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

by JOHN J. GOBBELL

  “Hah!” Sodawski pointed at Popovits’s stake truck. “Guess what’s for dinner?”

  “Last time it was rabbit,” said Bergman. He turned to them, grinning. “This time it’s chicken.”

  Indeed, Popovits’s stake truck was loaded with crated chickens. Feathers trailed in its wake as Popovits matched the great cab-forward’s speed. They zipped past a speed board: 60-45.

  Bergman jabbed a thumb at the stake truck and said, “Ben, maybe ve should take it easy. Popovits’s is a crazy man.”

  “Not me,” growled Sodawski. “They’re paying me to keep a schedule.” Once again he yanked his lanyard, the whistle rendering four blasts: a mournful long, long, short, long.

  “Come on, Ben!” yelled Bergman, thumping the arm of his chair with a thick gloved fist.

  Ahead, Sabovik plainly saw that the grade-crossing barricades were down. Yet the truck raced on, Popovits concentrating at the wheel, occasionally glancing over at them.

  Soda Whiskers’s blue right eye glinted in the sunlight. He blasted the horn again and said, “Idiot trying to get hisself killed.”

  Less than five hundred feet, Sabovik reckoned. “You can’t stop now, can you?” he asked.

  Soda Whiskers shook his head. “We could slow down, but nah. Gonna teach him a lesson.”

  “Ben,” yelled Bergman. “Don’t press your luck. Slow down!”

  “More steam, Rudy, dammit.” He reached up and sounded five more short blasts on the whistle.

  “Ben!” shouted Rudy.

  “Don’t look at me, he’s asking for it!” yelled Sodawski.

  The walkie-talkie squawked. Bergman grabbed it. “Yeah?” Then he said to Sodawski, “It’s Elmer. He vants to know vhat the hell you’re doing?”

  Sodawski yelled back, “Tell him to pay attention and give me more steam.” He yanked the whistle lanyard five quick times.

  “He vants to talk to you,” said Rudy, handing over the walkie-talkie.

  “Sure, sure.” Sodawski grabbed it and threw it in a metal cabinet, slamming it shut.

  Sabovik ventured a question to Sabovik. “Who’s Elmer?”

  Sodawski jabbed a thumb toward the engine behind. “Hogger behind us. Gone cold feet on me. “

  “Vat vill Milo say?” asked Rudy.

  “Who cares? Now give me steam!” Again, Sodawski yanked the whistle cord, giving five short blasts.

  “Okay, okay.” Rudy twirled valves. The engine surged ahead, the speedometer jiggling to sixty.

  The stake truck lost ground. But then more black smoke gushed out the tailpipe. It started to catch up, then slowly pull ahead.

  “Shiiiit,” yelled Nitro, his adam’s apple bouncing.

  They thundered past another speed board: 70-50. Sabovik glanced at the speedometer: sixty-five.

  Suddenly a Packard four-door sedan pulled onto the highway from a side-road and rolled to a stop before the barricade. A split second later, the Popovits Farms stake truck screeched to a halt just behind the Packard in a flurry of dust, flying pebbles, and chicken feathers.

  The engine blasted through the intersection.

  “Jerk does that all the time,” said Sodawski. “First time we’ve beaten him. You’d think he has a death wish.” He reached up and sounded four short blasts.

  Sabovik offered, “That means to change speed?”

  “That’s right,” grinned Sodawski, kicking back on the regulator. “Four to slow down, five to go faster, six to shut up.” In moments, the speedometer jiggled back to forty-eight miles per hour.

  Bergman called across the cab, “Ben, I vas supposed to tell you to take it easy.”

  “It’s okay, Rudy.”

  “Vat do I tell Milo?”

  “He’s back in the buggy, Rudy. Don’t worry.” Sodawski gestured to the cabinet. “Or you can call him. I’m sure he wants an explanation.”

  Rudy shrugged.

  “Who’s Milo?” asked Sabovik.

  Sodawski’s face darkened for a moment. “Our boss, the conductor.

  Rides in the caboose. And I’m hogging today because we’re shorthanded.”

  Sabovik had read the file on Soda Whiskers. The man had been a fireman for years, long after his peers were promoted to engineers. But he’d been in trouble for minor scrapes. And once in a while there was an incidence of drinking on his record. He’d recently been in the hospital for an undisclosed illness. From the way it was written, Sabovik figured the supervisor was being kind to him and was glossing over the fact that he’d been in Roseville Community to dry out. “Do you ever see him?”

  “Oh, yes. I’m sure I’ll hear about this at our next water stop.”

  The walkie-talkie squawked in the cabinet, its tone strident.

  Sabovik looked at Bergman and then shrugged.

  “Okay, okay. I get it.” Rudy walked over, drew out the walkie-talkie, and pressed it to his ear. He thumbed the switch and said, “It’s Milo, all right.” After a moment, he grinned and put it back on the shelf.

  “What?” demanded Sodawski.

  “Milo says your skills ain’t up to par.”

  Sodawski’s blue eye glinted. “The hell you say!”

  Rudy’s grin broadened. “He says your timing vas off. He vants to know vy you didn’t hit the sonofabitch?”

  Sodawski sat back in his chair and shook his head. “Next time I’ll try harder.” Then he looked up to Sabovik. “All right. Our fun for the day is over. Now, what is it you want to know about this monster?”

  “Anything you can tell me.” Sabovik didn’t add that he was really interested in the route.

  Sodawski grabbed his pipe and began puffing. “Well, you’re riding in one of the most innovative engines in North America, if not the whole world.” He pointed out the front window. “As you can see, we have clear visibility down the line. And we don’t breathe fumes when we're pulling through tunnels because the stack’s behind us. You’ll see that today. Now as far as this engine goes, it’s an “AC-10 class compound engine, two-hundred-pound plant generating, six thousand horsepower with superheat--”

  “What’s that?” asked Nitro, edging over.

  “Superheat?”

  “Er, yeah.”

  Sodawski looked at Nitro with half an eye roll: everybody knows what superheating is! “Superheating is where you take the steam already generated in the steam drum, run it though some pipes, then let the fire hit it again. This makes the temperature and pressure go higher. That’s when you shove it to the pistons. Much hotter, far more efficient, 25 maybe 30 percent. Far more power.”

  “Superheat,” said Nitro.

  “Right, superheat,” said Sodawski.

  C HAPTER TWENTY TWO

  19 August, 1944

  USS Matthew (DD 548)

  Moored Mare Island Naval Shipyard

  Mare Island, California

  “... I said the plant is superheated, Mr. Peete; 815 degrees. You do know what superheating is, don’t you?”

  “Uh, I believe so, sir,” was the muffled reply.

  Sitting at his desk in the captain’s day cabin, Mike Donovan listened to the banter drifting from the wardroom on the other side of the bulkhead. It was the deep, corrugated voice of Lieutenant Burt Hammond, the ship’s operations officer, pulling Ensign Jonathan Peete through a knothole. The irony was that this was the first time Donovan had heard Jonathan Peete sound unconvincing. Before the war, the man had been a budding movie star, playing in westerns and detective stories. More recently, Hollywood had discovered that Peete could sing, and he was given a supporting role in the musical One Swell Summer.

  It turned out that Jonathan Peete’s luck was attributed, at least in his early days, to his father, Michael Thomas Peete, a major star pre- and post-talkies. But now Michael Peete’s star image was on the wane, as evidenced by the very paternal role he played in One Swell Summer. That was 1942 when the draft board in North Hollywood, California, began breathing down young Jonathan Peete’s neck. Armed with a degree in drama from Yale, he enr
olled in an officer candidate program. Only when Jonathan was about to graduate from OCS did he learn that father Michael had pulled strings, trying to secure for him a full lieutenant’s commission with a Hollywood assignment.

  Jonathan balked. He’d stormed into his commanding officer’s office and requested – no, demanded an assignment to the fleet, preferably overseas to the war zone. Michael became furious, and father and son hadn’t talked since. Jonathan couldn’t have been happier. after receiving his commission, he put in for the navy’s prodigious destroyer fleet and was ordered to the Matthew. Once Kruger had seen the orders, he’d sent Peete on to gunnery and torpedo school before the young ensign reported aboard.

  Donovan hoped he’d fit in. In this war, he didn’t need a movie star as a leader. He needed leaders to lead and they were damn hard to come by, especially experienced people.

  Hammond was still at it with Peete. He bored in: “... because if you don’t know about superheating, Mr. Peete, Mr. Corodini here will be happy to send along the ship’s engineering specs for you to go over before we next get under way. You do know who Lieutenant Corodini is, don’t you, Mr. Peete?”

  “Ship’s engineering officer, sir.”

  “Very good, Mr. Peete. Now, I imagine that if you can read lines in a screenplay, you surely can read few lines in the ship’s engineering doctrine.”

  Chuckles ranged from the officers around the wardroom table.

  “Mr. Peete?” demanded Hammond.

  “We had instruction in naval engineering, sir. But I can’t–”

  “You mean they didn’t teach superheating to you in Ninety-Day Wonder school?”

  Donovan didn’t mind the hazing. All junior officers endured it from one aspect or another. But hazing was only good if it was constructive. Burt Hammond’s hazing was demeaning, particularly since there were chief petty officers in the wardroom, waiting for the meeting to begin. He needed an officer and chiefs corps that pulled together, not one busy dodging bullets.

  Where the hell is Kruger? he wondered. It was early afternoon, and Donovan fidgeted. He needed Kruger to let him know if all the officers and chiefs were gathered for the meeting. Despite Admiral Nimitz’s admonition to take his full thirty day’s leave, he’d decided to report aboard early, assess the ship’s needs over a few days, put them into motion, then take the rest of his leave.

  Diane Logan had advised him not to return to duty for at least another week, but he felt much better and was getting agitated about his first command. The Logans were putting him up, and both he and Diane knew they had unfinished business. He’d gone through a catharsis of sorts, telling her about that horrible night off Tassaforonga Point and how Tiny was killed. He knew he had to keep talking. But there was something at a deeper level that he sensed, and he wanted to pursue that as well. Also, he had to admit that the feminine scent he’d caught that first night lay fixed in his subconscious.

  One thing that he and Nimitz hadn’t discussed – and that Diane didn’t realize – is that a ship that doesn’t get under way is a dead ship. And with Tom Drake, her captain, killed in an auto wreck, they’d kept the Matthew dockside pending a new skipper.

  Donovan needed to take over before the Matthew atrophied to a shriveled wreck. He’d seen signs of it this morning when he overheard sailors on the reefer ship across the way. They were laughing about the “Matthew the Motionless” saying it was impossible to get her under way since she was stuck high and dry on coffee grounds.

  To everyone’s surprise, he walked up the gangway unannounced at 0900. It was worse than he’d seen that evening when he’d stood out on the dock with Vicki Kruger. Little things: petty officers standing around drinking coffee, talking with nonrated men who were supposed to be working. Cigarette ashes littered the deck, and the men’s uniforms looked dirty, their shirts not tucked in. Elsewhere, inspection plates lay open, the areas unattended. A young bosun striker was painting over rust. Donovan shuddered to think what he’d find on his captain’s inspection.

  After telling an apologetic Kruger to go back to work, he spent the morning reviewing service jackets, having lunch sent to his stateroom where he ate in seclusion. He discovered that only sixty of their enlisted complement of 341 had been to sea; of that, only thirty-seven had combat experience. It was just as bad with the officers. He could count on just six qualified men for top underway watches, seven if he included Kruger. It was not just going to be a long day, it was going to be a long year.

  A knock on the door.

  “Enter.”

  Kruger walked in. “All set, Captain.”

  “Chiefs, too?”

  “Just about everybody. Except Chief Dudley who’s standing the quarterdeck watch.”

  “Let’s get in there before” – Donovan looked at a personnel file – “Lieutenants Burt Hammond and Alberto Corodini rip Mr. Peete to pieces.”

  Kruger stopped in the doorway. “It’s Al or Lieutenant Corodini. He’s adamant about that. No one but his mother or grandmother calls him Alberto.”

  “He hates Alberto?”

  “That’s what he tells me.”

  “I wonder what else he hates?”

  Kruger remained tight-lipped.

  “Let’s go, Mr. Kruger.” Donovan eased past his executive officer and stepped into the wardroom.

  “–tention on deck,” someone called. Chairs scraped, men shot to their feet. Coffee cups clanked, and blue tobacco smoke cascaded about the space as three rubber-bladed fans tried vainly to disperse it. The wardroom, with a long athwartships dining table, was designed to accommodate twelve men at meals. The compartment was packed with about thirty, half of them jammed against the forward and port bulkheads, all straining to see their new skipper.

  “Seats, gentlemen, those of you who can find chairs.” Donovan took his chair at the table’s head, while Kruger slipped into the chair to his right. Corodini, the next senior officer, sat to his left. “Smoking lamp is lit.”

  He studied their faces. Expectation, concern, and foreboding were written over the officers’. The chiefs, older men, far more experienced, were more passive, expressionless, professional. Donovan knew he could depend on them. It was the officers he worried about.

  It hit him that he was seated in the captain’s chair -- not the chair to his right, where he’d sat before aboard the McDermott. That was the exec’s chair and it now belonged to Kruger. He was seated where Mario Rossi had sat. It was where Mario had so easily dispensed justice and wisdom and discipline and confidence.

  Mario’s smiling face flashed before him. Get it rolling you stupid mik.

  “Well, now, it can’t be all that bad, gentleman. I’ve only been aboard for five hours. She’s still afloat isn’t she?”

  Chuckles ranged about the space.

  He shrugged and then said, “Tom Drake was a good man. Last month I had the good fortune to meet with Admiral Nimitz, and he said as much. He sends his condolences.” He shook his head. “It doesn’t make sense, I’ll admit. The pinnacle of your career and zap, an auto wreck. But as the Good Book says,>let the dead bury the dead.’ It’s time to move on and bring this ship back to fighting trim. By that, I mean she’s got to be worthy of joining the Big Blue. And right now, I don’t think this ship is ready for a division officer’s inspection, let alone a captain’s inspection. “Am I right?” He looked into their eyes. “Anybody have anything to offer to the contrary?”

  Silence. Lieutenant “l Corodini took a drag on his cigarette. Immediately he broke into a deep-seated, lung-twisting smoker’s cough that lasted thirty seconds. He grew red in the face and wheezed, “... sorry, Captain.” Someone shoved over a glass and he gulped water.

  Kruger reached over and stubbed out Corodini’s cigarette. “That’s why they call>em coffin nails.”

  “Sorry, Captain,” said Corodini. He was a massive man, at least six-four, weighing 250 pounds, with fiery red hair.

  “You play football, Mr. Corodini?” asked Donovan. He’d already read Corodini’s se
rvice record and knew the answer.

  Corodini straightened to his full height. “Fullback, Ohio State, sir.”

  “Glad to have you in the lineup.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  It grew quiet. Donovan continued. “The hell with inspections. Here’s what I’d like to do. I intend to read my orders at 1500, assume command, and then get this ship under way tomorrow at 0800.”

  Outside, it was bright daylight, but the wardroom suddenly seemed to grow dark. “Holy smokes,” murmured one of the chiefs.

  “Anything wrong with getting this ship under way?” asked Donovan. “I mean those three bladed things hanging off the fantail are meant to go round and round, aren’t they?”

  Corodini cleared his throat. “Captain, there’s a few things you should know about the plant first.”

  “And what are those, Alberto?”

  Despite the little red flecks that quickly flashed at the corners of Corodini’s eyes, he did a good job keeping his temper. “Well, sir, we have a lube-oil problem to the main feed pump in the after engine room. Also, the fuel-oil service pump in the forward fireroom is–”

  “Estimated time of repair?” asked Donovan.

  Corodini blinked and looked at Kruger. “Well, sir. If the parts get here on time possibly by 1800 this evening.”

  “What if the parts don’t get here until 1900? Will you be able to work on it then?”

  “... uh, well, if need be.”

  “And what if the duty section can’t finish the job by then?”

  “Well, sir. With the ship’s company back aboard, we’ll finish the job tomorrow morning, sir,” said Corodini.

  Donovan stared at Corodini.

  Corodini cleared his throat and continued, “Besides that, there’s a failure in the after steering port ram, and we’ve--”

  “We have a starboard ram, don’t we?” asked Donovan.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Can you fix the port ram by 0800 tomorrow?”

  “If we get the parts.” Corodini gazed darky to the end of the table.

  The seat at the other end was occupied by Howard Sloan , a redheaded, freckle-faced, thin lieutenant junior grade. Sloan said nothing, his lips pressed.