Silent Sea (The Silent War Book 2)

by Harry Homewood

  “Got some paddles in my bilge from those rubber boats we had,” Petreshock said. “They do?” Flanagan nodded his head.

  At two in the morning Flanagan, Jim Rice, Steve Petreshock, and Fred Nelson climbed down onto the pressure hull and eased into the painting punt. They wore black turtleneck sweaters and dark blue watch caps, and their faces and hands were blackened with camouflage cream. Bob Lee came along the deck as the punt disappeared in the darkness. He turned to Chief Ed Morris, who was leaning against the side of the Conning Tower, smoking his pipe.

  “What the hell is going on, Chief? Who were those people? What were they doing?”

  “That’s the Chief of the Boat and friends,” Morris said. “They’re gonna go steal an anchor somewhere. Hell of an idea, stealing an anchor. If they get the damned thing in that little punt the whole rig will probably sink and with all that black stuff on their faces and hands they’ll be impossible to see in the water and they’ll drown.”

  “Steal an anchor? Have you been drinking, Chief?”

  “I haven’t been drinking, Lieutenant. I got the Chief’s duty below decks. Sure they’re gonna steal an anchor. The Chief of the Boat is queer for stealing anchors, didn’t you know that? Does it in every port we hit.”

  “Wiseass,” Lee said. He turned his back and started to walk away, and then came back.

  “Damn it, Chief, I’m the Officer of the Day, and I demand to know what in the hell is going on!”

  “I thought you knew, that you were kidding with me, sir,” Morris said. “What’s going on is some clown on the Base is coming over here tomorrow, today really, it’s after midnight, and if we don’t have an anchor hanging up there on the billboard we ain’t gonna get any clearance to go where they’re going to send us, which I hear is New London.

  “So this afternoon I did a little scouting for the Chief of the Boat and I found out that an LST carries the same sort of anchor we do and there’s four LSTs tied up in a nest across this arm of the harbor. The Chief of the Boat is gonna steal one of those anchors and bring it back.”

  “That’s impossible!” Lee said.

  “Mr. Lee,” Morris said, “there is no such word as impossible to a Chief of the United States Navy. Some things might take longer than others, but nothing is impossible. Not to a Chief Petty Officer. Flanagan will steal an anchor. And he’ll bring it back here. If he doesn’t sink and drown.”

  An hour later Lee heard a gentle splashing, and the punt, barely afloat, eased up beside the pressure hull amidships. Chief Morris came around the Conning Tower and went down on the pressure hull, his arm holding on to one of the newly installed deck posts, and helped Petreshock and Fred Nelson get out of the punt. The two men ran forward on the deck, and Petreshock went down the hatch to the Torpedo Room. Lee heard the clank of the anchor gear, and a fathom or so of cable rattled out of the hawsepipe. The two men still in the punt paddled it forward. A few minutes later Lee heard Flanagan’s low order to walk the anchor in, and there was a muted clanking noise. Jim Rice got out of the punt, went down the hatch, and appeared a few minutes later with a gallon can of paint and two brushes. He dropped down into the punt, and Lee could hear the slap of the paint brushes.

  “Might be a good idea, Lieutenant,” Morris’s voice sounded at Lee’s shoulder, “to come with me and take a look at the moon from the other end of the deck.”

  The Materiel Officer appeared the next morning with his clipboard and a small staff. The inspection took hours, and when it was finished the officer turned to Ralph Ulrich.

  “Everything is in order. I’ll sign your clearance and send it to the Operations Officer. I understand you’re getting underway at zero seven hundred tomorrow.”

  “Fuel,” Ulrich said.

  “Oh, yes,” the Materiel Officer said. “Here it is. A destroyer coming in from Okinawa will be alongside on the other side of the pier late this afternoon. No room for her at the destroyer docks, and she’s leaving tomorrow afternoon for Mare Island. The Fuel King man will be down here after the destroyer docks to unlock the lines under the pier. You’ll fuel first. You’re down for fifty thousand gallons. That will get you to Panama if you run at two-thirds speed on two engines. The destroyer will fuel after you do.”

  “That’s the last thing I want to do, run to Panama on two engines at two-thirds speed!” Brannon snapped when Ulrich told him the news. He turned to Lieutenant Jerry Gold.

  “That guy from Materiel said this tin can was coming in from Okinawa?” He looked at Ulrich, who nodded. “Okay, I’ll bet they give liberty to two-thirds of the crew. They’re over here, alongside our pier, away from their own command. I know tin-can sailors. They’re a lot like us.

  “The people with the watch will be bitching. Jerry, I want you to get up to the O-Club. Take some money from the recreation fund. Ulrich, you get the money, go with him. Bring back some beer and some hard liquor. Enough to get about two dozen people drunk.

  “Get hold of Morris and Booth. Those two Chiefs are the biggest con artists in the submarine navy. Tell them what we want to do and have the engine room people standing by to take on fuel when the Fuel King man gets here and unlocks the valves.” Ulrich looked at him and grinned.

  “You’re getting right into the swing of being a Navy Yard man, sir,” he said. He went off with Gold, chuckling.

  Chiefs Booth and Morris wandered across the pier while the Eelfish Engine Room people were hooking up the fuel hoses. A few minutes later Morris came walking back, and looking carefully up and down the dark pier, opened one of the Conning Tower ammunition storage lockers and took out a case of beer. An eager destroyer sailor rushed across the pier and grabbed the case, followed by another destroyer man, who grabbed the case of whiskey that Morris pulled out of the ammunition locker.

  At a little after twenty-two hundred hours Jerry Gold walked into the Wardroom where Mike Brannon was playing solitaire with a worn deck of cards.

  “All fuel tanks topped off, sir. One hundred and eleven thousand gallons of fuel aboard. Destroyer is fueling now, sir.”

  “Everything okay?” Brannon asked, putting a red jack on a black queen.

  “There’s two or three people in their Black Gang sober enough to shut off the valves when their tanks are full, sir.”

  “Good,” Brannon said. “Tell the Chief of the Watch below decks that I want a zero five hundred reveille. Serve breakfast at zero five thirty. We get under way at zero seven hundred.”

  Jerry Gold went to his stateroom smiling gently. “Hot damn,” he said to himself. “If I can steal sixty thousand gallons of diesel oil I might be able to slip an old gold crown or two into my pocket. Have to make sure my white jackets have pockets.”

  Eelfish reached Panama four days ahead of schedule. A three-stripe Commander came aboard, a smile creasing his red-veined cheeks.

  “Been kind of a naughty fellow, haven’t you, Captain?” he said genially. “You’re way ahead of schedule. Can’t let you through the Ditch until your scheduled time, four days from now.” He looked at the bright blaze of Japanese battle flags on the Conning Tower. “There is an alternative, unless you want to fight with Pearl Harbor, and that’s pretty hard to do because it takes seven days for them to acknowledge anything we send to them.

  “You can go through our Ditch tomorrow morning at zero six hundred. But if you do that you’ll have to act as a target for a division of destroyers on the other side that hasn’t had a live submarine to work with for over a year. What’s your decision sir?”

  “We’ll be happy to act as a target for the destroyers,” Brannon said solemnly.

  “It’s wait here four days or work with them four days, so it’s all the same,” the Commander said. “Zero six hundred. Tugs will be here at zero five hundred to get you into position.”

  The Eelfish cleared the Canal at dusk, pointed her bullnose north, and began running on four main engines. Down in the radio shack Ralph Ulrich stood with Jim Michaels as Rafferty listened to the signals coming over the air. />
  “They keep asking us where we are,” Rafferty said.

  “They’re supposed to be submarine killers,” Ralph Ulrich said “Let them find us. We’re going home!”

  Ulrich went into the Wardroom and reported to Mike Brannon that the destroyer division commander was asking for Eelfish and what he had decided to do.

  “You’re getting to be a damned good Exec, Ralph.” Brannon grinned. “Soon as we come within the command area of Key West, the skipper there is a guy I served under in 0-boats in New London before the war, I’ll throw us on his mercy, let him sweat over what to do with us.”

  An hour after Eelfish had transmitted Brannon’s message to the Commanding Officer, Key West, the answer came back.

  “Sorry, your transmitter must be out of order. Can’t read you. Suggest you proceed original orders if your receiver will pick up this message and Godspeed.”

  Brannon grinned, and Eelfish raced toward home, past Cape Hatteras, up the long reach of the East Coast, and then, at last, the turn around the eastern end of Long Island and into the waters of Block Island Sound, through the Race, and up the Thames River, where a huge crowd was waiting on the pier. Brannon put his binoculars to his eyes as Ulrich delicately maneuvered the Eelfish in midstream, turning her to point in to the dock, gauging the run of the tide.

  “By God, she’s there! Gloria! And my daughter! I think it’s little Gloria, she looks so big!” Lieutenant Lee, standing down on the main deck, smiled, thinking of his own wife in Australia.

  The first two weeks in New London passed swiftly. The Reservists in the crew added up their points and were sent to Great Lakes Naval Base for discharge. When the last Reservist had left Mike Brannon walked up to the Submarine Personnel Office.

  “I’m short thirty-six enlisted men and I have no officers in my Wardroom except my Exec,” he said. He put a roster on the Personnel Officer’s desk.

  “I think we fought this war with nothing but Reserves,” the Personnel Officer said.

  “We’d have been in a hell of a mess if we hadn’t,” Brannon growled. The Personnel Officer looked at him and then down at his desk.

  “You’re going to be stationed here for some time, sir. You’ll be used as a training ship for a while, but before that starts the people who built Eelfish want to put her in dry dock and go over her from stem to stern. You’re the first New London boat to come back here that’s suffered extensive depth charging.

  “So, if I may suggest it sir, you could grant leave to your crew, what’s left of it, and yourself, and your, ah, one other officer. Thirty days minimum. The engineers will be busy with your ship for at least six weeks.” He looked up.

  “The Command at the Submarine School has given strict orders, sir. The battle flags on your Conning Tower are not to be painted over when they paint your ship. We, everyone here, is very proud of Eelfish, sir, and you and your crew. You must have noticed the people here who come down to the pier and just stand and stare at the ship. They’re proud, sir.”

  “Thank you,” Brannon said. He turned and went out the door, and walked back to the Eelfish.

  EPILOGUE

  The next year passed swiftly for Mike Brannon. He was promoted to full Commander and given the extra responsibility of Assistant to the Squadron Commander. Gloria found a pleasant house to rent on the Sound that was well within their budget, and they settled into the peacetime routine of a middle-seniority career officer on his way to Flag rank. They entertained junior officers once a month and were, in turn, entertained by their senior officers.

  Sitting in his office in the Submarine Base in New London early one morning Brannon saw his door open, and Chief Yeoman Booth came in carrying a tray with two full cups of coffee in one hand and a letter in the other.

  “Got a letter from Chief Flanagan,” he said, putting the coffee cups on the desk. “Thought you might like to hear what he’s up to, sir.”

  “I would,” Brannon said, reaching for a coffee cup.

  “He retired a year ago when I was on leave,” Booth said. “Went out to the Philippines. He’s got a regular business letterhead with half a dozen companies listed. Everything from construction to salvage work to ships’ supplies. He says he’s making money at all of them.”

  “He’s a good man,” Brannon said. “Whatever he turns his hand to, he would be able to do.”

  “He married a girl from Tacloban,” Booth continued. “Said he inherited a ready-made family. She’s got twin boys about fourteen, fifteen months old.” He looked at Mike Brannon, his eyes crinkling in a smile.

  “Tacloban,” Booth went on. “That’s where he went ashore to deliver the orders to the guerrilla guy and didn’t come back for a night and a day and when he came back he was passed-out drunk and Brosmer swore he smelled pussy on him.”

  Brannon nodded, smiling.

  “Well, he’s married, and he says he’s happy as hell. Great woman. Good kids. You heard about Captain Mealey?”

  “Made Rear Admiral,” Brannon said. “Going to be our boss as head of Submarines, Atlantic. Hell of a good move.”

  “Sablefish is due in at ten hundred hours, sir. You want to meet her at the pier?”

  “Hell, yes,” Brannon said. “John Olsen’s her skipper.”

  Lieutenant Commander John Olsen crossed the gangway to the pier and engulfed Mike Brannon in a bear hug. “Hah! Three full stripes. Congratulations, Mike.”

  “First things first,” Brannon said. “How about dinner at my house at about eighteen hundred? I’m going to be tied up here, but I’ll send a car to pick you up.”

  “Can the car pick me up at the station, the railroad station, at seventeen hundred? My fiancée’s coming in on the seventeen hundred train from New York.”

  Brannon’s eyebrows rose. “You engaged? The great woman hater? She’s welcome. I have to see this wonder woman who managed to trap you.

  “Now, what can I do for you before I shove off to a lot of meetings? You’re part of our Squadron now and I sort of wear the number two hat in the Squadron.”

  “I’ll give you an easy one,” Olsen said. “I need a first-rate Chief of the Boat. Mine looked all right during the pre-commissioning, but he fell apart when we started operating out of Key West.”

  Brannon chewed his lower lip reflectively. “I’ve got Steve Petreshock in Eelfish as my Chief of the Boat and you can’t have him. I know, Fred Nelson. He made Chief a couple of months ago and he’s in excess. You know how good a man he is. That suit you?”

  “Perfect,” Olsen said. “If he wants to come aboard.”

  “He’ll jump at the chance,” Brannon said. “He knows he’s in excess, and Chief of the Boat billets don’t come along very often. I’ve got to run. The driver will meet you at the train station at seventeen hundred hours. See you at the house.”

  John Olsen walked into the Brannon’s living room with a buxom, black-haired smiling woman at his side.

  “These are the Brannons, dear,” he said to the woman. “Mike and Gloria. Folks, meet my fiancée, Mrs. Joan Hinman.” He watched as Brannon’s face twisted.

  “You mean?” Brannon asked softly.

  “What John means, Captain Brannon, Mrs. Brannon, is that I am the widow of Captain Arthur Hinman. And I am going to be Mrs. John Olsen if this Swede doesn’t chicken out on me.” She looked at the Brannons, her dark blue eyes under heavy black eyebrows level and serene.

  “I’m delighted!” Gloria Brannon cried. She rushed forward and swept Joan Hinman into her embrace. She released her, and Mike Brannon came forward and shyly kissed Joan’s cheek.

  “How did all this happen, if I may ask?” Mike Brannon said as the four sat on the shaded porch at the back of the house.

  “I was stationed in Key West with Sablefish,” Olsen began. Joan waved her hand at him.

  “I went to Key West for a change,” she said. “Some friends told me it was quaint and kind of funny there. I went to church one Sunday morning. A Lutheran church. Sort of an odd little place, only about twent
y-five people in the congregation. The church had a little social hour after the service, coffee and doughnuts and put some money in the bowl to pay for it.

  “I noticed this tall, skinny fellow dressed in a pair of old slacks and a sport shirt, and he put a dollar in the bowl and only had coffee, so I got interested. Fellow might be a big spender. Some nice lady, wife of a retired Colonel I think, came up and said wasn’t it just fine that since we were the only two visitors that day that we’d already met.”

  “We hadn’t, but Joan took care of that,” Olsen said. “She said she hadn’t had any breakfast and would I pop for orange juice and flapjacks? I did, and that led to lunch and to dinner and let me tell you, she’s a good eater. Expensive date.”

  “One thing led to another,” Joan continued. “He told me he was a captain of a ship and he took me to see it. I told him about Captain Hinman and he got a funny sort of a look.

  “Then he told me about the Mako and the Eelfish.” Her normally smiling face was solemn.

  “I knew how Art had died. Quickly, the Admiral said when he wrote, and you said the same thing, sir. But I didn’t know about the rest of the crew, the Psalm.” She reached out and took Olsen’s hand.

  “John told me. It was hard for him to do that. We both cried. It sort of brought us closer together, and since then he’s taught me a lot about how you people in submarines feel about each other, how close you are to each other.

  “I left the Navy after the Mako went down. They give you that option, you know. I didn’t have to work if I didn’t want to. There was the pension and the insurance. So I helped in charitable things and kept myself busy, and then one day a friend told me about Key West and I went there and I went to church and there was John. The hard part was a long way back, almost three years at that time.”

  “She made me take her out every night,” Olsen grumbled. “Can you imagine me trying to learn to dance?”

  “After about three months of suffering through him being a perfect gentleman at all times I gave him a choice,” Joan said. “I told him that if he had any dirty, sneaky, nasty thoughts about men and women and he didn’t try to carry them out he could get out of my life.” She threw her head back and rocked with laughter.