Pacific Interlude

by Sloan Wilson

  “Welcome to the madhouse,” he said in his deep voice. “What the hell happened to you out there?”

  “Our water pump went out. We didn’t have a spare.”

  “Lucky you had someone who could fix it. I doubt if our engineer could even find our water pump.”

  Wydanski should hear that, Syl thought. “Where’s Schuman? Did he make it in all right?”

  “Yeah, but they put him on the Dulag run. They took two of these damn airfields without much trouble, but they’re nothing but mud. The boys are going crazy onshore.”

  “Have you had any air raids yet?”

  “They hit two big cruisers, but most of their planes just circle around up there keeping an eye on us. I don’t know what the bastards are cooking up, but I doubt if it’s a champagne reception.”

  Some black soldiers appeared to unload the remains of the deck cargo. Without a hoist of any kind, they contrived gangplanks and rolled the steel drums ashore. A seaman from the Yankee Yo-Yo ran to the bridge and told Mostell that his cargo pump had broken down.

  “Oh, boy,” Mostell said. “If we don’t get it fixed that bastard Harris will give us straws and make us suck the stuff out.”

  He ran back to his ship.

  “They’ll unload him through the hatches,” Simpson said. “I hope we can get out of here before they start. That’s dangerous business.”

  Fifteen minutes later soldiers were carrying big portable pumps aboard the Yankee Yo-Yo. From his flying bridge Syl watched while they inserted hoses. The gasoline motors of the pumps whined and stuttered. Simpson had told the truth when he had first described this kind of operation. The hoses leaked so much that the decks of the Yo-Yo were soon running with gasoline that dripped from her scuppers, streaking her topsides. Syl had found it difficult to believe that pump engines could backfire, but he soon heard a report as sharp as a pistol shot and saw an impassive sergeant lean down to adjust a carburetor with a screwdriver.

  “They say God looks after drunks and little children,” Wydanski said as he climbed up to join Syl. “He must like these little tankers too.”

  “I don’t see why the army takes chances like this for just one load,” Syl said. “If that ship goes, she’ll take everything around here with her. Us, barges and all.”

  “Gas is funny,” Wydanski said. “It’ll let you get away with murder nine times out of ten, maybe ninety-nine times out of a hundred.”

  He didn’t mention it only took one time to end it all. He didn’t have to.

  Buller appeared an hour late and asked for help to unload a truck full of sleeping bags. He had also managed to find some canned goods and a box with fifty cartons of cigarettes. The men made a black joke of passing these around as they strode across the tank deck where the stench of gasoline fumes was especially strong.

  As soon as the cargo pump sucked air Syl took in the hose and prepared to go out in the bay and fill up again. He had half-forgotten how skittish the tanker became when she was empty, and a gust of wind almost blew his bow against the side of the Yankee Yo-Yo as he backed away from the barge. Men came running with fenders, but no one looked particularly worried.

  “If you want to come aboard there are easier ways,” Mostell called to Syl from his bridge. Joke.

  After threading his way through the crowded harbor, Syl found the big merchant tanker Garden City in San Pedro Bay. She lay a few hundred yards from a huge flotilla of troop transports anchored in rows and surrounded by destroyers as though they were steaming in convoy. At five-thirty in the afternoon, while the Y-18 was still taking cargo, Syl was startled to see thick gray smoke billow from the sterns of most of these ships, as though they had all been hit at the same time.

  “Smoke screen,” the mate of the big tanker called down from his deck. “They expect Jap planes every day when the sun goes down so they send up the smoke.”

  It was not long before all the ships disappeared into the billowing dark swirls. Most of the bay now looked like Boston harbor in a heavy fog.

  By the time the Y-18 had finished loading it was almost dark. Syl headed back toward Tacloban harbor, skirting the dense smoke banks. He had just passed them when ships all over the bay opened fire on some invisible plane overhead. With their guns apparently guided by radar, even the ships under the smoke screen sent tracer bullets arching up through their canopy, and the winking flashes from bigger guns made the smoke glow in spots as though it were rising from one huge smoldering fire. The men of the Y-18 stood by their two little 50-caliber machine guns staring at the blossoms of antiaircraft shells exploding in the sky high overhead. Finally they saw the tiny speck, a Jap bomber that was sailing serenely between puffs toward the dark outline of distant hills. There it disappeared, but soon came back, flying much lower this time. The guns all over the harbor and many on shore surrounded it with exploding shells. When it suddenly dived toward a row of LSTs on the beach, Syl at first thought that it had been hit, but it pulled up and skimmed a hundred feet over the surface of the harbor before plunging into the nearest landing ship. Flames erupted a split second before Syl heard the explosion.

  A strange air of anticlimax surrounded the death of the ship. The flames soon died to a glow as smaller landing craft closed in to smother them with foam and spray. No voices could be heard, no cries, no curses, no laments—the stricken LST was far enough away to appear silent, except for the initial explosion. As she continued into the harbor the Y-18 soon lost sight of the burning vessel. Nothing was visible above a projection point of land except a spiral of smoke that now mixed with the smoke screens of the other ships.

  “Did you ever see a ship hit before?” Simpson asked Syl.

  “I saw one torpedoed once … it was nothing like this …”

  At least the torpedoed ship had been able to lower boats and her escorts had dropped depth charge on the submarine. She had not died silently like a felled ox.

  “That damn well could have been us,” Buller said. “We’re small but someday one of them slant-eyes is going to get smart enough to see we’re loaded with gasoline. Kaboom.”

  Syl just laughed at him. Throughout the air raid he had not really felt in danger. Maybe because there was nothing he could do about it. No responsibility, no sweat …

  The Yankee Yo-Yo was still being unloaded through her hatches. After he had moored, Syl strolled over to Mostell and invited him to his cabin.

  “Have a cold beer,” Mostell said, taking one from a pail of ice. Syl looked startled when he sat down and lit a pipe.

  “Don’t worry,” Mostell said. “The ports are closed. No fumes are in here. The trick of living aboard these tankers is learning to relax … I hear an LST got hit. Did you see it?”

  “Yes.”

  “The first few times, that’s quite a shock. You’ll get used to it.”

  Syl doubted that … The cold beer felt especially good in his dry mouth. In about two more hours he’d have to be maneuvering his ship again and he told himself he shouldn’t drink much. Still, as Mostell said, the trick was to learn to relax. He took another long swig.

  All that night the Y-18 continued her shuttle run with the men catching their sleep while she was unloading and loading. During these operations the galley range had to be turned off and they ate cold food, but no one had to remind them that the troops fighting ashore had it worse. The boom of artillery and the rattle of machine guns in the surrounding hills could be heard clearly.

  Beginning at dawn the next day, October 23, there was a great exodus of ships from Leyte Gulf. Most of the big fighting ships disappeared. Freighters still half-loaded joined convoys of high-sided empty vessels in the many convoys which steamed out of the harbor. By nightfall of the next day only three amphibious force flagships, a few LSTs and about thirty Liberty ships remained in sight, but more planes than ever roared overhead.

  “Something funny is going on,” Buller said to the mate of the Garden City as they came alongside. “Why is everybody running off?”

  “Hav
en’t you heard? The whole damn Jap fleet is coming at us. The big boys have gone out to stop ’em and the rest are running for cover.”

  “Is that straight dope or just scuttlebutt?”

  “Wait and see …”

  During their endless loading and unloading Wydanski cut off the ship’s electricity to avoid sparks and not even the radios were operating. When they were turned on during brief runs across the harbor, nothing much could be heard except an endless tangle of coded messages. The frantic activity at the Tacloban airport made clear that naval battles were being fought nearby. A constant stream of planes from the big carriers, some showing bullet holes, landed, refueled and immediately took off, roaring low over the decks of the Y-18 as she lay pumping her cargo into the barges. While the cargo pump did its work Syl walked up to the airstrip and watched bulldozers shove aside planes with landing gear giving them trouble or engines stalled. Nothing was allowed to permit a moment of delay as scores of planes circled, waiting to land and refuel.

  It was impossible to get a clear picture of what was happening. Huge Japanese battleships and carriers were said to be approaching Leyte Gulf from every direction, through Surigao Strait, through San Bernadino Strait, from the open Pacific itself. Some said the Americans had sunk most of them; others that they had sunk the Americans and were about to fall on the helpless vessels in the harbor and wipe out the whole beachhead—or just maybe all the ships had sunk each other. Syl was so busy running the Y-18 at top speed on her shuttle runs that he did not have the time even to try to figure it all out.

  Mostell had finally fixed the Yankee Yo-Yo’s cargo pump. His ship worked alongside the Y-18, sometimes passing her in the harbor, sometimes mooring astern of her while they unloaded at the barges.

  “I hear Halsey messed up,” he said on the afternoon of the twenty-fifth. “He chased the Japs up north and let a fleet come through San Bernardino Strait. Sprague is fighting it out with them now off Samar. All he’s got is a bunch of tin cans and escort carriers.”

  “How straight is that dope?”

  “My radioman picked up some plain language reports. Old Sprague was asking for all the help he could get.”

  Syl shrugged. If some monstrous Jap battleship with 18-inch guns steamed into Leyte Gulf, what would he do? The Tacloban airstrip would be her first target. Probably he’d just die in the water—they would pick off all the shipping they could find, right down to the smallest landing craft. Comparatively small though the Y-18 was, there was no way he could hide her five hundred tons. Well, whatever happened, it was beyond his control.

  Plain exhaustion kept the crew of the Y-18 from worrying too much. Never able to sleep for more than three hours at a time, they kept their small tanker loading and unloading gasoline around the clock … Mooring lines in, mooring lines out, connect the big cargo hose and disconnect it. Fenders out, fenders in, and why do we even have to take the damn things in? Keep that cargo pump going or they’ll unload us through the hatches. Keep that main shaft bearing greased, come hard right or we’ll hit that damn barge, back full. Who needs emergencies from the Japs? We can make our own …

  Late in the afternoon of October 25 Hathaway turned on the radio while they were crossing the harbor to get a new load and received a report of a great American victory. Most of the Japanese fleet had been destroyed and the rest had been turned back. Mopping-up operations were continuing …

  It was hard for Syl to take comfort in this. Five minutes later, antiaircraft guns fired all around the harbor. Syl saw no bombers but suddenly the Tacloban airstrip with the barges he had just left and the newly built storage tanks all erupted like a gigantic volcano, spewing flames so high that they reached through the clouds overhead.

  Syl’s first concern after the initial shock was for the Yankee Yo- Yo, but she too had been lucky—she was ahead of the Y-18, just alongside the Garden City, to take on a new load. Mostell must have been equally relieved to see the Y-18. His signal light blinked, “Thank God.”

  Syl tied up astern of the Yankee Yo-Yo alongside the Garden City, and the crews of the three ships stood staring at the inferno where the airstrip had been.

  “Major Harris,” Syl said suddenly. “He must have been there …”

  “And all those guys who took our lines,” Mostell added.

  “Just figuring probability, one of us two should have been near enough to get it,” Simpson said. “You can call it luck, or you can call it God …”

  Syl couldn’t help thinking that Simpson was pretty presumptuous to think God preferred him to Major Harris and the others, but he said nothing. As the daylight faded, the whole inner harbor reflected the flames. It looked like a huge and ironically beautiful sea of fire …

  CHAPTER 17

  “WHAT DO WE do now?” Buller said an hour later as they stood watching the flames gradually begin to die down. “There’re no more barges or tanks to fill.”

  “They’ll bring in more barges tomorrow,” Mostell said, “and they’ll put up new tanks soon enough. Meanwhile we can get a night’s sleep. Might as well enjoy it while we can.”

  “Why don’t we just stay close tonight?” Buller asked. “Maybe we can get up a poker game.”

  “Gas tankers should never raft up,” Simpson said. “Three tankers triple the risk.”

  They agreed to anchor separately but meet later. Simpson as usual stayed aboard while Buller, Wydanski and Syl went to the Yankee Yo-Yo by skiff.

  Mostell led them to his wardroom. The blonde ensign and the lieutenant junior grade who served as executive officer of the Yankee Yo-Yo seemed unusually tense tonight. The atmosphere of hostility in the cramped compartment increased when the ship’s engineer, a lanky warrant officer of about forty with a southern accent, came in and sat down. Syl remembered that Mostell had disparaged the abilities of his engineer. There was, of course, no reason for him of all people to be surprised that a ship’s company might not be exactly one big happy family.

  Mostell passed around cans of warm beer and they started to play “baseball,” a crazy form of poker that had become a fad throughout the fleet. So many cards were wild that everyone held at least a full house and no one could be sure that even a straight flush would win. Although the betting was brisk, a quarter limit was set by Mostell, and the pot rarely held more than ten dollars.

  Syl had trouble keeping his mind on the game, especially after a radioman announced that the aircraft carrier Princeton had been lost. It was unreal. Here they were bickering about cards aboard a gas tanker while sea battles were being fought all around them. Despite the official reports of a tremendous victory, the Tacloban airstrip had been blown up, a big carrier had been lost, and who knew what else was coming down? When the ensign and engineer began arguing about what to do when they each had a perfect hand, the shouting was interrupted by Paul Schuman, who suddenly arrived with two of his officers.

  “I thought you were over at Dulag,” Syl said.

  “That airstrip is such a swamp that they don’t need any more gas,” Schuman said. “They sent me over to help you guys.”

  “Haven’t you heard? We got no more airstrip to supply,” Mostell said.

  “The hell you haven’t … they’re already bulldozing Tacloban clear and they’re moving in a whole new string of barges for us to fill. They’ll be ready for us to do business in the morning.”

  “Well, sit down and join the game,” Buller said. “By the way, when you got two perfect hands, what do you do?”

  “You split the pot,” Schuman the peacemaker … and con artist? … said.

  “You can have my place,” Syl said, tossing his cards down. “I think I’ll go back to my ship and turn in.”

  “I’ll run you back,” Mostell said, following Syl to the deck.

  “That smoke in there was getting to me, never mind the noise,” he said. “How about coming up to my cabin for a drink?”

  Syl accepted. As they walked forward Schuman came up.

  “I hate those damn wild cards,”
he said. “You guys want to go over to my ship?”

  “The meeting is coming to order in here,” Mostell said.

  His surprisingly luxurious cabin was cool, with a nice breeze fluttering the black curtains at the open ports. To avoid closing them, Mostell left the cabin dark. A red bulb over his desk glowed in the darkness, giving the conclave of captains a conspiratorial air.

  “What do you make of all this talk about a big victory?” Syl asked.

  “Which one?” Schuman said. “Tokyo Rose says the Japs won a big victory and we say we did. I like to believe our side, but no government can afford to admit losses. We kept on saying for months that no damage had been done at Pearl Harbor.”

  “We’ve admitted the loss of the Princeton,” Mostell put in.

  “That’s what scares me,” Schuman said. “I doubt like hell we lost just one carrier. If they got to her—”

  “The fact is we’re still here,” Mostell said. “The Japs’ job was to drive us out.”

  “So far, so good,” Schuman said.

  There was a knock at the door and Buller came in.

  “I smell Scotch,” he said. “Is this meeting just for you skippers?”

  “Hell no, come in,” Mostell said, pouring him a drink.

  “Here’s to the end of the war,” Buller said. “I’m betting it will come quicker than we think.”

  “You believe we sank the whole damn Jap fleet?” Schuman said.

  “It don’t make much difference. Germany won’t last long now, and when she falls they’ll bring all our navies and armies over here.”

  “You think the Japs will quit?” Mostell said.

  “We can just blockade ’em and starve ’em to death. No sweat.”

  “I doubt if it’s going to be that easy,” Schuman said. “A lot of men are going to have to die first.”

  “Only if we follow damn fools like Dugout Doug,” Buller said. “That son of a bitch is gearing up to run for president.”

  “To do that he’s got to come out a winner,” Mostell said. “That’s not so bad for us.”