Time and Tide

by Thomas Fleming

  "I'm not so sure of that, Commander," McKay said. "It seems to me you're railroading these men to a prison sentence without any evidence."

  "I just gave you the evidence," the commander snapped.

  "It isn't a crime to go to a party."

  "I told you the kind of party this was."

  "They claim they didn't know that."

  "They're a couple of fucking liars."

  "Maybe. But if you try to court-martial them, I intend to testify on their behalf. So will these two officers, their immediate superiors."

  The commander glared. "I don't think Admiral Nimitz will be terribly pleased if I tell him how you people are interfering with this investigation. I want to keep these men under arrest until they talk. One of them might be able to tell us what they heard from an officer whose rank would shock you if I told you what it was. He broke away from my Marines and dove into the surf. His body washed up an hour ago."

  Bert. Harold almost wept. But he was too amazed by the way the captain was defending them. It was true what Edna said, about a ship sticking together, from top to bottom. Captain McKay really cared about them simply because they were part of his crew. His men.

  "That's regrettable, and deplorable, I agree," McKay said. "But I don't see why these men should have their lives ruined because an officer was desperate enough to do a thing like that to protect his reputation. You have no right to demand them as a kind of sacrifice. As far as I can see, you don't have the evidence to convict these men of anything. It's not a crime to dance with another man. British sailors do it all the time."

  The commander gritted his teeth and stubbed out his hundredth cigarette of the night. "Okay. We'll release them. But if we obtain any evidence against them from the other prisoners, we'll rearrest them. If they get into any similar trouble, you can depend on it that your complicity will be noted, Captain."

  "Sure, Commander, sure. You're just doing your job. I understand."

  Back aboard ship, Captain McKay led them to his cabin. "All right," he said. "Let's understand each other. You two people are here under one condition. That you promise me you will never perform a homosexual act aboard this ship."

  "Captain, I never have — I swear it," Edna blubbered.

  "Me neither," Harold lied. "And I never will."

  "What you do on the beach is your business — except in Hawaii, which is under military government. But you won't have to worry about Hawaii for a while. We're sailing tomorrow."

  For Truk? For the naval battle of the century? Oh, Oscar, wherefore art thou? Harold wondered.

  No matter. He had a new love to worship from afar. His captain.

  Love Letters

  Dear Rita:

  I've spent several weeks trying to begin this letter. Now we're at sea, on the way to invade the Marshal's.

  I don't know whether we can begin again after what I've said and done to you. But I would like to try, some day.

  During these weeks of indecision, I've thought mostly about love — how hard it is to understand it — how easy it is to misunderstand it.

  I think I've always misunderstood it. Maybe it goes back to my mother, the first woman I loved. Maybe it's part of a wider misunderstanding, which afflicts the whole race of males. I don't know.

  But I do know this. For the first time I recognize the depth of your love for me. I'm afraid too often I thought of it as nagging, even as a kind of dislike. Maybe I was just too damn stubborn, too determined to be a lonely hero, making it on my own in my own perverse way. Maybe that was why I resented your advice, your concern.

  You must be wondering if I've been hit on the head by an eight-inch shell. In a way, I have. I won't tell you what happened, but I've found out you were right and I was wrong about Win at Savo Island.

  Not completely wrong, I should add. You could argue that with a different executive officer the thing would never have happened. Parker's cowardice exposed Win to a terrible temptation — and he yielded to it. You could also argue that Win's whole life had been a long tragic progression to that terrible moment.

  You can see I still love him. He's still my friend. You'll have to understand that. Some wise man wrote that to know all is to forgive all. I don't know all, but I know enough to forgive him. I also know —as he knew—that the Navy could not forgive him. Can you forgive me? Do you know enough? Do you still care enough? I hope SO.

  Your husband, Art

  Dear Barbara:

  There is no need to keep apologizing to me for not joining the WACS or the WAVES. Somebody in the country ought to be getting an education they can use after this interminable war finally ends. If it lasts much longer we'll have eight or ten million male ignoramuses on our hands who don't know how to do anything but shoot guns. We'll need some educated women around.

  Most of the time, Bobbie, I've tried to stay out of the fights you have with your mother. That was probably a mistake. But women have mystified and confused me from birth. It may have something to do with having three older sisters. I sort of instinctively keep my distance from the female world for fear of being overwhelmed. Now I'm issuing an urgent recommendation that you sign a treaty of peace with your mother. She could use some support from a loving daughter. She and I have had a profound disagreement, in which I behaved pretty badly. I won't go into details, but we came close to breaking up. I'm trying to repair the damage, but in the meantime (or if in the long run I fail) I wish you'd let Rita know you want to help. She's very proud and fancies she's as tough as any son of a seacook who ever walked up a gangplank, so it won't be easy. But if you can do the job, you will have made a lot bigger contribution to my personal war effort than you could ever make banging a typewriter in uniform.

  With much love, Dad

  Dear Martha:

  We're pulling out of Pearl tomorrow. I can't tell you where we're going, naturally, but it's going to be big. I keep thinking about you all the time.

  Flanagan was reading a poem to me the other day. The guy's getting queerer by the minute, with this poetry stuff. Anyway, it was about the Lady of the Lake. I said to him, Hey, Martha's my Lady of the Sound. I mean Puget Sound. It's not very poetic. Flanagan, the snob, turned up his nose at it.

  Hawaii was a bore as usual. We spent most of our time swimming and drinking beer. I got a sunburn like you can't believe. If only you were around to rub some Unguentine on it. I'd rub some on you and you know what would happen next.

  Jesus what a difference you've made in my life! I'm so different, I'm thinking of changing my name. How would you like to be Mrs. Roland Effingham. Or Mrs. Wilbur St. John? Or Mrs. Theodore Van Pelt? Seriously, I might want to change my name because I'm beginning to think I'll blow the Navy and try to get into something legit, like the movies. Would you like a little forty-six-room place in Beverly Hills? Stick with Jack. I'm sticking with you, Baby.

  Jack

  Dear Gwen:

  I've been racking my brain for some way to get you to Honolulu and now it's too late. We're off to see the Wizard again. I was ecstatic to hear you'd gotten a small part in Preston Sturges's next film. He's the most talented director in Hollywood and you are perfectly suited to his kind of comedy.

  If I get out of this thing in one piece, I'm beginning to think I'd like to direct instead of act. Maybe I'm just tired of taking orders and I'd like to give a few. Not to you, though. You're much too hotheaded.

  At the moment, the idea of having another life beyond the war is as fanciful as another life beyond the grave. I spent most of my time in Hawaii going to a school for CIC officers. They're giving us more and more responsibility. Too bad some rank doesn't go with it.

  Naturally, the rest of the ship takes a dim view of my overweening power. Recently Mullenoe put out the word that CIC stands for Christ I'm confused. I retaliated by announcing plans to take over the navigator's duties. I might throw in a little night work as engineering officer on the side.

  The captain has gone through some sort of a sea change. After being in the most
tremendous funk for six months or so after that story about Parker got out, he is now as serene and smiling as he was when he first came aboard. It's put everybody in a good mood. I even saw Kruger smiling the other day.

  Thank God you're a Navy brat! Otherwise this ship gossip would be a total bore. Or is it anyway?

  Your inveterate sailor, Sinbad

  Dear Dad:

  Mom tells me you're really feeling on the bum since you retired. I'm sorry to hear it. Maybe you ought to look at the bright side. You're young enough to start a new career and you don't have to overwork, with your pension coming in regularly.

  Still I guess you miss the cops. there are a lot of guys on the ship like my boatswain who'd miss the Navy if they got out of it. So I understand a little of how you feel.

  Don't worry about me. We've got a good crew on this ship. We can handle anything the Japs throw at us.

  Love,

  Frank

  Dear Anna:

  I keep wishing we'd get close to Australia and then strip a bearing in a turbine and limp to Sydney for repairs. I passed my water-tender's second class test last week, so I shouldn't be talking this way. I'm a rated man—with responsibilities. Now I've got a striker I'm supposed to be teaching, the way Amos Cartwright taught me. He's kind of a dumb goy but willing to learn.

  I really like teaching. That must be your influence. I'm struggling with some of those German books you sent me. Ye gods, they're skullbreakers. I don't know what the hell Thomas Mann is talking about most of the time. So write me long letters explaining it all, will you? Consider me your culture-striker.

  I'm glad you've made a little progress with the authorities on behalf of your aborigines. What an impression they made on Amos! They really spooked him. He said they made him feel he was in touch with the creation of the world. He loved their idea about everyone living forever in the dreamtime. I hope that's where he is right now.

  We're going into action again. Everyone is hoping this is the last time around. I doubt it. We've been looking for one big battle to end it all ever since we came out here. The Japs won't oblige.

  Your wandering Jew, Marty

  Onward Christian Sailors

  "From now on," Officer of the Deck Lieutenant Wilson Selvage MacComber said, "it's going to be a rout."

  "I hope you're right," Captain McKay said.

  Around them steamed an awesome array known as Task Force 58—six heavy aircraft carriers and six light carriers with over seven hundred planes on their hangar decks, eight battleships, six cruisers and thirty-six destroyers. Just ahead were two of the battleships, the recently launched Missouri and New Jersey. Long streamlined monsters, without a trace of the old battleships' squat gun-platform look, they were capable of hitting thirty-two knots—as fast as any carrier or cruiser. America's productive might was giving the Navy overwhelming superiority in the sky and on the sea.

  Behind them lay another conquest—Kwajalein, the key to the Marshall Islands. It had been captured with amazingly light casualties. Admiral Kelly Turner had applied the bitter lessons learned at Tarawa. For three days, instead of for three hours, this awesome fleet had pounded the Japanese with an incessant rain of shells. The task force's seven hundred planes had dropped additional tons of bombs, and land-based planes flying from Tarawa had added still more destruction. The dazed, decimated Japanese defenders had offered little more than token resistance.

  At this very moment, planes from the carriers were swarming over the great Japanese naval base of Truk, 660 miles southwest of the Marshalls. The battleships and cruisers and destroyers had their turret hoists and handling rooms loaded with armor-piercing shells for the Combined Fleet if they came out to fight. Among the crew, tension ran high. Jack Peterson spun the main battery director back and forth like a dervish. He was sure the decisive battle he had been predicting ever since they had sailed from Long Beach was looming just over the horizon.

  The Jefferson City's CIC radio carried transmissions from the pilots as they argued and kidded with each other about targets and anti-aircraft fire over Truk.

  "You mean those itty-bitty boats down there are warships?"

  "Cut the crap! This is serious business. Those guys are shooting at us!"

  "They are? I thought those puffs all around us were firecrackers for Hirohito's birthday party. Isn't that what we came for?"

  "Eeny meeny miney mo, I just hit a cruiser on the toe."

  Montgomery West tried to keep score on what the pilots claimed they hit. If they were even half right, the Japanese fleet had been wiped out. When he reported this news to Captain. McKay, he grunted skeptically. "Everything looks like a hit to those guys. And every ship looks like a battleship. They're not as bad as the Army boys, but they're cousins under the skin. Check with the admiral's staff for the real score.

  From the Jefferson City's mainmast fluttered the four-star flag of Admiral Raymond. Spruance. Having an admiral aboard complicated life for everyone. Room had to be found for his staff in Officers' Country. The Jefferson City's CIC was sliced in half to create a flag plotting room, where. Spruance and his staff worked. Flag signalmen took over the. Jefferson City's halyards, and flag radiomen commandeered a large chunk of the radio room. Spruance occupied a stateroom reserved for such starry visitors, directly behind the flag bridge.

  "Admiral Icicle" was the nickname the crew quickly chose for the lean severe Spruance. Not that Spruance ever said a word to any of them. He regarded himself as strictly a passenger aboard Captain McKay's ship. But the crew had a chance to study him for two hours each afternoon when the forecastle was cleared by the Marine detachment and Spruance walked briskly up and down, accompanied by one or two of his staff officers.

  Spruance's choice of the Jefferson City for his flagship baffled McKay at first. As Nimitz's chief of staff for the previous year, Spruance obviously knew all about the travails of Captain McKay and the ship. McKay had been one of his students at the Naval War College in 1938, when Spruance was the second-ranking professor on the faculty. But. McKay, as shy as Spruance himself, had not become close to this taciturn man. Had Spruance been ordered by Admiral King to get enough evidence against Captain McKay to send him home in disgrace?

  McKay soon discovered that Spruance disliked Fleet Admiral Ernest J. King at least as much as he assumed McKay did. Spruance's chief of staff, Captain. Byron Maher, was a victim of King's SOB style. A chunky, balding man with the mournful eyes of an abused beagle, Maher had been one of the brighter members of the class of 1917. Given a cruiser when the war broke out, he had run it aground off Hawaii. King had relieved him and vowed he would never get another ship and would never be promoted to admiral. Cominch ignored Spruance's repeated recommendations to make Maher a rear admiral.

  Inevitably, this bond of animosity — and Spruance's recollections of McKay as one of his better students at the Naval War College — led to an invitation. "Art," Byron Maher said, "the admiral wonders if you'd like to join us for a walk this afternoon."

  "I'll be delighted."

  Spruance liked to talk while he strolled. That afternoon he discoursed on the strategy of the war as it was evolving in Washington and Pearl Harbor. He was not happy with it. "We're spending as much time and energy brawling with each other as we are fighting the Japanese," the admiral said.

  "MacArthur wants to invade the Philippines, which will take a good year to capture. He wants to rescue the reputation he lost there in 1941. He should have been court-martialed and retired for losing them in the first place. That fiasco was worse than any mistakes made at Pearl Harbor. King is furious with MacArthur for stealing an entire fleet from him. He wants to invade Formosa, but he can't get enough troops out of the Army or the Marines to do it. The Army Air Force says they can bomb Japan to its knees if we get them bases in the Marianas. What do you think, Art?"

  "Why take any more islands? Why not sail this fleet into Japan's home waters and force their fleet to come out and fight? We win and Japan has no choice but surrender."
r />   "I've already gotten that recommendation from a half dozen aviators," Spruance said, using his term for the carrier admirals. Spruance was still a battleship man, even though carrier planes had won the battle of Midway for him. "What makes you think the Japanese Fleet will come out and fight if they don't think they can win? We don't have the oilers, the ammunition ships, to maintain a fleet this big at sea for a long period of time. And we'd be very vulnerable to their land-based planes."

  McKay sighed. For a moment he was back at the War College, squirming while Captain Spruance urged him to think harder about his estimate of the situation. "It's going to get tougher and tougher to take these islands. From now on, they'll know exactly where we're going."

  "I know," Spruance said. "Kwajalein was a fluke."

  "Maybe we can decide it all at Truk."

  Spruance shook his head. "The aviators got very few capital ships. Mostly auxiliaries. The main fleet was gone before we got there. Maybe we can do a little hunting tomorrow. Tell your gunnery officer to make sure his boys are ready to shoot."

  That was typical Spruance. He treated his staff the same way, as Byron Maher was wont to complain to his classmate McKay. "He'll discuss grand strategy by the hour. But if you want to find out what he plans to do tomorrow, you have to be a mind reader."

  The next day, the carriers launched another strike at Truk. Spruance detached the battleships New Jersey and Iowa, cruisers Jefferson City and Minneapolis, and four destroyers. The heavies steamed in line of battle column, the destroyers scurrying ahead through the placid seas. Soon they were opposite the northern entrance to Truk Lagoon. Inside they could see dark green cone-shaped islands, rising to a height of fifteen hundred feet. Spruance ordered a countermarch, and the American squadron proceeded to plow past the entrance from the opposite direction.

  No one could figure out what the admiral had in mind. McKay invited Byron Maher up to the bridge and asked his opinion. "I think he's just enjoying himself. He's thumbing his nose at the Japs," Maher said. "Imagine how we would have felt if Yamamoto did this sort of thing off Pearl Harbor on December eighth, 1941?"