One Man's War

by Thomas J. Wolfenden

  “Trouble! Grab your shit, ruck up, and follow me,” Tim said, retrieving his carbine from inside the door and heading out towards Ian’s house, leaving everyone standing there on the porch. He stopped and yelled out, “That was not a fucking suggestion. Grab your shit and follow me, goddamn it, right-fucking-now!”

  Chapter 6: Anchors Aweigh!

  Displacing 44,474 tons, with a length a squeak past 441 feet, a beam of just under 57 feet and a draft of 47 feet, the SS Jeremiah O’Brian wasn’t a sleek vessel by any stretch of the imagination. It was made for utility, not to win any beauty contests, and its present condition left it looking all the more forlorn and neglected.

  The once dark gray hull was now streaked with rust, and every surface, including its superstructure, with its tall single funnel directly amidships, was covered in over five years’ worth of white bird droppings. But it was afloat and not listing, and had only taken on a small amount of water, which Mr. Nakamura had complete control of with the use of the bilge pumps now purring away below decks.

  The early morning fog was burning off, and the sun’s rays did little to improve the sight that Ensign Johnson took in from the starboard wing bridge, where he stood looking out over the harbor. His sipped his coffee and wondered if it was at all possible to actually get this hulk ready to go to sea. His enthusiasm for the project had disappeared over night.

  The sound of the hatch from the wheelhouse opening was a relief to his troubled thoughts, and he turned to see Petty Officer Suplee step out with his own mug of coffee.

  “Good morning, Mr. Johnson!” he said. “It’s just another wonderful day in the Navy!”

  “Morning, Harry,” Suplee nodded, his blank expression remaining. “I just came up from the engine room. Mr. Nakamura has all the pumps running, and he says he’s going to try to light off the boilers later on today.”

  “How are the bunkers?”

  “They’re about half full, sir. We’ll need to top them off at some point.”

  “I figured that,” Johnson said.

  “Sure isn’t the Hughes, eh, Mr. Johnson?”

  “That it isn’t. We’ll have to top off the bunkers from somewhere. I hadn’t planned on the city being in this condition,” Johnson said, taking a sip of his coffee and looking out over the harbor again. The fog was thinned enough now that he could see the Bay Bridge, and he looked out past it.

  “It was just the law of averages. What do you have in mind?”

  “I had a look at the charts yesterday. I’m thinking of heading south, maybe San Diego.”

  “That would be a good idea, sir. We’d be able to get a lot of provisions there, and I can scrounge around and maybe get working radar set up on this tub.”

  “We’ll find some pressure washers and get this goddamn bird shit cleaned off.”

  “And some paint. It’ll take forever with just the three of us,” Suplee added, “I would be nice if we had more hands.”

  “I don’t think that will happen anytime soon, Harry,” Johnson said, still looking out over the water. “When does Mr. Nakamura think we can sail?”

  “Tomorrow maybe, if he can get all the boilers fired up. He sounded pretty optimistic.”

  “I’m glad one of us is.”

  “Bill,” Suplee said, still finding it hard to call this officer by his first name, old habits died hard, “I think if we can get down to San Diego, to a decent port, we can get her ship-shape. It’s just going to take a while.”

  “It’s going to be a lot of work, Harry.”

  “You know something? I’m actually looking forward to it,” Suplee said with an optimist’s grin, which made Johnson smile.

  “It’s going to be a lot different than our last voyage,” Johnson said.

  “Anything would be better than that fucking nightmare.”

  “True. Now let’s get below. I think Mary was tinkering about down in the galley trying to fix up some breakfast for us,” Johnson said, tossing the remainder of his coffee overboard. The two men entered the wheelhouse, and traveled through the ship’s passageways down two decks to the galley where they found Mary, who had two skillets on the burners and the aroma of hot food permeating the space. When they entered, she looked up at them and smiled.

  “I hope you boys don’t mind powdered eggs and fried spam,” she said. “It’s about as good as we’re going to get for a while.”

  “It’s a feast for kings, my dear!” Johnson said, grabbing a plate. Mary dished out platefuls for both men, and one for herself, and all three walked forward to the officer’s wardroom mess, where they found young Billy sipping what looked like a glass of Tang and thumbing through a comic book. Both men had a sudden fear that he’d found Nakamura’s nasty Hentai comics, but were relieved to see it was Bat Man. The boy looked up and smiled.

  “Daddy, is this going to be our home from now on?” the boy asked, and Johnson ruffled the boy’s unruly hair and smiled.

  “It sure is. We’ll sail the Seven Seas in search of adventure!”

  “Cool!” the boy beamed and went back to his comic.

  Johnson poured them all a fresh cup of coffee, and sat down to eat. A few minutes later, Nakamura entered. Mary told him there was still plenty of food in the galley, and to help himself. He bowed and left, returning a few minutes later with a heaping plate of spam and eggs, poured a cup of coffee and sat down at the table with them. It was beginning to get warm in the room from the rising sun’s rays, now unhindered by the fog, beating down on the steel ship.

  “It’s going to get really hot in here later,” Johnson said.

  “I was thinking about that. I guess they didn’t put air conditioning in when they built this tub,” Suplee commented.

  “It was probably low on the priority list back in ’43 when the keel was laid.”

  “When we get to San Diego, I’ll scare up some aircon units and rig them up in the living quarters,” Suplee said, shoveling in another forkful of powdered eggs.

  “That would be a good idea,” Johnson agreed.

  “When are we going to San Diego?” Mary asked.

  “As soon as we can, there’s not much here that we can use, and there will be more available at the big base there,” Johnson told her, and then turned to Nakamura. “When do you reckon we’ll be able to get under way?”

  “I think maybe tomorrow, Johnson-San. The engine seems to be okay. I will know better when I have boilers running.”

  “That soon?” Mary asked in astonishment.

  “Yes. It should be very possible. It look like ship was very well cared for. It just sit for long time now. Everything should work okay, and we sail fine!” Nakamura assured her.

  “Do you think we’ll have enough oil in the bunkers to sail for thirty-six to forty-eight hours?” Johnson asked the Japanese man.

  “Hai. We have plenty for such a journey. Not much more than that though. We must fill up soon after.”

  “Forty-eight hours? That long to get to San Diego?” Suplee asked.

  “It’s not the Hughes, Harry. We won’t be tearing around the ocean at over thirty knots. This ship was only designed for about eleven or twelve knots, so yeah, I’m figuring around forty-eight hours to get to San Diego.”

  Suplee let out a whistle as he let that information sink in. “Why so slow, Skipper?”

  “Back in 1942, when the concept was first thought out, most of the current ships of the day only made that kind of headway. They had the technology to make engines that would propel a ship faster, but they thought it better to make the ships only go as fast as the current ones afloat.”

  “I’m still not following you. If they had the technology, why not build a faster boat?”

  “They sailed in convoys, for protection. In order to keep the convoy in one cohesive unit, they could only sail as fast as the slowest ship in the convoy. No sense putting in a turbine that could make twenty knots or so, when the ship sailing next to them could only make nine or ten.”

  “I get you now,” Suplee said
, getting up to refill his coffee mug.

  The young boy Billy, who had been sitting quietly the entire time, piped in with a question; “What’s a ‘knot’, Daddy?” which made his father smile. He was thoroughly enjoying being a father.

  “It’s a measure of speed, Billy. One knot would be one nautical mile an hour. So a ship that is sailing at ten knots is going ten nautical miles an hour.”

  “That’s how far you go in an hour, Daddy?”

  “Exactly!” Johnson said, looking over at Mary, seeing her smile broadly. She stood and started to gather the plates. “C’mon, little man, help Mommy with the dishes, and later you can help Daddy with the sailing, okay?”

  “Okay, Mom!” he said, picking up a few pieces of flatware and following Mary out of the wardroom.

  When she was gone, Johnson looked at both of them men and sighed. “So tell me, what have you both figured out?”

  “I think all will be in order,” Nakamura said. “I will start the boilers and we will see, but have not found any problems with them or the engines. We can sail tomorrow if you wish, Captain-San.”

  Johnson nodded in satisfaction. “Do that now, if you’d like, Mr. Nakamura, the sooner we find out, the better.”

  “I will attend to that right away,” Nakamura replied, getting up and leaving the two men alone.

  Johnson turned to Suplee and asked, “Anything else?”

  “Yes, sir. I can get a few simple household air conditioners, the window units would work best I think. I’ll just use a torch to cut holes in the bulkheads and mount them in the cabins and wheelhouse. It should be a straightforward job. The auxiliary power unit and generators put out more than enough juice for the job.”

  “We’ll do that when we get to San Diego then.”

  “It shouldn’t be too hard. I’ll run into town and pinch a bunch from an appliance store. The electricity to the cabins is 110 volts, too. Cutting the holes and fabricating the mounts will be the hardest part. The plumbing is in order. The heads and showers are working fine, and there’s plenty of water in the freshwater tanks.”

  “Good, there’s nothing worse than a clogged head on a ship.” Johnson said, his unease and trepidation diminishing. He just wished he had more hands to do the grunt work.

  “That’s true, Skipper. Have you thought about navigation?”

  “I have. I know this ship isn’t as modern as we both are used to, but I can assure you, I do know how to use a sextant and I’ll get you up to speed on celestial navigation. Sergeant Major Flannery also gave me an IVIS tablet, and that has a GPS receiver built in. If the charts we use aren’t completely wrong, we shouldn’t run aground anywhere.”

  “He’s a great guy, for an Army type.”

  “That he is. He didn’t have to let us come with him at all.”

  “I know, Skipper. We owe him a lot. He could have left us on that atoll,” Suplee said, an involuntary shudder running through him.

  “Have you tried to get hold of him on the radio?”

  “I have,” Suplee nodded. “I tried last night right before lights out, and again this morning. I got nothing. I was hoping to find out if Lieutenant MacFarland got back okay, but I did get hold of Sergeant Williams on Oahu. Everything is going well there.”

  “He’s probably busy with getting things set up in Arizona. He’s got a nice compound out there.”

  “That he does. I hope everything is okay.”

  “I’m sure it is, Harry. Oh, and another thing. We’ll have to take on a shitload of seawater ballast before we sail, or we’ll all be seasick before we reach the ocean.”

  “I’ll get right on that now, Skipper. I hadn’t thought of that.”

  “We’ll worry about the paint and bird shit later. Let’s just get this ship ready to sail, and once we’re in San Diego, we’ll worry about esthetics,” Johnson said, knowing it wasn’t esthetics at all. The bird droppings were caustic, and would act like acid to the paint and steel of the ship. It definitely had to be dealt with, however, it could wait for a few more days.

  “I’ll get right on the ballast, Skipper,” Suplee said.

  He departed into the ship, leaving Ensign Johnson alone where he sat with his thoughts for a few minutes, finished his coffee, and went up the two decks to his stateroom. It was spacious by naval standards, though the single bunk was a bit cramped for him and Mary, but the closeness was nice after their long separation. He undressed and took a hot shower, then dressed in clean work clothes. He’d always been a hands-on officer, never afraid to roll up his sleeves and get dirty, this was going to be a monumental job, and every pair of hands would be needed.

  He went down to the boiler room, and after a short time, he and Nakamura got the boilers fired up, and the pressure rose and held. They decided to let them run overnight, to make sure that all was in order before setting sail. He walked through the ship, taking hours to do so. He wanted to know every inch of the ship, inside and out, from the bilges and cargo holds, to the crew’s berths, to the pantry. After he made his tour, and finding nothing remarkable, he went back up to the wardroom and ate supper with the rest of his new crew.

  After everyone retired for the evening, Nakamura and Suplee to their staterooms one deck below the captain’s quarters and the wheelhouse, Johnson got his son to bed into what he now called his ‘cabin’, the bunk in the radio operator’s shack on the opposite side of the superstructure from his stateroom. The boy thought it was just splendid.

  Once the boy was settled, he walked out onto the starboard wing bridge and looked up at the night sky. The sun had set a few hours ago, and now the sky was painted with billions of stars, unhampered, most probably for a long time to come, by light pollution. He looked north, found Ursa Major and Polaris, and smiled inwardly. He recalled another time, on that horrible ship, looking up at a completely alien night sky, the Southern Cross replacing this familiar sight, and wondering if he’d ever see them again.

  He took this clear sky as a good omen, for sailors are a superstitious lot, and made his way to his stateroom, where he found Mary already asleep. He shut the cabin door quietly, undressed, and curled up beside her in the narrow bunk, letting her long, dark hair caress against his chest. He was asleep in an instant.

  The next morning, after a brief powwow of sorts, they got busy preparing the ship to set sail. The fog was again as thick as pea soup. The ship was not equipped with operational radar; the newer one of the two installed previously to make it Coast Guard certified had been fried in the Event; the second, original radar set from World War Two was in need of a few vacuum tubes, so it was decided to wait out the mist. It wasn’t until mid-morning that they could release the moorings from Pier 45, where the ship had been tied all these years.

  That in itself, would have been comical to watch, had it not been so deadly serious. With only three of them to do all the work, Suplee volunteered to go dockside and slip all the ropes off their cleats, rushing to each one the whole length of the ship, and then rushing up the gangway before the ship drifted too far from the dock, leaving him stranded ashore. He made it on board with only a minute to spare, and he breathlessly winched the gangway to its stowed position before collapsing on the deck, exhausted.

  When he regained his strength, he made his way up to the wheelhouse, where he found Johnson, and a petrified Mary at the wheel. Suplee took over the helm. Johnson gave orders to Suplee, who operated the telegraph, to let Nakamura know when to increase power or reverse the engines.

  No automation on this ship, Suplee remembered.

  When Nakamura answered the telegraph from the engine room, they all felt a slight shudder through the deck, the single funnel belched a thick cloud of black smoke, and for the first time in over six years, the 18-foot diameter, four-bladed, manganese-bronze screw started to turn, frothing up the water in the harbor in a burst of raw power.

  The ocean was still miles to the west, and Ensign Johnson did his best dead-reckoning by looking at the IVIS, the chart on the chartroom table, and l
ooking out the wing bridge. He felt like a one-armed man hanging wallpaper, and they all breathed a sigh of relief when they sailed under the Bay Bridge, past the Presidio, and out into deep water. The headed directly west for a half hour, then turned to port, heading directly south, and they didn’t completely relax until Half Moon Bay was well north of them.

  The sun shone brightly, and the ocean was filled with gentle rolls, making the ship bob in spite of the ballast they’d taken on the previous day. A few seagulls flitted about, squawking noisily, and Mary went out to the wing bridge and let the cool sea breeze hit her face, trailing her long black hair out like a pennant behind her.

  “What now, Skipper? You want to stay on this heading?” Suplee asked, and Johnson, who had been standing at the windscreen looking out ahead of them with binoculars, dropped them and turned.

  “Yeah, this will do for now, Harry.”

  “Good,” he said, and took two bungee cords he’d fashioned the night before, lashing the wheel in place, stepping aside for a moment. “Autopilot is set, Skipper!” he announced, making Johnson laugh for the first time that day.

  “That’s a good idea, Harry!”

  “I thought of it last night. I’m glad I did; the helm on this tub is a pig. After conning from the Hughes, it’s like getting out of a Ferrari and climbing into a garbage truck.”

  “By the time we get there, we’re going to be exhausted,” Johnson said with a frown.

  “You said it, sir. Mr. Nakamura set up a cot down in the engine room. He said he’d take naps, but he’d be right there to answer bells for the whole trip.”

  “That will leave just us two to con the ship all the way, Harry.”

  “It’s going to be a long forty-eight hours,” he grimaced.

  “We’ll do six hours on, six hours off. The hard part will be getting into San Diego,” Johnson said.

  “We’ll be fine, I think. We can pull into the harbor and drop anchor, then use the whaleboat to go ashore. That would save a lot of heartbreak, not trying to come alongside a dock when we’re wasted.”

  “That sounds like a good idea, Harry.”