Pacific Interlude

by Sloan Wilson

  “They’ll take care of their own,” Syl said as he studied them through his binoculars. Canoes with motors were already angling in, dodging the ships as best they could. Bobbing in the wakes, they came alongside the overturned dugout and took the people out of the water.

  “Hell of a way to make friends with our little brown brothers,” Buller said. “They were probably trying to welcome us. One kid back there was waving an American flag—”

  “He was probably a goddamn Jap,” Cramer said. “Hathaway says the bastards are shooting civilians by the thousand in Manila right now. They’re going crazy.”

  It was difficult for the men of the Y-18 to identify with radio reports of the Japanese rampage in Manila. The Y-18 was their world … somehow it would get them to Manila. The fighting would have stopped before they arrived. “The Pearl of the Orient” had a reputation as a great liberty port, and that was what they most talked and thought about as they took their dress whites from their mildewing seabags for washing and airing, shined shoes, shaved beards growing since Brisbane, cut each other’s hair on a stool on the fantail.

  In the midst of all this heady preparation, someone also made off with Willis’s seabag.

  Willis had left it on his bunk with his clothes neatly rolled inside. He found it missing when he came down from the mast top to stand his watch. He was spluttering with anger when he reported this to Simpson.

  “Have you told Cramer?”

  “He’s probably the one who took it—”

  “There’s no reason to think that,” Simpson said. “He’s the master-at-arms. He won’t allow stealing aboard this ship—”

  “I don’t know nothing about no seabag,” Cramer said when Simpson and Willis talked to him on the fantail, where Sorrel was cutting his hair, “but I’ll try to find out about it.”

  Waving the scissors aside, he went to the forecastle, where the men off watch were napping and reading.

  “All right, you bastards, which one of you took Willis’s seabag?” When no one answered he strode through the ship asking everyone the same question, got no answer. He came back to Simpson. “I don’t know who took the damn thing … Willis, are you sure you didn’t stow it somewhere and forget it? We’ve never had stealing aboard here—”

  “I left it in my bunk this morning,” Willis said stonily.

  “We’ve never had no trouble like this before—”

  “And we’re not going to put up with it now,” Simpson said. “Until that seabag is found there’ll be no liberty for anyone. We’re going to put a stop to this thing right now—”

  “Somebody probably dropped it over the side last night,” Cramer said. “It ain’t fair to punish the whole crew for what one man did—”

  “I left it on my bunk this morning,” Willis repeated.

  “It still could have gone over the side,” Cramer said. “The water’s full of trash around here. No one would have noticed it in the wake.”

  “If the bag ain’t found, maybe the men will chip in stuff to make up a new outfit for him,” Simpson said. “Anyway, till Willis is outfitted no one is going to get liberty.”

  Simpson went to report to Syl, who was resting in his cabin.

  “What the hell’s the matter with them?” he said.

  “You got to face the fact that they just don’t want Willis aboard,” Buller said a little later. “They’ll do everything they can to drive him off.”

  “All the men don’t feel that way. I saw Sorrel working out with him on Morse code. So was Hathaway. The kid’s a nut on code. He’s already pretty good at it.”

  “They’re the only ones. Any one of the others could have taken that bag.”

  “They’ll pay for it. They won’t go ashore—”

  “If you take away their liberty in Manila, the whole crew will be browned off. They’ll just hate Willis more. How long do you plan to keep the men restricted? It can’t go on forever.”

  “I figure they’ll make up a new outfit for him. Plenty of the men are about the same size.”

  “What if they don’t?”

  “They’ll get sick of being restricted, especially if the fighting’s over by the time we get to Manila.”

  “They’ll kill the poor little bastard,” Buller said.

  “If the going gets rough they’ll forget about Willis,” Simpson said, and left.

  Syl stretched wearily. There was no good simple way to handle this situation. Now an issue had been made out of a damn seabag, what would he do if it weren’t found or replaced? The longer the men were restricted, the angrier the ones who’d had nothing to do with the thing would become. If he gave in and granted liberty he’d be undermining Simpson’s authority. He held a no-win hand and realized unhappily that now he too was resenting Willis—

  Syl was taken out of his dilemma by Sorrel, who suddenly appeared at his door … “Sir, the tin can is flying a signal, says enemy aircraft in the vicinity. Mr. Buller wants to know if you want to sound general quarters—”

  “Of course …” Syl jumped up, took his helmet and life preserver from his locker. He was also supposed to wear his .45 automatic at such times, and although he usually left it in his drawer with its belt, he buckled it on now. The polished leather holster felt good at his hip. As the Klaxon horn shrieked he ran for the bridge.

  No enemy aircraft or planes of any description were in sight. The sky was mostly clear blue with a few fluffy white cumulous clouds floating lazily overhead.

  “Probably a false alarm,” Buller said, sounding disappointed. He hadn’t bothered to get his helmet, his life preserver or pistol.

  At battle stations there actually was little for most of the crew to do. The six men assigned to the two fifty-caliber machine guns opened the ready boxes and loaded. Cramer ran out hoses and tested the water pressure. The joke was that aboard a gas tanker the entire ship’s company fell on their knees and prayed when the general alarm sounded, that that was probably as useful a response to bombs and torpedoes as any …

  “Mr. Buller, I better send a messenger for your general quarters gear,” Simpson said.

  “What the hell’s the point of a helmet and life preserver on this gas bucket? If she blows, we’ll lose our asses. You want the pickup crew to send home our heads all safe in their helmets in hat boxes?”

  “This here is where I keep mine,” Murphy said, holding his helmet against his crotch. “I’d rather lose my head than my balls. Who the hell ever laid a broad with his IQ?”

  Suddenly the destroyer, which was far up ahead, opened fire, her five-inch cannon thudding under the sharp cracks of her three-inchers and the rattle of her rapid-fire guns. Tracers arched up in the sky, and the small white puffs of her bigger shells blossomed overhead.

  But no target was visible.

  “The crazy bastard’s just shooting at seagulls,” Cramer said.

  The shooting stopped as suddenly as it had begun.

  “Maybe he was just testing his guns,” Simpson said.

  For what seemed forever, nothing happened. A slight stern wind counteracted the motion of the ships, gave the illusion of dead calm. The acrid smoke from the Diesels hung over the stacks. The midafternoon sun was still hot, and the men took off the helmets and shed their life preservers. When Simpson toured the decks and made them put them back on, they echoed Buller’s sentiments … what good was safety gear aboard a gas tanker?

  “Damn it, you can get shrapnel flying over the decks. It can take your head off. And you can be blown clear when a tanker goes. There’s a reason for these regulations …”

  The men nodded soberly, took their helmets off as soon as Simpson passed. Willis, Syl noted, was one of the few who remained in full gear. He had Rhinehart’s old post at general quarters, the bow watch. With nothing to do up there but stare at the sea and sky, his face shone with sweat as he glanced aft, his features as impassive as a mask.

  “Captain, how about cook bringing up some ice water?” Buller asked.

  The cook was standing
by to pass ammunition to the machine guns, which would not be necessary unless they fired long enough to empty the ready boxes, a protracted kind of action which seemed unlikely.

  “Hell, I can fix iced tea, ladies …”

  Laughter.

  “I don’t think the Japs will hit us until it starts to get dark,” Simpson said. “The tin can probably just picked up an observation plane on her radar. Those bastards fly so high you can’t see ’em, but they can sure see us.”

  Syl pictured Japanese admirals in some control room in the bunkers of Manila plotting the position of this convoy on a wall chart and radioing airfields still in operation on islands all around them. He guessed that there were so many Japs hiding out with radios in those jungles that no observation plane would really be necessary to keep track of the convoy’s progress. Probably the attack would not come until the sun started to go down. The pilots were now waiting in their barracks, maybe drinking saki. He wondered if the ones who flew the suicide planes went through a religious rite first. Or were geisha girls provided for their last good minutes on earth …?

  Glancing over at Schuman’s ship, which now sailed like a mirror image of the Y-18 only about a thousand yards abeam, Syl saw that Paul Schuman had inflated his rubber life rafts, which perched like big yellow doughnuts on his fantail. Probably that was a good precaution—if any escape from a burning tanker was possible, seconds could count.

  “Inflate the rafts,” he told Simpson.

  “Do you think that would be good for morale?”

  “It will be good for mine, goddamn it. Do it.”

  When the carbon dioxide cartridge on one of the Y-18’s two rafts proved defective, three men took turns puffing air into it until their faces turned beet red.

  Cramer said, “I’m glad we didn’t have to do this while we was burning—”

  Suddenly the destroyer opened fire again, and this time the three minesweepers joined in. Staring through binoculars at the white puffs clustering far over ahead, Syl could still not see any plane.

  “They must have picked something up on their radar,” Simpson said.

  Finally Syl saw a tiny speck, no larger than a mosquito, high in the sky just ahead.

  “I see him,” he said. “He’s way out of range.”

  “How the hell do we know if it’s theirs or ours?” Buller said.

  “Radar,” Simpson told him.

  “Where the hell are our planes? Why aren’t we getting air cover?”

  No one answered.

  “If our planes want us to keep on bringing ’em gas, they better damn well cover our ass—”

  “The tin can is probably radioing for the P-38S,” Simpson said. “We’re just a small convoy. The fly boys probably have a lot of other things to keep ’em busy …”

  “I see a splash two points on the starboard bow about halfway to the horizon,” Cramer called out from the flying bridge. “Are they dropping bombs way out there …? Hey, another …”

  “Those are bombs, all right,” Simpson said, staring through the binoculars.

  “I knew the Japs had bad eyes,” Buller said, “but I thought they could do better than that.”

  “Don’t complain,” Syl told him.

  “They start with high altitude bombing,” Simpson said, “then they fly right down your throat.”

  This time it did not happen, not right away, at least. The plane disappeared and the shooting stopped, leaving a tense silence. The stern wind was dying. A glistening calm surrounded them.

  “I smell gas,” Buller said, sniffing loudly.

  “You’re on a tanker,” Simpson said.

  “Stronger than usual. Did someone leave a hatch open?”

  “You just smell fumes from the masthead vent,” Syl said. “They’re blowing aft now.”

  “The sun on the decks drives ’em up,” Simpson added. “Nobody’s damn fool enough to leave a hatch open.”

  “But I thought we were too full for fumes—”

  “There’s always a little airspace under the deck,” Simpson said.

  “Mr. Simpson, can we issue dark glasses to the lookouts?” Cramer called out. “It’s like a damn mirror out there.”

  Simpson scooped up the glasses from a drawer in the chartroom and handed them out. Sweat soon clouded them and the men called for rags. No clean ones could be found, and Simpson distributed handfuls of toilet paper.

  “Hell, I may be scared but I ain’t shit my britches yet,” Sorrel said.

  Laughter. But not much.

  “I see more splashes halfway to the horizon dead ahead,” Cramer sang out as the destroyer’s guns again opened up. “Willis, why don’t you report those? Why do you think we put you up there?”

  Willis’ answer, if any, was drowned out by a crescendo of gunfire from the minesweepers, whose guns were smaller than the destroyer’s five-inchers but sounded louder because they were much nearer. This time Syl saw two tiny planes flying far up ahead, well above the puffs of the antiaircraft shells.

  “They’re still way out of range,” he said. “I guess our boys are just trying to keep ’em up there.”

  Soon the planes disappeared, and the shooting again stopped.

  “Keep a lookout all around the horizon,” Simpson called. “The next ones could come in low and fast, just above the water.”

  “You ever seen that?” Buller asked him.

  “At Guadal and Biak, when we was hit.”

  Syl had almost forgotten that the Y-18 had survived a suicide plane. It must have hit this bridge just about where he was standing. He wondered if the dead captain had seen it coming soon enough to try to jump. Had he stood paralyzed or refused to abandon ship?

  A swarm of flies from one of the nearby islands suddenly lit on the decks—surprisingly big and almost as green as the paint.

  “The bastards bite,” Buller said, slapping his face. “They look like damn corpse flies. I seen ’em after floods on the Mississippi. Did they have a battle around here?”

  “Not that we’ve heard,” Syl said.

  “They’re fighting all over these damn islands,” Buller said. “This war is good for the flies if nothing else. Look how fat the bastards are …”

  “Sooner or later I’m going to have to take a leak,” one of the men at the guns said.

  “Stay at your post and use a bucket,” Cramer rasped. “Murphy, bring a bucket up here. You better pass it around.”

  “At least we ain’t scared pissless,” Murphy said as the bucket was handed around.

  Gradually the sun sank toward the horizon.

  “That’s where they’ll come from,” Simpson said, pointing to the glittering red path it made. “Keep the guns trained there.”

  “Don’t shoot up that minesweep, no matter what you see,” Syl added. “They won’t start with us, anyway, the bigger ships catch it first—”

  “We could run into a cowardly Jap,” Buller said.

  He had a point, Syl thought.

  As the sun touched the horizon it looked like a great red ball, the very emblem of Japan. Syl expected to see planes swarm out of its glare at any moment. His muscles were tight. If the Japs had been waiting to attack, now was their time, when the gunners on the ships would be blinded. In another few minutes that dazzle of light would fade and the lookouts could spot attackers the moment they came over the horizon. And then darkness would fall, a protective cloak over the convoy. The planes would play hell trying to find the ships until dawn. By then they should be close enough to American airfields at Mindoro to be covered … Give us ten more minutes, ten more …

  But the sun seemed to hang motionless on the horizon, as though the whole clockwork of the universe had finally run down. Then it slipped until the horizon bisected it, and quite suddenly it was swallowed by the sea, which now reflected nothing but the cool lavender sky.

  “We ain’t there yet,” Simpson said. “Tomorrow night we’ll be a lot closer to Manila. That’s where they’ve probably concentrated all their planes.”
>
  “Ours too,” Syl said.

  “The moon comes up about ten,” Cramer said. “If they’ve run out of planes, they may be counting on their torpedo boats.”

  “Or they might be licked,” Buller said. “If I was a Jap I’d quit right now—”

  “They don’t quit—” Simpson said.

  “They’re human, ain’t they? How would you feel if you were a Jap listening to a radio? The Battle of the Bulge probably got their hopes up but now they must see that the Krauts are done. How long do the little bastards think they can stand against the rest of the world?”

  “Being Japs, they’ll just see how many of us they can take with ’em,” Simpson said. “They’re still fighting house to house in Manila. Do you think they’ll let us bring supplies in there without even trying to stop us?”

  “No matter what they do, we can’t all stay up all night,” Syl said. “Hasn’t that tin can signaled an all-clear?”

  “It’s too dark to see flag signals,” Sorrel said. “He wouldn’t want to use his light.”

  “Tell Hathaway to listen for VHF.”

  A few minutes later Hathaway came to the bridge to report that the escort commander had told the convoy to secure from general quarters but to remain alert for suicide boats.

  “Shall I double the lookouts?” Simpson asked.

  “No,” Syl said, “just keep one gun manned. The men need rest. We’re not even halfway there …”

  CHAPTER 27

  AS SOON AS Syl stretched out in his bunk he felt instantly sleepy, surprisingly relaxed. It was odd to recall that there had been many safe nights in his life when he had felt too tense and scared to shut his eyes. What had he been so worried about? Impossible to remember. Now as the ship rolled slowly in a groundswell, he could imagine the gasoline sloshing in her tanks under him. This convoy was bound to draw fire before it reached Manila—but here and now there were these moments of deceptive peace. Nothing to worry about. For maybe an hour, anyway.