“Can do,” Stobb said.
“Well, Chief,” Ash said, “I guess we’d best get on with it, so trot over to where Samarango is checking in stores and see if there’s anything in the mix that falls under your supervision. I think you may have two or three crates of damage control equipment in this load, so let me know if you find anything out of order.”
“Right,” said the chief, rising to his feet. “Pleasure to be aboard, Sir.”
“Pleasure to have you,” Ash said, seeing the man out.
Bell, the second class quartermaster, the next man to report, couldn’t have stood much more than 5 feet 4 inches in height and said that he’d been born and raised in Willis, Texas, a village north of Houston. Bell had five years of experience as a quartermaster, three on a cruiser, and two on a fleet oiler, and despite the man’s pronounced redneck accent, Ash realized that he knew his business.
“I noticed a consignment of Atlantic coast charts in the delivery we had this morning,” Ash said. “Bring that crate in here, do an inventory, and find the chart that covers this part of the coast down to Portland. Our first trips will be in and out of the Royal River here and down to Portland where we’ll degauss and make our compass adjustments.”
“Yes, Sir,” Bell said.
“And one more thing,” Ash said. “My officers will be coming to us straight from the training ship in New York. They will have learned a lot in their navigation classes, but in order to turn them into first class navigators, you and I are going to have to work as a team, so give them all the help you can.” Ash could see at once that he’d presented his quartermaster with a whole new idea. Previously, he imagined, every officer with whom the quartermaster had worked had already been skilled with navigation. Immediately, Ash seized on an idea that had sprung into his mind fully formed.
“In my experience,” he said, “Texans have always made excellent teachers, so I will be looking to you, Bell, to keep up the tradition.”
The whole proposition constituted nothing more than pure bluff on Ash’s part, but it worked to perfection; calling on the Texan’s pride had clearly made a believer out of Bell and even caused him to inflate his chest a little.
“Right,” Ash said, “that’s all for now. If our sonarman is out there, send him in.”
Raul Gomez, also a second class petty officer, was a Mexican-American who had spent five years on destroyers steaming out of San Diego and Pearl Harbor. At the time of the Japanese attack, Gomez had been lucky; he’d been on leave in the States, visiting his family. His ship, the Downes, had been bombed and disabled in dry dock, and no one knew when she might return to service. Commander Sims, having somehow stumbled onto the man’s availability, had pulled a string and sent him to Ash.
“I’ll bet you weren’t having weather like this when you left El Paso,” Ash ventured.
The creases in the man’s Yaqui face curved into a smile, “No, Sir, Captain” he said. “It’s about 80 degrees, the day I caught the train.”
“Know how to handle an attack on a sub?” Ash asked.
“Yes, Sir.”
“Think you can detect the difference between a bed of kelp, a whale, and a U-boat?”
“Think so,” Gomez said, showing Ash a serious expression beneath his mop of coal black hair. “Done it before.”
“Good,” Ash said, “because you’ve got one of the most important jobs on the ship. We’ll have some seamen coming in here from boot camp soon. Look them over, identify the most likely candidates, and let me know. And then, once I hand down the order, you can begin training them up as strikers for sonarmen because we’ll need three of you standing watch on the repeater. We get a contact, I sound the alarm, then you get down there fast and take over the search. And that’s the way it will stay until your new recruits know their stuff.”
Once Ash felt certain that he and Gomez had reached an understanding, he dismissed the man and called in Teague, the third class gunner’s mate who had been waiting outside, sitting on his sea bag.
Teague looked to Ash like he had come straight to Maine from the midst of a Nebraska cornfield. Redheaded and freckled, and with a broad set of teeth beneath pronounced high cheek bones, the man first struck Ash as a stand in for Edgar Bergen’s ventriloquist’s dummy, Mortimer Snerd, but when Ash looked the man over, noticed his tailored blues, and saw the firm expression on his face, he knew that his snap impression had been mistaken.
“What’s been your schooling?” Ash asked.
“Four months’ gunnery school at Great Lakes,” Teague said.
“Know how to take down and maintain the Oerlikons?”
“Yes, Sir,” Teague said, “and I’ve fired ’em too.”
“What about the Mark 14 3"/23 caliber gun? Any experience with one of those antiques?”
“No, Sir,” Teague said, “but I’m all checked out on the 3"/50, so I can’t imagine that there’ll be all that much difference.”
“Good enough,” Ash said. “So, let me give you what little I know about it. Apparently, on the gun we’ve got, a well-trained crew ought to be able to put out between eight and nine rounds a minute. The drawback is that the gun only has a range of about 8,800 yards. A German U-boat carries a 4-inch gun which means that it is fully capable of blasting us out of the water before we can get close enough to engage it. That means that once we establish a gun crew, you’re going to have to drill them to perfection in order for us to be anything like effective. And the same goes for the men on the Oerlikons. Our 3-inch might not have enough penetrating power to sink a U-boat, but if we ever do get in close enough to a U-boat for you to cut loose on it, your first concern has to be to damage their gun so that it won’t shoot or kill our gun crew before they can open up on us.”
“Right, Sir, I think that’s what I anticipated,” Teague said.
“All right,” Ash said, “see Mr. Anson, and if he gives you the go ahead, you can start taking down your guns and getting the cosmoline out of them. Any more men left outside when you came in?”
“Steward showed up just as I was coming in, Sir.”
“As you leave,” Ash said, “send him in.”
Lajames Watts was the only designated striker, SDSN, that Ash had ever seen among the Navy’s stewards and the only Black sailor to be assigned to Chaser 3. According to his records, Watts had passed through a Navy culinary school in 1935 and emerged as a full-fledged baker, but owing to the fact that the steward’s rate was “closed,” filled to its quota’s capacity with rated petty officers, he would have to wait until one retired or died before he could ever be promoted to SD 3/c.
“You’re from Georgia?” Ash asked.
“Yes, Suh, ’lanta,” Watts said.
“What were your last two billets?”
“Cook for Rear Admiral Harkness, in Seattle, ’fore he retire Suh. Then I’se wardroom cook on da Holland. She a sub tender, Puget Sound.”
“Think you can keep this crew happy, without a reefer, without much in the way of fresh meat or vegetables?”
“I think I knows a trick or two’ll keep ’em tame,” Watts grinned.
“Good man,” Ash said. “Think a giant like yourself can make do in a small galley?”
Watts chuckled. “I’se generally makes do wheresever I goes” Watts said.
Looking the man over, taking in what looked to Ash like Watts’ rock hard body, his thick hands, and his more than 6-foot frame, Ash knew that he’d found one more reason to thank Commander Sims for his attention to the ship. If, Ash thought, any one of these people coming aboard turned out to be prejudiced, the man would do well to keep his mouth firmly shut; if he didn’t, Watts looked capable of pounding him straight down to the keel.
“Find Mr. Anson,” Ash said. “When he gives you the go ahead, you can start cleaning up your galley and moving galley equipment aboard. Once we go to sea, a mess cook will be designated to assist you, and the officers will take their meals on the mess deck with the crew so that you won’t have to pack food and take it up
to the wardroom. That’s all for the moment, so you can go out and start work as soon as Mr. Anson is ready for you.”
Outside, Ash found no more petty officers waiting for an interview, but in the early afternoon, after Chief Stobb and Samarango had marched the other petty officers up to The Jarvis House for lunch and brought them back, a bus arrived at the gate and disgorged two more petty officers—Hill, a yeoman 3/c, and Polaski, a radioman 3/c—and 18 firemen and seamen, including Glick, the designated seaman who was to function as Ash’s signalman. By Ash’s count, his crew had arrived. All that remained wanting were two ensigns.
5
At dusk, walking beside Chief Stobb and following the enlisted contingent as Samarango marched them smartly up the street toward The Jarvis House, Ash looked ahead and spotted his two ensigns standing in the snow at the entrance to the hotel. Samarango, halting the crew in the shadow of the portico, threw the officers a sharp salute which both returned, and then he immediately began marching the men straight inside by files and into the dining room for their evening meal.
“Ensign Solomon, United States Naval Reserve, reporting for duty aboard Chaser 3, Sir,” said the taller of the two men, announcing himself with reserved decorum as he quickly saluted Ash.
“Ensign Hampton, United States Naval Reserve, reporting for duty aboard Chaser 3, Sir,” said the shorter man, also raising his hand in salute, his words breaking with slightly more verve.
“Welcome aboard,” Ash said, returning both salutes before shaking each man‘s hand. “Have you registered yet?”
“Not yet,” Solomon said.
“We were about to,” Hampton said, “but then we saw you coming up the hill.”
“Go in and register,” Ash said, “stow your bags and then come down to the dining room, and we”ll have dinner”.
Fifteen minutes later, seated at a table for four directly across the dining room from where the remainder of the crew were thrusting their forks into heaped servings of a New England boiled dinner, Ash studied the faces of the two men sitting across from him. Wide set, beneath thick black hair that had been closely cropped, Jules Solomon’s dark eyes looked thoughtful but determined above a long jaw and full cheeks that could become heavily and darkly bearded if the man ever failed to shave. Although Solomon’s spine rested with apparent comfort against the back of his chair, Ash sensed that the man seemed wary, almost apprehensive. William Hampton III looked back at Ash from a longer, more angular face, his light blue eyes and thin lips projecting an expression that struck Ash as being half ironic but, nevertheless, curiously naive. For the time being, Ash decided that he would take the implied irony for a pose and the masked naivete for the fact.
“Let’s begin with you, Mr. Solomon,” Ash said evenly. “I know that you list your hometown as Brooklyn, that you graduated from Rutgers in 1940 with a degree in mechanical engineering, and that after you graduated but before you reported to Prairie State, you supervised maintenance and repair at one of New York City‘s electrical generating plants. I think your past experience will be helpful with your duties aboard, but more about those in a few minutes. What I would like to hear from you, if you don‘t mind, is something more personal; whatever you‘d care to tell us. I like to know the men with whom I will be going to sea.”
Solomon furrowed his brow, clearly grappling with what he would say. Then, after a brief pause, with what Ash believed to be an engineer‘s practicality, Jules Solomon took a deep breath, leaned forward, and spoke directly.
“My father, Captain Miller, is a Ukrainian Jew who got out of Kiev before the Bolsheviks could take control,” Solomon said, showing no further hesitation. “He came to the States in 1918, took out naturalization papers, and settled in Brooklyn. A year later, he met and married my mother, and they started a bakery which is now a first-rate and growing business. I started work there when I was six, and when she was old enough, so did my sister. She’s now at NYU studying fashion design. I worked at the bakery until I graduated from Rutgers—it paid for my education. I wouldn’t say we’re a particularly religious family, but neither do we deny our heritage. The neighborhood in which I grew up seemed to be about evenly split between Jews and Italians. My father and mother both speak Yiddish as well as English, but our parents wanted us to grow up only speaking English. The irony is that in a pinch, I can also get by in Italian, or the dialect which passed for Italian in our neighborhood.”
Ensign Solomon, Ash sensed, had said as much as he intended to say.
“Thank you,” Ash said. “Now, if you don’t mind me asking, what was it that attracted you to the Navy, and why before Pearl Harbor?”
Solomon sat up straight in his chair, and when he spoke, his voice took on a harder edge.
“Our family is not political, Captain, but we do read the papers, and the reports coming out of Germany angered us. And then, when Hitler and Mussolini showed us what they were about in Spain, my father and I detected a menace that we both believe has to be stopped. The servicemen I’d seen most often in Brooklyn all came from the Navy Yard. A number of them buy from us, yard birds and sailors alike, and not a few officers, so I’d gotten to know some, and I asked questions. A commander that I’d met finally put me in touch with the right recruiting office, and that’s when I signed my papers. Pearl Harbor, I regret to say, came as a complete shock. Hamp and I were already going through our course on Prairie State, but prior to what we began hearing there, our family’s attention had been so focused on things east that I don’t think we were very much aware of what had been going on with Japan.”
Ash nodded. “I agree with you about ‘the menace,’” Ash said. “Not to wax philosophical, but it has always seemed to me that when evil raises its head, good men have to stamp on it, and now we’ve got to stamp on it in two directions. I worked my way to Europe on a freighter in ’38 and spent a month traveling around Germany after I left the ship. I didn”t like what the Germans showed me, turned around, came straight home, and signed up for the reserves. I’m guessing that we think alike on the subject. As a result of already being at sea last year, Japanese intentions were less of a mystery; on my last ship, we’d been expecting something, but Pearl Harbor, when the blow struck, shocked us all.”
Solomon looked relieved and, for the first time since sitting down, seemed to relax in the light of Ash’s approval.
“It is none of my business,” Ash said, “but it would be helpful to know if you are facing any personal entanglements, such as an engagement, an impending wedding, or a marriage. Girlfriends don’t count.”
“No, Sir,” Solomon said. “Nothing of the sort.”
“One final question,” Ash said. “What name do you prefer to go by?”
“Solly,” the man said. “I”ve been called Solly for most of my life.”
“Solly, it is,” Ash said. “And now, Mr. Hampton, or Hamp, if you’re the man Solly referred to a minute ago, let me hear from you. Is it to be William, Bill, Hamp, or something else altogether?”
“My contemporaries aboard the Prairie State seem to have christened me ‘Hamp,’ Sir, so between the three of us, unless you object, I think I’ll stick with Hamp.”
“Hamp, it is,” Ash said. “From your record, I see that you were born in Westchester, did your schooling at Andover, spent three years at Lafyette, and left to enter midshipman’s school aboard Prairie State. Those are the facts as I have them. I’ll let you take it from there.”
“I’m afraid,” Hampton said, “that I had no other choice than to be born with the taste of a silver spoon in my mouth. I don’t consider it my fault; I had no control over the circumstance. Back around 1900, my grandfather dabbled in some mining stocks and struck pay dirt with copper near Santa Rita, New Mexico. The stock prospered, and so did my grandfather, and not long after that he started buying banks, and then he opened a factory to manufacture rope and line during the First World War, and that also prospered. And after that, he bought other companies which manufactured paint, chemicals, and soap, a
nd then he died, and my father took over his companies, banks, and mining interests. But all the while, my grandmother—I love her, you understand, but the woman is hard as nails and twice as unforgiving—well, my grandmother continues to exercise a controlling interest in everything, and my father, bless him, has no way to get out from under her thumb. The man is an excellent manager and well supported by my mother, but as the major shareholder, Grandmother Hampton calls all the shots. By the time I came out of Andover, she started calling the shots for me too, and did until, at the end of my junior year—when I found that I’d had about all of banking, finance, and accounting that I could take—I shook the traces and bolted, the Navy having offered me a worthwhile avenue of escape, a chance to prove myself to myself, and a more than respectable means of avoiding the family business. My grandmother, ensconced in her thirty gilded rooms at The Glade, instructed our banks to cut me off without a cent the moment she received the news that I had joined up. So, until my father can slip me something or my grandmother relents, I will be forced to live on an ensign’s pay and avoid keeping company with the swirl of idle debutantes who, while comely, had become increasingly obnoxious to me, my grandmother having apparently found half a dozen that she meant to put in my way as suitable candidates for marriage following my expected graduation from Lafayette. Lafayette is a fine college; I had a good time there and did reasonably well, but it was Grandmother’s choice rather than mine. I wanted to apply to the Naval Academy but was beaten down without mercy. A war at that time seemed unlikely, at least to my grandmother, so I was told that the most patriotic path I could take would be to devote myself to commerce and promote our companies. Eventually, I developed other ideas, so here I am.”
While Hamp had been speaking, their waiter had brought bread to the table, and lifting the basket, Ash saw to it that the two ensigns helped themselves before taking a piece for himself.
Loquacious as Hamp’s recitation might have been, even—Ash thought—as it bordered on the facetious, he nevertheless sensed that it contained the truth, or the essentials of the truth, that Master William Hampton III, Ensign William Hampton, had mustered the fortitude to free himself from a form of domination that he didn’t like, declare his independence, and strike out on his own.
Splinter on the Tide Page 4