by Larry Colton
Tim stepped onto the deck, the warm tropical night air filling his lungs. He glanced at his crewmates. Standing nearby were Chuck Vervalin, Bob Palmer, and Gordy Cox, three young men he barely knew, all shirtless, all sucking in the fresh air. None of them knew anything about the others’ love life or home life or religion. But now, in the middle of a moonlit sea thousands of miles from home, they were together, more scared than they’d ever been. Their ship was dead in the water, deep in Japanese territory, and they all knew that with daylight would come the enemy.
Part Four
CAPTURED
13
Chuck Vervalin
USS Grenadier
The Grenadier lay dead on the ocean surface; only the slightest breeze blew across the Strait of Malacca. Standing on the deck, Mechanic’s First Mate Chuck Vervalin and the rest of the crew were drenched in sweat from the fifteen-hour ordeal in submarine hell at the bottom of the ocean. The coast of Malaysia lay a dozen miles to the east, but it might as well have been a thousand miles away.
By Captain Fitzgerald’s calculations, they had eight hours of darkness to try to restore power to the ship and escape to safer waters. Luckily, there had been no destroyer or escort ship assigned to the merchant ships, but most likely other enemy ships would be in the area, or planes patrolling from a nearby base. In the morning, the Grenadier would be a sitting duck. Fitzgerald ordered the crew to gather around him.
“Men, it looks like I’ve got us in a hell of a mess,” he said.
Indeed, he had made two crucial errors: he had not retreated to safer waters after they’d been spotted and he had surfaced in daylight. But nobody on the crew was blaming him.
The first order of business was clearing the ship of smoke by opening all the vents and using the engines to help suction it out. The second task was readying the ship for a possible battle. The ship’s biggest deck armament, a 3-inch gun, had been knocked out of commission by the initial blast, but the 20mm gun was still operative. Below deck there were approximately twenty rifles, plus several handguns.
“Bring up all the guns,” Fitzgerald ordered. “We’ll need all the help we can get.”
Chuck brought up a Browning automatic rifle. He’d been a great shot growing up and scored high in marksmanship at Submarine School, but this rifle was nothing like the one he’d used to hunt squirrel for the family’s dinner back in New York.
On deck, Fitzgerald watched the sub’s slow drift and its wide, phosphorescent wake. He heard the sound of the diesels, barely rumbling, echoing forward in the calm night. And he heard the soft silence of the bow wave, telling him what he already knew: his ship had little chance of regaining power.
Efforts continued to fix the ship’s radio; without a working radio, there was no way to send out an SOS. Its transmitter had been severely damaged in the initial blast from the torpedo. The subsequent electrical fires had shorted out the receiver. Still, hope persisted that the radio could be repaired.
All the frames from the engine room through to the aft torpedo room were badly bent inward. The torpedo hatches were damaged, the gaskets so badly cut that Fitzgerald could slip his hand all the way between the knife edge and the hatch cover. All the hydraulic lines to the tubes, vents, and steering mechanism were ruptured. One of the mechanic’s mates, Bernie Witzke, a rangy nineteen-year-old from Saint Paul, Minnesota, looked like he’d slept in a vat of axle grease.
In the mess hall the shock of the explosion had knocked dishes and phonograph records to the deck, shattering most of them. Chuck knelt down and sifted through the pieces, shaking his head to discover that all of his favorites—Armstrong, Ellington, Crosby, Goodman—were broken. He found a Victrola submerged in the sink. He sat on a bench, the sweat rolling, drips trickling from his nose, a pool of perspiration collecting in his shoes.
The cook had made sandwiches and coffee for the crew, but few of the men were eating, too consumed with repair tasks to think about food. Chuck hadn’t been thinking about eating either, but when he walked by the table and saw a big can of peaches, he grabbed a soupspoon and dove in, the sweet thick syrup soothing his parched throat. Most of the smoke had been purged from the sub, but the intensity of the heat and toxic air had taken its toll, many of the men going about their business in a semi-dazed state, many still coughing.
If all efforts failed to get the engines started again and the screws turning, Fitzgerald’s Plan B was to cobble together a set of sails and rig them to the periscope shears. They would hope to catch a trade wind and ride it to nearby Pilgrim Island or to the Malaysian shore. Once there he could disembark the crew and blow up the ship. Even though Japanese forces had captured Malaysia, it was possible that the crew could find sympathetic Malaysians to provide them refuge until a rescue could be organized. Or, if they couldn’t make it to land, maybe they could sail to one of the sampans in the distance and commandeer it to shuttle the men to land.
Efforts to repair the radio failed. Whatever was going to happen to them, nobody would know.
Fitzgerald remained on the bridge for several hours, awake through the changing watches. At 2:30 a.m. he toured the boat, stopping in the engine room to offer encouragement. Returning to the deck, he cast a lonely figure, his granite jaw set, his slate gray eyes relentlessly studying the sea.
Chuck knew that if the ship was to escape, the engines needed to be able to turn the shafts. Normally, it took only 450 amps to get it done. Finally, after several hours of hot, sweaty labor, they got one shaft to turn, but only barely, and it took 2,750 amps to accomplish that. The shafts had been bent too badly.
At 0400, the bone-weary engineering officers and electricians reported to Fitzgerald on the bridge. “Everything possible has been done to reestablish propulsion,” reported Lieutenant Al Toulon. “I believe there’s nothing further we can do.”
“Pass the word for all hands on watch to start rigging a sail,” replied Fitzgerald. “On the double.”
14
Bob Palmer
USS Grenadier
Bob sat in the forward torpedo room; he had a gash on his forehead and dried blood smeared his face. He’d helped gather canvas from all parts of the ship—mattress covers, tarpaulin from spare parts, torpedo covers, seat covering—and now he was part of the team assigned to cut and fit these pieces into a sail. Half the men snipped, the others sewed. Bob was on the sewing team; he had learned to handle a needle and thread as a boy, mending holes in his socks and britches.
“Skipper’s ready to try rigging a sail,” someone yelled.
“This could work,” Bob said, holding the makeshift sail aloft.
As he helped carry the sail up to the deck, he coughed, still trying to clear his lungs. Dawn was breaking. The air was motionless, the sea like molten glass. Bob licked his finger and held it skyward into the gray-black morning, feeling nothing more than the slight chill of the waning night. When the sun came up, he hoped, so too would a breeze.
Captain Fitzgerald was on the bridge, perched on a jump seat behind the conning tower, staring down over the bow at the work party of sailors stringing up the sail along the lower guy wires to the antenna trunk. The patchwork sail was unlike anything he had seen when he was sailing in Chesapeake Bay as captain of the Naval Academy’s sailing team.
But there was no wind and the sail hung limp. For the next two hours, as the sun came up, the sail would catch an occasional puff of wind, then go slack again. By 0800, all hopes of riding the wind to shore were abandoned.
Fitzgerald began to consider the unthinkable, the last choice any captain wants to make—to abandon ship. His thoughts were interrupted by one of his lookouts: “Enemy ship approaching from the northwest. Looks like a destroyer or a light cruiser.”
Captain Fitzgerald quickly gathered the entire crew on the forward deck and pointed toward the approaching ship, now about five miles to the northwest. He began to choke back tears. “I’m sorry for this mess,” he said. “I just hope I can get us out of it.”
The men
were silent.
By Bob’s figuring, the captain had two options. The first was to take the Grenadier back down again, with the crew on board. If he did that, it was highly unlikely he could get it back up.
The second option was to abandon ship. If they did that, the ship would fall into enemy hands; it would be the first American submarine ever captured. Neither Bob nor anyone else on the crew had received any training on what to do if forced to abandon ship—or if captured by the enemy.
“I want all important documents and papers destroyed, including all Australian money,” said Fitzgerald. “We can’t let the Japs know where our home port is. Destroy any equipment that could help them.”
Bob hurried down the hatch, opening his footlocker and duffel bag, making sure to remove all his money, which wasn’t much. A couple of officers weren’t so lucky. A few nights earlier, Lieutenant George Whiting had won $800 in a poker game, but he had to stuff it in a bag to go overboard. It was the same fate for the $400 hidden inside a flashlight that Lieutenant Toulon, an Annapolis grad, had won in a cribbage game.
Bob fought the temptation to stuff his pockets with mementos. He picked up a framed photo of Barbara, gave it a kiss, and set it on top of the bunk.
Bob turned, distracted by what was going on behind him. Several of the men were passing a flask. Bob assumed it was Pink Lady. It dawned on him that these men passing the flask back and forth would most likely be drunk when they had to abandon ship.
Chuck picked up the pillow on his cot and gently placed his watch under it in the middle, then set a picture of his parents to the left of it, a photo of Gwen to the right. Then he covered his little shrine back up with the pillow, giving it a pat as he turned and headed back up on deck.
Bob entered his yeoman’s cubicle and began frantically stuffing paper into a duffel bag: the ship’s logs and records of the ship’s patrols, targets, torpedoes fired, fuel intake, mechanical repairs—all data the enemy would definitely want. As the ship’s yeoman, Bob had compiled this data. Now it was his job to destroy it.
Lieutenant Kevin Hardy was also stuffing the ship’s documents into a mailbag. To help it sink, he jammed rocks into the bag. The rocks were originally brought on board to weigh down bags of garbage thrown overboard during the patrol so the sub wouldn’t leave traces of where they’d been. Bob put rocks in his bag too, and he and Hardy both cut air holes in the bags to help them sink.
With all hands on deck, Captain Fitzgerald stayed below, cradling a submachine gun. Making sure nobody was still down, he opened fire on vital equipment—radar, coding machine, cryptograph machine—anything he thought could give the enemy useful information. Bullets and shredded parts flew in every direction. When he was satisfied enough damage had been done, he headed up to the deck.
15
Tim “Skeeter” McCoy
USS Grenadier
Tim picked up a framed photo of his new fiancée, the red-haired Miss Perth, and put the photo on a bunk. Then he headed to the deck. With everybody and everything cleared out from below, Fitzgerald surveyed the situation on deck. The bags of data, money, and everything else that could betray their origin had been thrown overboard, destined for the ocean floor. To the northwest, the Japanese ship was still bearing down on them, although lookouts now recognized that it was not a destroyer or light cruiser, as they had first thought, but some sort of merchant ship.
To the starboard side, Tim noticed one of the bags with the ship’s documents just bobbing like a cork in the water. It had floated too far from the ship to reach from the deck.
“Somebody’s got to go out there and bring it back,” said Fitzgerald.
“What about sharks?” someone asked.
Tim stepped forward. “I’ll do it.”
That Tim was the first to volunteer didn’t surprise anyone. In his short time on the Grenadier, he had already gained a reputation as the first to run his mouth and the last to back down. He dove into the water and started swimming. Neither he nor anyone else on board had seen the sea snakes swimming nearby. Poisonous sea snakes.
It took him a minute to reach the bag. From his spot in the water, he could still see the sub, but not the enemy ship in the distance. Pushing the bag in front of him, he turned and headed back toward the sub.
Halfway there he glanced to his left and spotted one of the snakes, five feet long and swimming parallel to him. He grabbed the bag, trying to shield himself. The snake moved closer.
Tim didn’t know that sea snakes are air breathers and that although they can swim under the surface, they must come to the top for air. Mostly, they inhabit tropical waters and feed primarily on fish. Although not normally aggressive toward swimmers, they will attack if provoked, their hinged mouths able to open as wide as a man’s thigh. Unless treated with anti-venom, their bites can often be deadly. Frantically, Tim continued swimming toward the ship, the bag still with him.
The men on deck watched helplessly, one eye on their crewmate, the other on the Japanese ship. Several of the men held rifles brought up from below deck; two had machine guns, but no one wanted to risk a shot with Tim and the snake swimming too close together. Then, without saying a word, Second Mate George Stauber, the lookout who had first spotted the dive-bomber and yelled out the warning to the captain, stepped toward the edge of the ship, a pistol holstered at his side. Raised in Ohio, he had scored high marks at the shooting range.
He drew his six-shooter from his holster, extended his arm, and without seeming to aim, fired at the sea snake. It was a perfect shot, hitting the snake right in the head, blowing it to pieces. A few seconds later, Tim scrambled out of the water and back onto the ship, tossing the mailbag onto the deck. More weight and more holes were added and it was thrown back into the water, where it sank immediately.
“Jap plane coming out of the northwest!” yelled Bernie Witzke.
Everyone turned to look, and there, about a mile away, another Japanese dive-bomber was coming right at them. Tim spotted the two 100-kilogram bombs tucked under its wings. The Grenadier was a sitting duck.
Tim scrambled for cover behind the conning tower while the gunners took their position at the 20mm. The men with rifles and machine guns crouched into position. “Hold your fire until he’s closer,” ordered Captain Fitzgerald.
The single-engine plane swooped in, taking a run up the port side. When it was a quarter mile away and at 65 degrees elevation, Fitzgerald thundered the word for the two 20mm and two .30-caliber machine guns to open fire. A solid wall of fire erupted from the sub’s deck, tracers streaking across the bright morning sky. The plane fired back. Tim heard the sound of bullets ricocheting off the deck and the clinking of bullets hitting the plane.
Chuck swung his rifle into position. He’d shot a lot of rabbits and squirrels as a kid, so he knew he needed to aim in front of the plane. He fired, the gun’s report echoing a foot from Bernie Witzke’s head. “Hit the goddamn Jap, not me,” yelled Bernie.
Chuck fired again. The plane was low and close enough that he could see the pilot’s face. With so much fire bursting from the deck, he couldn’t be sure if his shots scored a hit. He glanced up toward the conning tower, where Captain Fitzpatrick was firing away with his pistol like a gunslinger.
The plane suddenly pulled its nose up sharply and changed course to the left, going around the stern to get into position for a run on the Grenadier’s port side. The gunners all held their fire until the plane was close enough again, then let loose with another fusillade, the machine guns wildly blasting away.
“He’s dropping his bombs,” Tim shouted.
Standing nearby, Lieutenant Toulon quickly surveyed the trajectory. “They’re going to miss, they’re going to miss,” he yelled.
The bombs drifted over the ship and exploded 200 yards off the Grenadier’s starboard side. The plane wobbled momentarily, then veered to the left, heading toward land. Fitzgerald ordered the men to cease firing.
Tim took a deep breath. The Japanese ship was still bearing down o
n them.
Fitzgerald ordered the men below deck one more time, instructing them to bring up as many mattresses as possible and toss them over the side. Tim wondered why, but did as instructed. Grabbing one end of a mattress, he glanced over and saw Bob Palmer furtively pull a bottle of pills out of his duffel bag and stick it in his pocket. Maybe it was for some kind of allergy, thought Tim.
With the mattresses in the water, Fitzgerald gathered the men around him again. He glanced at the approaching ship, then at the faces of his men, many of them, including Tim, still not old enough to vote.
“Prepare to abandon ship,” Fitzgerald instructed, voice cracking.
The last order of business was to pass out the life preservers—belts that fit around the waist and inflated when the cord was pulled. With not enough to go around, the stronger swimmers were instructed to go without. Tim didn’t take one. The rifles that had been brought up on deck and used to fire at the plane were thrown into the water.
As Tim and the rest of the crew prepared to jump overboard, Fitzgerald ordered Chief of Boat Whiting below deck to open the vents. Down below, Whiting first hurried into the officers’ quarters and found a Victrola and a stack of records that had not been damaged. He hustled to the ship’s PA system and pulled a record out of one of the sleeves, then set it on the turntable.
Upstairs, as the men readied themselves to go overboard, they heard the music—Glenn Miller’s theme song, “Moonlight Serenade.”
Tim remembered he and Valma had listened to that song the first night that they met in Perth, and the exhilarating rush he felt at having just met someone so beautiful.
He crouched, ready to jump overboard.
16
Gordy Cox
USS Grenadier
On his last trip below deck, Gordy pulled two pearl-handled knives from his footlocker. He’d bought them in Borneo when the Sculpin stopped to refuel after fleeing the Philippines. He also pulled out a ring his mother had given him for good luck when he left home in Yakima. Reluctantly, he tossed the ring and knives back into the footlocker and climbed up to the deck.