"Screwball and I flew across country once," Bus said in slow, clear, loud tones. "He bet me that he could sleep with a different dame in every city we stopped at."
The other officers were horrified. Such talk had never before passed current at our mess. They looked at one another. I looked at Captain Kelley. His face was ashen. He looked at his plate and crumbled a piece of toast in his left hand. There was a long silence, and then Bus spoke again. His voice was cold and gray. "And do you know..."
Captain Kelley rose from the table. His junior officers rose, too, as a compliment to their skipper. Dropping his napkin unfolded, he left the mess hall. That afternoon Bus Adams, fighter, tough guy, roustabout, was on his way north to share in the bombing of Kuralei.
FRISCO
I WAS on the LCS-108 when we hit Kuralei. I joined the small ship at Noumea and was on it nine days before we hit the beachhead. I got to know the crew pretty well.
LCS-108 was a landing craft, very small, loaded with guns. It was the smallest ship that went to the invasion under its own power. Its job was to carry an initial assault crew of twenty-five volunteers who were willing to do anything at the invasion and to do it first. This crew expected to wade ashore through three feet of water breaking on coral against an enemy-held beach. The other seventy-five men formed a heavily armed reserve unit to throw in where the fighting became thickest. The crew itself, about thirty men, were to man the antiaircraft guns and harrass the enemy with rockets.
The skipper of the 108 was an Annapolis ensign. His men truly worshipped him. "God help us if we meet a Jap battleship!" his men told me. "Cap'n will head right for it." I am sure he would have.
The exec was a young school teacher from Nevada. He was an ensign, too, as were the other two officers. The exec spoke in a high voice. One of the seamen told me, "Only difference between the skipper and the exec is that if you do wrong the skipper could knock you down. The exec just makes you feel awful small."
I think the skipper was secretly miffed at having aboard an officer senior to himself. In case of trouble, you know. But I knew nothing about ships and was, I hope, no hindrance.
We made rendezvous at D-minus-two. It was a glorious feeling. You went to bed alone on the vast ocean. In the morning you were surrounded by big important ships of the line. I relaxed. If Jap planes did break through they would surely overlook a mere spot on the ocean like us. The skipper, on the other hand, tried always to maneuver his craft so that in case of attack he could flank some big ship from a starboard torpedo. He doubled the antiaircraft watch. I don't know when he slept. He was all over the ship, his first command. I saw him in the most unlikely places.
D-minus-one brought frequent squalls. This scared us, because Jap torpedo planes like to dive through small clouds and pepper the ocean with fish. We had four alarms that day, but no Jap planes. Night fell and the storms went. We sailed under a magnificent sky, bright with stars. Then, in the distance, we saw other stars blazing in fury across the sky! The warships were at Kuralei! The bombardment was on!
We watched the fiery display for hours. Men who would work as never before when the sun came up, could not drive themselves to sleep. They clustered about the rails and guns to watch the American Navy in its first great Pacific bombardment. I tried to sleep, but could not. Once, when the noise had become familiar, I dozed off for a moment. But I was soon awakened by a tremendous dull thump. There were cries on deck, and I thought we must be hit. I hurried topside and saw an eerie sight. The Japs had hit one of our oilers. She blazed like a torch. As I watched, both fascinated and horrified by what I saw, one of our greatest battleships passed between us and the flame. For breathless moments the tremendous ship was silhouetted. Then it left the flame and so far as we could tell vanished.
The oiler burned itself out and was sunk. In hushed groups we watched new salvos strike Kuralei. But no longer were we sure that no shore fire would hit us.
Like the men on deck, I could not sleep. Yet the bombardment tired my eyes and dulled my brain. It was too massive to understand. I went below to my own bunk and found that I was simply incapable of staying there alone. Like the youngest seaman, I was assailed by thoughts that were not meant for lonely harvest.
I went forward to the crew's recreation room. I knew that I was intruding, yet I had to. The enlisted men of LCS-108 were not unpleasant to me, since I had no authority over them. In fact, I think they may even have been glad to see me. They thought I knew much more than I did.
"How many men on an oiler, sir?" they asked.
"I don't know," I replied.
"Do you think they all went down, sir?"
"There are always some survivors, aren't there?" I reasoned. "Seems to me out there would be a pretty good place, if you had to get it anyway. Look at all the ships!"
"That's right!" the men said. They nodded to one another. The thought cheered me, and I think it did the same for the men. Suddenly I felt that a strong portion of America was there to protect us during the next few days. And we, in turn, were protecting others. In the days that followed these reciprocal thoughts came back to me time and again. The sense of belonging is one of the great gifts men get in battle.
As the night wore on the exec came down. He, too, was unwilling to stay in his quarters. Men coming off watch drifted by for a drink of water and stayed. The air was heavy with smoke. As always in such Navy groups, somebody started singing. Where the deer and the antelope play... We joined in, trying to hit close harmonies and holding notes until they fairly groaned to be let loose.
A coxswain was, by nature and by talent, leader of the singing. He was a slight boy under twenty. He had a fine, Irish tenor. Before the last notes of a song had died away, he would lead forth with another. Soon, as in every songfest I attended, he started the two old favorites of all males voices. In high falsetto he sang, "I'm coming, I'm coming! For my head is hanging low." I think we sang that song at least eight times. The real singers amongst us introduced variations and trills I had not heard before. The bellowers simply hit a few notes and held them deliciously long.
Then the coxswain started the other favorite. Silent night, holy night! All is calm, all is bright. He had a fine voice for the carol and was joined by a bass who rumbled the low notes. It may seem strange that men aboard a ship about to go into action would choose to sing a German carol, a carol in fact so German that it sounds rude sung in English. Yet they did elect that song, and when they sang it, it was not German, even though more than half the men sang it in that language. Nor, in a sense, was it a religious song. It was merely a succession of glorious notes which men could hold onto with affection as if they were, indeed, memories.
Our singing was interrupted at 0230 by loud explosions. We hurried on deck in time to see a series of ammunition dumps on Kuralei go up. Spires of flame shot several hundred feet into the air, subsided, and then sprang higher. Again our ships, hundreds of them it seemed, were illuminated. Full in our path a cruiser loosed a salvo and passed into the darkness. Soon another took its place. New explosions rocked the beaches.
After some minutes we went below again. The mood for singing was gone. A heavy-set fireman who by choice was in the assault party sat next to me on the table, our feet on a bench. "I tell you, sir!" he said. "I haven't seen anything prettier than that since Market Street on a Saturday night!"
"You mean Market Street in Frisco?" a gunner's mate asked. Several men leaned forward.
"Yeah! Market Street in Frisco!" the fireman said.
"What a town!" another fireman murmured.
"You can say that again, buddy!" a seaman said approvingly.
Conversation ceased for a moment. All the men near me were thinking of Market Street in Frisco. Suddenly two men started speaking at the same time: "I remember..." one said. "It was on Market..." the second began. They laughed and each indicated that the other should speak first. The cook, whom nobody liked, broke the impasse.
"I was in Frisco four days," he said.
; "So what?" a voice inquired.
"So it was the best leave I ever had," the cook replied. "What the hell did you do in Frisco?" the voice taunted. "Pick up a soldier?"
"Nyah, to you!" the cook replied. "It was Friday. I was having a fish dinner. I looked across the aisle and there was this babe."
"What was wrong with her?" the stooge asked.
"Where that babe was wrong," the cook said, "you'd never notice it!" The stooge had no comment. Men in the recreation room leaned forward. They were interested in what happened when the cook, whom they otherwise detested, met a girl in Frisco.
"What happened, cookie?" someone asked.
"Well, this babe-and I ain't kiddin', fellows. She was just about through her dessert and there I was on me soup. It looked to me like she was givin' me the eye, but you know how it is. A smart girl. Maybe she is. Maybe she ain't. She sort of puts it up to you."
"Thass the kind I like," a drooly voice interrupted. "The kind that puts it up to you."
"Knock it off! So what happened, cookie?"
"So quick as a wink I ditches my soup and steps beside her. 'You ain't finished your dinner!' she said. 'To hell with it!' I answered right quick. I give the waiter a couple of bucks and said, 'Keep the change!' Then the waiter said, 'But the young lady's?' So I slung him another two bucks. Well, the dame really give me the eye then. She seen I was a spender."
"What you was anglin' for you could of had for two bucks," the heckler observed. "All right!" the cook said. "But this dame was class."
"Then what happened, cookie?"
"We stepped out! And brother, this dame was just what I said, class. When we went into a club or restaurant, guys like you looked up, but plenty!"
"What did she take you for, cookie?" the voice inquired. "But plenty?"
"As a matter of fact," the cook replied. "She did. I spent one hundred and eighty bucks on that dame in four days."
"Whew!" a seaman whistled.
"The hell you did, brother!" the persistent voice cried.
"So help me, I did!" the cook answered. "One hundred and eighty bucks in four days. And it was worth more to me."
"I suppose some of that was a hotel bill?" the drooly voice asked.
"Hell, no! We stayed at her place!"
"Oh, she ran a flop house!" the voice interpreted. "I told you what you got you could of had for two bucks."
"So what if I could?" the cook asked. "To me it was worth one hundred and eighty. We had taxis everywhere. Best seats everywhere. Went to two shows. Bought her some presents. Hell, I seen you guys lose a hundred and eighty bucks in one night at crap. What you got for it? Me? For my dough I had me the best time in Frisco, for four days, with a dame that was strictly class!"
The men looked at cookie. They thought of him differently now. Even the heckler grudgingly granted him a point. "You got to admit it ain't to be sneezed at," he said. That was the limit he would go in approval, but his ambiguous surrender pleased cookie. He grinned.
All this time I was aware of a rasping sound in a corner to my right. As cookie stopped speaking, I turned to see what caused the sound. "It's only Norval," a seaman said. I twisted my head farther and saw a thin, sour-faced fireman, perhaps twenty-three years old. He looked at me with that grim stare which officers see so often and which always means: "What the hell are you doing here?"
"Don't mind Norval," a chubby seaman advised.
What was supposed to be wrong with the man in the corner I never discovered. During that long, fateful night he sat in the shadows. First he sharpened his bayonet to razor edge. Then he honed an eight-inch dagger which he took from his belt. When this was done he took off his shoes, and I saw they were studded with long steel spikes. He sharpened each one of these, carefully, patiently, like a ball player who hears the opposing second baseman is a tough hombre.
All night Norval sat there. From time to time he looked up at the foolish gossips about the table. Twice he caught my eye. He glared at me contemptuously, blew breath through his nose, and returned to his scratching, raspy files. When I last saw him he was filing down the sear on his revolver, to make it fire at the slightest suggestion from his trigger finger. The steel of the sear was hard, and Norval's files made a thin, piercing sound.
"Lay off, killer!" a seaman cried.
Norval continued with his sear. He did not even look up, but the contempt of his shoulders and the toss of his head eloquently asked his old question: "What the hell are you doing here?"
"I had a swell time in Frisco," a machinist's mate said. "My wife came out with me. We had a hard time finding a room, but we finally did. Gee, we went to the zoo, and the art gallery, and the Cliff House, and just about everywhere, I guess." The room was silent. The last place in America most of these men had seen was Frisco. Their last fun was there, their last liberties. Some thought of the zoo; some remembered four movies in a row.
"A funny thing," the machinist's mate continued. "This may seem funny to some of you guys. But my wife and me decided we didn't want to have any kids till after the war. But being there in Frisco and knowing... Well, we got a little girl now. Like to see her?" At the first sign of encouragement he whipped out a picture of as undistinguished a baby as I have ever seen. Men with no children looked at the bundle, grunted, and passed it on. Fathers appraised the infant, said nothing, and handed it along.
"I spent four days in Frisco, too," a thick-voiced fireman said. "In that YMCA on the Embarcadero. I had dinner every day at Joe Di Maggio's, and got drunk every night. Boy, that was some four days! I met an Australian, and did we have a time! He got pinched, but they discharged him and told him to sober up. That night we put on a toot that you could hear in Seattle!"
"Any you boys spend much time on Grant Street?" a seaman asked. "Well, I was down there one night and picked me up a Chinese doll. What do you guys honestly think about chop-suey lovin'? You think it's all right?"
There was a heated discussion as to whether any white man should date a Chink, the question being solved when the seaman flashed the picture he had of this particular almond-eye. The photograph, taken of the girl in her night club costume, made the earlier argument purely academic.
"What did you do in Frisco?" a fireman asked me.
"I seem to have missed the fun," I said. "Got in there one night and left the next night on the Clipper."
"You flew out?" the men asked.
"Yes."
"Was it in the Mars?" they asked.
"No. Regular Clipper." The fact that I had flown out made me an authority.
"How soon do you think the war will end?" they asked.
"About four years," I said. This was greeted with silence. The men thought what four years would do to them.
"We can hope, can't we?" a wag said in sepulchral tones. "You know what they say, sir? Optimist: 'In 'Forty-five, if I'm alive.' Pessimist: 'You and me in 'Fifty-three.' Realist: 'Golden Gate in 'Forty-eight.' Damned fool: 'A bit of heaven in 'Forty-seven.' "
"I don't get it," a seaman said. "Why the damned fool?"
"Cause they won't be any heaven left in 'Forty-seven! Guys back from Europe will use it all up!" The wag slapped the table.
"You think we'll be kept out here that long, sir?"
"Somebody will be," I said.
"You think you will be?"
"Could be."
"Ain't you mad about it, sir?"
"I was at first," I admitted.
"What happened?" the men asked. They were interested. This touched them, too.
"Oh, I sort of decided that it doesn't matter much when I get back," I said. Then the closeness of battle prompted me to honesty: "I don't think that I'm going to be stopped merely because somebody else got there first. I got a lot of work to do!"
A chief petty officer looked at me. "That's exactly how I feel, sir. Boy, I got a lot to do when I get home! The longer I stay away the more certain I am I'll do it, too."
"What you gonna do?" a voice asked.
"That's my business,"
the CPO said.
"I felt that same way in Frisco," a storekeeper added. "Said to myself, This is the last look for a long while. Make the most of it.' But you know what I did?" There was a furious bombardment outside. We looked at our watches. "I just couldn't make up my mind what to do first! So I lay in my damned room till about noon each day, got up, ate some lunch, and went back to bed. I went out a couple of nights, but it was lousy. I was glad when the ship sailed."
"Me?" a yeoman asked. "Them days wasn't long enough for me. Them Frisco street cars! Boy, I bet I rode a hundred miles a day on them babies. I'd get on and ask every pretty girl I met what she was doing. Kept right on until I made contact. Different dame every day. I been to Boston, Panama, San Diego. None of them compares with Frisco for a liberty."
"Say?" a seaman interrupted. "Ain't we movin'?" We remained silent. Yes, we were moving. We were moving toward the beach. Again we looked at our watches. A head appeared in the hatchway.
"Assault party!" Norval dropped his files and leaped for the gangway. "Assault party! Prepare to land. Prepare to land!"
When the smoky room was emptied, I went on deck. In the gray twilight of D-Day the first wave was going in. Fire raked them as they hit the coral. Jap guns roared in the gray dawn. But some of them got in! They were in! And now the battleships lay silent. The airplanes withdrew. Men, human beings on two feet, men, crawling on their bellies over coral, with minds and doubtful thoughts and terrible longings... Men took over.
THE LANDING ON KURALEI
WE WOULD have captured Kuralei according to plan if it had not been for Lt. Col. Kenjuro Hyaichi. An honor graduate from California Tech, he was a likely choice for the job the Japs gave him.
As soon as our bombers started to soften up Konora, where we built the airstrip, the Jap commander on Kuralei gave Hyaichi his instructions: "Imagine that you are an American admiral. You are going to invade this island. What would you do?"
Hyaichi climbed into a plane and had the pilot take him up 12,000 feet. Below him Kuralei was like a big cashew nut. The inside bend faced north, and in its arms were two fine sandy bays. They were the likely places to land. You could see that even from the air.
Tales of the South Pacific Page 40