“Captain Rudd told me something else. The submarine command officers in charge down there are all old Gun Club boys, people who were assigned to Newport and to torpedo and exploder work at one time or another. They all think the Mark Six exploder is sacred. You can modify the exploder if you’re working out of Pearl but if you’re working out of Brisbane or Freemantle and they catch you doing that you’re in deep trouble. So I want you to tell your people that they should keep their mouths shut when we get in. The less you say, the less any of us say, the better.” Hinman pushed the message over to Joe Sirocco.
“Lay out our course, Joe. I’d like to arrive in the area during daylight, submerged of course, so we can look it over. I am not going to commit this ship to an operation like this without knowing what the place looks like, how many fishing vessels there are in the area, if the area is patrolled.” He shook his head.
“Good God! One of the children is aged three and the other is less than a year old! Babies on a submarine! Anyone got any suggestions on where we’ll put them?”
“Why don’t you give that problem to Chief Rhodes,” Sirocco said. “I’m sure he’ll come up with the only good place, the CPO quarters. There are four bunks in there.”
Hinman nodded. “Put it to him, Joe. Nate, you’d better have Doc start reading up on child care if he’s got any books on that. And how to treat malnutrition, jungle rot or whatever other disease these people might be expected to have. The message says they’ve been running from the Japs, living in the jungle, for over a year. That means that the baby must have been born out in the jungle!” He looked at Cohen, a small smile on his face.
“This is a Scotch missionary family — at least the man is, so I presume he’s a Presbyterian. You could exchange theological theories.”
Cohen smiled shyly. “I don’t know, sir. Missionaries are very dedicated people. He might try to convert me.”
Viewed through the periscope, Sampaloc Point, the entrance to Subic Bay, looked peaceful enough. There was a stretch of white sand fronting the wooded point. There was no sign of life anywhere. in subsequent messages received by Mako the Command in Australia had pointed out the importance of the mission; the missionary’s wife was a distant relative of Prime Minister Winston Churchill and the Staff in Australia had already sent a message to London saying that the rescue would be effected. Hinman read the message and ground his teeth together in exasperation.
“Damned politicians! Trying to make Brownie points before we’ve ever had a chance to make contact! If we don’t get these people we’ll be crucified. If we do get them the Staff will get all the credit. And I don’t have to be told to extend every courtesy and hospitality to people who have been living in a jungle for more than a year! What do they think we are, animals?”
Mako spent hours cruising off the point of land, watching through the periscope. Twice they saw a figure come out of the woods and walk down and sit beside a boat that was drawn up on the sand. Just before dusk Joe Sirocco, who was manning the periscope, saw two figures move out of the woods. As he watched he saw the two figures stretch some white cloth across the bushes.
“Captain to the Conning Tower,” he said crisply. Hinman came up the ladder.
“They’ve made the signal, sir,” Sirocco said. “A white cloth spread on the bushes.” He stood to one side and Hinman put his eye to the periscope.
“It could be a trap!” Hinman said. “I’m not going to go up until after full dark.”
“That’s an hour from how,” Sirocco said.
“I want both deck gun crews in red goggles,” Hinman said. “Put the machine gunners in red goggles. We’ll go to Battle Stations Surface when we go up.”
“We don’t have that many pair of red goggles, sir,” Sirocco said. “I tried to draw some but they didn’t have them at Pearl. We’ve only got eight pair.”
“Black out the Control Room and get the people in there now,” Hinman said. “I don’t want to put anyone topside with their eyes unadjusted to darkness. I don’t like this operation, Joe! We haven’t seen a single fishing boat all afternoon! The only damned thing we’ve seen is a guy come out of the bushes and walk down the beach and sit down by that little boat and then he goes back up in the bushes. There should be fishing boats around, something should be moving in the area.” He swung the periscope around and studied the horizon. “Empty sea! It’s unreal!”
Mako surfaced after full dark, the gun crews tumbling over the bridge and down to the deck. The machine gunners set up their 50-caliber guns on special stanchions set in the deck near the Conning Tower. Dick Smalley, the Gunner’s Mate, adjusted the broad strap of the twin 20-mm machine guns around his buttocks and leaned back, his hands on the cocking levers of the guns.
“Both deck guns manned, sir. Breeches open. Standing by to load both deck guns.” Chief Rhodes’ voice from the deck was calm.
“If we have to open fire I want you to lay your rounds into the tree line,” Captain Hinman called down to the gun crew forward. He turned and spoke to the lookouts in the periscope shears.
“Keep your eyes in your own sectors! Don’t look around to see what’s happening! The biggest danger we face is being surprised by some patrol boat or aircraft!” He turned to the quartermaster.
“Make the identification signal.”
The quartermaster raised the signal gun to his shoulder. He aimed the signal gun at the white blur of the cloth and began to pull the trigger, sending three sets of dot-dash-dot, “R” in the Morse code. There was no answer from the beach. He sent another group of three signals. A small light blinked faintly on the beach, a series of three short blinks, “S” in Morse and then a long blink repeated three times, “T” in the code.
“They answer the right way, sir,” the quartermaster said. “Small boat under way from the beach,” Grabnas sang out from his position in the port lookout stand.
“Load deck guns!” Hinman’s voice was sharp. “Machine gunners, load and cock! Stand by on deck to receive the party!”
“Standing by on deck, Bridge,” Rhodes answered. Ginty, a strong line tied around his waist and fastened to the base of the deck gun, was down on the swell of the pressure hull, waiting.
The boat drew closer, a long, narrow fishing canoe with one outrigger. Captain Hinman, his binoculars at his eyes, saw two people in the forward part of the canoe, each holding a child. Two men were paddling and a large man with white hair that shone in the moonlight was at the steering oar.
The boat came alongside Mako and Ginty, with Rhodes belaying his safety line, leaned outward.
“Gimme the kids first,” Ginty said. He handed the two children up to the deck and then picked the woman bodily out of the canoe and handed her up to the deck. He gave his hand to the man, who stumbled and slipped on the wet pressure hull and then gasped as Ginty grabbed him and pushed him up over his head and back to the crew members in the deck party.
“They’re all yours, Navy,” the white-haired man said. “I wrote a report and gave it to the Reverend. Will you see that it gets to General MacArthur for me?”
“Will do,” Captain Hinman called down. “Can I have your name, sir? You’ve done a good job.”
“Master Sergeant Peter McGillivray, U.S. Army, sir. Now the commanding officer of McGillivray’s Raiders.”
“Anything you need that we can give you?” Hinman asked. “Food, clothing? If we’ve got it and you need it it’s yours.”
“I could use some sulfa powder if you’ve got some, sir. I can steal what we need from the Japs but they’re as short of medicine as I am.”
Hinman turned and spoke briefly to Nate Cohen. He handed the box over the rail.
“Here’s five pounds of sulfa powder,” he called to the man in the boat. “That help?”
“That’s a Godsend,” McGillivray said. “See you around, Navy. I’ve got to get the hell out of here!” He raised a hand in salute as his two paddlers shoved the canoe away from Mako’s hull.
“Secure deck party,” Ca
ptain Hinman ordered. “All hands except the watch get below. Let’s get the hell out of here ourselves!”
Once safely out to sea with regular sea watches set, Captain Hinman turned the deck over to Don Grilley and went below. He went into the Wardroom and sat down.
“Where are the people we picked up?” he asked Thomas T. Thompson, the black Officers’ Cook who held sway over the small galley next to the Wardroom.
“Well, Captain, it’s like this,” Thompson said. “The lady’s clothes are in rags, so bad that she can’t hardly be decent in front of other people. So Johnny Paul, he ain’t too big you know, he’s given her some dungaree pants and a shirt and she’s in the Officers’ shower right now, cleanin’ herself up. They’re dressing her husband in dungarees and a clean shirt and sandals and they’re tryin’ to find some sandals small enough for the lady. Mike DeLucia took the little boy back to his torpedo room to clean him up and Ginty is taking care of the baby girl.”
“Ginty? Ginty? Taking care of a baby girl?”
“Yessir,” Thompson said with a broad grin. “Old Ginch has got that baby girl up there and he’s givin’ her a bath in a bucket!”
“I’ve got to see this!” Hinman said.
“Uh, uh, Captain. I wouldn’t if I were you. Ginty rigged some sheets around the shower in the Forward Room so the lady could have some privacy when she come out of the shower and he closed the water-tight door to the Wardroom so no one could bust in on her. If I were you I’d just sit tight and have some more coffee. When the people get the visitors all cleaned up they’ll bring ‘em here.”
“Sailors!” Hinman said.
An hour later the missionary and his wife, each dressed in clean dungarees and wearing submarine sandals, lightweight shoes with perforated leather tops and a strap to hold them on, pushed their plates back in the Wardroom.
“That all you gonna eat?” Thompson said from his galley.
“My dear man,” the missionary said. “You cooked a superb meal! Just marvelous! Roast beef and Welsh rarebit!”
“I didn’t cook none of it,” Thompson said. “I just sort of supervised. Couldn’t get no haggis for you. Had to make do with the Welsh rarebit. How about more tea?”
When Thompson had cleared the table Captain Hinman turned to the missionary.
“I’d like you to meet my officers now.” He nodded at Thompson and in a few minutes the off-duty officers crowded into the Wardroom.
“Gentlemen,” Captain Hinman said from the head of the table. “Meet the Reverend Lucius Shrewsbury and Mrs. Shrewsbury and their two children, Ronald and Deborah.” He introduced each of his officers.
“Amazing people you have, Captain. It is Captain, is it not?” the Reverend Shrewsbury said. He indicated the Forward Torpedo Room with his hand. “That huge man up there almost scared Mrs. Shrewsbury to death, y’know! Took the baby right out of her arms and told her to get in the shower and get cleaned up!”
“His name is Ginty,” Hinman said. “He’s a very good man.”
“Indeed he is,” Mrs. Shrewsbury said in her soft voice, lisping through the gap where her front lower teeth were missing. “After I had dressed in these nice clothes I went up there by all those shiny brass things and that huge man had Deborah in his arms and she was all washed and clean and he was singing to her! And some nice man has cut Ronald’s hair.”
“The barber would be Mike DeLucia, the man in charge of the After Torpedo Room,” Captain Hinman said.
“And this kind gentleman, here,” the Reverend said, pointing to Lieutenant Cohen, “this gentlemen took charge of us and showed us everything. He made us welcome and oh, that wonderful hot water shower bath! And the clothes! A most Christian thing to do, sir!”
“Lieutenant Cohen is Jewish, Reverend,” Hinman said.
“So was Jesus!” the Reverend said. “A habit of speaking one gets into, you know. No offense intended, none taken, right, sir?” He looked earnestly at Nathan Cohen, who smiled gently.
Mako twisted her way southward through the islands of the Sulu Sea, running at full speed on the surface during the night hours and submerging by day. The children adapted well to the submarine. The boy, Ronald, was everywhere. Deborah, the small girl, was a toddler and couldn’t negotiate the high sills of the water-tight doors, but a sailor always seemed to be loitering nearby to lift her over the sill. In the galley Johnny Johnson and his crew worked overtime trying to concoct meals that would stun the passengers and did amaze the crew.
Four days after the passengers had come aboard Dusty Rhodes went to Joe Sirocco.
“Sir, we’ve got to talk about something,” Rhodes said. Sirocco nodded.
“Some of the crew got together,” Rhodes said, “and they decided that the reputation of the Mako is at stake, sir.”
“In what way?” Sirocco asked.
“They decided that we can’t turn those people we’ve got over at the dock looking like, well, sailors. Someone, I don’t know who, salvaged the lady’s torn dress from the GI can. They took it aft and they broke out the bolt of white linen we use to clean the deck guns and they cut out a new dress. Someone else chipped in with a pair of blue trousers and they made piping for the edges of the dress and the arms, the edges around the sleeves.
“A couple of Chief Barber’s people have got some civilian clothes aboard, I know it’s against regulations but I’m not going to hit them for that. Anyway, they’ve done some eyeball tailoring and they’ve got a pair of trousers, a clean shirt and a tie and a jacket that they think will fit him. Chief Hendershot, he hasn’t got any hips or ass in any case, he found a pair of swimming trunks that are too small for him and DeLucia did a tailoring job on those, cut them down for the boy and he made him a shirt out of an undress white jumper. And a dress for the baby.”
“Is that all?” Sirocco asked.
“No, sir, they used some of the cowhide we carry for chafing gear and they’re making sandals for the two kids.”
“My God!” Sirocco said.
“That’s not all,” Rhodes said patiently. “There’s a little gift package goes to the lady with the dress. Four pair of nylon stockings and a bottle of perfume and some lipstick!”
“Where in the hell did they get nylon stockings and perfume and lipstick?”
“I don’t ask questions like that, sir,” Rhodes grinned.
“I won’t either. When do they want to give these gifts to the passengers?”
“The day before we get in, sir. If the Captain will allow it.”
“You know he will! He’ll want to thank every damned man on the ship for this! I think it’s marvelous!”
“I think Ginty wants to adopt that little girl,” Rhodes said. “He spends most of his time off watch holding her. Yesterday he was giving her a bath and one of the people standing around made some remark about the baby’s private parts and Ginty clouded up and said he was going to break arms and legs if he heard any more talk like that around a lady! I’ve got two boys of my own but I never would have thought that Ginty would have any liking for kids.”
“Nor would I,” Sirocco said. “But you never can tell, can you.”
The message diverting Mako from Brisbane came while the ship was running down the length of Makassar Strait. The message instructed Mako to cross the Java Sea, traverse Lombok Strait between the islands of Lombok and Bali and go to Exmouth Gulf on the northwest coast of Australia. An official welcoming party would be on hand to take the passengers to Perth and the Navy would send a PBY aircraft bearing two torpedoes and food for Mako. A Staff officer of ComSubSouWesPac would be on the PBY to hand deliver new patrol orders to Mako.
“Exmouth Gulf?” Hinman said as he studied the chart. “Why, there’s nothing there! It’s nothing but a fueling station!” He turned to Cohen.
“Nate, get a message off to Staff. Request that Mako be sent enough beer so the crew can unwind. Damn it, if they’re going to rob us of a regular R and R the least they can do is send us some beer for the crew!”
The
ceremony at which the Mako took leave of her passengers was brief. An Australian Colonel and two Majors, one a physician, welcomed the Shrewsburys. The Colonel drew himself and saluted Captain Hinman.
“Damned good job, sir! I admire the tailoring job your chaps did. Mrs. Shrewsbury just told us about it. Good chaps you have, sir, damned good chaps!”
He beamed proudly as the Shrewsburys walked down the line of Mako’s crew, speaking to each one. When Mrs. Shrewsbury came to Ginty she reached upward with her hands and pulled his scarred face down to hers and kissed him on the lips.
“Mr. Ginty,” she lisped through the gap left where her husband had pulled her teeth with a pair of pliers. “I want to thank you for the love and care you have given Deborah. She will miss you and so will I. You’re a very dear man!” She kissed him again. Ginty stood rigid, a deep blush crawling up his thick neck.
“Well, ma’am,” he finally said. “When that little lady grows up some and anyone bothers her you get in touch with me. I’ll pull their arms and legs off like they was a fly!” He scowled fiercely and she giggled.
The Reverend Shrewsbury said goodbye to Nathan Cohen. “I’ll write to you, my friend. There are some points of Christian theology you really should be put straight on.” He looked earnestly at Cohen. “You won’t be offended?”
“Of course not,” Cohen said. “But before we get to arguing by mail why don’t you ask a Rabbi to get you a copy of the Talmud? I think you’d enjoy the lovely logic and reasoning in it. Our people have scholars who devote an entire lifetime to the study of that great work and never begin to understand all the wisdom that is within it.” The Reverend Shrewsbury nodded. “I will do that. Fair is only fair, I always say. The Christian thing to do!” He chuckled and Cohen laughed with him.
The Australian Colonel turned to Captain Hinman.
“Once again, old chap, His Majesty’s Government thanks you and your crew. We’ll board our aircraft now. The High Command wallahs are quite excited at seeing these people you pulled out so neatly. I’m told your own people will arrive shortly with food and other things for you. Just hope you don’t think it’s bad manners to shove away and be off but I do have a wallah back there with pips all over his bloody shoulders who will crawl right up my back if I don’t get back!”
Final Harbor (The Silent War Book 1) Page 28