Time and Tide

by Thomas Fleming

  "Maybe it's more serious than that," McKay said. "Maybe he's hoping that by humiliating them this way, the war party in their government will collapse and we can negotiate peace."

  Peace. The word stirred an enormous wish for it, in all its meanings, in Arthur McKay's soul. Peace would mean that Sammy was safe, that he could devote himself to regaining Rita's love. Peace would lift the burden of the Jefferson City from his shoulders.

  "What's there to negotiate as long as Roosevelt insists on unconditional surrender?" Maher said. "You should hear what Spruance thinks of that idea."

  As they turned back toward Kwajalein, lookouts sighted smoke just over the horizon. Soon they saw it was coming from two crippled Japanese ships, a destroyer and a cruiser. In between them was a smaller patrol craft, which the destroyers' shells had left burning on the water. Spruance telephoned the Jefferson City's bridge. "Art," he said, "you and the Minneapolis will take the cruiser. The battleships will take the destroyer."

  McKay realized Spruance was looking forward for the first time in his life to a sea battle. At Midway he never saw the enemy fleet. All the destruction on both sides had been wrought by planes. He could have left these cripples to be finished off by Task Force 58's planes. But he wanted the thrill of fighting ship to ship.

  Neither McKay nor his crew shared the admiral's enthusiasm. The smoking cruiser reminded them too much of the Jefferson. City off the Aleutians. The battered destroyer brought back memories of the morning after the Friday-thirteenth night battle off Guadalcanal, when Ironbottom Sound was littered with crippled ships.

  As the New Jersey passed the sinking patrol boat, she opened fire at point-blank range with ten of her five-inch guns.

  The Japanese ship disintegrated into flaming debris. "Jesus Christ," gasped George Tombs. "That isn't war."

  "Yes it is," McKay, said.

  McKay saw two flashes of light on the destroyer's deck. "Torpedoes," he said. "Alert the lookouts. Notify the other ships."

  Tombs shouted the warning over the TBS. The New Jersey turned just in time to escape the deadly fish. A moment later, her main battery and the main battery of the Iowa fired salvos. The destroyer, game to the end, replied with her five-inch popguns for another sixty seconds. Then she crumpled into a mass of extruded burning metal as the huge shells struck her.

  Simultaneously, the Jefferson City and the Minneapolis opened fire. The Japanese cruiser's guns flashed in return, and shells straddled the Minneapolis. But within five minutes this enemy ship too was a smashed burning hulk. Her forward turret somehow fired one last round which fell a thousand yards short of the Jefferson City as she exploded and sank.

  Led by the mighty battleships, the American squadron turned away, letting the Japanese on Truk hunt for survivors, if any. From flag plot came a message. "Admiral Spruance congratulates the Jefferson City on her shooting."

  "I don't know about you," George Tombs said, "but I don't think I'll be able to eat much supper tonight."

  A weight heavier than the burden of command pressed Captain McKay's shoulders. The mixture of dismay and weariness on Tombs's honest face was part of it. Sinking a virtually defenseless ship in broad daylight at point-blank range somehow offended the feelings every sailor shared about their calling. It made them all sick of the war. But the war had its own timetable, its own malevolent life.

  In F Division, the cinch victory created uneasy feelings too. "They went down the way I'd like to go down," Boats Homewood said. "You got to admire their guts."

  "I never thought I'd hate to lay a salvo on any Jap ship," Jack Peterson said “But I guess there's a first time for everything."

  "I don't like easy wins," Boats said. "You got to pay for them later on."

  "There but for the grace of God go I," Flanagan said. "That's what you're saying. Except neither one of you bozos believes in God."

  "Hey, what do you mean," Homewood said. "Sure I believe in Him. I'm a baptized Christian."

  "The kid's right," Jack said. "We don't really believe in Him. I quit when I was sixteen."

  "I never quit," Boats insisted. "I just figure He'll take me the way I am. I take Him the same way."

  "Come to the church service tomorrow," Leo Daley said. "The chaplain wants everyone there, Catholics, Protestants, Jews. Why not atheists?"

  "What's he gonna do, ascend into heaven?" Jack Peterson asked.

  "I don't know. But I'm going," Daley said. "Even Camutti and Jablonsky are going. Why don't you come, Frank?"

  "Why not?" Flanagan said. Something had happened to the chaplain. He was giving much better sermons. He had stopped droning. He was organizing prayer groups in the deck divisions.

  At least five hundred sailors clustered on the fantail the following morning. The captain and a lot of the officers sat in the first rows. It was another beautiful sunny day. The chaplain led them in "Onward Christian Soldiers," and then read some passages from the Bible about great military victories, such as Joshua's.

  "We've got a Joshua on this ship, men," he said. "His name is Spruance and he has just demonstrated how he is going to topple the walls of the Japanese Empire with the ships and planes of the U.S. Navy. That victory over those fleeing cowards yesterday demonstrates beyond all doubt that this war has God's blessing. This ship has God's blessing too; I feel it in my heart. This ship which has endured the perils of the war and remains eager for the fray.

  "I'll tell you what I want to see now I want to see some of you declare yourselves for Jesus. I want all of you to declare for Jesus in your hearts. He's the one who'll sustain us all as we march on to victory against our despicable foes. Remember the words of the hymn. We're sailing under the cross of Jesus, just as your brothers in the Army are marching under it.

  "Is anyone willing to come forward? Will anyone offer himself as a representative of the whole crew?"

  "I will," Daley cried. "I'm a Catholic, but I believe what you're saying about Jesus."

  "What division are you from?"

  "F Division."

  "I want a witness from every division on the ship. I won't stop until we get one."

  It took another twenty minutes of exhortation, but eventually he got someone from every division. They stood in a circle around him, and Bushnell stretched his arms over their heads. "Lord," he cried, "as those rays of your sun slant down on these men, imbue them with faith in victory, faith in your loving care. Let them spread this faith among their fellows. Captain, will you join in this circle of faith?"

  Flanagan thought the expression on Captain McKay's face was less than enthusiastic. But he joined the circle of sailors and held hands with them as the chaplain made the sign of the cross over them. They sang another stanza of "Onward Christian Soldiers" and the victory service was over.

  Up in main forward, Peterson and Homewood were playing acey-deucey. "What did he say?" Peterson asked.

  "We're sailing into the fray under the cross of Jesus."

  "Christ," Homewood said.

  "That's his last name."

  Emerson Bushnell was invited to dine that evening with Captain McKay. He arrived expecting congratulations for the victory service. Instead, the captain never mentioned it. They discussed their Midwest boyhoods. The chaplain had grown up on his grandfather's farm in Illinois. The captain told the chaplain how his father had sent his mother to him at the Naval Academy with an ultimatum. If he did not leave the Academy, he was going to sell the farm while prices were high, thanks to World War I. McKay had declined to leave and his father had sold the farm and invested the money in wheat futures on the Kansas City exchange. When the war ended, the price of wheat had plummeted, and he had lost everything.

  "Maybe that's why I can't quite swallow the notion that the business of America is business," the captain said.

  For a moment the chaplain thought he was about to hear a searing personal confession. The captain loathed the capitalistic system, American greed, the exploitation of true believers such as his father.

  Instead, he
dropped the subject. "About that service this morning, Chaplain. It was all wrong."

  "What do you mean? I thought—"

  "The war isn't over, Chaplain. It's too damn soon to be celebrating God's blessing on our glorious victory. I've got a feeling it isn't going to be glorious. It's going to be a bitter, nasty, heartbreaking business just as it's been from the start. Think about solving that morale problem, Chaplain. Think about helping these men keep up their courage for a couple of more years."

  The Return Of The Invisible Man

  The thief was back. He slithered through the ship day and night, stealing with incredible effrontery. A man would take his wallet and watch to the head and leave them on the shelf above the sinks while he showered. During the ten or twenty seconds that he had soap in his eyes, they would disappear. Fire Controlman First Class Bourne, who wore a money belt, had $150 extracted from it while he slept. Even a tailor-made uniform, laid lovingly on a rack while its owner shined his shoes a few feet away, was not safe.

  Boats Homewood was in despair. He no longer issued fiery pronunciations about stopping the thief. Instead he tried to be philosophic. He said there was one on every ship and they should not let him ruin their attitude toward the Navy. Flanagan could not understand his acquiescence.

  Others were not so philosophic. Even the Bobbsey Twins, one of whom lost his second gold watch, swore they would put the thief over the side if they caught him. Flanagan, fascinated by the thief's on-again, off-again larceny, speculated on his state of mind or soul.

  "He seems to run wild whenever we fuck up in a big way," he said. "Tarawa started him again, I'd bet on it."

  "Bullshit. It's Pearl Harbor," the Radical fumed. He had lost his wallet, with a precious picture of Lenin in it, given to him by his father. "He's nothing but a fucking capitalist acting out his instincts. Stealing directly, instead of through the wage-price system."

  "He ran wild after we got our asses blown off in the Solomons," Flanagan persisted. "And when we got exiled to the Siberia Patrol. When we do something right as a ship, he's okay. It's the Navy he hates, not the Jefferson City."

  "I think he hates the whole fuckin' system," Jack Peterson said. "In the Navy and out of it. The system ain't no different outside. Big deals eatin' in expensive restaurants and the rest of us in hash houses."

  "Why does he steal from his shipmates if he doesn't hate the Jefferson City?" Daley asked.

  "We're the only game in town," Flanagan said. "I think he hates to do it. He hates himself for it. But he can't help it."

  "You are really full of shit, you know that?" the Radical said.

  "I agree," Jack said. "But it's good bullshit. He's gonna make money sellin' it some day."

  "Shit. Nobody's gonna make any money after this war. The fucking capitalist bosses are gonna be in the saddle," the Radical said. "We're gonna have a depression twice as big as the last one. Our only hope is the Russians. After they beat the Germans, they may decide to use their army to liberate the workers of the whole world."

  "Hey, I wanta be around for that scrap," Jack said. "What kind of a Navy do the Russians have?"

  "They don't have one," the Radical admitted, looking glum.

  "Ain't they gonna have some trouble gettin' an army across the Atlantic or the Pacific to liberate the workers of the U.S .A.?"

  "With the military training we've gotten, we may be able to liberate ourselves."

  "They got any thieves in Moscow?" Jack asked.

  "None. Why should the people steal anything? They own everything already."

  "You mean if we're Russians and you got a watch on your wrist, I own it?"

  "No. But you can get a watch from the government free of charge. So why steal it?"

  "Hey, that's some system. You mean there ain't no expensive restaurants, no high-priced cars? Everybody eats the same, wears the same, drives the same?"

  "Absolutely. That's what Communism is all about."

  "What about the officers in the Russian Army? Do they get paid the same as the privates?"

  "Sure."

  "Even the generals?"

  "Sure."

  "Flan," Jack said, "is any of that true?"

  "Nope," Flanagan said. "It's all bullshit."

  The Radical practically foamed at the mouth. "It isn't! It's the truth!"

  Flanagan and everyone else knew by this time that it was a waste of breath to argue with Booth about his Russian fantasies.

  "Even if you're right," Flanagan said, "I think the thief would steal in Moscow. He does it for kicks. I'm convinced of it."

  "Me too," Jack said. "The guy's a psycho. You know, he's got kleptopatra or whatever the hell it is."

  "Kleptomania?" Flanagan said. "I don't think so. They want to get caught. This guy's kick is not getting caught. He's smart as hell."

  That night as the boatswain's mate of the watch piped Lights Out and they crawled into their racks for a few hours of sleep, a scream arose from the far corner of F Division's compartment. It was the Radical. He was standing in front of his locker wailing like a blues saxophone.

  "It's all gone. Everything, He took everything!" he howled.

  The thief had cleaned out his locker. Gone was his copy of The Communist Manifesto and Stalin's Life of Lenin. Also gone were all his clothes. He had nothing left to wear but what he was standing in. It would cost him a month's salary to refit himself.

  "That settles it," the Radical cried. "The minute this war's over, I'm applying for Russian citizenship!"

  Newspaper Days

  The Dream Life of Lieutenant Flugel

  Thanks to the codebreaking skills of U.S. Naval Intelligence, this first edition of your ship's paper is privileged to bring you a series of breathtaking reports on the problems of the German Navy. Chief among them is Leutnant Otto von Himmel Flugel, commander of the garbage scow SS Grossfart.

  Irked that he was the oldest lieutenant in the German Navy (or in any other navy, for that matter) Flugel ceaselessly bombarded the Admiralty and occasionally the Fuhrer himself with plans for winning the war. He fancied himself an expert in fire control, for instance, and proposed converting the Grossfart into a secret weapon that would confound Allied radar by emanating odors so strong, antennas would warp at a single whiff.

  The only trouble was the Grossfart's odors were already warping antennas throughout the Reich. The Fuhrer could not even get the Berlin Symphony on the radio at Berchtesgaden! The Admiralty ordered Flugel another fifty miles into the North Sea and hoped he would be captured by a neutral Irish fishing boat.

  Any sane man would have committed suicide at this point, but Flugel was undiscouraged. His secret was his dream life. Each night, after spending another momentous day making sure that there was not a single wormy potato in the spud locker, Flugel retired to his cabin and had another glorious dream.

  Last week Flugel dreamt he was in command of the battleship Scharnhorst, the pocket battleship Gneisenau and the watch pocket battleship Gesundheit. Destroyers and U-boats swarmed around them, firing salutes. Down the Rhine they steamed to do battle with the American Fleet. Flugel had a plan to annihilate it, which he radioed to the Fuhrer.

  “Durribkopfl” screamed the Fuhrer. "It is the British Fleet you are fighting. The Americans are all in the Pacific. Which is where you will soon be heading, in a dinghy. What is your plan for winning the second battle of Jutland?"

  "Inwisible ships, mein Fiihrer. We don't have enough ships to win, so we must convince the British we have many more which are inwisible."

  "Brilliant, Flugel. You are hereby awarded the Iron Cross with three sauerkraut strands. How will we produce these inwisible ships?"

  "The problem is not inwisible ships, mein Fuhrer. It is inwisible sailors. How do you put wisible sailors aboard inwisible ships?"

  "I have news for you, Flugel."

  "Yes mein Mier."

  "You have just been demoted to mess steward."

  "But there are no mess stewards in the German Navy. We consider the
term humiliating to a member of the master race. We call them Geheimnitzkartofflenmeisters."

  "Then join the British Navy!"

  Even in his dreams, Klugel was a jerk.

  To improve the crew's morale, the chaplain started a ship's newspaper, The Hawthorn (named after the state flower of Missouri). Captain McKay gave it his reluctant approval, after Bushnell flourished an Alnav from Washington recommending the idea.

  Flanagan was one of the first contributors. The chaplain was somewhat hesitant about accepting his story. But Flanagan convinced him the paper needed humor if it was going to be read. He also assured him his effusion contained no references whatsoever to anyone aboard ship.

  The first edition had barely begun circulating on the way back from Truk when Lieutenant Kruger climbed the ladder to Flanagan's watch station beside his forty-millimeter gun director. He clutched a copy of the paper in his hand.

  "Did you write that?" he said, pointing to the Flugel story. "Sure," Flanagan said.

  "You son of a bitch, when I ask you a question, answer it with sir!"

  "Sure, sir," Flanagan said.

  "You want a war with me, you've got it," Kruger snarled. "You're going to be on every working party that's called out on this ship from now until the end of the war, got me? You're going to messcook every third month and you're going to need the cleanest uniform, the best-shined pair of shoes in the fucking fleet if you ever hope to make liberty. Do you read me, sailor?"

  "Yes, sir. You're going to persecute me for a harmless bit of fun, sir."

  "There's nothing harmless about it. You're trying to undermine my authority. You're a fucking subversive. If you do it to me, you'll do it to the executive officer and the captain and the admiral! You want to start a revolution on this ship!"

  "No, sir. I just want a few laughs, sir. The men are pretty discouraged, sir. We thought this raid on Truk was going to end the war, sir. Now it looks like we'll be out here for the rest of our lives, sir. Anything wrong with trying to cheer people up, sir?"

  "Plenty. When you do it this way!" Kruger yelled.

  While Kruger was raging, Flanagan slipped the switch on the mouthpiece strapped to his chest. The lieutenant's threats and insults went out over the gunnery circuit to every lookout on the ship and to anyone else who was listening in main plot and sky plot, CIC and other nerve centers.