A CALL TO COLORS: A NOVEL OF THE BATTLE OF LEYTE GULF

by JOHN J. GOBBELL

  Lamar stuck his head in the door. “Pardon me, Admiral, the president’s party is ready to head on over to Aiea. They’re accelerating the schedule.”

  “You mean now?” Nimitz snapped.

  “Afraid so, sir,” said Lamar.

  “Just when I was getting to know--say, are you all right?” Nimitz’s eyebrows went up.

  A bolt of pain ripped through Donovan’s abdomen, and he felt himself on the edge of blackness. What the hell? He wanted to double up and grab his belly.

  “Sir?” Lamar was beside Donovan, his hand on his shoulder, keeping him from pitching out of his chair.

  Nimitz came from around the desk.

  Donovan blinked and looked up into their faces.

  “Look how white he is,” Nimitz said softly. “Call Captain Anderson, Art.”

  “Sorry, sir,” Donovan gasped. “No need to call the doc” he managed.

  Lamar, phone in mid-dial, looked up.

  “My quinine. Forgot to take it this morning,” said Donovan. Actually he did feel a little better.

  “What is it, malaria?” asked Nimitz.

  “Yes, sir,” said Donovan, accepting a glass of water from Lamar. “Drank some bad water one day on Guadalcanal. Fouled me up for a while, but I’m on the tail end of it now.”

  Nimitz brightened. “Damn. That happened to me after my first trip out there. Put me on my back for two weeks.”

  “I’m fine, Admiral. Just need to get to my quinine.” Donovan rose, still feeling shaky. His belly felt warm, almost hot, but the pain was gone and his footing was okay. “Thank you, sir.”

  “Well, all right. But I want you to see a doctor just the same. Make sure all those bugs are out of your system.”

  Nimitz grabbed his hat and steered Donovan toward the door. “Best of luck with the Matthew, Commander. Give `em hell for me, will you?”

  “You bet I will, Admiral,” said Donovan.

  “Don’t forget to check in with the doc.”

  “Yes, sir. Thanks for your time.”

  “Good bye.” Nimitz and Lamar turned and headed down the hall.

  Donovan walked across the shiny green linoleum surface to a scuttlebutt. The water was chilled and felt good going down. Feeling better, he headed for the parking lot. What the hell was that? He wondered. He’d never been ashore at Guadalcanal. And he sure as hell had never had malaria.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  1 August, 1944

  Oak Knoll Naval Hospital

  Oakland, California

  The doctor was towheaded, had crystal blue eyes and not a hint of a beard. And yet the diploma on the wall of his closet-size office said the lieutenant junior grade had graduated from the University of Washington’s medical school in 1941. Another diploma specified that he’d served his internship at San Diego’s Mercy Hospital. Both diplomas stipulated the man’s name:

  HORACE T. DUBERMAN, MD

  A trophy with a bow and arrow sitting on a pile of magazines stated:

  HORACE DUBERMAN - SAN DIEGO ARCHERY CENTER

  SECOND PLACE

  Horace was an archer who tried to make up for his youthful appearance with a somber facade. Donovan only hoped that Duberman was better as a doctor than as a second-place archer.

  Donovan offered a hand and said, “Mike Donovan.”

  Duberman’s smile was thin, his hand cold, near comatose. “What can I do for you?”

  After Donovan explained his condition, the doctor ordered him to remove his tie, shirt, and lie back. Probing his belly, he asked, “Are you experiencing any pain, Commander?”

  “Experiencing pain? Do you mean...Lieutenant, does it hurt?”

  “Yes.”

  “Once in a while.”

  “Now?”

  “No.”

  The doctor probed some more, then said, “Sit up, please.” Making a great show of unlimbering his stethoscope, he listened to Donovan’s chest and heart. “Breathe deeply, please.”

  “I’ll do my best.”

  “Thank you.”

  So much for this guy’s bedside manner.

  Duberman pushed his stethoscope around and then said, “Okay, you can relax.”

  “You want to put that thing against my head, Doc? Might hear the latest hula music from Hawaii.”

  The doctor didn’t blink as he checked Donovan’s eyes, ears, and nose. Then he stepped back. “You can put your shirt on.”

  “Thanks.”

  “I see from your file that you’ve had, ahhh, extensive combat experience.”

  “Experience?”

  “Well, yes, you know, combat. Contact with the enemy.”

  “Contact?”

  “Please Commander; I’m trying to help you.”

  “Let me put it this way, Lieutenant. The Japs have done their best to separate my ass from the rest of my body. But somehow, I’ve foiled their plot and survived.”

  “Ummm.” The doctor nodded solemnly while flipping pages in Donovan’s medical record. “How’s your appetite?”

  “Now that I’m home, I can report that I’ll be eating like a pig.”

  “I see. And how about your sleep?”

  “Well, it’s like I said. Sometimes I have nightmares that scare the daylights out of me. I wake up sweating.”

  “What are your dreams about?”

  Donovan ran his tie under his collar and began the four-in-hand knot. “Same one. We’re aboard the Tampa; John and Tiny and me.” He explained the nightmare.

  “I see. Your medical file here says you’ve been in combat, more or less, over a period of twenty-one months.”

  “More or less.”

  Dr. Duberman ran his finger down a page. His eyebrows went up. “See here. You had a ship blown out from under you. The cruiser Tampa.”

  “Lieutenant, that’s what I’ve been telling you.”

  Dr. Duberman looked up with curious blue eyes. “Have you ever had a mental evaluation?”

  “You think I’m a head case?”

  “Well, it could help to--”

  “Bullshit! Just give me something for a restful night’s sleep. I’ve got a ship waiting for me.” Donovan finished with his tie and turned to face the doctor, fists jammed on his hips. “That’s all I need.”

  Young Dr. Duberman rubbed his chin. “Very well. Report to the lab. I want to see some blood work and a urinalysis. If they’re okay, then we’ll put you on something.”

  “Like what?”

  Duberman shrugged. “Belladonna, possibly.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Stomach tranquilizer. Helps you sleep, too.”

  “You think that will take care of it?” He fussed with his tie.

  “Yes, it should work.” Dr. Duberman scratched on a form and handed it over. “Here’s your lab slip. Go down there now, give the samples, and then report back here tomorrow morning at 0900. If everything’s okay, I’ll give you a six-month supply.”

  “Thanks, Doc.” Donovan reached to shake the man’s hand, but Dr. Duberman had walked out.

  * * * * *

  That afternoon, Donovan got a priority telephone clearance from the Alameda Naval Air Station switchboard and put a call through to his home in Sherman Oaks, California. His mother, Mary, answered and was overjoyed to learn her oldest son had returned to the States. But soon she broke down, and Donovan thought he was going to start crying as well. Fortunately, the phone booth was in the bachelor officers’ quarters’ lobby; people were walking to and fro, giving a detached sense of reality.

  “When can we expect you, son?” she asked.

  “Right after I see Carmen Rossi in Rocklin.”

  “Who’s that?”

  “Skipper’s wife. We, ahhh, lost him out there. I was the closest to him; it’s my job to talk to her.”

  She sniffed for a moment. “Mikey, I’m so sorry. Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine, Mom.”

  “Do you have to go far?”

  “Oh, no. Rocklin is southeast of Sacramento, about thirty
or forty miles. I take the train there.”

  “Oh.”

  “Mom. They’re giving me command of a ship, a destroyer.”

  “Oh, your dad will be so proud.”

  “How is Dad? How’s the store?” Ray Donovan owned Donovan’s, a popular neighborhood drugstore on Ventura Boulevard. He’d been one of the first to install a soda fountain and jukebox, making the store popular with teenagers.

  “I wish I knew.”

  “Pardon?”

  “The store is doing fine. I work there a lot since my boys are gone.” Mary Donovan was also a pharmacist.

  “Working your fingers to the bone, is he?”

  ”He wouldn’t know.”

  “What?”

  “Right now, Ray’s out buying real estate.”

  “What for?”

  Mary Donovan’s voice turned to a whisper, “Remember the panic after Pearl Harbor?”

  “You bet.” After the long string of Japanese victories in the Pacific, many local landowners were convinced the Japanese were going to strike California next. Quite a few sold homes and businesses, especially near the coast.

  “There’s a lot of storefront property available on Ventura Boulevard out in Tarzana, and Woodland Hills. Last week, he bought a city block in Encino. He wants to build a Signal gas station at the corner of White Oak and Ventura. That’s phase one.”

  “What’s phase two?”

  “A new Donovan’s drugstore, right beside it. Phase three will be a bowling alley on the other side. Doesn’t that sound keen?”

  “Mom, that intersection is out in the sticks. He’ll lose his shirt.”

  “That’s what I keep saying, but you know your father: firing both barrels all the time.”

  “Well, I hope Hopalong Cassidy’s horse burns ethyl.” Many B westerns, including those of folk hero Hopalong Cassidy, were shot in that part of the Valley. The family had survived the Depression fairly well with the drugstore even at a time when a lot of friends and neighbors had been hit hard. Now Donovan visualized his father losing it all, ending up in the poorhouse. He could see his cigar-chomping, white-haired, dad digging ditches for a TVA dam or something.

  “Mom, are you okay?”

  “Goodness’ sakes, we’re fine. How about you?”

  He pulled the bandage off his arm where the lab technician had drawn blood and decided to pop the question. “Mom, what do you know about belladonna?”

  “Well, it – say, who wants to know?”

  “Ah, a buddy of mine has to take it. He’s worried that it could cut into his ability to make decisions and be alert.”

  “Well, it’s used for patients with nervous stomachs. Doctors like it because it decreases acid secretions in the stomach and reduces the risk of burning the lining and causing ulcers. We don’t hear of complaints of drowsiness, either. Is that what you want to know?”

  “Basically, thanks, I’ll tell him.”

  “You can also tell him that his mother misses him and wants him to get down here.”

  He never could fool his mother. “Mom, I--”

  “Can you get here by Saturday?”

  “Try to, why?”

  “Because on Sunday, your father leaves on the train for New York.”

  “Good God. What for?”

  “To line up financing for all that property. He wants to -- he calls it ‘bundle the loan.’”

  “I’ll try, Mom.”

  It was silent, so Donovan asked, “How’s Pat doing?” Donovan’s younger brother, Captain Patrick Donovan, was a P-51 pilot with the Eighth Air Force in Britain.

  “Last we heard he had thirty-eight missions.”

  “I thought he only had to do twenty-five.”

  “That’s what we thought, too, but he’s going for fifty.”

  “He’ll be the youngest general in the air force. Either that or the youngest pilot in a German prison camp.”

  “Mike, don’t say that!”

  “Just pulling your leg, Mom. See you Saturday.”

  They rang off.

  Donovan pushed open the phone booth’s accordion doors and stepped out into the lobby. A day to kill before I shove off for Rocklin tomorrow morning.

  It was a Tuesday, and he didn’t think much would be doing in Oakland or over in San Francisco, for that matter. Besides, he was still tired from the flight. He’d bounced and jiggled in the air for fourteen hours, arriving early this morning. Maybe tomorrow night, he’d go into San Francisco or possibly out to the Claremont Hotel in Berkeley with its fine view of the bay. Tonight he just wanted to sleep. But what to do for the rest of the day?

  A bus rumbled up to the front door. Air brakes squealed as its accordion doors opened. A Marine captain and a navy ensign alighted and walked into the BOQ lobby. A sign over the bus’s front window announced it was the hourly shuttle for Mare Island.

  What the hell. Nimitz wouldn’t mind.

  * * * * *

  As often happens in August, it was a cold, blustery late afternoon in the San Francisco Bay Area. The wind roared through the Golden Gate and fanned out, raising goose bumps on brave souls trapped in summer garb. Unaccustomed to this winter-like onslaught, Donovan walked down the pier at the Mare Island (derisively called Nightmare Island) Naval Shipyard wearing working khakis, a light foul weather jacket, and a garrison cap. Donovan cursed himself for not taking the bus at the front gate or even checking out a pool car, but he wanted to see the Matthew for himself. To amble up and look her over without anyone seeing.

  Fairbanks Morse “rock-crusher” diesel engines rumbled as he walked past three Balao-class fleet submarines moored in a nest, menacing in their gray-matte and black camouflage patterns. Fork-lifts and stake trucks darted about while a massive overhead crane clanked and ground its way down the pier. Shooting beneath was a little 0-2-2-0 steam-switcher engine shoving two gray, ammunition-laden boxcars.

  Destroyer tenders, APAs, a light cruiser, another nest of submarines, five this time: the ships were alive with men bustling about, carrying crates and boxes, hooking up steam or electrical hoses, while radar antennas and gun mounts spun, their strident warning bells clanging at sailors to stand clear. Men hung over the ships’ sides, chipping paint, while other men on deck bent low, wearing protective safety hoods with Martian-like cobalt lenses, performing their artistry with welding torches.

  He found the Matthew jammed at the far end of the pier, forty feet of her fantail sticking into the fairway, the wind whipping her ensign. Moored portside-to, she hulked all by herself, not nested with other destroyers; just alone, like a forgotten orphan. Donovan walked along the opposite side of the pier in the shadow of a large seaplane tender and studied the Matthew from a distance. The hair on the back of his neck bristled, and it wasn’t from the wind. In fact, it was calm in the lee of the high, slab-sided seaplane tender.

  Just look at her. Sleek, graceful.

  Drawing power and water from the shore, she was at cold iron, her stacks covered with black canvas. She wore a camouflage pattern of dark gray on light gray, not the dappled pattern popular in the South Pacific during the early part of the war. Her prominent features were a superstructure rising a third of the way aft of the bow and twin raked stacks; all surrounded by five single Five-inch 38-caliber gun mounts, each gun capable of hurling a fifty-four-pound projectile eighteen thousand yards, or nine nautical miles. A quintuplet torpedo mount lay between her stacks on the 01 level; another was nested just aft of number two stack. Each mount carried five mark 15 torpedoes with a warhead of 825-pounds HBX. The rest of the ship bristled with forty-and twenty-millimeter cannons and depth charges.

  One of 175 Fletcher class destroyers, the Matthew was a brand-new greyhound, ready to leap and bound. But she wasn’t tested, Donovan knew. At this stage of her young life, he wondered if she would be mature enough to run with fast carriers and battleships; mature enough to dish it out to the enemy.

  Maybe so, maybe not. He wouldn’t know until he stepped aboard. Right now she was quiet, sti
ll in mourning for Tom Drake, her skipper. Automatically his eyes whipped to the port yardarm seeing the “absentee pennant” two-blocked there. Tom Drake, you’re absent forever, he mused. But then, I’m absent, too, and that must be for whom the pennant is flying.

  Unlike the frenetic activity aboard other ships, the Matthew’s decks were empty; nobody was about except the quarterdeck watch, where an ensign and a white hat, both wearing holstered .45s, paced up and down, trying to keep warm. From the looks of her, Donovan figured Richard Kruger must have sent half of the crew either on leave or to school while waiting for the new skipper.

  Something wasn’t right. It was near sunset as Donovan walked to the end of the pier and eyed her mast. She carried a starboard list of about five degrees. No big deal, but it looked sloppy.

  The ensign on the quarterdeck spotted Donovan and watched, his hands on his hips. Casually Donovan eased back across the pier and deep into the shadow of the seaplane tender, where he ambled to a portable reefer shed.

  The ensign turned away and bent to work on his quarterdeck log.

  Two sailors smoked in the lee on the other side about ten yards away. Unaware of Donovan’s presence, one commented, “Just look at that damn can. Sleek, fast, she looks like she’s just aching for a fight just sitting there.”

  “Not that one,” said the other sailor.

  “Huh?”

  “Ship’s a hangar queen. High and dry on coffee grounds. They call her ‘Matthew the Motionless.’”

  “Wonder why?”

  “Hard-luck ship. Skipper was killed. Something’s always going wrong.”

  “I’ll be damned.”

  “Nice looking, isn’t she?” It was a woman’s voice.

  Donovan nearly jumped. “What?”

  She was beside the reefer shed in shadows where the fan exhausted warm air. A woman in her late thirties, her graying brunette hair pulled back in a bun. She was in a wheelchair, a blanket over her legs. “I’m not going to bite,” she said, her eyes narrowing as she studied his silver oak leaves. “Commander.” Her smile was genuine. But it was a smile hard-earned and carefully dispensed. Her eyes were deep set, with crow’s-feet. And her chin was sharp. She was a good-looking woman who had survived well over time.