Herman Wouk - War and Remembrance

by War

  It gave him a Turn. He had never quite stopped believing in God, though he thought He must be more like his father, for forbearance and a sense of humor, than the thundering blue-nosed God of the preachers.

  "Well, ask a silly question, hey?" he thought. "I better mind my own business and leave the rest to You."

  He read the Creation chapters, then the stories of Noah and the Tower of Babel. He had not looked at these since Sunday school days.

  Surprisingly, they seemed not boring, but terse and perceptive.

  Adam's dodging of responsibility was something he saw every day in the squadron; Eve was a lovely troublemaker like too many he had tangled with; Cain was every envious hating son of a bitch in uniform; and the storm description in the deluge chapter was damned good, the real thing. He began to -bog down in the patriarchs, and Jacob's troubles with Laban did the trick. He fell asleep clothed, his gold wings gleaming in the light he was too drowsy to Turn off.

  "Now General Quarters. General Quarters. Man your battle stations."

  The dawn GQ call boomed over the windy flight deck.

  Stars still twinkled in the black sky, and in the graying east one cloud glowed pink. Pulling on helmets and life jackets, sailors poured out on the gloomy deck, some to the gun tubs, some to the aircraft, some rolling out fire-fighting equipment.

  Warren was in his plane, checking a balky canopy. Most of the aviators were still in the ready room; they had all long since breakfasted, and were just waiting. Warren, usually a sausage-and-eggs man, had taken toast and one cup of coffee to keep his insides quietly in order. In the dark morning hours the teletype had fallen silent.

  Cif enemy carriers, still no word.

  The canopy was moving freely, yet Warren lingered in the plane.

  The stars faded, the sky went from indigo to blue, The sea brightened.

  Starkly clear in Warren Henry's mind was relative movement diagram of what was probably happening.

  The Jap carriers-if Pearl Harbor was right about a dawn strike -would now be about two hundred miles west of the Enterprise. In a God's-eye view, the two moving carrier forces and the motionless Midway atoll made an equilateral triangle on the sea, and the triangle shrank as both forces speeded toward the atoll. Some time this morning the distance between the forces would close to strike range, and that would be the flash point of the battle. Of course, the Japs might not be there at all. They might be down off Hawaii, in which case Admiral Nimitz had fallen for a historic sucker play.

  The sun pushed a blazing yellow arc over the sharp horizon and mounted. -Well, no Jap daybreak attack; one hazard passed! that was what Warren had really been waiting for.

  He went down to the ready room, and as he was walking in the loudspeaker rasped, "Pilots, man your planes."

  "Okay... This it it... Here we go..."

  The fliers jumped from their chairs, boots thudding on the metal deck, faces taut and eager. This time by a common impulse they turned to each other and shook hands. Then, slapping shoulders and joking, about half of them had crowded through the door when in the passageway the loudspeaker bawled, "Now belay that last word. Pilots return to their ready room.

  Angry and jumpy as racehorses pulled up short after a bad start, the aviators trudged back to their chairs, trading rude comments about "those idiots up there." A bad business, Warren thought, some nervous faltering on the command level.

  What had happened "up there" was that Captain Miles Browning had given the order, and Rear Admiral Spruance had countermanded it.

  Spruance had already discomfited Halsey's chief of staff well before dawn. Prior to the GQ alarm Browning and his operations officor had mounted to Halsey's flag shelter a small steel eyrie high up above the flying bridge; and as Spruance had left no call, Browning had not disturbed him. A short shadowy form in the starlight outside the shelter had greeted them. "Good morning, gentlemen."

  "A,h-Admiral?"

  "Yes. Looks like we'll have good weather for it."

  As day broke, Spruance leaned on the bulwark outside, watching the ship come to life. Captain Browning was nervily ready for battle, his head was full of contingency plans, but this early presence of the placid Spruance was unsettling.

  Halsey would be pacing now like a caged cat. The chief of staff, who was wearing a leather windbreaker like Halsey's, did all the pacing, smoking cigarette after cigarette with Halsey gestures, fuming at the lack of news, arguing with the operations officer about where the Jap carriers could be.

  Abruptly he seized a microphone and issued the summons to the pilots that had greeted Warren in the ready room.

  Spruance called in, "Why are we doing this, Captain?"

  "If you'll look here, please, Admiral."

  Spruance amiably came to the chart table.

  "By now, sir, the Japs have certainly launched. It's broad day.

  They probably launched well before dawn. We know the range of their planes. They must be somewhere along this arc, give or take twenty miles." He swept a stiff forefinger in a slim circle near Midway.

  "They'll be sighted any minute. I want to be ready to hit them."

  "How long does it take our pilots to man their planes?"

  Browning glanced at the operations officer, who said with a touch of pride, "On this ship, Admiral, two.minutes."

  "Why not leave them in their ready rooms for now? They'll be in those cockpits a long time today."

  Spruance walked out on the sunlit platform, and Browning testily broadcast the recall.

  The flag shelter was a small area, cramped by the chart table and a couple of settees. A rack of confidential publications, a coffee maker, microphones, telephones, and radio speakers made up the equipment. One speaker, tuned to the frequency of the Midway patrol planes, was emitting a power hum and loud popping static. About half an hour after sunrise this speaker burst out in gargling tones, "Enemy carriers.

  Flight 58 reports."

  "Kay, that's IT!" Browning again snatched the microphone. Spruance came inside. The three officers stared at the humming and popping receiver. Browning exploded, pounding the chart table with his fist, "Well? Well, you stupid son of a bitch?

  What's the longitude and latitude?" He glanced in angry embarrassment at SPruance- "Christ! I assumed the Squirt would give us the location in his next breath. What kind of imbeciles are flying those Catalinas?"

  "Their combat air patrol may have attacked him," said Spruance.

  "Admiral, we've got the yenow bastards sighted now. Let's get the pilots to their planes."

  "But if the enemy's out of range we'll have to close him, won't we? Maybe for an hour or more."

  With a miserable grimace, as Spruance went out in the sunshine, Browning slammed the microphone into its bracket.

  A dragging interval ensued; then the same voice, much clearer, broke through the random popping: "Many enemy planes bearing 320 distance 150. Fight 58 reports." Again, humming silence.

  More violently, the chief of staff cursed the P.B.Y pilot for giving no position. He poured coffee, let it stand and cool; smoked, paced, studied the chart, paced some more, turned the pages of an old magazine and hurled it into a corner, while his operations officer, a burly quiet aviator, kept measuring with dividers and ruler on his chart.

  Spruance lounged outside, elbows on the bulwark.

  ,Flight 92 reports- " It was a younger, more excited voice barking out of the speaker. "Two carriers and battleships bearing 320 from Midway, distance 180, course 135, speed 25

  Dog Love."

  "AH! God love that lad!" Browning plunged for the chart, where the operations officer was hastily marking the position.

  Spruance came inside, took a rolled-up maneuvering board graph he had tucked in a wall rack, and spread it beside him on a settee.

  "What was that position again? And what is our present position?"

  Rapidly measuring, scrawling calculations, barking questions into the intercom to flag plot several decks below, Browning soon rattled off the lat
itudes and longitudes to Spruance.

  "Is the message authenticated?" Spruance asked.

  "Authenticated, authenticated? Well, is it?" Browning snapped.

  The operations officer threw open a loose-leaf book while Spruance was spanning distances on his small graph with thumb and forefinger.

  "The farmer in the dell," the operations officer quoted, "any two alternate letters." The pilot gave us Dog Love. that works."

  "It's authenticated, Admiral," Browning said over his shoulder.

  "Launch the attack," said Spruance.

  Startled, Browning jerked his head around from the chart to look at Spruance. "Sir, we've received no orders from Admiral Fletcher."

  "We will. Let's go."

  At the chart, the air operations officer lifted a worried face.

  "Admiral, I make the distance to the target one eighty. At that range our torpedo planes won't get back. I recommend we close at least to one fifty."

  "You're quite right. I thought we were about there now."

  The admiral turned to Browning. "Let's put out a new fleet course, Captain Browning, closing them at full speed. Ten the Hornet we'll launch at a hundred and fifty miles."

  A sailor in dungarees, life jacket, and helmet came thumping up the long ladder with a message board. Spruance initialled it and passed it to Browning. "Here are the orders from Fletcher."

  URGENT. com TF 17 To com TF 16. PROCEED SOUTHWEST AND ATTACK ENEMY CARRIERS WHEN DEFiNITELY LOCATED. WILL FOLLOW AS SOON AS MY SEARCH PLANES RECOVERED.

  NEles Browning was a fighting man, everybody acknowledged that, and he had been waiting most of his professional LIFE to see such a dispatch. His ill humor vanished. A beguiling masculine grin lit his lean weathered face (he was a well-known ladykiller, too) and he squared his cap and saluted Raymond Spruance. "Well, Admiral, here we go."

  Spruance returned the salute and went out in the sun.

  In the ready rooms, when the carrier sighting printed out on the teletypes, the nervous irritation of the pilots cleared away. False alarm forgotten, they cheered, then fell to plotting and calculating.

  Guesses fired back and forth about probable time of launch. The range.. of the torpedo planes was Of course the problem. Their chances of survival were reckoned poor at best, and the torpedo pilots deserved a decent chance to get back.

  Visiting the ready room of Torpedo Squadron Six to kill the slow-grindirg time, Warren -found his friend Commander LindseY in flying suit and life vest, his bandages gone, blood-caked scars on his hand and on his pale sunken face.

  This was the man whose plane had crashed on the first day out.

  "Ye gods, Gene, did DOC Holiwell shake you loose?"

  Commander Lindsey said, unsmiling, "I've trained for this, Warren.

  I'm leading the squadron in."

  The torpedo squadron room was unusually quiet. Some aviators were writing letters; some doodled on their flight charts; most of them smoked. Like the dive-bomber pilots they had stopped drinking coffee, to avoid bladder discomfort on the long flight. The'effect here was one of taut waiting, as outside an operating room during surgery. At the blackboard a sailor wearing earphones was chalking new numbers beside MNGE TO TARGU: 153 miles.

  Lindsey said to Warren, glancing at his own plotting board, "That checks. We're closing fast. I figure we'll close to a hundred thirty miles. So we'll be launching about an hour from now. This is for keeps, and we've got to get the jump on the little bastards, so even if we strain a bit-I, "Pilots, man your planes.

  Glancing at each other and at the paid squadron commander, the pilots of Torpron Six got out of their chairs.

  Their movements were heavy, not eager, but they moved. So alike were the expressions of grave hard resolve on their faces, they might have been nineteen brothers. Warren threw an arm around Lindsey's shoulder.

  His old instructor slightly winced.

  "Happy landings, Gene. Give 'em hell."

  "Good hunting, Warren."

  The fliers of Scouting Six were trampling by in the passageway, shouting high-strung banter. Warren fell in with them. As the squadron ran out on the gusty sunny flight deck, a sight met his eye that always thrilled him: the whole task force turning into the wind, the Enterprise, the Hornet, the farflung ring of cruisers and destroyers, all moving in parallel; and old Dad's Northampton right up there, swinging from the port beam to a station almost dead ahead in dazzling sun glare. With farewell shouts and waves the pilots climbed into their planes. Cornett nodded at Warren from the rear seat, placidly chewing tobacco in long bony jaws, his red hair flying in the wind.

  "Well, Cornett, here we go to get ourselves a Jap carrier.

  You ready?"

  "Stew lot yew dana sartin cummin," Cornett approximately replied, then broke into clear English to add, "The canopy is freed up."

  Thirty-five dive-bombers were spotted on the flight deck, their motors coughing, roaring, and spitting dense blue fumes. Warren's plane, among those farthest aft, carried a thousand-pound bomb; as flight operations officer he had made sure of that. The take-off run for some of the others was too short, and their load was a five-hundred-pound bomb, with two more hundred-pounders. Warren's launch was heavy and lumbering. The SBD-3 ran off the end of the deck, settled much too close to the water, then began a wobbling climb. The rush of warm sea air into the open cockpit was soul-satisfying. A professional calm settled on Warren as he wound up the wheels and flaps, checked his dancing dial

  AL needles, and climbed skyward in a string of soaring blue bombers.

  The Hornet dive-bombers too were single-liling into the air in steep ascent about a mile away. Far above some shreds of high cloud, the gleaming specks of the combat air patrol circled.

  At two thousand feet, as the squadron levelled and circled, Warren's exaltation dimmed. He could see', on the shrunken Enterprise far below, that the launch was lagging. In their square deck wells the elevators sank and rose, tiny men and machines dragged aircraft about, but the time crawled past seven thirty, seven forty-five. Soon almost an hour of gasoline was gone, and still no fighter escorts or torpedo planes were airborne! And still the two carriers plowed southeast into the wind, away from the atoll and the enemy, slaves to the wind in launch or recovery, no less than sailing ships of old.

  A signal light flashed on the Enterprise, beaming straight up.

  Letter by letter, Warren read the message, addressed to the new group leader, Commander McClusky: Proceed on assigned mission.

  A second shocker, after the very long-range launchsuddenly, no coordinated attack! What was going on? No fighter protection, -no torpedo planes for the knockout punch: the Enterprise dive-bombers ordered to go in alone against the Jap interceptors! Rear Admiral Spruance was jettisoning-or allowing Halsey's staff to jettison-the whole battle plan at the outset, with the drills of a year, the fleet exercises of many years, and the entire manual of carrier warfare.

  Why?

  A barometer in Warren's spirit registered a quick sharp rise in the danger of this mission, and in the chances of his dying.

  He could not be sure what "those idiots down there" had in mind.

  But he suspected that between the inexperienced Spruance and the overeager Browning-who was something of a joke among the veteran pilots -the thirty-six Enterprise dive-bombers were being squandered in a jittery shot from the hip.

  Warren Henry knew too much military history for a young flier. To him all this strongly smelled of the Battle of Balaclava: Theirs not to reason why, Theirs but to do and die Resignedly, he'made hand signals to his wing mates. From planes roaring along a few yards below and behind him, they grinned and waved.

  They were both new ensigns; one was Pete Golf, clutching a cold corncob pipe in his mouth.

  McClusky waggled his wings and swooped around to the southwest.

  Warren did not know McClusky except to say hello. He had been the squadron C.O of the fighters, but there was no telling how he would perform as group leader. The other thirty-five plane
s gracefully veered to follow McClusky.

  Making his Turn over the screen, Waitren saw from his tilted cockpit the tiny Northampton straight below, cutting a long white wake ahead of the Enterprise. "Well, old Dad," he ttfought, "there you are, sitting way down there, and here I On the bridge of the Northampton, Pug Henry stood among crowding officers and sailors in gray helmets and life jackets. He had been watching the Enterprise since dawn. As the departing bombers dwindled to dots, he stared after them through binoculars. Everybody who served on the cruiser's bridge knew the reason.