Dropping off one convoy at the mouth of the Delaware, Ash and the DE picked up another, which they then took down to Norfolk before turning around, after a brief replenishment, and guarding yet another back to Cape May. As the days turned into nights and the nights into days, August dissolved into September and September into October as Chaser 3, working with this or that DE or this or that combination of subchasers, moved international merchantmen up and down the coast between half a dozen different ports, never once making New York, never once making Casco Bay. Twice during that time, Ash saw ships torpedoed. The first, a freighter carrying both stores
and grain, went down slowly, Ash guiding Chaser 3 in close enough alongside to take off the entire crew without a single injury or death. The second—a smaller freighter that nevertheless seemed to be carrying ammunition of some kind in its forward hold—blew itself to smithereens so quickly that the only survivors appeared to be the two lascars that had been blown clear when the ship exploded, and only because they were standing on the fantail at the time. In each instance, it had been the attending DE that had led the hunt for the offending U-boat, while Ash had been relegated to shepherding the remaining ships in the convoy to safety.
On another night, south of Charleston—a calm night with a mere hint of a mist hanging in the air—Ash received the fright of his life when, glancing casually to port, he gasped to see the phosphorescent wakes of three torpedoes racing towards him at such high speed that he knew he didn’t have a prayer of avoiding them; then, to his chagrin, he watched, astounded, as three glistening porpoises rose straight up out of the sea, flipped backwards, and disappeared into the deep. For half an hour more, the same chase continued, the playful creatures obviously homing on the sound of Chaser 3’s sonar. In each instance, Ash nevertheless felt like he’d been slugged in the gut, never knowing for sure whether he was seeing one more approach of the teasing porpoises or real death-dealing torpedoes from a lurking U-boat. It was unnerving, that experience, and unsettled his stomach for hours, one of the mysteries of the sea.
Finally, in early November, Chaser 3 went into port for three days’ upkeep, in Key West. As far as Ash was concerned, Key West was better than nothing, each of the watch sections enjoying two full days of well-deserved liberty in a place that supplied them with adequate quantities of beer, entertainments that proved lively, and the warm freedom to go ashore without having to wear pea coats. In fact, throughout their stay, the men shifted back from blues to whites, the Caribbean heat and humidity remaining high throughout their time there. But for Ash, Solly, and Hamp, about the best that they could hope for turned out to be a couple of drinks each night at the club followed by a well-cooked steak. Key West, tiny paradise that it might have been, remained much too distant for Claire, Chana, or Keren even to dream of trying to reach.
“Romance by letter, scented or otherwise, can only make the heart grow fonder,” Ash quipped, as he reread one of Claire’s letters for the third or fourth time.
“Somehow,” Hamp said, “I find that exchanging Chana in the flesh for the pleasure of her prose style is much less compelling than I could wish.”
“Florid, is she?” Ash asked.
Solly broke into unexpected laughter. “More like illiterate, I’ll bet,” he said.
“Nonsense,” Hamp said, “I hang on her every word. Jane Austen should have been so smooth.”
“You’re kidding,” Solly laughed.
“Not at all,” Hamp said. “There’s a world of feeling in three little words. She writes ‘I miss you’ right here at the start. That’s music to the ear.”
“That kind of prose is called purple,” Solly said. “I had no idea that Chana could be so loquacious.”
“And Keren,” Hamp said, “has she sent you endearments?”
“She writes that her cat is shedding,” Solly said, “and wonders if she should take the beast to the vet’s.”
“Very passionate,” Hamp said.
At that point, after a knock, they were interrupted by Samarango.
“Cap’n,” the bosun said, showing Ash a serious face, “it’s Teague. He’s got a personal problem and requests an interview.”
Ash folded Claire’s letter back into its envelope and returned it to his locker.
“I’ll meet him in the chart room,” Ash said. “That’ll afford him some privacy.”
Five minutes later, Samarango brought Teague to the chart room.
“I understand that you have a problem,” Ash said. “Lay it out for me, and I’ll see if I can help.”
Teague, in so far as Ash could read the man, didn’t look so much distressed as angry.
“It’s like this, Cap’n,” he said. “Don’t know if you knew it or not, but I’m married. Been married for two years. Had a place in Omaha, the two of us, ’fore the war started, but I signed up early, January of ’41. My wife didn’t like it then, and appears she don’t like it now. The bank and my mother has both wrote. My wife’s gone. Cleaned out our bank account and must have faked a power of attorney ’cause she’s sold the house, and she didn’t have no right to do that, not without my signature. I didn’t leave her no power of attorney.”
Not all romances, Ash realized, ran the smooth course that his and Claire’s seemed to be running.
“You’ve got leave on the books,” Ash said, “nearly a year of it built up. Do you want me to give you emergency leave?”
“No, Sir,” Teague said, drawing himself up. “I got a job to do here, and there ain’t no one else can do it, so I ain’t goin’ on leave. This war’s more important than that gal, no matter how much dirt she’s done me. But I got somethin’ else in mind.”
“Spill it,” Ash said.
“I hear tell that Navy intelligence has an investigative branch,” Teague said.
“To tell you the truth,” Ash said, “I don’t know for sure, but I’ll look into it for you, and I’ll do it today. Why don’t you put the facts down on paper for me, and if ONI looks into things like this, I’ll pass along anything you give me. Is that what you’d like?”
“Yes, Sir,” Teague said. “I’d be much obliged. It’s one thing if that girl wants to walk out on me, but sellin’ our house out from under me, that’s a crime in my book, and I mean to see that I get my share back from her. She can take her share, an’ good riddance, but I got equity in that place, and I sure as hell deserve my part back from her.”
“Understood,” Ash said.
Later that afternoon, after finding his way into the right ONI office, Ash presented what he had to a lieutenant commander manning an investigative desk, and to Ash’s surprise, the lieutenant commander accepted the assignment with ease.
“We’ll get onto it,” he told Ash. “We work with the FBI on cases like this, and we have more of them in a year than people would imagine. Girls like that usually wait until their man is at sea, and then quick as a snake strikes, they clean him out and blow the scene. Most of them don’t go very far, so we’ve had considerable luck in tracking them down and seeing a degree of justice done. Sometimes, even here on the beach, it’s an uglier world than it looks.”
On the night after Ash had spoken with the naval investigator, Chaser 3 experienced its first run in with the Shore Patrol. Around 2300, a Shore Patrol van drew up and stopped on the pier. As Ash watched, two husky sailors wearing SP brassards, night sticks, and leggings, threw open the rear doors and pulled Rollo from the interior, whereupon, with each man grasping one of Rollo’s arms, they escorted him to the brow and brought him straight down onto the quarterdeck in order to turn him over to Ash.
“Fightin’ at the EM club,” the senior of the two said, after he had saluted Ash and handed over some attending paperwork. “This one’s got a black eye, but he broke the other one’s nose.”
“All right,” Ash said. “If he can stand, I’ll take it from here, and thanks for bringing him back.”
Rollo sagged a little as they let him go, the senior shore patrolman giving Ash a grin and a twist of
his head as though to say, “Lucky you,” before the SPs retreated up the brow and disappeared into their van.
By that time, Samarango had come on deck to take charge of his inebriated seaman.
“What do you have to say for yourself, Rollo?” Ash asked, as Samarango took hold of the man’s arm in order to keep him on his feet.
“Somabitch said chaser sailors is splinters in the fleet’s ass,” Rollo said, beer fumes issuing from his mouth like the waves off a gas jet, “so’s I hauls off an’ hit ’em, Cap’n, an’ he goes down, an’ then his buddy hits me. Big guy. Stinkin’ drunk, and me mindin’ my own business an’ all.” Samarango, Ash noticed, actually rolled his eyes.
“Right,” Ash said, trying not to laugh while lending a hard edge to his tone. “Two weeks’ restriction to the ship as an extra duty man. Can’t have you giving the ship a bad name, Rollo, so save your fighting for the krauts, and in future, set a better limit on the amount of beer you drink. That’s all. Dismissed. Chief Master at Arms, take this man to his bunk and see that he turns in.”
Later, at about the time liberty expired, Grubber, Krupp, and two of Chief Stobb’s snipes, Teller and Armstead, came back weaving and singing down the pier. As Ash watched in disbelief, Teller missed the brow entirely and fell straight into the slip, only to come up sputtering and spitting as the deck watch threw him a line and rushed to haul him on board.
“Teller, you silly ass!” Chief Stobb barked when he came up to retrieve the man. “Don’t you even think about goin’ down into the compartment until I’ve hosed you down good with fresh water. An get that damn uniform off soon as you get to the fantail. You stink like hell!”
“What’s it like up there tonight?” Hamp asked, as Ash returned to the wardroom and prepared to turn in.
“Lively,” Ash said. “Rollo popped some sailor on the beach and came back with a black eye. Teller just walked off the brow and straight into the slip. Chief Stobb is back aft hosing him off. There’s no telling how much crap and garbage is in that water, but from the looks of him, he came up covered with about half of it.”
“Hmm,” Solly said, “sounds like the boys back aft are going to smell him all night. That ought to sober them up in a hurry.”
“If they don’t lynch him first,” Ash said.
“Very profitable, this liberty,” Hamp said. “They seem to be rapidly developing into real seagoing Jack Tars after all.”
“Yes,” Ash said, turning off his reading light as he slid into his sack, “they do.”
On November 9, just in time to leave port on the tail end of a hurricane which passed south toward Honduras, Chaser 3 once more took to the sea, pitching and rolling beyond anything the men had seen for weeks. Almost immediately, three of Ash’s supposed Jack Tars became seasick, but after tossing their cookies, none of them gave so much as a thought to seeking relief in their bunks and went about their routines with a resolution born of the fact that they were resigned to their fates.
The convoy they picked up—16 vessels gathered from various stretches of the Caribbean—was bound for Charleston with an escort of three chasers overseen by a DE which carried the escort commander. With the outer bands of the hurricane still strong enough to strike them on the starboard quarter as they worked north, the pitching, rolling escorts still yawed uncertainly in the oncoming seas.
“Geeze,” Solly said to Ash on the bridge, “if this doesn’t feel like being trapped inside a cocktail shaker, I don’t know what would.”
“Ain’t that the truth,” Ash said, dodging a sheet of spray that suddenly whipped back over the plunging bow and up against the bridge screens, “but we’re lucky to have advanced this far north. Key West is probably getting plastered with rain by now. That, at least, we escaped.”
Around midnight, finally, the convoy outran the storm’s orbit, the wind, what little remained of it, coming from dead ahead. As a result, the yawing ended, but with a strong sea running, Chaser 3 continued both to pitch and roll, the sea only beginning to moderate two days later as the untroubled convoy approached Charleston.
Much to the crew’s displeasure, Chaser 3 did not go all the way in that night, did not tie up to a pier, and did not grant liberty. Instead, replenished by a yard oiler in the outer harbor and without being able to take on fresh provisions, she no more than topped off with water and fuel before COMDESLANT sent her straight back out to sea where, in company with yet another DE, a corvette, and five subchasers, she joined in escort for a 40-ship convoy headed for San Juan and destined, ultimately, for parts east.
“Holy shit, Sir!” Polaski exclaimed, rushing up to the bridge and thrusting a message board into Ash’s hands. “We’ve landed in North Africa, Sir! Big invasion! Morocco, Algeria, it appears we’re getting at Rommel from the ass end!”
Ash took the board, flipped on his flashlight with the red lens, and began to read.
“He’s not kidding,” Ash said to Hamp who was standing as Officer of the Deck. “According to this, we apparently hit the beach on 8 November, so it’s starting at last. I’m guessing that’s where this batch is headed—North Africa—with destroyers and DEs to take them on from San Juan.”
“I’ve got a friend who’s a platoon commander in the Big Red One,” Hamp said. “I wonder if he’s over there. Anything about the units involved?”
“No,” Ash said, “and I don’t suppose they’ll say. Security and all.”
“By the way,” Hamp said, changing the subject, “it’s more than 1,300 miles down to San Juan. We gonna run on one tank, all that way? We’ll be cutting it kind of thin if we do.”
“Not to worry,” Ash said. “According to the op-order the DE commander has put out for us, we’re going to do an underway replenishment halfway down. We’ve never had to do one before, but this time, we do.”
“Tricky, is it?”
“Yes and no,” Ash said. “I imagine we’ll go up inside the convoy to do it.
The oiler will be on a set course with a set speed; probably 12 knots, and every other ship will conform to her. First ship will move up alongside while the second will take a lifeguard position about 500 yards behind her. A bolo heaving line will come over from the oiler to us; we’ll then pull across a messenger line with heavier lines to follow, and finally a steel cable which will be attached to our tripod by a pelican hook. Then the hoses for fuel and water will slide down the cable so that we can make them up to our fittings. They’ll probably pass us a distance line as well with a sound-powered phone line attached. There are flags on the distance line so that we’ll know how many feet we are from the oiler at all times, and the real trick is to con the ship so as to remain about 40 feet from the oiler throughout the evolution. I won’t say that it isn’t tense, because the OOD has got to remain sharp and alert every minute so as to give minor corrections to the lee helm for speed and to the helmsman in order to hold a relatively steady position throughout. As long as the seas cooperate, it isn’t too bad. If we have rough weather, it becomes a hell of mess, in terms of difficulty.”
“And once the tanks are topped off?”
“The lines are sent back, one after another, and then we break away and return to our station in the screen”
“You’ll be the one keeping us aligned with the oiler?” Hamp asked.
“Going alongside,” Ash said, “but I’ll want you and Solly up here on the bridge with me in case either of you ever has to do it in future. I intend to give both of you the con at one point or another, so that you can have a go at it and see what’s involved. Chief Stobb and Samarango are perfectly capable of handling the lines, the hookups, and the replenishment proper.”
“Something to look forward to, then?” Hamp grinned.
“Yes, like killing a rattler, or something like that,” Ash laughed.
The route selected for their transit to San Juan took them outboard of the Bahamas along the western edge of the Sargasso Sea. Regardless of conditions farther to the north where, Ash imagined, ice would already be forming
on the decks of the convoys bound for Iceland, their transit ran through much warmer waters, and for once, the sea also remained relatively calm, the waves seldom cresting at heights of more than 6 feet. To Ash’s way of thinking, the sea seemed almost gentle, and on the morning of their third day out, the DE’s skipper, relaying orders from the oiler where the convoy’s commodore was stationed, put up a flag hoist calling for the screening escorts to refuel. Chaser 3 turned out to be the fourth chaser to go alongside.
“Chief,” Ash said to Stobb in the minutes before he prepared to move up into lifeguard position. “Watch them like a hawk. I don’t want one of our people to hook the diesel line up to our water tanks by mistake. That’s happened to others, more than once, and I sure as hell don’t want it happening to us.”
Chief Stobb laughed. “No, Sir,” he said. “I’ll handle it myself, Cap’n. Right as rain, all the way.”
“Samarango have everything ready on his end?”
“Yes, Sir,” Chief Stobb said. “Been rigged and ready for the last hour.”
“All right,” Ash said. “Let’s get to it. I expect a flag hoist any minute now.”
The flag hoist came, and when it did, Ash put on turns, reversed course, whipped around behind the convoy, and came up smartly into the lifeguard position inside the convoy and 500 yards astern of the oiler, all lookouts gluing their eyes to the chaser alongside the oiler in case a man fell overboard. Twenty minutes later, as the refueling chaser sent back the lines and broke away, Ash once more put on turns, ran up alongside, and slipped into position to take on fuel.
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