Run Silent, Run Deep

by Edward L. Beach

  "Radar! Range and bearing to the nearest pip!"

  "North! Six hundred!"

  I could hardly talk. My voice suffocated in my chest. "Steer north!" I croaked.

  "Skipper, may I come on the bridge?" asked Keith.

  "No! Goddamit! Stay below!" The choked swear words came easily. "Keep the hell out of this!"

  "What's the bearing now!"

  "Three-five-nine!"

  "Steer three-five-nine!" I could catch the note of disbelief in the helmsman's voice as he acknowledged. Scott had not divined my purpose the first time, but he knew now. The rules. of discipline held firm, however, and the lubber's line settled one degree left of due north.

  It was getting lighter, and I could see better all the time. I didn't feel the wind and spray on my face, or the pounding of the sea coming aboard over our exposed starboard beam.

  I aimed the juggernaught, myself, exactly at the center of the boat. As before, they watched at first in surprise, suddenly in terror, when they knew. They rowed better than the first boat, started to edge out of our way. I was ready.

  "Left ten degrees rudder!" We curved left a little. "Amid- ships!"

  We smote it amidships with our bullnose rising, smashed in the side, tumbled it over, rolled it down and out of sight under our keel. Some sticks of kindling came up in our wake, nothing that could be recognized as a boat.

  "Radar, give me the bearing and range to the last pip!"

  No answer. "Radar! Acknowledge!" The voice was weak, hesitant. "Nothing on the radar, sir!"

  "You're lying!"

  "Zero-six-three, one thousand!" Keith's voice, strong and dominant.

  This time it was right into the teeth of the storm. Mindful of our former difficulty in turning, I gave no order to the screws, only to the rudder. I staggered back as the wind hit me over the edge of the cowling, had to duck periodically as the seas came aboard and broke with great sheets of solid black and gray water yards over my head. The boat came into sight at around eight hundred yards, a tiny dot in the water, an infinitesimal oasis in the great sea-desert. Rolling, pitching, staggering, like a drunken man, we headed for it. Five hundred yards. One hundred yards.

  "Zing!" A rifle bullet. "Zing!"

  "Zing!" A sharp rap, as one hit the armored side plating at the front of the bridge, and the whine of a ricochet. Somebody was still fighting. Maybe he had seen us ride down the other boats. The boat turned bow on as the Eel approached, making the most difficult target it could. I aimed right for its stern, watching carefully. Our bullnose rose above it with the short, quick, choppy movement of a ship plunging into a sea, just grazed it on descending, had it a little on the port bow.

  "Left full rudder!" I ducked at the same time as I gave the order, a split second before a bullet smashed into the TBT binoculars.

  Peering over the bridge cowling, I saw our bow alongside, pushing the boat as we began our swing to port. They were fending us off with their oars. Once the bow came by, of course, our stern would swing wide and clear by many yards. I ducked again.

  "Shift your rudder to full right!" Scott had not yet reached full left, reversed himself immediately. We bumped them again with our belly, sideswiping.

  The man with the rifle had been standing in the stern, along- side the steering oarsman. I caught a quick glimpse of a short, fat fellow with an impassive moon face as the boat skidded by.

  He looked mean, hard, in the oily dead-pan way that only certain Orientals can. Then the exhaust of the two port engines poured into the boat. A sea lifted it, set it down on the turn of our tanks, cracking the ribs with a loud smash of splintered wood. It bounced off, half-capsizing, drifted aft into our wake, bilged and flooding.

  I left the rudder at full right, and we came around in a circle.

  This time there was no avoiding us. The lifeboat was completely filled with water. The rifle pocked the front of our bridge before we hit.

  Our stern knifed through the fragile sides as if they were match sticks. It split in half. A final shot cracked overhead.

  I saw the gun flying out into the water at the instant of the collision. There were bodies in the water on both sides as we hurtled past. One shook his fists at us, his mouth open in a scream no one could have heard, and tried to swim over to us.

  It was only a few feet, and he managed to put both hands on the smooth skin of our ballast tanks back near the stern. But the speed of the ship and the heaving of the ocean were too much for him, and I last saw him spinning in the wash as our flailing propellers sucked him down and under.

  "All ahead one third!" I yelled down the hatch. Then in the speaker, "Radar! Are there any more pips on the scope!

  Keith answered, as before. "Nothing on the radar, Captain."

  My hands were trembling. They wouldn't stop. My knees too. I felt as if I were about to fall over. I wrapped both arms around the shattered TBT, and deep, wracking sobs came boiling up out of the hard, twisted knot that was my belly.

  14

  Keith wrote the message to ComSubPac for me. I couldn't bring myself to think about it. To get old Nakame, I had murdered three lifeboat loads of helpless Japanese.

  We sent: FOR COMSUBPAC X, SPECIAL MISSION SUCCESSFUL X, SCRATCH BUNGO PERMANENTLY REPEAT PERMANENTLY X, ALL TORPEDOES EXPENDED X, EEL SENDS TO COMSUBPAC.

  The answer which came in the next night was hardly the one we expected. Instead of sending us back to Pearl or Midway for a new load of torpedoes, or even requiring us to keep the Bungo Suido under close surveillance for a while until someone could be sent out to relieve us, we were directed to proceed immediately to Guam, there to stand by for lifeguard duty during a series of air strikes. And there was no comment about our success. It was absurd to think that somehow ComSubPac had heard what the Eel had done, but there it was.

  The news was greeted with a chorus of dismay from the crew, who had been eagerly anticipating an early return from patrol.

  Their reaction to the final combat, during which we had deliberately murdered a lot of unresisting shipwrecked Japanese, was curious. At first I sensed disbelief, disapproval. Eyes looked at me silently, thoughtfully. The men fell silent when I happened near. When I left I could hear conversation resumed, low-voiced, uneasy. They thought me a murderer, I knew.

  They would obey me, do my bidding quickly-more quickly then ever-but they would never think of me as other than a man who had killed my fellow man in cold blood. War or not, I had gone beyond the permissible limit.

  Some of the officers also seemed to be affected, the only exception being Keith, who had not changed. But nobody seemed in the least unwilling to take the maximum advantage out of it, now that the loathsome deed was done.

  As for myself, the longer I thought about it, the more I dwelt on it, the lower I felt. There was no answering the arguments. I had done what I had set out to do; I had destroyed Bungo Pete, and he deserved destroying, by our lights, for he had destroyed many of our fellows. But to do it I had crossed the boundary dividing the decent from the indecent; the thin line between the moral and immoral. I was a pariah, despised, an outcast. I would never be able to look a decent, untarnished man in the face again.

  All the way south to Guam the lifeboats haunted me. I couldn't sleep, tossed fitfully, always the tortured faces in front of me, screaming when we drove past them the last time. I dreamed that I could understand Japanese, or that they had shouted in English, and I strained to catch their last words.

  Always they cast some foul curse upon me and the Eel, always prophesying doom, swearing ever-lasting revenge. I took to spending long solitary hours on the bridge, alone, standing at the after part of the cigarette deck, looking at the water rushing past, or sitting on my bunk staring at the green curtain closing off the entrance.

  Keith tried unsuccessfully to snap me out of it. "Don't take it that way," he'd say. "We all did it together. I'd have done the same thing! We had to do it-Bungo would have been back there with all his crew of experts in a new tincan within a couple of weeks.
Nobody's blaming you. The men are proud of you."

  But it didn't do any good. I hardly glanced at the operation dispatches as they came in, made Keith do all the planning, see to all the preparations. Vaguely I knew that we were supposed to stay on the surface during the air strikes, and remain in a certain spot, where crippled planes could find us. The aviators would ditch their planes or parachute out as close to us as they could get, and it was up to us to get them aboard. We were to remain there three days, unless the objectives of the air strike were achieved sooner.

  On the morning of the first day, flying our biggest American flag, we were on station. The dispatches had said that the Jap aircraft would have much too much to do to spend any time bothering about a little submarine wandering around on the surface thirty miles south of Guam, but it felt a bit risky at first.

  Then several flights of U. S. carrier-based planes appeared to the south, flew overhead en route to make their attack. We were too far to see the actual bombing runs but some of the dog- fights took place within our sight. And as the dispatches had said, none of the Jap planes took a second look at us.

  We got no business the first day. So far as Keith or I could see from the bridge, every U. S. plane returned safely to its carrier, in the big task force over the horizon to the south. There were no distress calls on the special aircraft frequency we were guarding, though we did hear the fliers talking to each other.

  As the second day wore on, it appeared likely that we'd have no business either. Our forces greatly outnumbered the enemy, and they were having a picnic. Mid-afternoon they started back, some of them flying low over us and waggling their wings. As I looked up at them, I wondered how it felt to fly in combat over the ocean, with no succor nearby in case of trouble, and thought I could sense, in some measure, the moral support given by our presence.

  "Guess it's about over for today, too," said Keith. "Wonder if we can try to stay on the surface instead of diving like yester- day?" The day previous we had dived as soon as the last planes had gone back, in accordance with our instructions, but the air had seemed so empty and peaceful that after a time we wondered why we had bothered.

  It was about this time that the bridge speaker blared forth: "Bridge! Radio thinks they can hear a distress message!"

  "I'll go down and see, skipper!" With that, Keith slipped down the hatch. In a few minutes his voice came up the speaker: "It's a little business for us after all, sir. I'm telling the rescue party to stand by!"

  Six men had been selected for their general stamina and ability to swim, to help bring wounded or helpless airmen aboard.

  Buck Williams was in charge, and they were outfitted with heaving lines, knives, Mae West life preservers, and other pieces of paraphernalia.

  Keith on the speaker again: "There are three men in the plane, all wounded. They're going to try to ditch near us. They say they have us in sight!"

  Low to the water, just appearing over the northeast horizon, a plane appeared, flying one wing low. It approached, circled us once. I could see holes in the fuselage and wing. The plane went off in the distance, turned, began to drop slowly, tail down.

  The pilot had evidently picked his heading so as to finish- fairly near to us, and he did a nice job of letting his craft down into the water. It came in pretty fast, however, struck with a tremendous splash, bounced into the air, belly-flopped back in, and skidded to a stop.

  Before it stopped moving we were under way heading for it, and several short minutes later we drew up alongside the two yellow life rafts that had miraculously appeared before the plane sank. Our rescue party was down on deck, looking very businesslike as they waited for the ship to approach closer to the rafts. One of them, Scott, held a heaving line coiled loosely in his hand, as though he were going to heave it to shore.

  There was about fifteen yards' distance to the rafts when our headway petered out. We were anxious, of course, not to come up too fast and take a chance of upsetting them with our wash.

  Scott took two or three tentative swings with the heaving line, wound up, and let fly. The heave was a beauty-which was why he had been picked for this job-and the weighted end landed just beyond the nearest raft, trailing the line across it.

  Through my binoculars I could see the single flier in the smaller of the two rubber boats grasp the line and painfully haul upon it. It was evident that it hurt him to move. I cupped my hands, yelled at him: "Make it fast! We'll pull you in!"

  He made no acknowledgment, but I could see him pass the end of the line through one of the flaps of the boat and take a quick turn.

  "OK, Scott. Pull them in easy," I called. Three or four sailors on deck grabbed the rope, pulled slowly and gently, and in a few seconds the first life raft was alongside, the other following at the end of a short line. Several men reached down to help the fliers aboard, but it was evident that they were badly hurt, not to say exhausted, and beyond doing anything more to help themselves. Feebly, the man in the nearest life raft reached up, finally lay back, and shook his head with a helpless grimace.

  "Pull them up forward to the sea ladder," Keith called to Williams. Buckley and Scott ran forward, pulling the heaving line with them, lined the rubber boats up with the foot holes cut in the side of our superstructure, knotted the line around one of the forward cleats. Then they ran back to where Oregon, also in the party, was preparing to lower himself over the side.

  His feet had already reached the first rung when one of the look- outs on the platform above me shouted a frantic warning.

  "PLANE! PLANE!"

  Keith and I looked over our shoulders instinctively. It was there, all right, a big four-engine patrol boat. It was coming right at us, the four big propellers glinting in the sun, the straight-across Japanese wing a thin, horizontal line bisecting them.

  "Clear the decks!" I yelled. I reached down, pulled the toggle handle-our air-operated foghorn blasted its warning. Then, "Clear the bridge!" Keith and the lookouts dashed below. The men down on deck came racing up. Oregon almost flew up from his barely over-the-side perch. When Williams, the last man off the deck, had almost reached the bridge level, I sounded the diving alarm.

  "They'll be all right in the rafts, I told them we'd come right back up for them," Buck said, as he ran past me.

  "You bet!" I thought, "and we'll surface under the plane and smash it to bits if it lands to capture them I"

  Our vents were open, air whistling out of them, as I gave a last look around. The plane was a fair distance away; we'd get down in time. But as I looked forward my heart froze like a stone in my chest. The heaving line Scott had used was still fast to the starboard forward cleat, and our bow was already dipping toward the sea!

  Instantaneously my mind encompassed the inevitables.

  Within seconds we would be submerged, dragging the line, and instantaneously my mind encompassed the inevitable Within seconds we would be submerged, dragging the line, and the two rubber boats, with us. The three fliers would be dumped into the water. In their condition their survival for even a few minutes was a foregone impossibility. Even if we did come back for them, all we would find would be bodies, half-chewed by fishes attracted by the blood.

  It could not have taken me more than a third of a second to assess the grim results of our carelessness. My carelessness in allowing the line to be made fast to the ship, Buck's in not cutting it free during the half a dozen seconds he had waited for Oregon, down on deck. All of ours, for not having anticipated the possibility of this very situation days ago.

  Keith's head was framed in the hatch. "Skipper!" he shouted.

  "Take charge, Keith!" I yelled the words at him while running to the after part of the bridge where the rail was cut for access to the deck.

  I leaped down, raced forward. The bow had just begun to dip when I got there, water barely sliding over the deck.

  Furiously I ripped at the heaving line. It was made fast in a Hitch; no loop to pull to release it. I cursed aloud! No knife in my pocket! How could I have
been so improvident? The cleat was well under now, my hands buried inches, a foot-under.

  The water rose rapidly to my face, the current due to our increase in speed on diving tugging at my arms. Frantically I pulled. My feet slipped, and I plunged into the cool water, sitting down facing aft, legs on either side of the cleat. This kept me from slipping further, and I concentrated on the now, soaked knot while I held my breath and tried to hold myself against the rising panic. "Take it easy, take your time; take it mV, take your time!" I said it over and over to myself, as the rush of the water bent me over the cleat. My ears began to hurt. We must be pretty deep now. I pulled again, got my fingers under some part of it, yanked with both hands and what must have been superhuman force, felt the line come free and slip swiftly from my hands.

  Painfully I braced back against the rush of water. I got both hands against the end of the cleat around which my legs were spread-eagled, pushed with everything I had. There was a terrific pain in my groin, paralyzing, digging deep into my insides. I doubled over, clutching my abdomen, felt the pain and me and the suffocating roaring in my ears chasing each other around and around and around.

  I must have been out for a moment, for the next thing I Remember was bright sunlight and the most exquisite, excruciating pain I have ever felt. I was floating in the water, one arm hooked in one of the life rafts, my head pillowed on the rubber inflated edge. Something was holding my arm, and a voice was saying something I couldn't understand. I shook my head, looked up. A deep gash of agony made me double up again.

  The spasm passed, leaving a quick, throbbing ache, and I managed to raise my head. "Hang on!" the voice said. It was the flier who had caught the heaving line. He was holding on to my arm like grim death itself, his face contorted, bloodless.

  It was obviously he who had pulled me, somehow, half into the rubber raft and held me there while I regained my senses. It, too, in his condition, must have called for a nearly superhuman effort.

  "I'm all right now," I managed to say, and made as if to struggle aboard. Waves of acute ache pervaded my entire abdominal section, and I had to stop. Resting for a moment and gasping with the pain, I tried it again, this time tumbled head first into the soft rubber bottom of the raft.