There had been no official word passed that the ship would be at Kwajalein in the morning, but the crew had its intel-ligence agent in the quartermaster who solved the star sights each night with Maryk. They knew the distance from the ob-jective as well as the captain.
Willie did not share the general gloom. His mood was buoy-ant and devilish. Within twelve hours he would be in battle; within twenty-four hours he would be a man who had risked his life for his country. He felt invulnerable. He was rolling toward an edge of danger, he knew, but it seemed an entertain-ing kind of danger, like a jump over a high hurdle on horse-back. He was proud of his lack of fear, and this buoyed him yet more.
He alone, beside the captain, knew that the Caine was go-ing to perform a hazardous mission at dawn. One of the top--secret guard-mail letters had contained new orders. The minesweeper was to shepherd a wave of attack boats from their transport to a line of departure only a thousand yards from the beach, fairly into the muzzles of the shore batteries; the reason being that correct navigation would be hard for the low-lying boats by themselves. Willie plumed himself on being in better spirits than the men though they were combat veterans and he wasn't; though he knew of a great impending risk and they didn't.
His optimism was really founded on a cunning estimate of his position (but a completely unconscious one) made by his viscera and nerves. He was not going to land on any beach; there was no risk of face-to-face encounter with stocky little yellow men brandishing bayonets. What confronted him was an increased likelihood of some crippling misfortune befalling the Caine, in the shape of a shell, a torpedo, or a mine. The odds in favor of his living through the next twenty-four hours had dropped from, say, a normal ten thousand to one to a smaller but still comfortable figure: seventy or eighty to one, maybe. So reasoned Willie's nervous tissue; whereupon it sent up to his brain some stimulating fluid that produced the en-sign's glow of bravery.
The nerves of the crew made less cheerful calculations for a simple reason. The crew had seen the results of misfortunes of battle; ships burning red and yellow, ships sinking, men scrambling over dripping slanted hulls, men soaked in oil, men ripped bloody, and floating dead men. They were inclined to think less of the odds than of the disagreeable possibilities.
"Officer of the deck!" It was the voice of Queeg, resonating in the speaking tube from the charthouse. Surprised, Willie glanced at the dim phosphorescent clockface. Ten-thirty, time for the captain to be in his cabin. He stooped to the coni-cal brass mouthpiece of the tube.
"Keith, aye aye."
"Come in here, Willie."
The captain, fully clothed, with his life jacket on, had crawled into the canvas bunk that hung over the navigator's table. This picture flashed on Willie when he closed the door of the charthouse, automatically lighting the room with one red shaded bulb on the bulkhead. The air was foul with ciga-rette smoke. "How are things going, Willie?"
"Everything normal, sir."
The captain rolled over on his side and peered at the en-sign. His face was drawn and bristly in the red light. "You read my night orders?"
"Yes, sir."
"Call me if there's anything the least bit unusual, do you understand? Don't worry about interrupting my beauty sleep. Call me."
"Aye aye, sir."
But the watch passed in the routine of pinging, zigzagging, and maintaining station. Harding stumbled up to him in the breezy gloom of the starboard wing at a quarter to twelve. "Ready to relieve you," he said sadly, exhaling a faint fra-grance of coffee.
"Well, forty miles to go, and still nothing."
Willie hesitated before going below, and considered curling up in a corner of the main deck. Coming down the bridge ladder, he saw that half the crew had had the same idea. There were no corners left on the deck, and no very wide pathways for walking. The sight made Willie disdainful and bold. He went below, took off his clothes, and slipped between the sheets. Despite the hour, it felt queer to be in his bunk, somewhat as though he had fallen ill and taken to bed in the daytime. He was still congratulating himself on his hardihood when he fell asleep.
GHANG, ghang, ghang, ghang, ghang...
The general alarm had not yet stopped ringing when he came bolting out on deck in his underwear, clutching shoes, socks, shirt, and trousers. He saw a calm sea, a starry black sky, and ships crisscrossing here and there in the melting for-mation. Sailors went thundering through the murky passage-ways and up and down ladders; no need to penalize any of them this time for not wearing helmet and life jacket! As Willie stepped into his pants the hatchway to the wardroom clanged shut behind him, and sailors of the forward repair party dogged it down hard. The ensign slipped his shoes on his naked feet and scrambled up the bridge ladder. The clock in the wheel-house showed three-thirty. The little space was crowded with shadowy figures. Willie could hear the rasping of steel balls rubbed together. He took his life jacket and helmet from a hook and approached the stoop-shouldered form of Harding. "Ready to relieve you. What's up?"
"Nothing. We're there." Harding pointed off the port bow and handed Willie the glasses. Willie saw, at the horizon, on the line between sea and sky, a thin irregular smudge, perhaps a fingernail wide. "Roi-Namur," said Harding.
Tiny yellow flashes appeared along the smudge. Willie said, "What's that?"
"The battle wagons peeled off and went ahead a couple of hours ago. I guess maybe that's them. Or maybe it's planes. Somebody's giving that beach hell."
"Well, this is it," said Willie, a little annoyed at the thump-ing of his heart. "If there's no change, I relieve you."
"No change."
Harding shuffled off the bridge. Now the sound of the shore bombardment came rolling across the sea to Willie's ears, but at this distance it was a mere trivial thumping, as though sailors were beating out mattresses on the ship's forecastle. Willie told himself that these vague noises and little colored flashes rep-resented hellish destruction that was being rained on the Japs, and tried for a moment to imagine himself as a slant-eyed soldier crouching and shivering in a flaming jungle, but the picture had the unsatisfying false effect of a magazine story about the war. In plain fact, Willie's first glimpse of combat was a disappointment. It appeared to be an unimportant night gunnery exercise on a very small scale.
The night paled to blue-gray, the stars disappeared; and day was brightening over the sea when the fleet came to a halt, three miles offshore. Attack boats began to drop from the davits of the transports, clustering and swarming on the water like beetles.
And now Willie Keith found himself in an honest-to-good-ness war; one-sided, because there was still no firing from the beach, but the real deadly business, none the less. The green islands trimmed with white sand were already aflame and smoking in many spots. Tubby old battleships, targets of so many journalists' sneers in peacetime, were briskly justifying thirty years of expensive existence by volleying tons of shells into the tropic shrubbery every few seconds, with thundering concussions. Cruisers and destroyers ranged beside them, pep-pering at the atoll. Now and then the naval fire stopped, and squadrons of planes filed overhead and dived one by one at the islands, raising clouds of white smoke and round bursts of flame, and sometimes a skyscraping mushroom of black, as an oil dump or ammunition pile went up with a blast which jarred the decks of the Caine. All the while the transports kept disgorging attack boats, which were fanning out along the gray choppy water in neat ranks. The sun rose, white and steamy.
The appearance of the atoll was not yet marred by the at-tack. The orange billows of flame here and there were deco-rative touches to the pleasant verdant islands, and so were the freshly blossoming clouds of black and white smoke. The smell of powder drifted in the air, and, for Willie, somehow com-pleted the festive and gay effect of the morning. He could not have said why. Actually, it was because the odor, with the in-cessant banging, reminded him of fireworks on the Fourth of July.
Keefer paused beside him for a moment on the port wing. Wisps of black hair hung out from und
er the gray dome of the novelist's helmet. His eyes glittered in their deep shadowed sockets, showing all the whites. "Like the show, Willie? Seems to be all ours."
Willie swept an arm around at the swarms of ships closed in on the frail-looking islands in the pearly sunrise. "Multitudes, multitudes. What do you think of the Navy at this point, Tom?"
Keefer grinned, twisting one side of his mouth. "Christ," he said, "the taxpayers ought to be getting something for their hundred billion dollars." He bounded up the ladder to the fly-ing bridge.
Queeg appeared, hunched almost to a crouch, his head mov-ing ceaselessly to and fro over the bulky collar of his kapok life jacket. His eyes were squinted nearly shut, and he seemed to be smiling gaily. "Kay, Mr. OOD. Where's this bunch of LVT's we're supposed to take in to the beach?"
"Well, I guess it's that bunch there, sir, by APA 17." Willie pointed to a huge gray transport some four thousand yards off the port bow.
"APA 17, hey? You're sure that's the ship they're supposed to come from?"
"That's what the orders said, sir. Jacob Group Four from APA 17."
"Kay. Let's get over to APA 17. Standard speed. You keep the conn."
The captain vanished behind the bridgehouse. Willie stalked into the wheelhouse, swelling with self-importance, and began barking orders. The Caine dropped out of the screen and headed toward the transports. The roaring and blasting of the battleship salvos grew louder with each hundred yards that the Caine moved inward. The ensign was feeling a little dizzy and exalted, as though he had drunk a highball too quickly. He went from wing to wing, taking bearings on the APA, calling for radar ranges, shouting rudder changes with inebriated con-fidence.
A long line of attack boats emerged from the clusters around the APA and headed for the old minesweeper. Willie went looking for the captain and found him perched on a flagbag, out of sight of the transports and the beach, smoking, and chat-ting casually with Engstrand. "Sir, Jacob Group Four seems to be heading our way."
"Kay." Queeg glanced vaguely out to sea, and puffed at his cigarette.
Willie said, "What shall I do, sir?"
"Whatever you please," said the captain, and giggled.
The ensign stared at his commanding officer. Queeg resumed telling an anecdote about the invasion of Attu to the signalman. Engstrand rolled his eyes momentarily at the officer of the deck, and shrugged.
Willie returned to the pilothouse. The attack boats were bumping toward the Caine in showers of spray. Peering through binoculars, Willie could see an officer standing in the stern of the leading boat with a large green megaphone under his arm. Spray flew all over his life jacket and khakis, and drenched the backs of the crouching marines in front of him. The glasses gave a prismatic blurriness to the boat and its oc-cupants. Willie could see the men shouting at each other but could hear no sound; it was like a glimpse of a worn-out silent movie. He didn't know what to do next. He thought the ship ought to be stopped but he was afraid to make such a com-mand decision.
Maryk came into the wheelhouse. "Say, where's the captain? We're going to run those birds down!"
The ensign pointed out of the starboard doorway with his thumb. Maryk strode across and glanced back at the flagbag. "Well," he said quickly. "All engines stop." He took a bat-tered red cardboard megaphone from a bracket under the port window, and walked out on the wing. The Caine slowed and rocked. "Boat-a-hoy," Maryk called.
The officer in the attack boat called back, in a voice that came faintly over the water, young, strained, and unmistakably Southern, "Jacob Group Four. Ready to proceed to point of departure."
Queeg poked his face in at the doorway of the pilothouse, exclaiming irritably, "What's going on here? Who said anything about stopping? Who's yelling to whom here?"
The executive officer shouted to the captain from the other wing, "Sorry, sir, it looked like we were overshooting these boys, so I stopped. It's Jacob Four. They're ready to proceed."
"Well, all right," called the captain. "Let's get it over with, then. What's course and distance to the point of departure?"
"Course 175, distance 4000, sir."
"Kay, Steve. You take the conn and get us there." Queeg disappeared. Maryk turned toward the attack boat, and the boat officer put his megaphone to his ear to catch the message. "We-will-proceed," the executive officer boomed. "Follow--us. Good-luck."
The boat officer waved the megaphone once, and crouched low in the boat as it began to churn forward again. His little landing craft was only fifty yards from the side of the Caine now. It was an LVT, one of the numerous land-and-water monsters evolved in World War II; a small metal boat incon-gruously fitted with caterpillar tracks. It could waddle on land or wallow through the sea for short distances, and though it could perform neither feat well, it existed because it could do both at all. Willie pitied the drenched men in the little craft, which pitched and rolled on the open sea like a toy.
Maryk steered for the atoll. There was nothing between the Caine and the Japanese island of Enneubing (which the Navy had nicknamed "Jacob") but a few thousand yards of choppy water with whitecaps. Willie could see details on the beach now: a hut, an abandoned rowboat, oil drums, shattered palm trees. He thought he had never seen a green so deep and rich as the green of Jacob Island, nor a white so white as its sands. There were two pretty orange fires on it, showing above the treetops; and not a movement of life anywhere. He looked around at the string of LVT's bobbing behind, and noticed a sailor in the lead boat frantically waving semaphore flags. The ensign signaled with his arms, "Go ahead." The flags rapidly spelled out, C-H-R-I-S-T S-L-O-W D-O-W-N. Several times the sailor fell off his signaling perch as the LVT dived into foam-ing troughs. Curtains of spray were dousing the attack boats every few seconds.
Queeg came around the bridgehouse and scurried up to Willie. "Well, well, what is it?" he said impatiently, and "What the hell do they want?" and "Well, can you read it or can't you?"
"They want us to slow down, Captain."
"That's too goddamn bad. We're supposed to be on the line of departure at H-hour. If they can't keep up with us we'll throw over a dye marker when we reach the spot, and that'll have to do." Queeg squinted at the island, and ran into the pilothouse. "Jesus, Steve, do you want to run up on the beach?"
"No, sir. About fifteen hundred yards to go to the line of departure."
"Fifteen hundred? You're crazy! The beach isn't fifteen hundred yards away-"
"Captain, the cutoff tangent on Roi Island is 045. Tangent now is 065."
Urban, at the port alidade, called out, "Left tangent Roi, 064."
The captain darted out on the port wing and pushed the little signalman aside. "You must be blind." He put his eye to the alidade. "I thought so! Zero five four and that's allowing nothing for set and drift along the line of bearing. We're inside the departure point now. Right full rudder! Right full rudder!" he shouted. "All engines ahead full! Throw over a dye marker!"
The stacks puffed billows of black smoke. The Caine heeled sharply to starboard and scored a tight white semicircle on the sea as it sped. around on the reverse course. Within a min-ute the LVT's of Jacob Group Four were a line of bobbing specks far astern. Near them on the sea was a spreading stain of bright yellow.
Later in the day, however, the Caine steamed bravely through the channel between Jacob and Ivan, together with a hundred other ships of the attack force. The American flag was flying on both islands. The Caine dropped anchor in the lagoon. Queeg ordered the posting of armed guards all along the sides of the ship to shoot any stray Japanese swimmers, and dismissed the crew from battle stations. There was nothing else to do. Hemmed in by transports, cargo ships, and destroyers, the Caine couldn't have fired at the beach even if ordered to. The grateful sailors left their gun posts, where they had been lolling for fourteen hours, and most of them went below at once to sleep. Sensitive as cats to the likelihood of danger, they knew that none threatened any more at Kwajalein. Willie's eyes stung with sleepiness, too, but he went up
to the flying bridge to watch the show.
It was a queer battle, the fight for Kwajalein, to be a young man's initiation into warfare. Possibly it was the queerest that has ever been fought. It had been won thousands of miles away, months before a shot was fired. The admirals had guessed correctly that the Mikado's "unsinkable carriers" were short of an important commodity: planes. Too many Jap-anese aircraft had been clawed out of the sky in the broils around the Solomons. As for warships, the remaining ones had become precious to the empire; and frugally guarded weapons are no weapons at all. With the mere arrival of the American array of ships and men, the battle was theoretically over. There was nothing at Kwajalein but a few thousand Japanese soldiers to face the monstrous fleet rising out of the sea; they were blasted into utter impotence in a few hours by an avalanche of bombs and shells. A white flag should have flown from each island at sunrise, by all the logic of war. Since the Japs ap-peared illogically unwilling to surrender, the naval bombarders set about annihilating them with an oddly good-humored, ribald ferocity.
Herman Wouk - The Caine Mutiny Page 33