Herman Wouk - War and Remembrance

by War

  They were still at battle stations. Red-stained handkerchief to his face, Byron mounted the ladder on his way to his post on the bridge. Aster, at the chart desk, said, "Stand by, Briny." The pharmacist's mate was bent over the captain, who sat with his back to the torpedo data computer, eyes open, complexion bluish, head bandaged, khaki shirt splashed with blood. Hoban gave Byron a sickly smile.

  "Well, I see you caught it, too." His voice was hoarse and weak.

  "It's just a cut, sir."

  "You were. luckier than me."

  Aster said, "Captain, do you want to try walking?"

  "In a minute. You're heading south, you say? Why south?"

  It was a tired, petulant query. "The entrance is the other way.

  "That's it, sir. He's tracked us, he knows where, we were heading.

  A line between the two contact points shows him.

  With two more tin cans coming for us, I figure we better do a wide end run. Ten miles south, ten miles east, and then up the east coast to the entrance."

  "Very well. Help me up." Aster and the pharmacist's mate lifted him by his elbows. On his feet, Hoban weaved and grasped a stanchion.

  "Whew! Dizzy. That's not a bad plan, Lady. But keep the men at battle stations. I'd better take a half hour or so in my bunk."

  "Aye aye, sir."

  Aided by the pharmicist's mate, the captain tottered to the ladder, and the bloody bandaged head sank through the hatch. Aster took up rulers and divider. "Briny, better have Doc Hviesten fix you up."

  "I'm all right, Lady. I'll just go to my station." Byron wanted to climb outside, see the waves, breathe fresh air.

  Aster gave him a hard penetrating look. "Do as you're told. And put on foul weather gear."

  "Aye aye, sir."

  When he did get to the bridge, he found blackness, spray, wind, rough swells. These were beautiful to him. The fire control officer had the deck; a blond lieutenant from Virginia, Wilson Turkell II, nicknamed Fool in some forgotten Annapolis episode. But only the captain and Aster called him Fool.

  He was an accomplished officer with two marked habits: total silence except on ship's business, and a way of drinking himself insensible on the beach. Turkell said nothing when Byron arrived, and nothing thereafter.

  The bridge was the captain's battle station. Half an hour passed and he did not come. Aster shouted an order through the open hatch to Turn east. From the dark form Of Turkell, surprising Byron almost like speech from a tree, issued five words: "This is a bad business."

  "What? Why, Wilson?"

  But the tree had spoken its wooden piece. Except for orders Turkell said nothing more.

  Half an hour passed in rainy, pitching, tossing silence, and the dark. Sonar lost the three destroyers. The - Devilfish turned again to run along the coast. The loudspeaker grated, "Now secure from battle stations. Meeting of officers in the wardroom."

  The captain was not at the meeting. In his place sat Aster, looking grim, smoking a gray cigar. When all the officers were seated, he pulled the green curtain. "Okay, I'll make this short," he said in low troubled tones. "I've been with the captain for the past hour.

  His concussion seems serious. Doc Hviesten says his pulse is elevated, so's his blood pressure, and his vision is impaired. He may have a fractured skull. The Devilfish has to return to base."

  Aster paused, looking around at the officers' set faces.

  Nobody said a word or made a gesture. He took a long puff at his rank cigar. "Now I guess you all feel as badly about this as I do. We came here to do a job. But there's no alternative.

  We can't break radio silence. if we could, ComSubRon 26 would just order us in. Captain Hoban isn't up to conducting attacks, and he can't delegate command. The safety of the boat and crew becomes paramount. The thing to do is get the hell out of here.

  Let's hope the Salmon, the Porpoise, and those other guys get some scores down at the landing beach."

  "How do we get out, Lady?" Turkell asked in an offhand way. "And when?"

  "On the surface, Fool, straight through the entrance at twenty-one knots" - Aster glanced at his watch - "approximately forty minutes from now."

  Turkell's reaction was a marked downcurving of his mouth and a single nod. "Any comments?" Aster inquired, after a silence. "We're all in this together."

  The engineering officer lifted a hand, an awkward formality among Devilfish officers. He was a peppery little lieutenant j.g. from Philadelphia named Samtow, a humorless fanatic about machinery maintenance, but otherwise rather a joker.

  "The captain's conscious? He's aware of what's going on?"

  "Of course. He's ill and dizzy. He doesn't feel up to conducting attacks, and there's no point in wasting torpedoes' "Does he know we'll transit the entrance on the surface?"

  Turkell's lips barely moved. "That's his desire?"

  "Well, Fool, we tossed it back and forth." Aster slouched, puffing on his cigar, shedding some of his forced dignity. "It's a tough one. Destroyers and sub chasers will be thick up there as whores on Market Street. We know that. These monkeys may even have mined the entrance.

  For all we know they have radar, too, though our intelligence says no." Aster swept both his arms wide, and shrugged.

  "On the other hand we've got zero visibility topside, haven't we?

  With the diesels we can run through and get away in a quarter of an hour.

  This hole is twelve miles wide, and that's one hell of a big expanse to bottle up solid with patrol vessels on a rainy night. But if we pull the plug it'll take us four times as long to transit the hot zone, with all those tin cans pinging for us. I grant you, two hundred feet of water overhead is a nice margin of safety.

  The captain finally said I'd have the conn, and to do it my way."So I say again, any comments?"

  The officers looked at each other.

  "That's the way to go," Turken said.

  Aster let several wordless seconds go by. He nodded.

  "Okay then. One more thing. Captain Hoban told me to express his regret at aborting the patrol. He says the boat, the crew, and the officers all performed admirably. If not for malfunctioning torpedoes we'd be heading home with a couple of major sinkings chalked up. We've learned that the Devilfish can catch a lot of hell and still go on fighting. The patrol hasn't been a dead loss, and he says well done."

  Aster spoke all this in a dry monotone-. In his natural tone he added, "And that's that. Back to battle stations. I just secured for a while to give the crew a -chance to grab a sandwich and a piss."

  "You mean," said Samtow, "there's somebody left in this boat who hasn't pissed in his pants?"

  The meeting broke up in coarse relieving laughter. The escape through the entrance was an anticlimax. Aster, Byron,. and Turkell stood on the bridge in rubber clothes, peering into driving black rain. The sonar operator, stammering with excitement, reported more and more screw noises and pinging; far ahead at first, then getting closer, then sounding all around the Devilfish.

  Apparently in the sonar receiver listening pandemonium was echoing, through 360 degrees, but on the bridge all was wet, dark and peaceful.

  They went cruising straight through the heavy Japanese patrol line and saw no sign of it as they plunged and wallowed uneventfully through the night out of the gulf and into the open ocean.

  "Just goes to show you, Briny," Aster remarked while the sonar operator was chattering alarm after alarm, "that ignorance is bliss.

  Here we are absolutely ringed by these yellow rascals, and it's like a pleasure cruise. Let's just hope we don't ram one."

  He kept the submarine at General Quarters until the pinging had faded from the sonar, far astern; then he stationed the watch. "Briny, when you're relieved, see me in my cabin. "Aye aye, sir."

  He was lying on his bunk in jockey shorts, smoking a cigar, when Byron came. "Hi. Draw the curtain and sit down."

  Aster raised himself on an elbow. "How do you like submarine duty?"

  Byron took a moment to answer, then
spoke the truth. "It's for me."

  Aster's green eyes flashed, and his mouth corners curved in his highly individual, cold, almost mirthless smile. "Now listen carefully." Aster leaned toward him-their heads were only a foot or so apart-and spoke almost in a whisper, "There's nothing wrong with Captain Hoban except that he's scared absolutely shitless."

  "What? No concussion?"

  "Nah! He confessed to Doc Hviesten. Doc told me. Then the three of us had it out. He did fall, but he wasn't knocked cold, he simulated it. It isn't malingering or cowardice, he just can't hack it, Briny. He got the message when the first depth charge went off.

  You know, I guessed it, watching him. It was pitiful. He crumpled up in a ball like a girl caught naked. I guess he's doing the right thing, because he sure as hell can't conduct an attack. He's broken.

  He's in terror. Doc had'to put him to sleep with a strong sedative.

  As soon as we reach Manila, he's going to transfer out of submarines."

  This was staggering news to Byron. "Oh, he'll think better of that. His whole career-"

  "No, he won't. He's through. He told me that, Briny."

  "Ten years in submarines, Lady-"

  "Look, he was in the wrong business.

  There was just no way he could find out. I'll never blame any man who decides he can't hack this, and I feel sorry for him.

  Actually he did well in his condition. He kept his self-control, and he maneuvered properly under fire."

  "Who else knows about him?"

  "Well, Fool was right there. You can't deceive Fool. But he's no blabbermouth. Doc Hviesten won't talk, he's very ethical. I think the. sailors were too scared to notice. I'm backing Hoban's story.

  When he's transferred the truth will get out. Meantime we have to run this submarine. We're returning to base with our tail between our legs, and that's poison for the crew. So if we make a fat contact on the way back, I'm going to ask Hoban's permission to shoot. We've still got twenty torpedoes left. If we do run an attack, Fool will be my kibitzer, he'll punch the Is-Was, and you'll man the TDC. Got that?

  You're the best diving officer I've ever seen, except maybe me, but Quayne will have to do that."

  "Jesus Christ."

  "What's your problem?"

  "I can't run that TDC."

  "You did all right in the attack trainer. Better than Samtow.

  There's nobody else."

  "Dive, dive, dive." Through the mists of sleep Byron heard the loudspeaker and the clamorous flooding of the ballast tanks. On the instant he was out of his bunk naked. Sitting at the tiny desk writing a report, his roommate, Samtow, yawned. "Easy. It's almost dawn, so Lady's pulling the plug."

  "Dawn? It is? How could I sleep five hours?"

  "It's a talent."

  "What's happening?"

  "We're about fifty miles out of Manila."

  "What about the captain?"

  Samtow shrugged. "Haven't seen hair nor hide of him."

  Byron dressed, drank coffee, and went to check on the torpedo rooms, bow and stern. The submarine stank. Listless cleanup and repair went on here and there, but the mood of defeat was as pervasive as the odor of malfunctions and decay. Most of the sailors were taciturn, but their feeling was plain-stunned humiliation that the red-hot Devilfish crew should be skulking home empty-handed from their first patrol, mauled by Japs, barely saving their skins.

  Then the sonar operator reported the faint beating of a propeller.

  The plotting party came on duty. The count of propeller turns per minute gave the vessel's approximate speed. Its very slow movement relative to the submarine showed it some forty miles away. The distance was astonishing, but depending on sea conditions, the equipment could sometimes pick up screw noises at great ranges.

  Several times the contact faded out and returned, still on the same closing course at the same speed.

  A rumor flashed through the compartments that Lieutenant Aster was going after it; and, as by a blast of compressed air, the sickly atmosphere in the vessel blew away. The torpedomen came to life, feverishly checking their weapons.

  The engineering gang fell earnestly to work on jammed valves, malfunctioning pumps, and broken fuel and water lines. The crew began an intensive cleanup. A cheerful fragrance of frying chicken soon obliterated the stench of leaking drains and filthy men. About midday curiosity overcame Byron. Pulling the curtain behind him, he stepped into Aster's cabin, where the exec, quite naked, sat correcting typed logs. "What's the dope, Lady?"

  "About what?"

  "Will we.attack this target?"

  "Oh, you require a special briefing, do you?"

  "Sorry if I'm off base."

  "Well, since you ask, I have the captain's. permission to close him and take a look." Aster was distant and uncordial.

  The propeller sounds slowly grew stronger, hour by hour.

  Derringer's plot showed that with this submerged approach, the Devilfish would not sight the ship much before evening, but a daylight run on the surface in these waters was far too risky.

  Byron had the afternoon watch. At five o'clock Aster appeared in the conning tower in clean khakis, freshly shaved, smoking a long Havana, and humming the "Washington Post March," his habit when in the highest spirits.

  "Well, now, gentlemen, just let's see if this rascal is in view yet, hey? Plot says he ought to be. Up periscope!-Well, well, well!

  By the Christ, there's our friend. Bearing. Mark!

  Two one zero. Range. Mark! Fourteen thousand yards.

  Down scope!"

  He shouted in the tube, "Chief, right on the money! He's there over the hill, hull down." Happy laughter resounded from the control room. Aster turned to Byron, his face glowing. "Briny, let's go to General Quarters."

  At the alarm the usual racket ensued: loud scurrying and shouting, clanging of watertight doors, barked reports by telephone talkers.

  Turkell arrived and slung around his neck the Is-Was, a conoluted plastic instrument that gave bearings for a torpedo shot if the TDC failed. Byron nervously took his place at the computer. He had worked the blackfaced instrument and its constantly turning dials in sub school and the simulator on shore, but had never before manned one at sea.

  The device put together the three moving elements of the attack problem-torpedo, submarine, victim-boiling down all the evolving data to one crucial number: the final bearing on which to launch the torpedo. The information coming in was of varying reliability. Course and speed of the Devilfish were precise; but the data on the target ship consisted of sonar readings and periscope glimpses, inexact and fleeting. The officer on the TDC had to guess which readings were fluky, which more or less accurate, in feeding new numbers into the machine. Wilson Turkell had rare insight for this. The responsibility weighed on Byron but excited him, too.

  On the plot and on the computer, submarine and target continued to draw together. Aster paced and smoked, waiting for the time of sunset to put up the periscope again. "I'm not scaring off our plump little friend up there," he observed to Turkell. His usually pale face was bright pink, and his lithe nervous pacing and finger-snapping were working up tension in the attack party which Byron could see on the sailors' faces.

  "All right," Aster said at last, crouching at the periscope well, "up scope!" He caught the handles and snapped them in place. Rising with the scope as stylishly as Hoban had done, he was looking through the eyepiece as it went up. "Range.

  Mark! Six thousand. Bearing. Mark! Two two four." The periscope had scarcely stopped when he ordered it down again. "Okay.

  Angle on the bow, twenty port. It's a medium-sized tanker, Fool.

  About five thousand tons."

  "Jap silhouette?"

  "Hell, tanker silhouette! What other nationarity is chugging around in the South China Sea?"

  "That's what we don't know, Lady," said a melancholy voice.

  Like a ghost's, the bristly face of Branch Hoban rose through the hatchway. He climbed into the conning tower, his eye
s haunted and sickly bright, his head bloodily bandaged, his lean frame stooped in his old tiger-pattern bathrobe, r which dragged on the deck. "Maybe some fool Dutchman hasn't got the word. Maybe it's one of our own ships out to rendezvous with a fleet unit. We just don't know."

  "Sir, it sure as hell doesn't look American."

  "Lady, we've got to know."

  "Okay. Identification manual, Jap merchants, tankers," Aster snapped at the quartermaster. Again he raised the periscope to call range, bearings, and angle on the bow.