“When this war is over she’ll probably go with him to some God-forsaken submarine base out in the Pacific,” the President said. “You keep your hands off my officers, Frank! I don’t want you seducing them with offers of good jobs!”
Later, at the Navy Department, a gray-haired Chief Yeoman, who wore the silver dolphins of the qualified submarine man on the breast of his jacket, took them into his small office and seated them in hard chairs in front of his desk. Hinman noted the six diagonal gold stripes on his left sleeve, “hash marks,” each standing for four years of honorable service. He made a guess that the Chief was on shore duty because of his age and length of service.
The Chief Yeoman was succinct. No, Lieutenant Richards now Lieutenant Hinman, could not be assigned to Pearl Harbor in any capacity. WAVES did not serve outside of the continental limit of the United States. Sorry about that, sir.
Yes, Lieutenant Commander Hinman’s promised thirty-day leave had been canceled. Captain Rudd’s orders were quite specific: Lieut. Comdr. Arthur Hinman would report to Pearl Harbor at once for reassignment. And then the Chief Yeoman had turned and looked out of his office window for a long moment.
“Sir,” he said, turning back to face Hinman and Joan, “as of today the aircraft assigned to you for the War Bond tour has been returned to regular duty.
“I can offer you a courier flight to the West Coast where you will have to wait seven days for a flight out to Pearl. I cannot offer that to Lieutenant Hinman, sir, there is no room on this flight, which leaves in one hour from now.
“Or, if you have to see other people here at the Navy Department and cannot make that flight all I can do is to offer you a courier flight to Chicago that leaves at fifteen hundred hours this afternoon. You will have to find something to do in Chicago for six days, sir; a courier flight will leave from Chicago six days from now for the West Coast, arriving in time to connect with the flight to Pearl.” He looked down at his desk. “There is room on that flight for Lieutenant Hinman, who will be assigned to duty from Mare Island Navy Yard, sir.” He looked away again, his hand resting lightly on Joan Richards’ service jacket, which was lying on his desk.
“I had to make the entry of marriage in Lieutenant Richards’ service jacket, sir. I noticed that her place of residence before enlistment is Chicago.”
“Do I understand that there is room on the fifteen hundred flight to Chicago for Lieutenant Richards?” Hinman asked.
“Yes, sir, there is.”
“I do want to see some people here,” Hinman said slowly. “I don’t see how I can do that and still pack and make that flight to the West Coast in one hour.”
“I can understand that, sir. Very hard to do.”
“Is it possible to get orders cut to ride that courier flight to Chicago?” Hinman kept his voice neutral.
The Chief Yeoman opened his desk drawer and took out two thick envelopes. “Here are your orders and Lieutenant Hinman’s orders for the courier flight to Chicago, sir, and for the flight from Chicago to the West Coast and your orders for Pearl. Lieutenant Hinman’s orders to report to Mare Island Navy Yard for assignment are included in the Lieutenant’s orders.”
He grinned. “Appreciate .what you said to that dope out in L.A., sir. We’ve got quite a few of that kind here in Washington. They’ve been pretty quiet since you sounded off!”
“You’re a good man, Chief,” Hinman said. “Do you miss the Boats?”
“Yes, sir, I do. I had to put in for shore duty four years ago. My wife had a bad heart attack. Hell of a place for a submariner to be, in an office ashore. My battle station used to be the bow planes.” His face became wistful. “I was a very good bow planesman, if I do say it as shouldn’t.”
“I’m sure you were,” Hinman said.
The Chief Yeoman stood up in back of his desk. “I don’t want to keep you from your appointments, sir.” He grinned. “Have a good honeymoon!”
“Are all submarine men like that?” Joan said to Hinman as they walked down the hall of the Navy Department building. “I mean, that whole thing was like a charade! He had the orders cut all along, in his desk!”
“I know,” Hinman said. “But you have to follow the rules, you know. Are all submariners like that? Pretty much so. They take care of each other, they stick together. It’s a camaraderie you won’t find anywhere else in the service except maybe in the aviation branches. Have we got a place to stay in Chicago?”
“Any hotel will do,” she said happily, squeezing his arm. “I’ve got to store up enough memories of you to last me until I see you again!”
Captain Bob Rudd met Hinman at the airport in Pearl Harbor. Hinman nodded at the gold eagles that were pinned to Rudd’s shirt collar tabs.
“On you they look good, sir. Congratulations.”
“War is no respecter of ability, Art,” Rudd said. “They make anyone who’s alive and breathing a Captain. Or an Admiral. Severn got his big stripe. He’s gone back to Washington after some quote unquote well-earned leave. I’ve got his job. How about that, hey?”
“I want a ship, sir,” Hinman said. “With all due respect, I want a ship and the sooner the better!”
“We have to talk about that,” Rudd said. “Later. Right now there’s something I want you to see before we talk about giving you a ship. Things aren’t like they used to be, you know.” He motioned to his driver who opened the rear door of the Staff car.
“Son,” Rudd said, “take us to where I told you to take us.” The car stopped at the land end of a pier in the Submarine Base and the car’s driver half-turned in his seat.
“Can’t go down on the pier, Captain. That sign warns us off. Cranes are working down there, sir.”
“We’ll walk,” Rudd said. He got out of the car and with Hinman walked down the length of the pier to where two cranes were trying to pull the periscope out of a submarine. Hinman looked at the faded number painted on the submarine’s battered Conning Tower.
“My God, it’s Mako!”
“Yup,” Rudd said. “Got in day before yesterday. Mealey had himself one hell of a patrol run! Dove under a screen of twelve tin cans with aircraft overhead and slammed seven fish into a Kongo class battleship. Took an awful pasting! Japs just kicked the shit out of them! Propeller shaft on one side, port I think, is bent a little but the Yard has a spare. You can see what happened to the attack ‘scope. After Trim tank is ruptured and a lot of little stuff, busted welds, things like that. They ain’t got one light bulb left in that thing, not one gauge glass that wasn’t shattered! Come on aft, here, look there! Damned five-inch twenty-five deck gun got blown right off its mounts! The Yard people can’t figure out how that could happen without tearing a hole in the hull but it did.”
“Did he sink the battleship?”
“Not quite. Battleship’s skipper beached the thing on the reef at the Northeast Entrance of Truk. Intelligence intercepted the damage reports on the battleship. Her ammunition lockers for the forward turrets exploded. Killed about three hundred of their people. The ship’s out of commission for two, three years. He only gets credit for severely damaging the ship. But old Stoneface Mealey got himself rightly pissed off because they were dropping so much stuff on him that he went up during the attacks and sank a Fubuki, busted it right in two with one shot! You know, that cold-blooded old bastard went in to seven-hundred yard range on that wagon? I never liked old Mealey very much before but he’s one hell of a submariner!”
They walked the length of the submarine along the pier and Hinman noted the torn wooden decking, the deep dimples in the submarine’s pressure hull.
“God, she took a beating! Any casualties on our side?”
“One man, youngster, machinist mate named Richards, that the right name? You should remember, he was part of the original crew. Got thrown against the engine in the Forward Engine Room and fractured his skull. He was buried at sea.”
“Anyone write to his parents?” Hinman asked.
Rudd nodded. “Joe Sirocco took c
are of that. Wrote a hell of a nice letter. Joe took Mike Brannon’s place as Exec Hell of a man! Reservist but just one hell of an Executive Officer. Old Mealey said he’s one of the best men he ever sailed with and when Mealey says that about a feather merchant that is one hell of a feather merchant! You’ll like him.”
“Like him?” Hinman’s voice faltered slightly.
“By golly, I forgot to tell you.” Rudd’s face wore a broad grin.
“Mealey got his fourth stripe, he’s a Captain now. They posted him as my Number One Boy, my assistant. I had to find someone to take the Mako, son of a bitch of a ship is all busted up and no other officer would want her so I figured on giving her to you!”
Hinman wiped the tears from his eyes with no attempt to conceal the act. “Don’t you ever gig me again about playing jokes on anyone! You dragged me away from a bride and a honeymoon, you canceled my leave and you never said anything about this!”
Rudd shrugged. “Makes up for some of the lousy jokes you played on me when I was your Skipper,” he said happily. “Now I suppose you want to go through her, check everything?” Hinman nodded eagerly.
“Okay, let’s get that over with,” Rudd said. “Then I’ll drop you at the BOQ with your bags and you’ll have time enough to get a shower and get into your dress canvas before I come by to pick you up. We’re eating at Captain Mealey’s house. Tomorrow or the next day you can go out to the Royal Hawaiian and see the crew. They got word out there today that you were coming back as the Skipper. I’d make a bet that the biggest beer bust in the history of the United States Navy is going on out there right now!”
“How is Dusty Rhodes, Barber, Ginty, the others?”
“Fine,” Rudd said. “I talked to Dusty when they got in. He told me Mealey ordered a reload of the Forward and After Room tubes to begin while he was still firing, if you can picture that! Dusty said that Ginty was opening the tube outer doors and closing the outer doors with only one hand on the Y-wrench! I didn’t think anyone was strong enough to do that!”
The two men picked their way down Mako’s shattered decking. “They’ll never get this ship ready for sea in under three months!” Hinman muttered.
“Oh yeah?” Rudd replied. “You don’t know this Navy Yard! You’re scheduled to go on patrol in just a little under four weeks from today, Art! This is one hell of a Navy Yard! Bring ‘em back a periscope and I think they could build you a submarine under the periscope in two months!”
Chapter 22
The Mako plowed westward across the Pacific, her bull nose throwing up twin sheets of spray that glistened in the bright moonlight. Joe Sirocco had the bridge watch and Captain Hinman was at his usual night station, aft of the bridge on the cigaret deck.
Sirocco leaned his elbows on the bridge rail and studied the ocean. The immensity of the Pacific never failed to fascinate him when he had the bridge watch. The Pacific, which covers one third of the Earth’s total surface, had impressed seamen for centuries. Those intrepid South Pacific islanders who had set out to sea in their outrigger canoes, armed only with their knowledge of the course of the stars and the habits of migratory birds, their familiarity with wind and current, had been so awed by the great ocean that they gave it status as a god, a natural force beyond understanding.
Sirocco turned to look southward. Somewhere out there, far below the horizon, sprawled the island groups of Melanesia, Micronesia and Polynesia; scores of islands, many of them populated by people whose cultural levels ranged from the aboriginal to the surprisingly sophisticated. A sprawling anthropological paradise that was now threatened by a war between races of people the Islanders did not know. A war that would bring to the Islanders all the benefits of higher civilization; food in cans to take the place of the food that grew so readily on the fertile mountainous upthrusts of drowned continents and the fish in the sea. War, conducted with weapons that could kill from afar, a war that would make no sense for the Islanders who waged war only for important reasons, the taking of women to revitalize the blood of the tribe or war for land on which to grow more food.
The war would bring to these people the ultimate in higher civilization — change. The invaders would bring medicines to heal the sick. The tribal wise men, who for centuries had healed with no more than a few herbs and the power of their minds, a power largely lost by more civilized peoples, would be cast into disrepute.
The white invader and the yellow, each in his own way, would rule and, in ruling, downgrade those native rulers who were descended from centuries of rulers.
The religious men among the invaders would heap their scorn on the tribal wise men who, when faced with problems they could not solve or with crises beyond their powers to confront, would sit and meditate and their souls would depart their bodies and travel great distances to consult with those long dead and bring back their wisdom.
Sirocco stared out across the trackless waters over which his navigational skills and instruments would bring Mako to her patrol area at the southern end of the Philippine island of Luzon. He would use the same stars the ancient navigators had used in their fearless voyages across the great waters but Sirocco needed a sextant and books of mathematical formulae to determine Mako’s position north or south of the Equator and an accurate chronometer set at Greenwich Meridian Time to tell him his distance west of Greenwich.
Captain Hinman was lost in his own thoughts as he stood on the cigaret deck. He felt at peace with himself. Mako, repaired and refitted, was solid beneath his feet. His ship. The ship he had midwived and had baptized in action against the enemy.
The crew, for the most part, was his crew. Men he had trained. He sensed a difference that hadn’t been there before. Although he had been Mako’s Captain when she was blooded in action against the enemy there had been no retaliation from that enemy. During his absence another Captain had taken Mako into action against the enemy and had sunk and damaged ships. Under that other Captain Mako and its crew had been scourged in the flame and thunder of depth charge attacks. Mako’s crew had had an experience that Captain Hinman had not known and he could detect the slight, subtle difference in the crew. They had matured in small ways and each of them carried a vast respect for the enemy and the knowledge that they had been afraid and had endured the fright, which is perhaps the most maturing agent of all in a man’s coming of age.
He didn’t think about Joan during the long night hours on the cigaret deck as Mako worked its way westward over the long sea miles. He saved the thoughts about Joan for the time when he went to his bunk and as he waited for sleep to come he savored each detail of their last few days together.
He was thinking, this night, of the dinner he had gone to with Bob Rudd at Captain Mealey’s quarters on the Submarine Base.
He had known Arvin Mealey casually for years. He had never liked the man very much. Mealey was known as a loner, a man who did not seek out the company of his peers and who discouraged any social contacts by those junior to him. Mealey was known as a strict disciplinarian, a man with little tolerance for the weaknesses of sailors ashore was a man bound for trouble. When Mealey’s crewmen got into trouble ashore he investigated and if the man was at fault, he ordered court-martial. When Hinman’s crew got into trouble on the beach he immediately defended his men against all criticism and if possible, let the man off with a warning.
The dinner with the Mealeys had surprised Hinman. Agnes Mealey, a tall, handsome, regal woman had embraced Hinman warmly and kissed him on the cheek, congratulating him on his marriage. Captain Mealey, in the role of host, was relaxed and on one or two occasions had let a small smile show beneath his mustache, belying the nickname of “Old Stoneface” that he had carried for years. After dinner they had moved to the screened lanai for coffee and Mealey had recounted in detail the action against the battleship and the subsequent depth charging. When he finished he turned to Hinman.
“I owe you my thanks and appreciation, Captain. You gave me a fine crew to go to sea with, very well trained. For the most part
, very good men.”
“Thank you, sir,” Hinman replied. “But I think it’s a shame they’re giving you a severely damaged on the battleship and not a sinking. If she’s on the reef, out of service for two or more years, she’s as good as sunk.”
Mealey nodded gravely. “Naval intelligence said their reports of intercepted messages show that it will be at least two years before they get her ready for sea again. I am content with the success of the attack. But speaking of damage, sir, there is a man in your Wardroom who in my opinion is damaged and should be transferred at once. I would have done so had I stayed aboard. I am talking about Lieutenant Peter Simms.”
Hinman’s eyes narrowed slightly.
“The man is flawed,” Captain Mealey said. “There is a dry rot within him. It will spread inside him and it will spread to others. I assume you heard what the electricians did to him?”
Hinman nodded. Bob Rudd had told him the story on the way to Captain Mealey’s quarters, howling with laughter as he told it.
“From what I have heard the electricians had provocation, sir,” Hinman said, choosing his words carefully.
“Provocation, imagined or real, should be dealt with through the proper channels,” Mealey said. “What happened in this case was that a man or men, enlisted man or men, made what amounted to a physical attack on the person of a U.S. Naval officer. That, sir, as you know full well is a major offense! If there had been sufficient evidence to present at a General Courts-Martial I would have requested such a courts-martial!”
“I trust Mr. Simms has learned his lesson, sir?”
“That’s not the point,” Captain Mealey said. His mouth under the white mustache was grim. “After the incident Simms just avoided going aft of the engine rooms. Of itself that was stupid. He was afraid to go farther aft! I recommend you transfer him!”
“I appreciate your advice, sir,” Hinman said. His mouth was set as grimly as Mealey’s. “I’d like to think about it, talk with Simms, talk with Dusty Rhodes and Chief Hendershot.”
Final Harbor (The Silent War Book 1) Page 25