Dust on the Sea

by Edward L. Beach

  The two-week refit at Pearl Harbor, supposed to be rest and relaxation for submarine crews between patrols, had been something less than restful for him, Eel’s skipper realized, when he and his crew rendezvoused back aboard their submarine. First, of course, there had been the coordinated tactics training, the “convoy college.” Then there were the demands of the refit itself, theoretically carried out in entirety under the supervision of the relief commanding officer. Obviously, however, the real commanding officer of any particular submarine could never be unconcerned about the work in progress.

  And finally, of course, there was the time spent with Joan. Blunt had been right in one thing. She was indeed sought after. She must have especially made herself available for him—otherwise he’d have had no time with her at all. He found it difficult to analyze his feeling for her. The tensions of war and his own psychic needs were a part of it. So was her tremendous physical attraction. But this last was not special for him alone. Many had felt it. Jim Bledsoe, for one.

  Deliberately, he had made his second evening with Joan as different from the first one—only the day previous—as he could. There was a nightclub in Honolulu which catered to the young-officer set, with a maximum of privacy and a dance band. Ostentatiously, it was placarded to the effect that it would close its doors half an hour before the curfew, to make sure that everyone had plenty of time to get home. For most of its habitués, Richardson found, this only adjourned the evening somewhere else. Hesitantly, he confessed that his ingenuity had not extended that far, and that he had not wanted to be with Captain Blunt a second night. Joan dimpled, and made it come right. Her room in Fort Shafter was only a convenience, a place to sleep should she have to remain late on some special project. She had a private apartment in the Moana Valley, with a private entrance.

  The apartment was tiny, secluded, tastefully decorated, austere rather than luxurious. All Joan’s possessions, she told him, had been lost when she had had to leave Japan on the eve of war. Her father was in the diplomatic service, but she did not know where he was and thought he might be dead. (Richardson felt this was not strictly true.) Her mother had died some years ago. (This must be true.) It was not until several days later that Richardson realized this was the extent of the information he was likely to learn about her. She was adroit at making him talk about himself, his time at Annapolis, his first duty after graduation, his boyhood in California, his father’s zealous career as a Presbyterian minister, the often expressed ambition for Rich to follow in his footsteps. The bad times of 1930 had wrecked the traveling preacher’s hopes of sending his son to divinity school, and he had died within the year. The appointment to Annapolis had come as a chance for an education which the new widow would have been unable to provide from her meager estate. It also answered a deep personal dilemma. Rich, even as a boy, had sensed that he lacked his father’s dedication to the ministry. His mind ran to mechanical things. He loved machinery. The complex machinery of a submarine was a constant source of delight, and operating it, or watching someone else operate it—if he did it well—was sensuous pleasure.

  It was peaceful listening to Joan’s records and talking quietly about the years before the war, when things (from the present view, at least) were much less complicated. He even told her one day about his girl while at the Naval Academy, his “OAO” (the initials were for “One And Only” in the schoolboy lexicon). Sally and he had had fun together. Undoubtedly, she had made someone a fine wife. His classmate Stocker Kane had married immediately after the expiration of the two-year rule, two years to the day after they had graduated. At one point Sally and he had planned the same; but as the two years stretched out ahead, and the demands of a navy life occupied all his interest, he had realized that his own confidence had not matched Sally’s.

  “It was just that you didn’t really love her, Rich,” said Joan. “It was too soon for you.” He had to admit to himself that this was true.

  Inevitably, even during their closest moments, when the war seemed so distant and Joan’s nearness so fulfilling, that cursed second self of his, which had forced the break with Sally, which sometimes took possession of him or, most often, merely stood there, watching, would evoke the thought of Laura.

  Laura. Jim Bledsoe’s widow. Richardson could clearly remember the moment when he first met her. A near disaster during training operations. A trip to the bar at the New London Submarine Base Officer’s Club afterward. Jim bringing forward a smiling girl in a green dress. “This is Laura.” Gray-green eyes. Tall. Slender. Cool hand in his. Blond hair—natural. Rich’s nerves still jumping from the near-collision during a practice approach that afternoon, had responded magically to her presence. She was the first girl, in fact the only girl, who had ever affected him to such a degree. Had she not been Jim’s, had Jim not been his exec in the S-16—if there had only been more time—he might have dared to pursue the strong emotion Laura had so suddenly awakened in him.

  The coming of war, a few weeks later, had telescoped everything. A cold, rainy Sunday at the club at New London. A chance encounter with Laura and Jim. The voice on the radio in the next room, sounding somehow different from the regular announcer, letting it be known, even though his words could not be distinguished, that something was radically wrong. Laura, sent back to New Haven. S-16, bravely, uselessly, girding for a possible sneak attack in the Thames River. A short time later, still in December, the terribly bad moment over Jim’s qualification for command of submarines. Laura, once warm and friendly, now cold. Still perfect, but even the coolness was perfection. Then it became apparent that she and Jim still hoped to snatch out of the jaws of war at least a few normal, or near-normal, months together. Before the Walrus was ready to go to sea, Jim had come in with a request for transfer to a New London–based submarine. It had been totally unexpected. Jim was petulant, antagonistic. In a release of long-suppressed emotion he had cursed the Walrus, Richardson, the whole naval establishment.

  Perhaps Richardson should have approved the request and sent it forward. The official response would have been automatic; it would have been approved. But Jim’s position would have been understood as unwillingness, or fear, to enter the active war. His career in submarines would have been finished. He would have carried the black mark with him forever. Richardson already bore some of the responsibility for the unfortunate qualification fiasco. He could not do more to Jim than he had done already, however inadvertently.

  He had made his voice cold, devoid of emotion. Standing at his desk, he tore up Jim’s paper, threw it aside.

  The effect on Laura was something Rich knew he would have to endure in silence. Whatever she knew or surmised about the workings of the navy, she must certainly have been bitter at the hand the navy had dealt her. She must have stated it to Jim. It just wasn’t fair. Jim should have been allowed to stay in New London a while longer. Someone else, despite the black mark of his earlier failure, surely would have given him a second chance to qualify for command. Both of them must have known it was Richardson who had blocked that road.

  And then there had been the emotion-charged day of leaving New London for the war zone. Memorial Day, 1942. Laura had been a guest for lunch in Walrus’ tiny wardroom. She and Jim had been married for only five days. It was the last time they were to see each other. Here, with Walrus on the point of departure—forever, as it had turned out—Richardson received a flash of pure personal insight. It was an affecting moment for all hands, with most of the crew saying longing and fearful farewells to their loved ones. He, on the other hand, the captain of the sub, had no one to bid him good-bye except the admiral at the submarine base, who routinely did this for all departing boats; Captain Blunt, his squadron commander; and a few other skippers.

  It was at that instant, for the first time, that he was able to identify the strange feeling he had for Laura. She was Jim’s. They had pledged themselves to each other. Richardson had grown to love her, and that was the beginning and the end of that, too.

  Through
it all, something of which he could never speak, Laura had come to personify the girl he would one day want to marry. Gradually he had come to know it, to accept it. But why had he opposed Jim’s request for transfer? Why had he insisted on taking a disgruntled, potentially disloyal, second-in-command to sea with him? Was it only, as he tried to make himself believe, and as Jim had apparently at last been convinced, that he felt a responsibility to protect Jim from the full consequences of his ineptitude? Was this the only reason, or was there something underlying it, something deeper, more basic? Could he have wanted to separate Jim from Laura?

  Buried within every soul lies a capacity for evil. Could that have been his real, his (even to himself) unadmitted motive? It was the first time he had followed this train of thought. It scared him. It was monstrous, diabolical. He, Edward Richardson—“Rich” to Jim and Laura—was not capable of such an act, much less the thought of it. Yet now he had thought of it. The question was whether he had also thought of it, somehow, subtly, unconsciously, before the Walrus got underway from New London.

  Joan had sensed something. She was withdrawing from him, growing indefinably more distant. There was something cold inside him. The second self was telling him to stop this morbid thinking. He had acted honestly, without conscious thought of self, or Laura. He had salvaged Jim’s submarine career. It was because of him that Jim had had the chance to find himself. He could hold himself to no responsibility for Jim’s death. Good men had died in the war. Jim had simply been one of them. So had Tateo Nakame.

  Joan accepted his mute apology. No word had been spoken. He wondered whether she had guessed he was thinking about another girl.

  The in-port routine between patrols always involved, at its end, a third week of exercises at sea. With three submarines designated to travel out to the same exercise area and there operate as a coordinated team, the at-sea period became a strenuous rehearsal for the tactics they had practiced on the game floor. A supply convoy was due in Pearl Harbor from San Francisco. The three boats spent the entire week lying in wait for it, planning its interception, trailing it. For two days and two nights, simulated attacks were carried out. At the end of the time, when the ships arrived at their destination, the eight-ship convoy had twice been theoretically wiped out. Richardson and Leone, who found themselves almost without supervision laying out the problem and the tactics for all three submarines, were so short on sleep as to be virtually wiped out themselves. Blunt, on the other hand, having delegated both minor and major decisions to his two subordinates, made up for long nights of pursuit and attack by equally long naps during the days. At the conclusion of the training he felt better rested, he said, than he had for years. Being at sea again, he repeated several times, was a tremendous tonic.

  It was already dark when Eel slid alongside her berth at the submarine base. The training period had been pronounced a complete success. A staff car was waiting for the freshly shaven and showered wolfpack commander, who promptly disappeared. Keith gave Richardson a long, silent look as the two wearily dropped on their bunks.

  ComSubPac was holding a conference. The reason was clear when the only attendees turned out to be a Captain Caldwell, the operations officer now temporarily also filling in as chief of staff, Blunt as wolfpack commander, and the skippers of the three submarines assigned to him. “This is top secret,” Admiral Small cautioned them. “You may not speak of it outside this room, not even to your execs. After you get to sea and are beyond Midway, you are authorized to let them know, but not until then, and no one else under any circumstances.”

  The three skippers nodded their understanding. Rich shot a glance at Blunt and Caldwell. They were looking steadily at the admiral. From their expressions, they already knew what was to come. This interview, then, was for the benefit of Les Hartly, Whitey Everett, and himself. It would prove the rightness or wrongness of his deductions regarding the importance of the mission they were to be sent on.

  Even as the thought raced through his head, Admiral Small confirmed it. “The purpose of this meeting is to inform you three commanding officers of your special mission. You will commit it to memory. You may make no notes of any kind. It will not be mentioned in your operation orders. While I’m speaking, go ahead and ask questions on any points you wish. This is the only notification you’ll receive.”

  Small motioned to Caldwell, who rose to draw back the curtain covering the wall chart. It was a different chart from the one Richardson had seen only a few months ago. Larger, more detailed as to land topography. Evidently a metal backing had been installed when the chart was changed, for Caldwell next selected several items from a box and placed them, with a noticeable metallic click, upon its vertical surface. Even Blunt leaned forward attentively.

  A red ring had been placed around a tiny island almost at the southern tip of the Nampo Shoto chain—the Bonins—and, almost due west, a large red arrow pointed to a much bigger island at the southern extremity of the Nansei Shoto, the Ryukyu group. Below the arrow, hand-lettered on a piece of cardboard mounted on a large magnet, were the words, “OPERATION ICEBERG.”

  The red ring covered the name of the small island, but Rich had plotted his way through the Nampo Shoto too many times to fail to recognize it instantly. Iwo Jima.

  The other island, almost directly west of Iwo Jima, was equally familiar: Okinawa.

  The admiral was talking. “Gentlemen, Operation ICEBERG is scheduled to begin in January. It is only the first move, and perhaps the most important, in the campaign which will end in Tokyo, we hope, in the fall. First, we are going to take Iwo Jima by assault. Its garrison is already isolated. There will be a heavy bombardment by naval ships and the army air corps, and then our Marines will move in. The Japanese general there is a dedicated soldier and will fight to the last, but we expect to take it fairly quickly after his troops are softened up. Immediately afterward, before the Japs have time to catch their breath, we will move on Okinawa. That’s our real objective. It will be the staging area for the attack on the home islands.” He paused. His listeners were staring at the wall chart. His voice, measured, flat, emotionless, each sentence carrying the impact of an explosive charge, continued.

  “We believe the enemy is unaware of our specific intentions, but by now he must have a pretty good idea of our Pacific strategy. The commander on Iwo has been told he can expect no reinforcements, that if attacked he must defend the island with what he’s got. Once we take Iwo, however, Okinawa will clearly be one of our most likely objectives. Undoubtedly Japan will do her utmost to bolster its defenses. But she’ll not expect a one-two punch, and that’s why we plan to move so fast.” He paused again. Richardson could hear Everett breathing beside him. No one spoke. The wall map held death for thousands of men, Japanese and Americans. Admiral Small was pronouncing their death sentences, though of course he had little to do with it. The decision must have been made in Washington, perhaps by the President himself, certainly upon recommendation by the Combined Chiefs of Staff: that extraordinary combination of the military leaders of all the allied nations in the war. Most of the men who would die would not know even that much. Eel, Chicolar, and Whitefish had a part to play. Other submarines, doubtless, had their parts too.

  Perhaps the admiral had expected questions. There were none. He went on. “Our mission is to prevent reinforcements to either of these islands.” Now he was coming to cases. “Special submarine patrol areas are about to be established around both Iwo and Okinawa. They will be kept occupied until each campaign is over, or, in the case of Iwo Jima, until it is clear the enemy is not going to send any more troops or supplies. Most of the Japanese forces are already pretty well tied down where they are anyway, with a single exception, the Kwantung Army. That’s the one that has us worried, and that’s where your three boats come in.” Again Admiral Small paused. He looked steadily at the four sitting before him.

  Rich nodded shortly, not bothering to note whether the others did also. The Kwantung Army was in Manchuria. Originally formed
to safeguard territory seized from Russia, it had been the basis of Japan’s political power in China’s northern province. This was the army which had attacked China in the early thirties, and until Pearl Harbor the Kwantung Army had done nearly all of Japan’s fighting. It was here that most of her top soldiers had received their early combat training. Since 1941, however, the Kwantung Army had been employed only to hold the ground against the possibility of combat against either China or Russia. It had seen little if any action. Yet Japan kept huge forces there, forces she badly needed elsewhere. If the admiral was hinting that a combat role for the Kwantung Army was in the offing, was expected, there must be important business for any submarines in the Yellow Sea. Small was speaking again.

  “Shipping in either direction between the home islands and Manchuria is critically important to Japan. Most significant, and of most importance to our forces, is any movement of troops out of Manchuria. We have received indications that the enemy may be contemplating shifting several complete divisions, but as yet we have no idea where to. As soon as they begin to suspect our plans for Okinawa, that’s where they’ll go for sure. They might even ship some of them to Iwo Jima. No matter where they go, they will be bad news for our men. They’re well trained and well equipped. Their officers are fanatically eager to get into the war. It’s up to us—to you fellows and your boats—to stop them from getting there.

  “We’ll keep you advised as well as we can, of course, via ‘Ultra’ messages. As you know, we’re able to get certain extremely valuable information from a special group at Fort Shafter”—Small’s eyes for a second flicked directly at Richardson—“and anything pertaining to the Kwantung Army or Manchuria in general will be sent to you immediately. Washington has directed that a coordinated submarine group be kept in the Yellow Sea. You are to try to cut off any traffic between Manchuria and the home islands of Japan. Generally speaking, there’s quite a lot. We suspect most of it is moving close inshore. You can hurt them severely by sinking the ships carrying supplies and replacement cadres to or from Japan. Most important of all, however, are the organized divisions of that army in Manchuria. If we get wind of any movement involving them, you’ll be expected to make a maximum effort to stop it. Carry out normal area coverage until you hear from us. But be ready to take decisive action if and when you do.”