The Hooligans

by P. T. Deutermann

  One of the skippers raised his hand with a question. “If we have that much firepower blocking this strait, what the hell are we doing there?”

  Bluto took a moment to light up a cigarette. “Well,” he said. “Our chances of actually hurting those big boys are pretty slim. But: they’re gonna come into the strait not knowing anything about what’s waiting for them. At one, two in the morning. Suddenly there’s gonna be a bunch of us spitkits roaring at them, launching torpedoes and gunning their bridge windows, which means they’ll probably have to break formation, turn left, turn right, speed up, slow down—while they swat us out of their way. And while they’re doing that and then reforming, about twenty destroyers will be coming at them from both sides of the strait, each carrying ten torpedoes.”

  “So, we’re what—the distraction?”

  “Pretty much,” Bluto replied. “And who the hell knows—sixteen boats, four fish each—one of us might get lucky. But our main objective is to rattle the hell out of ’em. If nothing else, they’ll realize that the Americans know they’re coming, and that’s not exactly gonna be confidence-building news.”

  Then he got that familiar gleam in his eyes. “This’ll probably be the last time we’re going to get to be torpedo boats and go up against something bigger than a goddamned barge. There’s a reason the whole Jap battle fleet—not their carriers, but their big gunships—have been anchored in Brunei Bay, because without air cover, they’re just targets. You heard about what the flyboys are calling the Marianas Turkey Shoot—four, five hundred Jap planes shot down in two days? Just east of here? We didn’t get their carriers, too, but it hardly matters. What’s a carrier without planes and pilots? Just another target.”

  He looked around the room, searching, I think, for any faces showing apprehension about this mission. “Listen,” he said. “Anybody doesn’t want to go out on this little adventure, come see me, no questions asked. That said, I’d personally hate to go back home one day after this war is over and admit that I bowed out of what’s probably going to be the last time in history that battleships duke it out.”

  He gave them a moment to absorb his offer, and then announced that Deacon was going to walk through the tactical arrangements, initial station assignments, comms, and the search-and-rescue plan.

  That was my signal to ease my way out of the ops hut. Bluto went back to his desk and sat down to finish his cigarette while the hut full of junior officers tried to be brave as they absorbed the enormity of the plan. The Seabees had come ashore for two days as soon as the Army infantry had pushed the Japs back five miles. The amphibious navy had figured out how to ship Quonset huts in such a fashion that the Seabees could erect them in a few hours, so now there were five huts positioned under the tree canopy along the captured Tacloban Airfield. The “Toot” was anchored offshore about a half mile away with our boats riding to boat booms on both sides. The airfield itself was ringed with 90 mm AA gun emplacements, manned by a combination of Filipino resistance fighters and Army guys. After taking Guam in the Marianas, the Navy had decided to reinstall torpedo tubes on most of the boats, since the Philippine invasion would put the whole fleet back within range of the remaining Japanese battle fleet. An ammo ship was due in the next morning to bring torpedoes to the Tutuila.

  The briefing hut was Bluto’s headquarters and, as usual, included a radio room and a place for him to sleep. Another hut provided sleeping quarters for the skippers, with the crews staying out with the boats and using Tutuila for housekeeping. The third hut was a bare-bones sick bay, where Higgins, two hospitalmen, and I hung out. We’d dealt with overflow casualties from the airfield’s medical station who needed urgent attention before being boated out to one of the two hospital ships anchored offshore, along with dozens of other support ships. MacArthur had put nearly 200,000 troops ashore over the past few days, and they had driven the Jap defenders back toward the big volcanic ridge behind the airfield. He intended to surround them with further landings to the south and north and force them into the sea on the western side of Leyte Island.

  A lot had changed since those frantic days on Cactus, which now was just a sad blood-soaked backwater almost 3,000 miles to the south. Admiral Nimitz and General MacArthur had agreed to pursue parallel advances in both the southwest Pacific areas and the so-called Central Pacific areas. MacArthur had cleaned the Japs out of New Guinea and the western parts of New Britain, home to Rabaul, where thousands of Japs were starving as the war essentially passed them by and American submarines cut off all supplies.

  The Central Pacific campaign, and what was now being called The Big Blue Fleet, had endured some of the most God-awful fighting of the war for over a year as they swept the Japs out of a series of islands whose names would reverberate down through Marine Corps history: Tarawa, Tinian, Saipan, Guam, Makin, and now, Leyte. Both claws of this vast strategic pincer were closing in on the Philippines, where victory would mean the destruction of the last really large (100,000) Japanese army deployed outside of the home islands, and, of course, it would fulfill MacArthur’s dramatic promise to return. Sometimes, when watching our own propaganda newsreels, it wasn’t clear which was the more important mission.

  I was still the MTB squadron doctor, but no longer doing much in the way of surgery. Rear Admiral Chisholm’s promise of an eventual summons to a big top one day never materialized. It wasn’t until we took Guam in July that I had finally found out why. Our squadron had been summoned to Guam after that island was declared mostly secure. We were currently based in a remote cove away from the tiny port of Agana, now the main logistical point of entry. We were employed in our usual post-landing operations, mostly inserting Marine patrols who were scouring the higher hills, looking for Jap stragglers. The Navy had set up a fairly large field hospital a few miles from the port. The Seabees were then ordered to build an actual hospital right next to it, because Guam was apparently going to become a central staging point for the two campaigns: the push on the Philippines, and a strategic bombing campaign by the B-29s against Japan itself. The Seabees had carved out a large airbase at the north end of the island for that mission. The B-29 had a combat range of 4,100 miles, and Tokyo, itself, was “only” 1,500 miles from Guam. There were even rumors that Admiral Nimitz was going to move his headquarters to Guam.

  Three weeks after the major fighting was over, I went up to that hospital. Basically, I was looking for work, not having much to do now that Guam was ours. We’d had plenty of action during the approach to the Marianas, of which Guam was a part. Now, however, we’d been told to refit and train in anticipation of going to the Philippines “soon.” As usual, nobody told the medical people very much about planned operations. Guam was where we’d learned that the boats were being refitted with torpedo tubes.

  I was surprised to find that the hospital wasn’t very busy, either. The casualties from the invasion fighting had long since been evacuated to hospital ships and then taken back to Pearl. There was a small staff at the field hospital who were busy supervising the Seabees as they constructed a real, bricks-and-mortar hospital building in anticipation of the serious fighting yet to come. Everyone understood that, as tough as the island campaign had been, an invasion of Japan itself would be quite the undertaking.

  I’d wandered around the field hospital without introducing myself. I was just another doc in khakis admiring the speed at which the Seabees were getting that building up. I finally ended up in the mess tent around lunchtime. The food on offer was an improvement from those days in the Solomons where variations on SPAM, captured Jap rice rations, and hot sauce were the only choices. I was finishing a cup of coffee when three Navy Medical Corps full commanders came into the tent, got their lunches, and sat down two tables away. Other people were wandering in and out randomly, including some dust-covered Seabees who’d discovered the mess tent. The threesome started talking about the construction project and some of the staffing problems they were anticipating. One mentioned a young surgeon they’d had to send back to the s
tates for overstepping his qualifications during the height of the fighting for Guam.

  “He was a decent-enough surgeon,” one of them said. “Although he’d only been licensed for two years before coming out here. Problem was he decided to do a major abdominal repair on his own when the protocol called for a team. One of the nurses pointed that out. He yelled at her and then proceeded, but ended up making a hash of it.”

  “The patient make it?”

  “Nope,” the first doc said. “Major bleed, not enough hands. Guy died on the table. He was pretty badly wounded, but still…”

  The third doc, who looked older than the other two, nodded. “We had a guy like that in late forty-two, back in the Solomons. I was at Nouméa, and we kept hearing stories about a third-year resident surgeon on leave from Duke Medical doing major procedures at the field hospital on Guadalcanal, and then later, over on Tulagi. Doing stuff way beyond his formal training, and the strange thing, he was apparently doing it with the approval of the local chief surgeons. Some of the surgeons began calling him Superman.”

  “So he was that good?”

  “Well, hell, I don’t know. Must have been to get that nickname, but still … Anyway, the rumors persisted, and finally, Admiral Chisholm—he was still a captain then—decided to go have a look in conjunction with a trip he was making to Cactus, New Georgia, and Munda. He took an experienced surgeon with him. They interviewed this Superman guy and then they all got caught in an air raid on the hospital. Chisholm was wounded, and the SMO there, a grouchy old-timer named Holland Fraser Whitman Garr, if you can believe it, was really beat-up. This resident guy ended up operating on both of them because the staff docs had been injured by a building collapse or something. Chisholm recovered, but Garr had to have an arm and an eye removed. He lived but later claimed the resident should never have done that, and that a more experienced cutter would have found a way around the two amputations.”

  “Well, now, that’s a tough call to make from a distance isn’t it?” one of the other doctors said. “You don’t amputate for the fun of it. This Garr guy probably had an arm hanging by its skin or the threat of gangrene. Sounds like the resident didn’t have anybody else to turn to, right?”

  “Well, yeah, and I wasn’t there, so I know I shouldn’t judge,” the older doc said. “But I remember Chisholm coming back to Nouméa after he’d recuperated from surgery at Munda. He was still convalescing when he insisted on bringing in the hospital department heads and briefing them on his various findings up at the front. One of the things on his list was that he’d taken care of the Superman problem. Said he’d blown some smoke up his ass and then told him to go back to his boat squadron and wait for his casting call, which, of course, Chisholm had no intention of ever making. He did say that the guy was a damned good surgeon, but no hospital would let the guy operate independently, and so there was no point in pulling him from his squadron.”

  “So, where’s this ‘Superman’ guy now?”

  “Who the hell knows,” the older doc said. “Garr was medically retired, which some folks thought was a blessing, and the resident is back in the medical weeds.”

  The other two docs shook their heads. Then another, older doc came in, nodded to the threesome, and walked over to the chow line. The guy who’d been telling the story nudged the other two and said, “That’s who everybody’s saying will be the CO once this hospital gets built.”

  I’d stopped listening by then, hoping that my red face wasn’t showing. But I’d finally found out why I never got the call. Chisholm, now the head honcho of Navy medicine in the Central Pacific theater, had masterfully defused my indignation at Garr’s accusations by promising he’d fix the situation. And he had—he’d put an end to my brief career as a surgeon and banished me to the sidelines, where the Navy felt the PT boats belonged anyway. We were nothing but hooligans, after all.

  I should have known, although it was possible that I’d been a bit too full of myself to not anticipate Chisholm’s decision. I wasn’t the only one pushed out of the limelight, though, as the Navy and Marines clawed their way up the Central Pacific in one bloody clash after another. The MTBs had less and less to do in terms of mixing it up with Japanese fleet units. For one thing, the Japanese fleet hadn’t been much in evidence as Nimitz’s plan to roll up their island conquests played out across the Central Pacific. Some of the landings created grotesque casualty counts, like Saipan and Tarawa, but there were no more Jap destroyers escorting reinforcement barges or trying to extract defeated garrisons from those islands. We’d participated in every one of the landings, but our mission was to do everything we could to help the grunts ashore, as opposed to going out to torpedo Jap cruisers and destroyers. It was telling that we didn’t even show up on one of these island invasions until the Marines were already ashore and grappling with an enemy that was basically trapped, having been abandoned and told to fight to the death by their commanders in Tokyo, and which is exactly what they did.

  I’d become increasingly bored with only the routine injuries and illnesses of life in the tropics to deal with. The island invasion casualties were being whisked directly to hospital ships purpose-built for the job, and I, of course, was not going to get invited aboard one of them as long as Admiral Chisholm was in charge. So, I started to go out on the boats, using the excuse that something just might happen that would require immediate medical attention. Bluto knew better, but he was, as always, amenable; I suspect he was as bored as I was with what seemed like menial missions compared to the heady days of watching battleships fight off Savo Island. I learned how to drive the boats, work out a torpedo-firing solution, interpret a radar picture, and actually operate all the various guns on board. On two occasions it turned out to be fortuitous that I was aboard when we picked up some downed naval aviators who were pretty badly injured. When we pulled alongside one of the hospital ships for transfer, and the ship’s hospitalmen came down the accommodation ladder to get them, the boat skipper told them that I was a doctor. The hospitalmen nodded politely and then got the wounded men back up the ladder. I’d often wondered after that if they’d known who I was.

  But now we were finally in the Philippines. Our trusty mother-ship Tutuila had returned with a cargo of torpedo tubes, which she then reinstalled on all the boats while we were still on Guam. Torpedo tubes had to mean that somebody, however reluctantly, anticipated that the boats were soon going to face the Imperial Japanese Navy again. We’d finally found out where and when at this morning’s briefing. It was only sixty-five miles from our shore base near Tacloban Airfield to the bottom of Leyte Island. The Southern Force was expected two nights from now, so we’d probably transit down to Panaon Island tonight. There was still the threat of Jap bombers during daylight, although the Turkey Shoot had reduced that threat significantly. I assumed Tutuila would follow us down, because we’d need fuel both before and after whatever happened in the strait.

  Higgins and I decided to transit in separate boats in case we got jumped on the way to Panaon Island. We left the two hospitalmen at our tiny sick bay hut near Tacloban. Bluto informed me that none of the skippers had taken him up on his offer to stay behind. He hadn’t given them much time to stew about it; they spent the afternoon getting their boats ready for the transit and loading food, gas, and other supplies. He’d brought them all back to the briefing hut to conduct a refresher course in how to shoot torpedoes. Higgins and I packed battle dressings, pain-control medications, and a bare-bones surgical kit. If any of these things became necessary, they’d have to find an island somewhere to put us ashore; a PT boat had no room for casualty care beyond immediate bandaging. We left just after sunset and headed south along the east coast of Leyte Island. The crew of my boat was subdued, with none of the usual going-out-on-patrol banter and jokes.

  Battleships. That was a sobering prospect.

  One of the Army sergeants who’d been helping us with truck transportation shook his head when he heard what we were going up against.

 
“You’re brave, I’ll give you that,” he said. “Not very bright, I reckon, but certainly brave.”

  TWENTY-NINE

  The transit was uneventful thanks to good atmospherics for our radars, which made navigation a lot easier. The night was black as ink and the atmosphere felt like it was loading itself up for some kind of obnoxious weather. It was the beginning of typhoon season, after all. The humidity was intense and the temperature hovered at eighty-five degrees. Our sixteen boats anchored off a little islet. Bluto set up a rotating radar watch among three boats; the rest of us got some sleep. The waters were flat calm, almost as if the sea itself knew that something momentous was about to happen.

  Tutuila showed up at dawn and immediately refueled the boats. Crews took turns going aboard our “tender” for a hot meal. Bluto called a meeting of the skippers on board at around noon. There was a message in from Halsey that his carriers had made several strikes against the Central Force and had even sunk one of the super-battleships. The rest of the force, many with bomb and torpedo damage, had been seen turning around and heading back west. We wondered if that meant we were off the hook, but then a second message came in, this time from Admiral Oldendorf, addressed to all units involved in blocking the Surigao Strait. The Southern Force had not been sighted by Halsey’s aircraft. It was possible, even probable, that they, too, had turned around, since it was supposed to be a coordinated pincer movement. Nevertheless, our big boys were moving into position across the northern end of the strait and all other units were directed to take previously assigned stations, just in case the second Jap formation was still coming on.

  Bluto then laid out his final battle plan. Two of our boats would be stationed at the southwest corner of Panaon Island as radar pickets. His command boat would take station just around the corner, on the south side of Panaon, a few miles from the pickets. All the other boats would spread out in a rough line abreast on either side of the command boat at a distance of 500 yards. When the lead ships of the Jap formation crossed a line of bearing 230 degrees true from Panaon, he would give the execute order. All the boats except his would come to full power and head in, firing torpedoes when within 2,000 yards of any suitable target.