Pacific Interlude

by Sloan Wilson

  Although the moon was bright this night no suicide boats streaked from the shadows of the islands they passed. At dawn there were more tense moments as the sun climbed out of the sea, but the enemy did not choose that golden moment to attack. Syl allowed himself to think that maybe Buller was right and the Japanese were giving up, here in the Philippines at least, and then he reminded himself that Hathaway received reports that the fighting in Manila was growing increasingly bitter. Corregidor was being bombed around the clock and the American army was advancing on all the key points of Luzon against desperate last-ditch resistance. Could be the Japs were just too busy to bother with a small convoy like this one, or maybe the Y-18 actually was a lucky ship …

  At noon they passed the island of Mindoro, around the towering peak of which the Jap plane had darted to attack the Merchant Prince, but now an almost unending stream of American planes roared from the airstrips there, heading for Manila, only a little more than a hundred miles away.

  “We sure got air cover now,” Buller said.

  “They don’t even know we’re here,” Simpson said.

  “There’s no damn room in the sky for Japs,” Buller said.

  In the late afternoon bombers still roared overhead but apparently they wanted to accomplish their missions before nightfall because the last of them thundered over the horizon as twilight approached. The sea and the sky were silent, almost breathlessly so as the great red disk touched the horizon once more. Standing on the flying bridge, Syl could see that all the ships in the convoy were training their guns on the dazzling orange path which reached toward them, and this time they did not have long to wait.

  The planes came in so low that they looked as though they were rising out of the depths of the glittering sea. With the sun blazing on their cockpit canopies and the guns on the lead edges of their wings flashing, they seemed to be part of the whole confusion of reflected lights. The guns of the convoy immediately surrounded them with explosions, smoke and fire. Two blew into clouds of spray, but the rest kept coming. God, how many? At least ten. They seemed to swarm all over the destroyer like a flight of bees before she suddenly erupted, sending a pillar of fire into the air that burned the sea brighter than did the dying sun. The remaining planes crashed into the big tankers, which produced sunsets of their own. Into this blaze two more planes came from the opposite direction, the east this time, and both chose the lead Liberty ship, diving onto her bridge with the precision of two quick hammer blows. That vessel did not burn so brightly after the initial blast but circled aimlessly like a great blind beast while smoke poured from her pilothouse. In a space of no more than five minutes seven big merchant tankers in addition to the Liberty ship and the destroyer were mortally hit. Only the three minesweepers, four Liberty ships and the three little tankers continued to steam through the sea of fire that still surrounded the blazing wrecks.

  At first Syl believed that all three small tankers had escaped intact, but then he saw Schuman’s ship veer away at right angles to the course that the remaining ships kept to, and then slow down. In the lurid glare of the ocean he saw a great spout of gasoline gushing from her port side. How had she been holed without being ignited? It could have been flying debris from any one of the surrounding explosions … fifty-caliber slugs, a near miss from a five-inch shell gone wild—the cause didn’t matter now. Her tanks had been badly gashed. She was like a bull bleeding to death in the ring, except the track she left was more lethal than blood. It was one long fuse leading to her tanks. Through his binoculars Syl could see men standing at her rail looking down at their wounds—the torn steel where the gas poured out, splashing white and deceptively innocuous into the sea. A smoky oil slick was glowing around one of the big tankers that was sinking, and sparks were flying from the flames still erupting from several of the blazing wrecks nearby. Syl could make out the bulky figure of Paul Schuman as he ran aft and climbed to the flying bridge. White water churned from her stern as he called for full speed and headed into the wind, trying to put as much space as he could between himself and all that fire before he abandoned ship. Paul knew his business, but now he needed time, maybe five minutes, maybe ten. And he probably would not get it. The ship could not escape her own wake of gasoline, that lengthening fuse she trailed wherever she ran no matter how she might try to twist and turn. With her slow speed there was nothing the Y-18 could do, no heroic rescue try even possible …

  Men on Paul’s ship were rigging sea painters from the bow, and when they launched the life rafts Syl could see the fat yellow doughnuts skipping alongside as the men climbed into them. The engine was stopped. As the ship slowed, a few more figures jumped into the rafts, but by this time they were too far away for Syl to see if Schuman was among them. Then the painters were dropped and the men in both rafts started paddling away as fast as they could, those without oars leaning over and scooping at the water with their hands. Gradually the distance between the yellow rafts and the spouting ship widened … but then there was one more explosion from one of the sinking tankers, a blinding flash, and that long fuse of gasoline was ignited. Fire crept along the length of it, a dancing procession of flame devils lengthened as they raced toward the source of that trail of gasoline. The men in the rubber life rafts paddled frantically, but they’d never have made it if one of the minesweepers hadn’t rushed toward them at top speed. Her screws churned in reverse as she neared, slowing her enough to take the rafts in tow before surging ahead again with them bobbing alongside as the men clambered out. The growing path of flame shot by her stern and the rafts, missing them by only a few feet before catching the wounded tanker, which was still feeding it.

  Paul Schuman’s ship, old Gasoline Alley, did not immediately explode. As she lost momentum she lay in the middle of a swelling pool of flame, then her hull caught fire and even her mast blazed for what seemed an incredibly long time before the final flash, and that hot wind, followed by what seemed like total darkness. Syl recovered enough to see the sea still glowing all around the sinking ships and the triumphant minesweeper, which was now heading back toward the remnants of the convoy, zigzagging through the wreckage with the other two minesweepers, looking for more survivors.

  All this had happened in such a brief time that the Y-18 and the other ships plodding along their original course were only now passing the spot where the destroyer was finally sinking, her upended stern sliding slowly into the flickering copper sea.

  Syl spotted a raft, stopped the engine, but before he got alongside he could see it was empty. But a cluster of small dark shapes were bobbing in the wakes of the minesweepers which were churning about looking for survivors. The shapes were men in charred life preservers, all dead, their faces down, their bodies bobbing limply in the wake of passing ships.

  “We should take them aboard—”

  “No,” Syl told Simpson. “Look for the living.”

  The Y-18 circled back through the wreckage, but the minesweepers were much faster and had rescued all the survivors to be found. Finally, the biggest of the minesweepers signaled, “Resume course and speed.”

  The Y-18, the little navy tanker and the four Liberty ships fell into a single column flanked by two minesweepers, while the third remained with the still-glowing hulks they left astern.

  “Tell Hathaway to try to raise the minesweeps on the VHF,” Syl said to Simpson, his voice sounding oddly flat to his own ears … “Find out if Paul Schuman made it.”

  “I don’t think we should open up on the radio now,” Simpson said.

  “Find out.”

  Simpson went to the radio shack, stayed what seemed an eternity, came back and said, “Mr. Schuman made it.”

  “Very well,” Syl heard himself say. What he was thinking was more in Simpson’s line … thank God.

  He was still in near-shock—he had to remind himself of that and to make himself think very carefully, as though he were driving while drunk. The convoy was still headed toward Manila Bay. The odd thing was that they had not even bee
n delayed much … should arrive shortly after dawn … One more dawn on this voyage, but the sun couldn’t possibly hold more Jap planes—he caught himself thinking of it as a great burning wasp’s nest that must be empty by now … When he was a boy, his father had burned a wasp’s nest from the limb of a tree near the garage with a rag on the end of a pole dipped in kerosene and the wasps were all killed before they had a chance to sting.

  “Shall we secure from general quarters now?” Simpson said.

  “Very well.”

  “How many got it, do you think?” Buller said, his voice sounding uncharacteristically subdued.

  “I don’t know …”

  “I suppose your friend Paul will get sent home now,” Simpson said. “Thirty days survivor’s leave … This whole thing will be over before they get a chance to send him back out here.”

  “Maybe … I hope so …” Except he would miss him.

  There had been three small tankers, sister ships, Syl found himself thinking. Now there was only one of that small trinity left. Mostell had died, Paul had survived. The odds for the Y-18 were unchanged. Lousy minus. His shock-dulled mind would not let the question alone. He’d heard it said over and over that more gas tankers were lost through accidents than enemy action. In a way, Mostell had been killed in an accident—it had just been his bad luck to be moored alongside the fuel barge when the airstrip was hit. And in a way Schuman’s ship had been lost in an accident—she’d been hit by flying debris or a shell gone wild, not by some Jap who had aimed directly at her. Of course the battle reports would say that those ships had been lost in action …

  Hell, one out of three will survive, he told himself, but he didn’t buy his own pep talk.

  “You better turn in,” Simpson said. “You look beat.”

  Suddenly Wydanski appeared beside them.

  “Like I said, I wish people would keep the engine room better informed. We didn’t know what the hell was happening down there till it was all over.”

  “Neither did we,” Syl said, and went to his cabin.

  Syl woke up two hours before dawn when he felt the ship’s engine slow down. Running to the bridge, he found Simpson studying the horizon ahead through the binoculars.

  “The minesweepers cut us all down to three knots,” Simpson said. “That’s Corregidor about twenty miles up ahead. It looks like literal hell is breaking loose out there.”

  No outline of land was visible in the night, but there was a continuous series of flashes on the horizon and the distant roar of planes.

  “Scuttlebutt around Tacloban was that we’re going to drop paratroopers on it,” Simpson said. “Maybe that’s coming up next.”

  “I was told they’re going to shove us in as soon as they knock the artillery out, but who knows how long that will be?” Syl said. “… I’ll take her now.”

  Sitting on a stool on the wing of the bridge, Syl found that he had recovered from the shock and depression of the previous night. The convoy had been savaged, but the Y-18’s luck had held, and Paul Schuman had managed to survive the loss of his ship. Maybe Manila had already been secured by the infantry and the men of the Y-18 could have their first liberty in a civilized port in months. Maybe the ship would be kept in Manila until the war ended. Like Buller said, Germany was caving in, and how long could Japan last with the world lined up against her? Come on, Captain Grant … this is no time to be down in the mouth.

  When dawn came Syl found himself surrounded by fighting ships off the mouth of Manila Bay, and he no longer worried about the glitter of the rising sun. Streams of fat-bellied American bombers were flying over Corregidor, which now showed as smoking, flickering twin humps on the horizon.

  “I’m glad as hell I’m not on that damn rock,” Buller said, coming from his stateroom to stand on the bridge, a mug of coffee in his hand. “I never thought I’d be grateful to be on a gas tanker.”

  Spoken like a true-blue Buller, Syl thought …

  By the time the planes came in to drop the paratroopers at eight o’clock on that clear, sunny morning of February 16, the Y-18 was close enough to see them float down, a blizzard of white, yellow and green silk parasols, festive looking at that distance. Down they drifted into the clouds of smoke and fire erupting from that dark rock, while more and more were spilled from the planes overhead. Although Syl was too far away to make out details, he guessed that some of those hundreds of parachutes had to fail to open, and through the binoculars he could see some drift over the sea where PT boats roared in pretzel patterns as they picked them up. Those who dropped into the water were at least better off than those who had to dangle as helpless targets for the machine guns and rifles of the Japs before landing in the midst of a pitched battle. What did the men think as they stood poised in the doorways of the planes over Corregidor, just before they made their jumps?

  “Jesus, what a time to ask men to die,” Buller said. “Why don’t anybody realize the fucking world war is over everywhere but here?”

  Syl said nothing.

  “Why do we have to take this cruddy rock? Why can’t we just knock it out so ships can get by? I mean, what’s all the hurry anyway? They don’t have to waste lives like this … Old Deugout just has to prove he can take it a lot faster than the Japs took it from him. We could neutralize that rock without losing hundreds of men—”

  “Too bad you’re not a general,” Syl said. At least then maybe he’d be smart enough to keep his big goddamn mouth shut …

  As they started the four-hour voyage up Manila Bay to the city, the two minesweepers ran ahead of the procession of ships and streamed paravanes to cut the cables of Japanese mines. While they passed Corregidor Syl studied that dark island with his binoculars. From some of the branches of trees clinging to its precipitous cliffs, parachutes hung like twisted ribbons. Swinging corpses.

  Soon after they passed Corregidor they came upon the wrecks of Japanese ships—destroyers, merchant vessels, a big tanker and one as small as the Y-18. Syl had not been aware that the Japs too had harbor tankers, that his opposite numbers were undoubtedly trying to stop their crews from smoking, and blowing themselves up—although the Japs seemed to favor self-destruction as both a custom and tactic of battle. This particular Jap tanker had not been fortunate. Her tank deck had been peeled back like the lid of a sardine can when her gasoline blew.

  The wrecks grew increasingly numerous as they approached the inner harbor, where it seemed a whole fleet had been sunk. Some of the hulls had rusted red, but a few looked as though they had just left the builder’s yard. The bulk of this wrecked armada lay mostly beneath the surface with only a bow, a stern, a pilothouse or a mast projecting, but a few had been beached and from a short distance looked as though they were ready to open fire. One still showed tattered signal flags flying from the rigging. Only when they passed close-by did they see the shattered ports of her bridge and her fire-seared decks.

  Until he saw this great wrecked fleet, Syl had not really believed that his side might be winning the war. In Tacloban and at sea the previous night he had been on the receiving end of the only action he’d seen. This mute evidence that the Japs too could burn and sink made him almost share Buller’s confidence that the war must soon be over. Not since Pearl Harbor had he heard of an American fleet that had taken this kind of beating, and the Japanese did not have resources to build a new armada every year. Like Buller had said, when the Krauts folded how much longer could the bastards stand against the whole world? He wondered how many men would have to die before they found out.

  He was so fascinated by the sunken ships that he paid relatively little attention to the skyline of Manila as they approached the city. At first it was so wreathed in smoke that he could not see much, but around midmorning a northerly wind blew most of it off. From a distance, the spires, the many tall office buildings and big hotels looked untouched, but through the binoculars Syl soon realized this was a city of ruins, with collapsed roofs, crumbling walls and hardly a window left intact. As the grea
t mass of smaller buildings came into view many blocks looked like a patchwork quilt of gray ashes and fire-blackened wreckage. The wind also brought the smells of a city that was still a battleground, a stench made up of busted sewer lines, uncollected garbage and thousands of corpses … The sounds of sporadic rifle and machine-gun fire reached them at the same time the odors did.

  The neck of the harbor was so crowded with wrecks that the Liberty ships could not negotiate the twisting channel that had been cleared through them. They anchored farther out to wait for the work of demolition experts, who were already mooring their landing craft alongside the biggest rusty hulls. One minesweeper turned back to explore other parts of the bay while her sister led the Y-18 and the navy tanker toward fire-blackened concrete wharves and skeletons of burned-out tanks.

  “Do you suppose we’re the first ships in here?” Buller asked.

  “First American ships in a long while, I’d guess,” Syl said.

  “First into Manila. The voters down in the bayous will like that.”

  As always, Buller had his eye on the important things in life, Syl thought.

  Even before they got their lines out on the wharf a procession of six mottled olive army tank trucks drove from a street between two tall, shattered buildings and parked alongside them. A young major jumped from the lead truck, strode aboard the Y-18. “Boy, are we glad to see you. Fill ’em up.”

  “You want us to pump right into your trucks?”

  “We got no storage tanks yet. I got plenty of the other kind of tanks waiting for gas and a whole damn fleet of everything.”

  “We’ll have to figure out some kinds of adapters and hoses that will fit—”

  “I’ll take care of it,” Wydanski said.

  “We’ll keep our tank trucks coming,” the major said. “They’re bringing in fuel barges. As soon as you’re empty go out and get more.”