucky on casualties. We had lost only one officer and one man, and they got theirs while riding in another squadron’s boat. But we began to lose men to disease. Nemeck died. Silent Joe, we called him. Bobby remembered a phrase from one of his letters to his mother that he had read as censor: “It’s exciting here, and naturally I’m scared. But I guess the Japs are scared, too.” Peritonitis got him, not Japs.

  After three months, even Wisdom wore out. Stilly had to relieve him. After his relief Wisdom suddenly looked ten years younger and nobody could get him to gripe about a thing.

  We began to have disciplinary trouble. One of our gunners was a bloodthirsty kid who had had two ships sunk out from under him: the California at Pearl Harbor, and later the Seminola. He would ride on Higgins boats, carrying supplies out to the ships, a dangerous mission, just for the fun. He even fought with the Marines at the Matanikau River, to see what it was like. He lived o
n Snob Hill and one night some fellows needled him. They threw his bunk over a cliff. He got sore. He went down and picked himself out a couple of Tommy guns and Springfields and announced he was going to hold that hill against all comers. He was crazy mad. Everyone took to foxholes. Finally Charley Tufts went up and talked the guns away from him.

  CHRISTMAS Eve was one of the unhappiest nights in all our lives. A couple of fellows were out on patrol. Robbie and Nik were standing by. Suddenly Tom Kendall, one of the boys who was out, came up on the radio, “We have sighted a Jap destroyer. We’re attacking. Please send a plane from Henderson Field to check.”

  Robbie looked at his charts and said, “Nik, I’ll bet a thousand bucks they’re attacking this little island.” And he pointed to an island which we, and the fliers, too, had often mistaken for a destroyer. Nevertheless, air support had been requested, and our other boats also started out.

  Well, they had attacked the island. Then they started home. About that time the planes came out, spotted two PT’s, thought they were Japs, and began to strafe. We all screamed on the radio, but those fliers never got the word. They just attacked and attacked. Finally the boats had to fire on them to keep them off.

  Just as the fight ended, it was eight bells—midnight, and the beginning of Christmas Day. One of the boat captains said bitterly on the radio, “Boy, what a nice Christmas present we got.”

  BUT Christmas itself was wonderful. The Navy arranged to have a real turkey dinner sent to us with all the fixings, even cranberry sauce. And they brought up wads of mail; no fighting man could ask for any nicer present than mail from home.

  New Year’s Eve was pretty good fun, too. We brewed some cocktails out of medical alcohol and powdered pineapple juice. We called them Tulagi Torpedoes. They were terrible, but we got nice and high.