by Herman Wouk
“And we’ll all be gay
When Johnny comes marching home.
Oh, when Johnny comes marching home again,
Hurrah, hurrah-”
For an instant Willie was marching up Fifth Avenue in the sunshine in an immense parade of the Navy, and crowds on the sidewalk were screaming cheers, and ticker tape was falling across his face as he marched. He saw the towers of Radio City, and the spire of Saint Patrick’s. His hair prickled on his skull, and he thanked God for having sent him to the Caine to fight in the war.
“And we’ll all be gay,
When Johnny comes marching home.”
The vision vanished, and he was staring at the battered radio on the green bulkhead. He said aloud, “Who told those sons of bitches they could fire the 20’s?” He ran topside.
The Navy’s first AlNav announcing a point system for discharge was on the Fox skeds within a week. It caused howls and curses and screams of pain throughout the minesweeper, as though the ship had been hit by a torpedo. Willie scribbled a rapid sum of his points and saw that he would be discharged, according to the AlNav, in February in 1949. The point system was weighted so as to get rid of married men and old men. There was no credit for overseas service or for combat.
He was not disturbed. The AlNav was monstrous, of course, but he was certain that it would be superseded in a couple of weeks, as soon as the wave of anguished screeching had traveled back up the chain of command and splashed over into the press. He could picture clearly what had happened. This point system had been drawn up in wartime and filed away for a remote future; and all at once it had been snatched out of the files and placed on the skeds before anyone troubled to realize its implications. Meantime the world had gone from night to day, from war to peace. Wartime thinking had become instantaneously obsolete, and the Navy was lagging a bit.
Meantime, there was the decrepit Caine to worry about. The repair program at Okinawa had halted in chaos. Multi-million-dollar refittings, night-and-day labor without regard to expense, were now things of the past, a past as remote as Gettysburg though only a week away in calendar time. The repair officer of the Pluto, a harassed little commander behind a desk piled a foot high with documents, his wrinkled face as gray as mimeograph paper, snarled at Willie, “How the hell do I know what to tell you, Keith?” (It was Willie’s fourth-visit in a week; he had been turned away by the yeoman the first three times.) “Everything is snafued from here to Washington and back. I don’t know whether the Bureau will authorize spending another forty cents on a four-piper at this point. Maybe the survey board will just decide to let the ship rot here.” He pointed at a wire basket overflowing with yellow flimsies. “See that? Everyone is a ship with troubles. Want to get on the list? You can be 107, maybe.”
“Sorry to have troubled you, sir,” Willie said. “I realize how snowed under you are-”
The perspiring commander responded at once to the friendly tone. “You don’t know the half of it. Like to help you, Keith. We all want to go home. Look, I’ll send you a couple of chief shipfitters for seventy-two hours. If between them and your crew you can fix those bloody fuel pumps you’ll have a ship to ride home in. That’s all you want, isn’t it?”
When Willie got back to the ship he called the black gang together on the forecastle. “It’s up to you,” he said. “If they decide to survey this bucket we’ll sit on the beach with the dogfaces for a year waiting our chance for a ride back. Fix the pumps and you’ve got your private limousine to take you home, maybe in a week. How about another look at the pumps?”
The pumps were repaired in two days.
An order went out to all the destroyer-minesweepers in the harbor to prepare to go to Tokyo to sweep the harbor in advance of the victorious fleet. The Caine wasn’t included. Keefer went with Willie to the MinePac office on the Terror. They tried to convince Captain Ramsbeck that they were ready for sea, but the operations officer reluctantly shook his head. “I appreciate your spirit,” he said, “but I’m afraid the Caine is washed up. Suppose you had another breakdown en route? This is the typhoon season. Would you like to ride out a typhoon with twelve knots of power?” Willie and Keefer looked at each other with rueful grins of defeat. Standing side by side on the flying bridge that afternoon, they watched the minesweepers stream out of Buckner Bay.
“Well, I would have liked to see Tokyo,” Keefer said. “I think they will write on my tombstone, Almost, but not quite. What movie have we got for tonight?”
“Roy Rogers, Captain.”
“Why does God go to so much trouble just to make me feel lousy? I think I’ll fast for a month and try to get the answer in a vision.”
So the Caine swung to its rusted, mossy anchor in an almost empty harbor, and the officers and crew listened to the surrender ceremonies over the radio.
The new point system came out almost exactly when Willie had anticipated it would, early in September. It was a workable, fair plan. It released half the crew of the Caine, and also the captain. Willie’s exit date was the first of November. When Keefer saw the AlNav he became tremendously excited. He summoned the executive officer to his cabin. “Ready to take over the ship, Willie?”
“Why-why sure, sir, but who’ll give it to me? I’ve barely got two years at sea-”
“Hell, Willie, you’re more qualified than De Vriess was when he got the Caine. Two years of war cruising is like fifteen years of peacetime duty. I say you’re qualified. I said so in the June roster of officers. It’s a cinch. We’ll get MinePac to send a despatch to BuPers-if you’re willing. If I wait for the Bureau mill to grind out a relief for me I’ll still be in Okinawa when the war with Russia starts.”
“I-well, sure, I’d like to take over, sir-”
The officer personnel section aboard the Terror was filled with a milling mob of captains and execs on errands similar to Keefer’s. The language of the AlNav was plain. It was an explosively sensitive reaction of the Navy to a squall of public opinion. Release was mandatory except in cases which endangered the security of the United States. Every exception had to be reported to the Secretary of the Navy in writing, signed by the admiral heading the fleet or force involved.
When the turn of Keefer and Willie came, the personnel officer hastily leafed through the papers and snapped at Willie, “Two years of sea duty and you think you can handle a DMS?”
Keefer interposed, “It’s been pretty intensive duty, sir.”
“Well, all right, that’s not the point. I’m in one hell of a squeeze play, that’s the point. I have to recommend these reliefs, and I take the rap if some silly young red-hot runs his ship up on a rock. And the admiral says don’t recommend anyone who isn’t qualified, or else, and the department says don’t hold back anyone who’s got enough points for release, or else.” He mopped his brow with a handkerchief and glanced at the growling line of officers behind Keefer. “I’ve been getting this double talk all day. Naturally you say he’s qualified, Keefer, you’re all on fire to go home. I’m staying in this outfit. I’ll have to answer for it-”
Keefer said, “He’s up for a Navy Cross, if that’s any help.” He told how Willie had saved the ship-in the Kamikaze disaster. “Well, he sounds like he might be able to handle it at that. I’ll send the despatch. The rest is up to the bureau.”
Three days later the morning Fox sked produced an action message for the Caine. Willie had been haunting the radio shack. He carried the sheet to the wardroom and broke the code hastily.
He was captain.
Keefer was all ready to leave; he had been packing since the day the AlNav arrived. Ten minutes after the despatch came the crew was at quarters for the ceremony of transfer of command. Ten minutes after that Willie and Keefer were at the gangway with the ex-captain’s bags. The gig was away exchanging movies. Keefer stared out over the harbor, drumming his fingers on the life line.
“Tom, I sure thought you’d want to take her into the boneyard,” Willie said. “A ride through the Panama Canal and all-you
could have stayed on-it would just have been another couple of months, after all-”
“You talk that way because your escape date is November 1. You’ve forgotten what freedom smells like in the nostrils, Willie. It’s like the smell of all the beautiful women and all the good liquor in the world distilled into one essence. It makes you crazy for it. These minutes waiting for the gig seem longer to me than a month under Queeg, which was longer than ten years of normal living. You’ll know what I mean on the last night of October.”
Willie said, “No sentimental ties to the good old Caine?”
The novelist’s face wrinkled. He looked around at the rusty deck, at the peeling stacks. The smell of stack gas was strong. Two half-naked sailors were skinning potatoes by the clip shack, cursing each other with monotonous obscenities.
“I’ve hated this ship for thirty-five months, and I feel now as though I’m just beginning to hate it. If I were to stay aboard, it would only be to see how much deeper hate could get for an inanimate object. Not that I really think the Caine is inanimate. It’s an iron poltergeist sent into the world by God to ruin my life. And it hasn’t done a bad job. You can lay my ghost, Willie. I’m tired of it- Thank Christ, there’s the gig.”
“Well, Tom, this is it.” They shook hands, and watched silently as the boat drew near. The OOD and the new exec, a lieutenant junior grade who had previously commanded a yard minesweeper, stood at a respectful distance from the two commanding officers.
Willie said, “I guess this is a real parting of the ways. You’re going on to a brilliant career, I know you are. You’re a fine novelist, Tom. I’m going to bury myself at some poky college and that’ll be the end of me. I’m not good for much else.”
Keefer bent to pick up his handbag, then looked Willie straight in the eyes. His face was distorted as though by a spasm of pain. “Don’t envy me my happiness too much, Willie,” he said. “Don’t forget one thing. I jumped.”
The bell clanged. Keefer saluted, and went down the ladder.
CHAPTER 40
The Last Captain of the Caine
Willie moved his belongings into Queeg’s room (he could think of it by no other name) and lay down on the bunk. It was an immensely queer sensation. Once, when he was sixteen, his mother had taken him to Europe; during a guided tour of the palace at Versailles, he had lingered behind the crowd of tourists in the imperial bedroom, and had leaped over the velvet rope and lain on Napoleon’s bed. He was reminded of that now as he stretched out on the bunk of Captain Queeg. He smiled at the association, but he understood it. Queeg was once for all the grand historical figure in his life. Not Hitler, not Tojo, but Queeg.
His mind was painfully divided between the thrill of command and the misery of May’s lengthening silence. He wanted so much to share this great news with her! He well knew that the Caine was a dirty old broken-down hulk-and that only because it was such a pitiful caricature of a ship had he been entrusted with it-and yet his blood ran quick with pride. He had risen from his fumbling, incompetent beginnings as Midshipman Keith to the command of a United States warship. Nothing could erase that fact. Luck and merit were mingled in the event, but the event stood. It would be on the records of the Navy so long as the Navy existed.
After a while he went to the desk and wrote this note to May:
MY DARLING:
Three months ago I wrote you a very long letter, and I have received no answer. I feel impossibly sheepish about repeating what I said, because I can hardly believe you didn’t receive it. If by some wild chance you didn’t please let me know quickly-you can send a wire to me now, I think-and I will write it again with extra flourishes. But if you got it-and I must believe you probably did-then your silence says everything that has to be said. I will still look for you when I come home. I want to see you face to face.
I am at Okinawa. Today I relieved Keefer as captain. I came through the war unscratched, and, I’m sure, a little better for having been somewhat useful for the first time in my life.
I love you-
WILLIE
Then he wrote to his mother.
Even at anchor, on an idle, forgotten old ship, Willie experienced the strange sensations of the first days of a new captain: a shrinking of his personal identity, and a stretching out of his nerve ends to all the spaces and machinery of his ship. He was less free than before. He developed the apprehensive listening ears of a young mother; the ears listened on in his sleep; he never quite slept, not the way he had before. He had the sense of having been reduced from an individual to a sort of brain of a composite animal, the crew and ship combined. The reward for these disturbing sensations came when he walked the decks. Power seemed to flow out of the plates into his body. The respectful demeanor of the officers and crew thrust him into a loneliness he had never known, but it wasn’t a frigid loneliness. Through the transparent barrier of manners came the warming unspoken word that his men liked him and believed in him.
He gave them fresh reason to do so in his first week as captain. A typhoon brushed past Okinawa one night, and Willie was on the bridge continuously for thirty hours, maneuvering finely with his engines and rudder to keep the anchor from dragging. It was a horrible night. The newcomers aboard did a lot of worrying and praying; the crewmen who had lived through December 18 were less terrified. When gray dawn broke over the heaving, white-capped harbor, it revealed a dozen ships stranded on beaches and reefs all around the bay, some high and dry, some lying on their sides in shallow water. One of the wrecks was a DMS. Of course the sight of these unhappy ships made everyone on the Caine feel especially snug and smug and comfortable; and Captain Keith was established as a hero.
New storm warnings kept coming in all day. More typhoons were loose in the South Pacific, and the paths of two of them indicated that they might hit Okinawa. When the waves in the harbor subsided Willie rode over to the Moulton in his gig. The DMS squadron, back from the Tokyo sweep, were ranged in the south anchorage. He burst in on Keggs in his cabin.
“Ed, are you ready for sea?”
“Hi, Willie! Sure- Need fuel and chow and such, but-”
“I want to get the hell out of here. MinePac doesn’t know what to do with me. He’s afraid to send me to sea because I might have another breakdown. Come on over to the Terror. Maybe we can talk him into letting both of us go. You can escort me.”
Keggs looked scared and perplexed. “Willie, we don’t originate sailing orders in this outfit.”
“Listen, boy, everything’s broken wide open. None of the big brass knows what to do from day to day. The war’s over. It’s all different-”
“Well, sure, but we still aren’t-”
“Ed, what can we lose? Wouldn’t you like to be under way for home at 0900 tomorrow?”
“Would I? Jesus-”
“Then come along.”
They tracked down the operations officer in the wardroom of the Terror, drinking coffee alone at the end of a long table. He greeted Willie with a friendly smile. “How’d you keep that old wreck of yours afloat in the blow, Keith? Well done. Have some coffee. You, too, Keggs.”
The two captains sat on either side of the operations officer. Willie said at once, “Sir, I want to take the Caine back to the States. Now. Today. I don’t want to ride out any more typhoons with the engine plant I’ve got.”
“Wait a minute, Lieutenant. Nobody asked you for suggestions about sailing orders-”
“I’m acting for the safety of my ship-”
“You’re not seaworthy-”
“I am as of the moment. My crew fixed the pumps. Sitting here through the next two typhoons isn’t going to make me any more seaworthy-”
“Well, you can always be surveyed here, you know-there’s a board on the way-”
“But I can still get her home. She has scrap value you’ll lose if you scuttle her here-”
“Well, I don’t blame you for wanting to get home. We all do. But I’m afraid-”
“Sir, how does the admiral feel about the
Giles, laying up there on Tsuken Shima on her side? It’s not going to be any credit to MinePac to have another major vessel wrecked. The Caine is in no shape to stay. The safe course is to send us out of this typhoon area. I have a crew to think about.”
“And suppose you break down in mid-ocean?”
“Send Keggs along, sir. We’re all up for decommissioning. The high-speed sweeps are finished. Anyway, I won’t break down. My crew will hold her together with chewing gum and bailing wire, I swear, so long as the bow is pointing to the States.”
Ramsbeck stirred his coffee, and regarded Willie with wry appreciation. “I’m hanged if you don’t make out a case. We’re up to our ears here, we can’t think of everything- I’ll talk to the admiral.”
Two days later, to the tremendous rejoicing of both crews, the Caine and the Moulton received orders to proceed to the Naval Supply Depot in Bayonne, New Jersey, via Pearl Harbor and the Panama Canal, for decommissioning.
It cost Willie Keith an unexpected pang to steam away from Okinawa. He stood on the bridge looking back at the massive island until the last green hump sank into the sea. At that moment he really sensed the end of the war. He had left his home three years ago and come half around the globe; he had pushed as far as this strange, unknown place; and now he was going back.
He couldn’t get used to steaming at night with lights showing. Every time he glanced at the Moulton and saw the yellow flare from the portholes, the red and green running lights, and the blazing white masthead light, he was startled. Instinctively he still observed all the blackout regulations; crushed his cigarette before emerging from his cabin, slid through the curtains of the charthouse so as not to leak any rays, and held his fingers over the lens of his flashlight. It was uncanny, too, to be on the bridge at night and not hear the gurgling pings of the sound search. The sight of all his guns untended, trained in, and covered with canvas made him uneasy. For him the sea and the Japanese had been one enemy. He had to keep reminding himself that the vast ocean did not spawn submarines of itself as it did flying fish.