Herman Wouk - War and Remembrance

by War

  "Sir, this is Captain Henry."

  "Well! We'll be seeing you at the planning conference tonight, Captain." Dolphins were pinned over Nimitz's breast pocket and its bright layers of campaign ribbons. White close-clipped hair, ruddy skin, composed blue eyes, a square jaw, a flat waistline; here was a healthy hardy old submariner with a gentle look, yet a sufficient air of supreme command. Nimitz inclined his head toward the receiving line. "You're a friend of this newspaperman, I'm told."

  "We became acquainted, Admiral, when I was serving in Europe."

  "I was advised to show my face here because the Army was turning out in force." Nimitz's gesture took in the khaki uniforms clustering around General Richardson, the military governor, and his hand swept out at the jocund mob of Hawaiian high society filling the lawn. "Is the man worth all this?"

  "He has a world audience, sir."

  "Public Information also wants me to talk to him tomorrow." The blue eyes probed. The statement was a question.

  The weight of the coming battle was already on Nimitz, Pug reflected.

  The request made him think of the little puff for Madeline in Variety.

  "Admiral, if you have the time for any correspondent, he's a fine one."

  Nimitz made a wry face. "Time is a problem. But they keep telling me we've got to keep up public morale back home."

  "A good way to do that, Admiral, is with a victory."

  Nimitz dismissed him with a flash of the eyes and a nod. A few minutes later, Pug saw the admirals thread through the crowd and slip out of the garden. Tudsbury now bulked yellow and huge at the tent bar beside General Richardson, in a ring of brightly dressed eagerly crowding women.

  Pug stood alone, not drinking. To avoid being jostled by the throng of guests he backed up to the palm tree, and unconsciously put his knuckles to his hips as Spruance had, looking around with much the same pained squint. Pamela Tudsbury, drinking with Janice, his sons, and Aster, was telling a story; an anecdote of Singapore, Pug guessed, from the close attention of the others. He was glad to see Byron enjoying himself, for he had seemed sunk in gloom' this afternoon, after a second unsatisfactory talk in two days with some evasive nobody in the State Department, who would not confirm or deny that Natalie was on her way home. As for Pamela, hungry though Pug was to talk to her, he would not intrude on that young group. Half a year had gone by sir their parting in Moscow. A few more minutes didn't matt How youthful she looked, after all! Her age was thirty-one, she was older than his boys. But not by much; not by much.

  Heavy on Pug's mind was awareness of the Japanese fleet plowing the high seas toward Midway. A ludicrous trifle by comparison, but weighing just as much on his spirit, was Pamela Tudsbury's distant greeting to him. He had not expected an affectionate outburst, but even in a receiving line a woman could signal feeling with a mouth twitch, a hand pressure, a glance. Nothing! At first glance Pam had looked less attractive than he had expected; a bit ordinary, even drab, and rather run-down. But now, a few yards away, animated in talk with young people, she was recovering the iridescent aura she had worn in memory and in fantasy; and he felt the same frustration that had ached in him at sea when daydreaming about her, though there she stood, solid and alive.

  This whole twittery festive gathering, to his dour view, seemed a game of dressed-up children. There came vividly to his mind the Waterloo eve scene, recounted in poems, novels, and movies, of the grand ball in Brussels; beautiful women, handsome officers, music, wine, the Duke of Wellington himself dancing; and then the distant mutter of the French artillery, and the dissolution of the gaiety in panic, scurry, tears, farewells, and hasty arming. This noisy fancy crush in the garden of Washington Place might lack the rich glitter of Napoleonic times, but the oncoming battle muttered in Victor' Henry's imagination like Waterloo. Its consequences, he thought, could be more cataclysmic for the side that lost.

  "What, what, Pug Henry?" Alistair Tudsbury left the bar and came limping toward him. "Standing aside and alone, with the worries of the world on your manly phiz?"

  "Hi there. Enjoying your party?"

  "Oh, one sometimes can't say no." Tudsbury made a grotesque grimace.

  "Bloody waste of an afternoon. Is that anniversary dinner still laid on for tonight?"

  "It's laid on."

  "Smashing."

  "What about your eye, Talky?"

  "Trifling irritation. Having it checked in your naval hospital tomorrow after I interview Nimitz."

  "Sure you'll see him?"

  "Why, Pug, the man came to this silly do, didn't he? These chaps are never too busy for me. They're always panting to get their ducks in a row for the public and for history. Why, Air Marshal Dowding talked to me at the height of Goering's September seventh raid! If I'd been at Waterloo, Napoleon would have talked to me on horseback while fleeing the field, I assure you. No matter how badly his piles were hurting him!

  Ah, haws hawr!"

  Pug gestured at the jolly crowd all around them. "I've been thinking about Napoleon. About that ball in Brussels before the battle."

  "Ah yes. "There was a sound of revelry by night-' But at the moment, at least, one doesn't hear the thunder of approaching cannon."

  The eye blinked and stared. "Or does one?"

  "Not that I know of."

  "Now come on, Pug!" A crafty tough look hardened the fat face.

  "Something's brewing on this island. Something damned tremendous.

  Tell me what you know."

  "Can't help you."

  "You do have the most damnably worried look."

  A blonde girl came simpering up to Tudsbury in a cloud of white organdy, with an autograph book and a pen projecting in little pink hands from the cloud. "Would you, Mr. Tudsbury?" she tinkled. Snorting, he scrawled his signature.

  The cloud wafted away in giggles.

  "I'll tell you what this reminds me of," growled Tudsbury.

  ",Pahits and dances I attended in Singapore, while those little yellow devils were marching or bicycling down the peninsula.

  With all those smashed behemoths out there in your harbor, and a whole American army in the Philippines captured by the yellow men, who are also swarming over Southeast Asia and the Indies, sweeping up the wherewithal to wage war for a century; with Singapore gone, with the Empire shatter with Australia naked as a bride for her deflowering, with Japanese fleet four or five times as strong as anything you've got left in the Pacific-with all that, one would expect in Hawaii, shall we say a concerned air, a hint of urgency, a trace of resolve such as we showed in Old Blighty during the blitz? But the tropics unfit the white man for modern war."

  Tudsbury flipped the lei with a fat paw. "The natives seem so simple to handle, one gets a false sense of invincibility.

  There's no such delusion in Australia. They are hellishly alarmed. They know that the Doolittle raid was a fine brave Yank stunt, but not a mosquito bite on Japan's war capacity.

  Every third person at this party has asked me about the Doolittle raid, popping buttons with pride. Why, man, the R.A.F's sending hundreds of bombers over Germany several times a month-in one night we sent a thousand bombers over Cologne-and we haven't dented the enemy's will yet.

  Perhaps my nerves are-shot, but what I see about me here is more or less a Singapore with Yank accents and pineapples."

  "Sounds, like your next broadcast, Talky."

  "It is, more or less. These people need waking up. I didn't like scuttling out of a falling British bastion under the artillery fire of Asians. Nor will they. I liked getting torpedoed by them even less.

  And I would gladly have skipped a week in a whaleboat on the open water, under an equatorial sun."

  "If you get to talk to Nimitz you'll be reassured."

  Pamela strolled by on Carter Aster's arm, both talking at a great rate. "How do you think my Pam looks?"

  "Sort of tired."

  "She's had a rotten time. We became separated when they sent off a drove of women in an old Greek tub bound for Java. P
am came down with dysentery on board, had to be hospitalized in Java, and then by God the Japs started landing there. So it was march aboard ship again when she could scarcely walk. Pam's resilient, and she's snapping back. I say, is that submarine hero coming to your dinner?"

  "He hasn't been asked."

  "Would you ask him, old cock? I do so want a word with him.

  Well, I'll drivel a bit more with General Richardson.

  Awful stick, isn't he?"

  As Tudsbury stumped off, Pug mulishly decided that he wouldn't invite Aster. He didn't like the Devilfish captain.

  Under his fawning politeness a hard ego jutted, with a hint of condescension to an older man commanding a treaty cruiser.

  The Navy tended to pound touchiness out of a man, and Pug Henry was used to letting the other fellow have his plaudits.

  But the snub from the governor of Hawaii in Pamela's presence, in favor of the younger officer, had nettled him.

  Byron came weaving up, grasping a tall planter's punch.

  "Hi, old Dad! Get you a drink?" His eyes wert sparkling and red, his grin foolish. "Great party, hey? What'll you drink, Dad?"

  With a glance from the glass to his son's face, Pug said, "What's left?"

  Byron laughed. "Dad, you can't put me down, not this afternoon.

  I'm feeling too damn good. I haven't felt so good in a year.

  Say, Dad, let's ask Lady Aster to the dinner, okay?

  He's peculiar, but in submarines you have to be somewhat goofy.

  He's a great skipper."

  Through a gap in the crowd, Victor Henry could see Pamela and Aster at the bar, still in merry converse. All right, Pug thought.

  Suppose this able officer, back from a brilliant war patrol, likes Pam and she likes him? What's objectionable in that? What claim have I on her, and how would I propose to execute a claim if I had one?

  "Sure, ask him, by all means. If you find yourself a nice girl, ask her."

  "I've got one."

  "Fine! And on second thought, bring me a rum collins with some hair on its chest."

  "Now you're talking." Byron gave his father a one-armed hug, and startled Victor Henry to his bones by muttering indistinctly, "I love ybu," or "God love you." The father wasn't sure which.

  Off Byron lurched toward the long bar under the striped tent, where Janice was talking to an Army general with thick white hair. Pug saw her wave excitedly to Byron. Beside Pamela and Aster were laughing into each other's eyes. Victor Henry smiled at his own ridiculous pain; then he realized that the white-haired Army man was Senator Lacouture. He strode to the bar. "Hello there, General!

  Welcome, and congratulations."

  "Why thanks, Pug." The brigadier general's uniform was bandbox new, the brass buttons too bright. The senator's plethoric face radiated good humor. "Yes, I'm still getting used to it! Why, General Richardson's driver met me at the airport, and zoom! -whisked me straight to this party. I think I'm going to like the Army, ha ha!"

  Byron said to his father in a flat frigid sober voice, "She's not on that boat."

  "What!"

  "They detained her and Jastrow. She's still in Siena. All the other Americans are coming home but not her."

  "Yes, but don't worry, young man," said Lacouture cheerily.

  "Somebody at State slipped up, not to notify you by cable. Sorry I had the wrong information. It's a temporary snag, so State assured me, a matter of weeks at mcist, some problem involving Italian journalists in Brazil."

  "Senator, two very beautiful ladies here are absolutely dying to meet you," General Richardson called.

  Lacouture hurried away.

  "One rum collins with hair on its chest," said Byron calmly, his face ashem. "Coming up, Dad."

  "Byron-I, Byron's back was to him, pushing through the brown Army crowd at the bar.

  The main dining room of the Moana Hotel was a kaleidoscopic whirl of brass-buttoned uniforms and colored frocks, crowded to the walls and tumultuous with talk and brassy jazz. Young officers, mostly from the SubPac rest center in the nearby Royal Hawaiian Hotel, were spinning excited girls around and around in the Lindy Hop. The band's singer, in a strapless red dress that exposed billowy bosoms, was walking, jiggling, and howling "and the boogie-woogie washerwoman washes away" to an audience packed at tables around the dance floor; at which tables military uniforms predominated, and pretty laughing girls, bejewelled, bepainted, and dressed in splendid half-nude evening finery. Elderly civilians at a few tables, by their look wealthy and retired, were gazing wistfully at all this amorous wartime dazzlement, lit by a sinking sun through open windows. Though it was still day, the restaurant fizzed like a ballroom at midnight because the revelry, off to an early start, had to end at ten. The ten o'clock curfew had teeth.

  Pug had reserved a large table by the dance floor. Carter Aster sat there alone. As Pug came into the room with the Tudsburys, the submariner jumped to his feet.

  "Where's Byron?" Pug asked.

  "Sir, I thought he must be with you. I couldn't find hide nor hair of him at the party." Aster pulled out a chair for Pamela with a gallant flourish. "I even went looking inside the governor's mansion.

  I figured he must have caught a ride with you."

  "He didn't."

  Dancing past them, Warren called, "Where's Briny, Dad?"

  Pug turned up his hands.

  "And the boogie-woogie washerwoman washes away.

  Warren was blocked from sight by jostling dancers. Aster and Pamela fell at once into animated chatter. Pug thought that at this rate he might never get to talk to her. The Cincpac conference was scheduled for ten. The fleet was sailing for Midway in the morning.

  In the car Tudsbury had held forth without cease on Singapore, the Russian front, Rommel, the Japanese advance toward India, and such cheerful matters.

  Meantime Pamela had sat in the back seat mum as a fish.

  Now, putting his mouth almost to Pug's ear, Tudsbury began badgering him again for inside dope on what was brewing.

  "The Boogie-Woogie Washerwoman" gave way to total gibberish bawled by the gelatinously shaking singer. "Hut-Sut rawlson on the riller-ah and a braw-la, braw-la soo-it" were the approximate noises Pug heard.

  With this Gdtterddmmerung babble at one ear, with Tudsbury's pesky questions yelled into the other, with Aster and Pamela getting up to dance, with worry about Byron's disappearance plaguing him, with an ever-growing sense of the Japanese fleet's approach, Pug Henry was not having much fun.

  Byron came in view, carrying a large brown envelope and leading a girl. "Hi, Dad. Hi, Mr. Tudsbury. This is Ursula Thigpen. Remember Ursula, Mr. Tudsbury? You gave her your autograph. Don't you think Ursula's a pretty name?"

  Ursula plumped down in the chair beside the correspondent before he could reply. "Now, that's Thigpen, Mr. Alistair Tudsbury." She tapped his arm with a stiff little pink finger, spelling, "T-h-i-g-p-e-n! Thigpen! Not 'Pigpen," see?

  Just in case you do broadcast about me. Bee bee!"

  "Well, well, Briny, so you surfaced," said Aster, returning with Pamela. "Where the hell did you get off to?"

  Warren and Janice came back to the table. "Like dancing in a subway rush," Warren said.

  "Hut-Sut rawlson on the riller-ah. Ursula inquired whether either Janice or Pamela cared to press their shoelaces. Byron had been driving her all over the island, she said.

  He had even brought her aboard the Devilfish, but there was no little girls' room on submarines. "My back teeth are floating," she elaborated.

  Janice took her off, wondering why Byron had this imbecile in tow.

  While. fixing her makeup in the powder room Ursula spilled a condom from her vanity case and unblinkingly put it back, tittering that in Hawaii you never knew when it was going to rain, did you?

  "Although frankly, your brother-inlaw doesn't seem exactly the type," she said.

  "He's cute, but strange."

  "What were you doing in the submarine?"

  "Oh, he Went to fetch a big
wooden box. It's out in the jeep.

  Getting it up those ladders was problem, but nothing like my problem, honey. Why, those awful submarine sailors!

  They could see everything. And they sure looked! I'll bet they've got eyestrain, the lot of them." Ursula chortled about this all the way back to the table, where a waiter was serving drinks.