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

by JOHN J. GOBBELL

  “We’re supposed to be lookouts,” said Constantine.

  “A gawd-damn lookout! So here I am, a friggin’ lookout. But not qualified for submarines because of poor eyesight. How far are you supposed to see in a damn submarine, anyway?”

  “Far enough to find the shitter.”

  “Hey, don’t screw with me.”

  “Look. Maybe you should talk to Mister Manure.”

  “Screw him. And screw this ship. And screw the loading machine.”

  “Look out, here he comes... shhhh.” The voices moved off.

  Donovan yanked the phone from its bracket and punched Kruger’s number.

  “XO.”

  “Need you up here, Richard.”

  “On my way, sir.” He hung up.

  * * * * *

  Donovan sent Kruger out to relieve Hammond and Muir and take the deck and the conn.

  There was a knock at the door. “Enter.”

  Hammond and Muir walked in wearing light foul-weather jackets, binoculars dangling from their necks. It was tight as the three stood in Donovan’s sea cabin.

  Hammond spread his hands. “You wanted to see us, Skipper?”

  Donovan leaned over and made a show of slamming and dogging the porthole shut.

  Hammond and Muir exchanged glances.

  “When is sea detail, Mr. Hammond?”

  Hammond checked his watch. “About five more minutes, sir.”

  “And where are we?” demanded Donovan.

  “Sir?”

  Donovan let his voice rise. “Where the hell are we, in relation to Rowaryu Channel?”

  Hammond said, “Ahh, we’re about three miles out. I was just getting ready to call you, sir.”

  “Did you read my standing orders.”

  “Of course, sir.”

  Donovan turned to Muir. “And you, Mr. Muir?”

  Muir gulped and then replied, “Yes, sir. I read them, Captain.”

  Donovan slapped the bulkhead. “Then why the hell do you have these two stupid oafs out there as lookouts, grumbling and bitching about loading-machine exercises and not doing their jobs?”

  “Who?”

  “Schumacher and Constantine, that’s who.”

  After a moment, Muir replied, “They’re good men, Captain. Maybe a little young. But I put them on the watch bill myself.”

  “Well, let me tell you what they’re doing.” While Muir turned red at the reference to his name, Donovan repeated the details of what he’d heard through the porthole.

  With a glance at Muir, Hammond said, “Sorry, sir. I’ll talk to them.”

  “That’s it?” asked Donovan.

  “Well, er, yes, sir,” replied Hammond.

  “Well, that’s not it. I want them relieved and sent below.”

  An eerie silence crept into the room.

  “Sir?” managed Muir.

  “I said, I want them relieved right now. If you had paid any attention to my standing orders, you would have learned that Rowaryu Channel was swept of mines a week ago but there is still danger and in case you haven’t checked, the minesweepers are still out there. This means we need eyes all over the ship – everywhere, checking for mines. So far, Mr. Hammond and Mr. Muir, you have placed this ship in jeopardy by posting incompetent, careless lookouts – men who bitch and grouse instead of doing their duty – and that is looking for mines and other hazards.”

  Hammond tried, “I’m sorry, Captain. I didn’t realize that–”

  “I know you didn’t realize that was going on because you two didn’t read my standing orders. And you didn’t realize those two were leaning against the bulkhead endangering this ship and not doing their jobs. Now get out there and take care of this before I have you relieved as well.” He jabbed a thumb at the doorway.

  “Yes, sir.” Hammond and Muir fairly ripped the door off its hinges and scrambled out.

  * * * * *

  Steaming at seventeen knots, the Simpson, Matthew, and Connelly stood into Rowaryu Channel at five-hundred-yard intervals. A twenty-knot westerly blew as they reduced speed to twelve knots and slewed through a following sea composed of choppy gray waves topped by whitecaps. Steering was tricky and La Valle, a 210-pound quartermaster, chomped gum furiously while working his helm, keeping the destroyer on its narrow track. Donovan stood on the bridge’s port wing. Kruger was on the starboard side, with Hammond and Muir hovering over the chart in the pilothouse.

  It seemed anticlimactic when they popped into the lagoon. The seas moderated; the bottom was almost visible through blue, crystalline water.

  Kruger wandered over and asked, “We done?”

  Donovan said, “Right. We’re okay for now. We should be hearing something shortly.”

  As if in response, a signal lamp began blinking from the Simpson. Hodges, a stocky second-class signalman, stood on the signal platform and began taking the message. With a cigarette dangling from his lips, Hodges energized his signal lamp and clacked a response to the Simpson’s flashing light. At the same time, he dictated Simpson’s message to a young striker, who transcribed it on a padded form.

  With a final clack of his lamp, Hodges called, “BT.” He turned off his lamp, took the pad from the striker, and entered the date/time group. Then he tore the message off the pad and handed it to Donovan.

  Donovan called Kruger, Hammond, and Muir and said,

  PROCEED TO AREA MIKE MIKE 35 FOR DUTY ASSIGNED.

  “Here,” he handed the message to Hammond. Plot the coordinates and give a me a course. I suspect we’ll find our ammunition ship anchored at Mike Mike 35.”

  “Yes, sir.” Hammond walked into the pilothouse.

  Simpson’s signal lamp blinked again. Hodges was on it before anyone yelled, a sort of demented sport around the bridge. He flashed his response, then lit another cigarette and signed off, this time with a grin. Tearing the sheet off the pad, he gave it to Donovan with a flourish.

  “I’ll be damned,” said Donovan.

  “What?” asked Kruger.

  “A baseball game.” He handed over the message.

  YOU UP FOR A BB GAME MOGMOG, SAY 1400?

  Kruger’s grin was as big as Hodges’s. “Hell, yes. Simpson verses the Matthew. We’ll beat the hell out of those pansies.”

  Hodges stood close by, his face expectant.

  Donovan handed the message back to Hodges and said, “Tell them affirmative, but say 1600 vice 1400.”

  “Skipper, that’s kinda late,” said Kruger. “Curfew’s at 1900.”

  “That’s the way it has to be,” said Donovan, who gestured to Hodges. “Go send it to them. Sixteen hundred.”

  Hodges’s face darkened. “Yes, sir.” He walked back to his platform and began transmitting.

  “Can’t we make an exception, Mike?” asked Kruger.

  “Mr. Kruger. We have a job to do. Number one is to replenish this ship. Number two is to become proficient on the loading machine. We’re not quite ready to meet the enemy. So we need the time.”

  “But–”

  Donovan turned to Kruger. “The hell with baseball. I’d just soon as live out this war. How about you, Mr. Kruger?” He fixed a stare.

  “Yes, sir,” said Kruger.

  “Very well. Sixteen hundred then.” Donovan walked off.

  Hammond was back with the chart. Wordlessly, he pointed to the anchorage.

  “Way the hell down there?” gasped Kruger.

  “What’s the distance?” demanded Donovan, raising his binoculars.

  “Fourteen miles,” said Hammond. “Bears one-nine-two.”

  “Very well, make it so. One-nine-two: twenty knots,” replied Donovan.

  Hammond gave the order, then stepped into the pilothouse to run his plot.

  Kruger turned to Donovan and said softly, “We really not getting our boys ashore today?”

  “Could be. Why?” asked Donovan.

  “They’ll crap in their pants, that’s what.”

  “Can’t be helped, Mr. Kruger.”

 
“We’ll have to do better than that. These guys need a break.”

  “Welcome to the war zone, Mr. Kruger. And you know something?”

  “Sir?”

  Donovan pointed to the west. “Plenty of Japs that way. Just over the horizon. After we mix with them, our boys will wish we were back here, doing loading-machine drills.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY TWO

  29 September, 1944

  USS Matthew (DD 548)

  Moored starboard side to USS Mount Saint Helens (AE 21)

  Area Mike Mike 35, Ulithi Atoll,

  Caroline Islands

  They’d moored alongside the fourteen-thousand-ton ammunition ship just before the noon meal. Wolfing their food, the crew turned to at 1245 and began passing ammunition under a searing ten-degree north latitude sun. The plan was to load ammo, shove off, and head back to their anchorage near Mogmog Islet. En route, Donovan agreed to let the gun-mount crews do their damn loading machine drills and then head ashore for baseball.

  The smoking lamp was out and an eerie silence descended on the Matthew as they began the grim business of loading. The usual in-port jocularity was absent as it occurred to the crew that these rounds were intended for an enemy not too far away.

  Using her cargo booms, the Mount Saint Helens landed pallet load after pallet load of ammunition on the Matthew’s fo’c’sle, amidships and fantail. From there, lines of shirtless sweating men snaked into the upper handling rooms of each of the Matthew’s five-inch gun mounts. Vent and exhaust blowers roared at full speed in the handling rooms, yet temperatures stood well over a hundred degrees as gunners fed their rounds into ammunition hoists and struck them below to the magazines. Breaks were called every twenty minutes with men walking among the thirsty sailors carrying water jugs and paper cups. Donovan and Kruger eased among them, encouraging, slapping men on the rump, cajoling, joking, making them feel better about what was at hand.

  While the five-inch ammunition was being struck below, other crews stowed a final allotment of forty- and twenty-millimeter rounds in ready service lockers beside the guns. Another pallet was landed containing ten cases of .45-caliber ball ammunition, two cases of hand grenades, and six cases of BAR ammo.

  The torpedomen worked in their own world. They started on the fantail where a bare-chested, 250-pound chief torpedoman Cecil Hammer, a veteran of World War I, roared his commands. “Come on, you lazy bastards, mule haul!” Shoving his chief’s hat back on his head, Hammer bellowed as the Mt. Saint Helen’s crane operator eased three depth charges, three hundred pounds each, on the port stern rack to replace the ones rolled in practice two days previously.

  Then they turned to their main task: rounding out ship’s complement of ten mark 15 torpedoes. The ten torpedo bodies were already snug in their quintuplet tube mounts: mount one located forward of number two stack, mount two aft of the stack. The torpedo director platform was mounted on the forward part of the number two stack.

  Only seven torpedoes had warheads, three having been used as exercise shots, with bright yellow warheads. They had already been disconnected and now stood nose-up on a pallet on the main deck, like three yellow soldiers. It was time to switch them and connect the mark 17 mod 3 warheads, each containing 825 pounds of HBX.

  Jonathan Peete stood quietly beside Hammer as he barked orders to his torpedo gang. Soon the crane operator swung the three exercise warheads high in the air and took them over to the Mount Saint Helens where he dropped them into her yawning hold. Two minutes later, a pallet of three mark 17 warheads was silently hoisted out of the ammunition ship’s hold.

  “Mr. Peete, d’ya mind?” asked Hammer.

  “Yes?” replied Peete.

  Hammer pointed with a massive arm. “The only place on this here ship that I can land my tarpeders is right where you’re standin’.”

  Peete, who had been daydreaming, jerked his head up to see the pallet load of torpedoes swaying directly above his head. “Well that’s a good idea, Chief. It wouldn’t do to have a squashed ensign, would it?” He stepped aside.

  “Uh, Sir?”

  “Kind of ruin your day wouldn’t it? Lots of cleaning up to do, goo all over the place, forms to fill out. You wouldn’t like that, would you Chief?”

  Hammer turned his back and twirled a finger for the crane operator. But Peete saw a corner of Hammer’s mouth turn up as he bellowed, “C’mon, dammit Gus. Get them damn things down here. We ain’t got all day.” Hammer and the Mt. Saint Helens’s crane operator skillfully maneuvered the load of dull-bronze warheads to a soft landing on Matthew’s main deck near the torpedo crane. While the torpedomen began attaching the warheads, another pallet load of six bulky wooden crates was swung aboard. These crates contained mark 6 mod 13 torpedo exploders, each weighing ninety pounds.

  Donovan finally discovered first-hand the attributes Admiral Nimitz saw in Kruger. Following the sound of muted curses and screams, Donovan made his way down to the second deck just above mount 52's lower handling room and peered through the hatch. The ammunition hoist had broken down, and hydraulic fluid sprayed everywhere while perspiration soaked men cursed and slid on the deck. Without the hoist, gunner’s mates formed lines down the hatchways so projectiles and powder would continue coming down, but at a much slower pace. Donovan called for Al Corodini and Reuben Sanchez, chief engineer and electrical officer. Within minutes, they scrambled down to the lower handling room packing thick manuals. Precious minutes passed as they spread schematics on the deck and scratched their heads, impervious to men working around them, cursing, slipping, as they desperately clutched their fifty-four-pound projectiles.

  “Excuse me, Captain.” It was Kruger, wearing his signature grease-stained overalls. He eased past Donovan and scrambled down the hatch. Unlike the bridge or CIC, Kruger had a presence in machinery spaces. People stepped aside respectfully as he examined the hoist. Donovan smiled inwardly: Richard Kruger, a forty-eight-year-old mustang, probably wouldn’t go much farther in the navy. In fact, he’d be lucky to retire as a lieutenant commander. But for now, Kruger was in his element: getting dirty, working with his boys, thoroughly enjoying life.

  Within minutes, Kruger diagnosed the problem and had the hoist happily clanking and cycling down ammunition.

  Dudley, a dark, wiry chief gunner’s mate with a thick Brooklyn accent, stepped over and shook Kruger’s hand. With a voice that could rip lumber, Dudley roared, “Gawd-damn good job, Mr. Kruger. You saved our bacon.”

  “Thanks.” Kruger looked up to Donovan and gave a thin smile.

  Donovan returned it with a thumbs-up.

  “Aw right, XO.” Corodini slapped Kruger on the back.

  Pushing the three officers and their bulging technical manuals toward the ladder, Dudley said, “Now, if youse gentlemen will excuse us, we got woik to do.”

  * * * * *

  Except for the ammunition hoist breakdown in mount 52, Donovan marveled at how quickly everything progressed. “ll due to the promise of a few hours and a couple of cheap beers on Mogmog. By 1500, the ammunition was aboard, the gunners and torpedomen securing their loads. The boatswain’s mate of the watch called away groaning gun crews, who made their way to the loading machine on the quarterdeck.

  On the bridge, sea detail was set with “l Corodini as OOD. The Mount Saint Helens pulled in the gangways and, the boatswain’s mates singled up the lines without permission from the bridge. Donovan choose to overlook it.

  Still wearing his engineer’s overalls, Kruger walked up to the Donovan and reported, “Special sea detail set, Captain. Engineering department ready for getting under way.”

  Donovan’s eyebrows raised. What about the other departments?

  Kruger said, “Actually, everybody is ready for getting under way. But those people on the Saint Helens haven’t finished sorting our mail.”

  “Why not?”

  “P5M delivered it just this morning. Our stuff is still mixed up with mail for the Simpson and the Connelly.”

  “Can’t they send it late
r?”

  “Yes, but there’s guard mail for us in there, too.”

  “Meaning we have to have someone accompany it?”

  “Yes, sir. Duty belt, .45 and all. So someone is going to be gypped out of our baseball game and a few beers. So I asked Ensign Muir if he wouldn’t mind doing it.”

  “Shouldn’t he be on the loading-machine drills?”

  “Normally, yes, sir. But much of the guard mail is gunnery doctrine; Muir can organize it quickly. I figure we can have Cliff Merryweather supervise the drills. It’s really his apple anyway.”

  “Okay with me.”

  “They figure another hour, then they’ll send Muir to us in an LCM.”

  “Very well,” said Donovan. “That it?”

  “Yes, sir,” said Kruger. “Other than that, we’re ready in all respects.”

  “Right,” said Donovan. He turned to “l Corodini. “You may get us under way, Mr. Corodini.”

  Flicking a cigarette over the side, Corodini stood on the bridge wing platform and drew to his full height. “Yes, sir.” Then he shouted into the pilothouse, “This is Mr. Corodini. I have the conn.” “After acknowledgments, he shouted toward the fo’c’sle, “Single up all lines.”

  Donovan stepped over and said quietly, “Mr. Corodini, we’re already singled up.”

  Unfazed, Corodini said, “Hell, this just ain’t my day.”

  Donovan shrugged. Someone giggled.

  Rubbing his jaw, Corodini roared at the fo’c’sle again, “Take in lines one and three.”

  Potters’ relay was superfluous as the lines began snaking in. Corodini’s voice was still echoing between the ships forward when he shouted to the fantail, a good two hundred feet away, “Take in lines four, five, and six.”

  Corodini was putting on a show, as if he were back on the gridiron at the Ohio State. And it was catching. Portholes popped open next door. Sailors undogged hatches and walked on deck to watch the Matthew get under way. Kenneth Muir sauntered out on the Mount Saint Helens’ bridge, two decks above, and looked down upon them, a tall glass of iced tea in his hands.