The commanding officer of the net tender, Ash learned, turned out to be a reservist, a junior grade lieutenant like himself, who had formerly been third mate on a freighter out of Baltimore. The commanding officer of the oiler was a regular, a four-stripe veteran like the C.O. of the sea plane tender and, as such, the designated commodore for their transit. In one regard, however, he differed greatly from any previous senior that Ash had met–he appeared to have a galloping sense of humor, which became instantly recognizable in the flashing light messages that he sometimes sent: “Pop over and take a gander along the port quarter.” “Those three tars peeling potatoes on your fantail, do they come as standard subchaser equipment?” “1700. If we were in port, it would be happy hour. The Kaiser didn’t drink, and think what that caused!”
“This guy is downright loquacious,” Solly laughed.
“He’s one of a kind, that’s for sure,” Ash replied.
But when it came to actual operations, the oiler’s captain seemed to know exactly what he was doing, taking them out at night so as to avoid being too much exposed against the lights from the beach, directing Ash to precisely those points where he could be expected to detect an impending U-boat attack, and causing him to drop back just far enough each night to interfere with any stalker coming up on them from behind.
“This guy needs to hire an agent,” Hamp said after one of the oiler’s more amusing dispensations. “He could make money doing stand-up routines in the officer’s clubs.”
Ash agreed, but at the same time, he realized that with four stripes on his sleeve and something in excess of 20 years of experience, the oiler’s captain knew his stuff. Their transit to Key West, longer by a full day than anything they had yet put in, went off without a hitch.
Contrary to expectation, after fueling and taking on water and fresh provisions, Chaser 3 did not rush straight back out to sea. Instead, she was actually ordered to tie up alongside the quay and given two days in port to allow for upkeep and rest. The crew, when Ash informed them, reacted like they had died and gone to heaven. Polaski, winner of the gin rummy tournament, looked forward to collecting his bucket of beer, and the rest of his duty section looked forward to standing by to assist in the event that he couldn’t finish it. Samarango, taking the duty section in hand, put them immediately to work washing down with fresh water, and then, with paint and brushes above deck and lubricants below, Samarango and Chief Stobb set the watch section to doing upkeep and maintenance with unexpected speed. Within an hour, after going ashore for freshwater showers and changing into the liberty uniform promulgated for Key West, the off-duty section hit the beach and headed straight into town, to, Hamp said, “disport themselves while soaking up the Hemingway atmosphere, or to soak themselves like Hemingway while disporting in the atmosphere.” Ash, Solly, and Hamp, leaving Chief Stobb as Command Duty Officer, first showered ashore and then returned to the ship, but from there, once changed into the uniform of the day, they made for the club and their first drink in weeks.
Inside the club, Ash, Hamp, and Solly went straight to the bar, Solly and Hamp calling for bourbon on the rocks even before they could reach the rail and belly up. The enlisted bar tender, an individual with slicked back hair and a sly smile who obviously took himself for an accomplished professional, lifted a bottle, flipped it once through a mid-air somersault, caught it deftly, and poured the drinks before either Solly or Hamp could get out their wallets. Then, he turned to Ash.
“An’ what’s yours?” he said, looking Ash up and down, the mere hint of a smirk showing in his eye.
Ash could not determine whether it was his low rank, his off the rack uniform, or the bartender’s obvious dislike of officers in general that led to the man’s attempt to belittle him, but it didn’t matter. For more than a week, Ash had anticipated a good slug of Scotch, and he meant to have one.
“Scotch on the rocks,” he said, offering the bartender a straightforward response.
“Afraid not,” the bartender snapped back. “Last of it’s gone. An’ the convoys ain’t bringin’ more over. So it’ll have to be somethin’ else, Loot.” This time, the smirk ran from ear to ear.
Before Ash could say another word, he felt another man step up to the bar beside him, turned, and found himself standing beside a full-blown rear admiral, the first admiral of any stripe that Ash had ever approached to within a thousand yards.
Immediately, the bartender changed his expression, snapped his skinny frame to attention, left Ash, stepped sideways, and said in sycophantic tones, “Evening Admiral. Your usual?”
“Right you are, Slope,” the admiral said with a smile, “my usual”
Instantly but without the previous flourish, the bartender named Slope set a glass on the bar, withdrew a bottle of single malt Glen Garioch from beneath the counter, and began to pour the admiral’s drink. As he did so, the admiral happened to glance in Ash’s direction.
“Evening, Sir,” Ash said, straightening up as a mark of respect.
“Good evening,” the admiral said jovially. “Just in, are you, off that new subchaser that’s tied up at the quay?”
“Yes, Sir,” Ash said.
“Captain, are you?”
“Yes, Sir,” Ash said again.
“Nice ship,” the admiral said. “Commanded one myself once, just after the first war. Rolls a bit, a subchaser, but you’ll never find anything that maneuvers better, and unless I miss my bet, your crew will bond like iron. First command?”
“Yes, Sir,” Ash said.
“Congratulations,” said the admiral. “Say, looks like you don’t have a drink yet because I thrust in here ahead of you. What’ll you have, Captain? Just say the word, and Slope here will take care of you”
Ash turned to the bartender. “I think I’ll have what the admiral is having,” he said carefully, looking the man named Slope right in the eye.
“Make it straight from my bottle,” the admiral said, “and put it on my tab. It’s going to be a long war, but right at the moment, we’ve got plenty of Scotch to go around, and I see no reason why those of us who like it shouldn’t enjoy it.” Slope, never once raising his head, went about pouring Ash’s drink like he was all business.
“Right you are, Sir,” Ash said, relishing his first sip. “And thank you.”
“Not at all,” laughed the admiral. “Seagoing officers get little enough time off, and when they do, they need their juice.”
Ash intended to introduce his officers to the admiral, but Solly and Hamp, perhaps intimidated by so much gold on the man’s sleeve or simply reluctant to intrude, had edged away down to the far end of the bar so as to be out of reach.
They talked on then, Ash and the admiral, for several minutes, the admiral pleasantly inquiring into such things as Ash’s origins, how he had gained his commission, and his former service aboard the Parker, and then, when the two men finished their drinks, the admiral excused himself and left to join a dinner party that he was apparently hosting in the dining room.
Rejoining his two juniors, Ash gave them a smile.
“Things seem to be looking up,” he said to them, ignoring Slope as the bartender poured him a second Glen Garioch on the rocks.
Solly grinned. “You seem to be keeping heady company,” he said. “We imagined that you’d deserted us.”
“Wish you’d stuck around,” Ash said. “Thoroughly nice man, the admiral. He’s the base commander here. I would have liked for you to have met him. No desertion intended, but suppose I treat you both to a steak as a reward for services performed.”
“Would those services include the two of us being sick over the barf buckets?” Hamp laughed.
“Something like,” Ash said, as the three men carried their drinks into the dining room.
The club gave them good steaks, slathered with mushrooms, and the three men ate heartily, topping off the feast with pieces of coconut cream pie that had been piled high with genuine whipped cream. Then, glasses of brandy in hand and treating themselves t
o cigars, they sank back into their chairs.
“Ever think you’d be living like this?” Solly asked.
“After a fashion,” Hamp said, “and surrounded by money from a girl of her choice–I think it’s what my grandmother always intended for me. The comfort is agreeable, but being bred like a beast is something I’m happy to avoid.”
“Never imagined anything like this,” Ash said. “Working for the paper in Herrin, I was lucky to be able to afford a burger and chips for a once a day meal.”
“Looks like you’ve found a home in the Navy,” Solly said.
“Possibly,” Ash said.
“Indubitably,” Hamp said. “And what about you, Solly? Finding it agreeable, are you?”
“What I’m finding it,” Solly said, “is an experience that I never imagined. This is a lot different from Brooklyn, I can tell you, and even with the rolling and pitching, I’m finding that going to sea isn’t all that bad. The captain isn’t getting much sleep, and I can imagine that that is one hell of a strain, Sir, but for the two of us, beyond the normal stresses of watch standing, it hasn’t yet forced us to our limits, and that’s probably a good thing. About what’s coming, who can know?”
“Yes,” Ash said, “who can know?” And then, “Well, I suppose you could say that we’ve put a dent in Florida’s beef supply, and I think we’ve killed off these cigars, so ready to go back to the ship and turn in, are we?”
An hour later, all three were sleeping soundly for the first time in a week.
13
During the weeks that followed, as March slowly gave way to April and then to May, Chaser 3 became, in Ash, Solly and Hamp’s collective opinion, a work horse fated to pull plows down furrows that never ended. Three times in ten days, they made runs between Key West and Tampa, shepherding coastal vessels that had been released by other escorts for them to pick up outside the mine fields and take north. Two runs back and forth from Key West to Havana followed, neither offering the crew a night’s liberty, and then they escorted several freighters to the mouth of the Mississippi, leaving them outside the delta to make their own way up the river to New Orleans. Off Grand Isle, they next caught up with three oceangoing tugs towing empty fuel barges, took them to Galveston, and turned straight around in order to conduct two more tugs pulling three barges each back to Mobile Bay. From Mobile, they returned to Key West for a night’s liberty before joining an old destroyer and the first chaser that they had seen aside from themselves in order to screen two oilers and 13 freighters headed for San Juan en route to more distant ports in Brazil.
The Caribbean heat by that time had become excruciating, or at least Ash found it that way. As a result, the crew, in order to take the sun, fight heat rash, and cool themselves to a limited extent, were permitted to go shirtless and wear shorts of a sort, cutoffs fashioned from worn out dungarees. At sea, shaving was also suspended, and while the three officers managed to retain a semblance of regularity by laundering their wash khakis at intervals, the crew rapidly began to look like a collection of pirates.
Running independently out of San Juan, Chaser 3 twice escorted high-riding oilers down to Caracas before screening others, all of them newly loaded with Venezuelan oil, back to San Juan, where they were picked up by destroyers and joined with much larger convoys destined for New York and Casco Bay. Curiously, Ash thought, throughout the entire period, they never saw so much as a hint of a U-boat, a single piece of wreckage, or the slightest indication that a war was in progress. And then, moving north toward Nassau in company with two rusted bottoms flying Liberian flags, a Venezuelan oiler, and a tramp freighter out of British Guiana, things changed.
Chaser 3 happened to be out in front of the four ships that morning, moving from port to starboard across the head of the little boxed convoy, her sonar pinging away, and pitching slightly into an oncoming sea, the result of heavy gales which had preceded them in the days before. Hamp happened to be standing the watch, and as Ash watched him, he saw Hamp’s eyes suddenly widen, and in the next second, he quickly jerked up his binoculars.
“Man in the water!” Hamp barked. “Three points off the port bow, about 500 yards. Looks like he’s in a life jacket, just now floating over a crest!”
“Got him,” shouted a sailor named Benson who was standing as port lookout.
“Don’t take your eyes off of him,” Ash snapped. “Man in the water’s the easiest thing in the world to lose. Hold him, you two, and I’ll take the con.”
With Hamp coaching his line of sight, Ash finally picked up the floater just as the man once more slid over the crest of a swell and disappeared into the trough before rising after a nerve-wracking interval up the face of the next wave and coming back into sight.
Giving orders for Samarango to muster enough men to pull the floater aboard, Ash took off turns and maneuvered Chaser 3 so as to bring the man along the starboard side where they could throw him a line. Two minutes later, Ash watched from the bridge as the floater’s head bobbed down the side where Samarango threw him the bitter end of a mooring line. The man in the water, having been exposed for Ash didn’t know how long, seemed slow to take the line and slower still to make it fast around himself beneath his arms. Finally, after a few minutes’ delay, he managed to tie a bowline across his chest, and Samarango’s rescue party, by this time also working under Solly’s supervision, managed to hoist him aboard, dripping like a half-drowned rat, and throw a blanket around him.
“Hamp,” Ash said, “you’re the designated medical authority aboard, so go back there and see what kind of condition this guy is in. When you know something, let me know, and when you get back there, send Solly up here to take the watch.”
After dispatching Hamp, Ash called down to the pilot house, put on turns, and set Chaser 3 back on course to resume her escort duties. In the meantime, the convoy had come up so that he was now out on their starboard beam. Given the convoy’s 10-knot cruising speed, Ash lost nothing for having stopped to pick the man up and knew that he would be back out ahead of his charges in no more than a quarter hour.
Seconds later, Solly climbed up to the bridge.
“I think you’d better take the watch while Hamp is seeing to this guy,” Ash said. “How’s he look? Any injuries that you could see?”
“I think you’d better go back there,” Solly said, showing Ash a straight face. “From the looks of the swastika on his life jacket and the way his hair is cut all the way up both sides of his head, I’d say we’ve got ourselves a German prisoner. I’m guessing that he must have been out on deck and been washed overboard from a U-boat last night or the night before”
It was the last thing Ash had expected.
“Did you try to speak with him?” Ash asked. “Did he say anything?”
“What little German I know,” Solly said, “is technical stuff, to go with the engineering I studied. I can’t make heads or tails of anything else. I asked Polaski, but he says that he only knows Polish. I think you’re the only one aboard who has a smattering of German”
“All right,” Ash said, turning the watch and the con over to Solly, “I’m on my way. Take us back out ahead of the box and resume the zig-zag.”
Ash went to the fantail. By the time he got there, the German was sitting up.
“Nothing wrong with him that I can see, Captain,” Hamp said, “save for exposure and exhaustion. Watts is bringing him some soup. This guy’s tongue is swollen to hell from lack of water. That ought to go down, soon as we get some fluids into him.”
“Nennen?” Ash began, asking the man his name.
Half rising before lack of strength caused him to sink back onto the deck, the man threw out one arm and tried to shout “Heil Hitler!” But his swollen tongue only allowed for a ridiculous sounding “Ha Hiler” before his dehydration compacted the sound. Nevertheless, it was enough for Ash. Placing both fists on his hips, he spoke to the man in firm, authoritative tones.
“Hitler,” he said to him in German, “is kaput here. You are an All
ied prisoner of war. Do not mention Hitler’s name again, or one of these men is liable to remove your life jacket and toss you right back over the side as food for the sharks before I can stop him. We will give you water and food and treat you according to the rules of the Geneva Conventions until such time as we turn you over to higher authority, but if you make one false move, my men will have orders to shoot you and throw your body over the side. Ya?”
“Ya,” the man finally snarled.
He was a burly man, the German, thick but not tall, not at all the Nordic type that so often appeared in Nazi propaganda, but rather a man with a swarthy face and dark brown hair who looked like he could be trouble once he recovered from the worst of his ordeal, and from what Ash could see, that might come in only a matter of hours.
“Boats,” Ash said, turning to Samarango, “this man is to be treated humanely, but what have we got below in the way of restraints? Handcuffs, leg irons?”
“Set of handcuffs, Cap’n,” Samarango said. “Want me to get ’em?”
“Yes” Ash said. “Let’s get some of Watts’ soup into this guy, and some water, and once you’ve done that, get him up to that stanchion beside the flag bag, and handcuff him to it. Not too tight, mind. No need to injure him, and let him keep the blanket. He’ll be out of the weather there and out of the way, and in these seas, he’ll be sheltered, and then you can issue Glick a .45, and Glick can keep an eye on him until we get into Nassau. And keep me informed about his condition. He’s a lucky bastard to have survived, but I don’t want him folding up on us if there’s something wrong with him that we haven’t spotted.”
Splinter on the Tide Page 14