The Caine Mutiny

by Herman Wouk

  “Feces?”

  “In the infantile world excrement is a deadly poison and therefore an instrument of vengeance. It would then be an expression of rage and hostility against the world.” The court members were exchanging half-amused, half-horrified side glances. Challee protested again about the waste of court time, and Blakely again overruled him. The president was squinting at the Freudian doctor as though he were some unbelievable freak.

  “Doctor,” Greenwald went on, “you have testified that the commander is a disturbed, not an adjusted, person.”

  “Yes.”

  “In laymen’s terms, then, he’s sick.”

  Bird smiled. “I remember agreeing to the rough resemblance of the terms disturbed and sick. But by those terms an awful lot of people are sick-”

  “But this trial only has Commander Queeg’s sickness at issue. If he’s sick, how could your board have given him a clean bill of health?”

  “You’re playing on words, I’m afraid. We found no disability.”

  “Could his sickness, greatly intensified, disable him?”

  “Very greatly intensified, yes.”

  Greenwald said with sudden sharpness, “Isn’t there another possibility, Doctor?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Suppose the requirements of command were many times as severe as you believe them to be-wouldn’t even this mild sickness disable Queeg?”

  “That’s absurdly hypothetical, because-”

  “Is it? Have you ever had sea duty, Doctor?”

  “No.”

  “Have you ever been to sea?”

  “No.” Bird was losing his self-possessed look.

  “How long have you been in the Navy?”

  “Five months-no, six, I guess, now-”

  “Have you had any dealings with ships’ captains before this case?”

  “No.”

  “On what do you base your estimate of the stresses of command?”

  “Well, my general knowledge-”

  “Do you think command requires a highly gifted, exceptional person?”

  “Well, no-”

  “It doesn’t?”

  “Not highly gifted, no. Adequate responses, fairly good intelligence, and sufficient training and experience, but-”

  “Is that enough equipment for, say, a skilled psychiatrist?”

  “Well, not exactly-that is, it’s a different field-”

  “In other words, it takes more ability to be a psychiatrist than the captain of a naval vessel?” The lawyer looked toward Blakely.

  “It takes-that is, different abilities are required. You’re making the invidious comparison, not I:”

  “Doctor, you have admitted Commander Queeg is sick, which is more than Dr. Lundeen did. The only remaining question is, how sick. You don’t think he’s sick enough to be disabled for command. I suggest that since evidently you don’t know much about the requirements of command you may be wrong in your conclusion.”

  “I repudiate your suggestion.” Bird looked like an insulted boy. His voice quivered. “You’ve deliberately substituted the word sick, which is a loose, a polarized word, for the correct-”

  “Pardon me, what kind of word?”

  “Polarized-loaded, invidious-I never said sick. My grasp of the requirements of command is adequate or I would have disqualified myself from serving on the board-”

  “Maybe you should have.”

  Challee shouted, “The witness is being badgered.”

  “I withdraw my last statement. No more questions.” Greenwald strode to his seat.

  For ten minutes Challee tried to get Bird to withdraw the word “sick.” The young doctor was upset. He became querulous and dogmatic, and threw up clouds of terminology. He refused to abandon the word. Challee finally excused the balky, hostile psychiatrist. He introduced as evidence the medical board’s report, the Ulithi doctor’s report, several of Queeg’s fitness reports, and sundry logs and records of the Caine. His presentation was finished.

  “It’s three o’clock,” said Blakely. “Is the defense ready to present its case?”

  “I only have two witnesses, sir,” said the pilot. “The first is the accused.”

  “Does the accused request that he be permitted to testify?”

  At a nod from his lawyer, Maryk stood. “I do so request, sir.”

  “Stenographer will affirmatively record that the statutory request was made. ... Defense proceed to present its case.”

  Maryk told the story of the morning of December 18. It was a repetition of Willie Keith’s version. Greenwald said, “Was the ship in the last extremity when you relieved the captain?”

  “It was.”

  “On what facts do you base that judgment?”

  Maryk ran his tongue over his lips. “Well, several things, like-well, we were unable to hold course. We broached to three times in an hour. We were rolling too steeply for the inclinometer to record. We were shipping solid water in the wheelhouse. The generators were cutting out. The lights and the gyro cut off and on. The ship wasn’t answering to emergency rudder and engine settings. The radar was jammed out by sea return. We were lost and out of control.”

  “Did you point these things out to the captain?”

  “Repeatedly for an hour. I begged him to ballast and head into the wind.”

  “What was his response?”

  “Well, mostly a glazed look and no answer, or a repetition of his own desires.”

  “Which were what?”

  “I guess to hold fleet course until we went down.”

  “When did you start keeping your medical log on the captain?”

  “Shortly after the Kwajalein invasion.”

  “Why did you start it?”

  “Well, I began to think the captain might be mentally ill.”

  “Why?”

  “His dropping of the yellow dye marker off Kwajalein, and then cutting off the water, and Stilwell’s court-martial.”

  “Describe these three events in detail.”

  Blakely interrupted the executive officer’s account of the Kwajalein incident to question him closely about bearings and distances, and the gap between the Caine and the landing boats. He made notes of the answers. “After these three episodes,” said Greenwald, “why didn’t you go directly to higher authority?”

  “I wasn’t sure of my ground. That’s why I started the log. I figured if I ever saw I was wrong I’d burn the log. If I was right it would be necessary information.”

  “When did you show it to Lieutenant Keefer?”

  “After the strawberry business, months later.”

  “Describe the strawberry business.”

  Maryk told the story baldly.

  “Now, Lieutenant. After the typhoon was over, did Captain Queeg make any effort to regain command?”

  “Yes, on the morning of the nineteenth. We’d just sighted the fleet and were joining up to return to Ulithi.”

  “Describe what happened.”

  “Well, I was in the charthouse writing up a despatch to report the relief to the OTC. The captain came in and looked over my shoulder. He said ‘Do you mind coming to my cabin and having a talk before you send that? I said I didn’t mind. I went below and we talked. It was the same thing again at first, about how I’d be tried for mutiny. He said ‘You’ve applied for transfer to the regular Navy. You know this means the end of all that, don’t you?’ Then he went into a long thing about how he loved the Navy and had no other interest in life, and even if he was cleared this would ruin his record. I said I felt sorry for him, and I really did. And he pointed out that he was bound to get relieved in a few weeks anyway, so I wasn’t accomplishing anything. Finally he came out with his proposal. He said he’d forget the whole thing and never report me. He would resume command, and the whole matter would be forgotten and written off-just an incident of bad nerves during the typhoon.”

  “What did you say to the proposal?”

  “Well, I was amazed. I said, ‘Ca
ptain, the whole ship knows about it. It’s written up in the quartermaster’s log and the OOD’s log. I’ve already signed the OOD log as commanding officer.’ Well, he hemmed and hawed, and finally said those were penciled rough logs and it all probably just amounted to a few lines, and it wouldn’t be the first time rough logs had been corrected and fixed up after the fact.”

  “Did you remind him of the rule against erasures?”

  “Yes, and he kind of laughed and said there were rules and rules, including the rule of self-preservation. He said it was either that or a court-martial for mutiny for me, and a black mark on his record which he didn’t deserve, and he didn’t see that a few scribbled pencil lines were worth all that.”

  “Did you persist in your refusal?”

  “Yes.”

  “What followed?”

  “He began to plead and beg. It went on for quite some time, and was very unpleasant.”

  “Did he act irrationally?”

  “No. He-he cried at one point. But he was rational. But in the end he became terrifically angry and told me to go ahead and hang myself, and ordered me out of his cabin. So I sent the despatch.”

  “Why didn’t you accept the captain’s offer?”

  “I didn’t see how I could.”

  “But the danger from the typhoon was over. Didn’t you think he could conn the ship back to Ulithi?”

  “I’d already committed an official act and I didn’t’ believe making erasures in the logs would change it. Also I still believed he was mentally ill.”

  “But you say he was rational.”

  “Captain Queeg was usually okay except under great pressure, when he tended to become mentally disabled.”

  “Then you had the chance, twenty-four hours later, of expunging the whole event from the official record with the captain’s knowledge and approval?”

  “Yes.”

  “Lieutenant Maryk, were you panicky at any time during the typhoon?”

  “I was not.”

  “How can you substantiate your statement?”

  “Well, I-well, by what happened. After relieving the captain I rescued five survivors from the George Black at the height of the typhoon. I don’t think a panicky officer could have effected the rescue under those conditions.”

  “Did you relieve Captain Queeg willfully?”

  “Yes, I knew what I was doing.”

  “Did you relieve without authority?”

  “No. My authority was Articles 184, 185, 186.”

  “Did you relieve without justifiable cause?”

  “No. My justifiable cause was the captain’s mental breakdown at a time when the ship was in danger.”

  “No further questions.”

  Challee came toward Maryk, saying in a tone of open hostility, “Just to start with, Mr. Maryk, wasn’t the captain on the bridge all the time you were effecting that rescue?”

  “He was.”

  “Didn’t he order you to come about and look for survivors?”

  “After I’d already come about, he said he was ordering me to do it.”

  “Didn’t he direct you in the whole rescue operation?”

  “Well, he kept commenting on my orders.”

  “Could you possibly have effected that rescue without his orders, or comments, as you call them?”

  “Well, I tried to be polite. He was still senior officer present. But I was too busy to pay attention to his comments and I don’t remember them.”

  “Didn’t he even have to remind you to do an elementary thing like putting the cargo net over the side?”

  “I was holding off on the cargo net till the last minute. I didn’t want it to be carried away by the seas. He reminded me, but he didn’t have to.”

  “Mr. Maryk, what kind of rating would you give yourself for loyalty to your captain?”

  “That’s hard to answer.”

  “I’ll bet it is. Four-oh? Two-five? Zero?”

  “I think I was a loyal officer.”

  “Did you issue a seventy-two-hour pass to Stilwell in December ’43 against the captain’s express instructions?”

  “I did.”

  “Do you call that a loyal act?”

  “No. It was a disloyal act.”

  Challee was caught off balance. He stared at Maryk. “You admit to a disloyal act in your first days as executive officer?”

  “Yes.”

  “Very interesting. Why did you commit a disloyal act?”

  “I have no excuse. I didn’t do that kind of thing again.”

  “But you admit starting your term as exec as you finished it, with disloyalty?”

  “I don’t admit to finishing disloyally.”

  “Did you hear sarcastic and insulting remarks passed by the other officers about your captain?”

  “I did.”

  “How did you punish them?”

  “I didn’t punish them. I repeatedly warned them against the practice and I didn’t allow it in my presence.”

  “But you didn’t punish this outright insubordination? Why didn’t you?”

  “There are limits to what you can do in a situation.”

  Challee clawed over Maryk’s story of the typhoon, catching him in minor inconsistencies and memory lapses. But the exec, with dull stolidness, admitted to mistakes and inconsistencies, and stuck to his story. Then the judge advocate switched to Maryk’s background, and brought out that his grades had been lower than average in high school and college, and that he had had no training in psychiatry or any other science.

  “Then where did you get all these highfalutin ideas about paranoia?”

  “Out of books.”

  “What books? Name the titles.”

  “Medical-type books about mental illness.”

  “Was that your intellectual hobby-reading about psychiatry?”

  “No. I borrowed the books off of ships’ doctors here and there, after I began to think the captain was sick.”

  “And you, with your background-did you imagine you understood these highly technical, abstruse scientific works?”

  “Well, I got something out of them.”

  “Have you ever heard the expression, ‘A little knowledge is a dangerous thing’?”

  “Yes.”

  “You got a headful of terms you didn’t understand, and on that basis you had the temerity to depose a commanding officer on the grounds of mental illness. Is that correct?”

  “I didn’t relieve him because of what the books said. The ship was in danger-”

  “Never mind the ship. We’re discussing your grasp of psychiatry, Lieutenant.” Challee belabored him with dozens of psychiatric terms, asking him for definitions and explanations. He reduced the exec to glum monosyllables and frequent repetitions of “I don’t know.”

  “In fact, you don’t know what you’re talking about when you discuss mental illness, is that right?”

  “I didn’t say I knew much about it.”

  “And yet you thought you knew enough to commit an act that might be outright mutiny, justifying yourself by your grasp of psychiatric diagnosis?”

  “I wanted to save the ship.”

  “What right had you to usurp the captain’s responsibility for the ship’s safety-setting aside your psychiatric insight?”

  “Well, I-” Maryk stared dumbly.

  “Answer the question, please! Either your act was justified by your psychiatric diagnosis of Queeg-or else it was the most serious breach of naval discipline of which you were capable. Isn’t that right?”

  “If he wasn’t sick it would have been a mutinous act. But he was sick.”

  “Have you heard the diagnosis of the qualified psychiatrists who have testified?”

  “Yes.”

  “What was their diagnosis-was he sick or wasn’t he on 18 December?”

  “They say he wasn’t.”

  “Lieutenant Maryk, did you think your ship-handling judgment was better than the captain’s?”

  “In normal circumstance
s the captain could handle the ship. Under pressure he became erratic.”

  “Isn’t the reverse possible-that under pressure you became erratic, and couldn’t understand the captain’s sound decisions? Is that possible?”

  “It’s possible, but-”

  “As between a captain and an executive officer, who is presumed by the Navy to have the better judgment in ship handling?”

  “The captain.”

  “Now, Lieutenant, your so-called justification consists in two assertions, doesn’t it-one, that the captain was mentally ill, and two, that the ship was in a dangerous situation-correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “The doctors have found that he wasn’t mentally ill, haven’t they?”

  “That’s their opinion, yes-”

  “Then this court must presume that the captain’s estimate of the ship’s situation was right and yours was wrong, isn’t that so?”

  Maryk said, “Yes, except-just don’t forget the doctors could be wrong. They weren’t there.”

  “Then your entire defense, Lieutenant Maryk, boils down to this. Your on-the-spot snap psychiatric diagnosis-despite your confessed ignorance of psychiatry-is superior to the judgment of three psychiatrists after three weeks of exhaustive professional examination. That is your defense, isn’t it?”

  Maryk took a long pause, then said shakily, “All I can say is, they didn’t see him when the ship was in trouble.”

  Challee turned and grinned openly at the court. He went on, “Who was the third ranking officer on your ship?”

  “Lieutenant Keefer.”

  “Was he a good officer?”

  “Yes.”

  “What’s his civilian background?”

  “He’s an author.”

  “Do you consider his mind as good as yours? Or perhaps better?”

  “Perhaps better.”

  “Did you show him this medical log of yours?”

  “Yes.”

  “Was he convinced by it that the captain was mentally ill?”

  “No.”

  “Did he dissuade you from trying to have the captain relieved, two weeks before the typhoon?”

  “Yes.”

  “And yet two weeks later-despite the whole weight of naval discipline-despite the arguments of the next officer in rank to you, a superior intellect by your own admission, arguments that had previously convinced you your diagnosis was wrong-you went ahead and seized command of your ship?”