CHAPTER FOUR
UNDERWATER ESCAPE
When March returned to his quarters that afternoon he found a letterfrom Scoot Bailey waiting for him. It was full of excitement andenthusiasm, and it filled March with a good deal of envy.
“I’ve flown already!” Scoot wrote. “I didn’t think we’d get around toit for quite a while, but I got up the third day I was here. Of course,I didn’t handle the plane, really, but I just held my hand lightly onthe stick while the instructor took me through a few simple turns andclimbs. Just to give me the feel of it, he said, and so I’d know Ireally came here to fly, not just to study in classes.”
March shook his head. “And to think that I’ve hardly seen a submarine!”he muttered to himself. “And I surely haven’t been inside one. ButScoot’s already been up in a plane! It just goes to show,” he toldhimself, “that submarines are tougher than planes. Just think of thetests we’ve got to go through before they can even let us take a ridein a sub. With a flier all he’s got to do is pass a physical test!”
“And speaking of classes,” Scoot’s letter went on, “they are reallytough! Remember back in college we used to think we had to study fairlyhard? Boy, we just had a picnic in those days! We’d look on that kindof business as a hilarious vacation down here.”
March felt worse than ever. “I’m just wasting time!” he complained tohimself. “Not even a class yet, and Scoot’s studying already!”
He finished Scoot’s letter quickly, learning that he had made a fewgood friends already, that he felt fine, that he loved flying. ThenMarch sat down and wrote Scoot a long letter.
“I’ll tell him about the pressure chamber,” March said. “I’ll show thelad that we’re doing plenty here that he never even dreamed of. AndI’ll tell him about the escape tower we’re going to have a try attomorrow. That ought to show him that he’s picked just an easy branchof the service.”
So March wrote, and he told Scoot plenty. He made the test in thepressure chamber sound much more harrowing than it had actually been,even inventing one man who passed out, bleeding profusely, in themiddle of the test.
Then he felt better, and went down to dinner feeling once more that hewas in the cream of the Navy. As he walked down the hill he heard thedrone of an airplane motor overhead.
“Simple,” he said to himself. “See how easy it is? Just push a stickthis way or that, just push a couple of pedals, and keep your eyes on acouple of dozen instruments. Why, in a sub we’ve got more instrumentsand dials than in twenty-five bombing planes!”
When he sat down next to Stan Bigelow, it was even better, for Stanagreed with him completely about the super-importance of the submarineservice, thinking up a few additional reasons for its superiority overNaval Aviation that had not occurred to March. Then they begandiscussing the escape tower test the next day.
“Do you know much about this Momsen Lung they use?” Stan asked. “I sawsome today when we took the pressure test, but I don’t know the detailsof how they work.”
“Yes, I read all about them a few years ago,” March answered. “Theywere invented by an Annapolis man—then Lieutenant Charles Momsen—notmuch more than ten years ago. And you know, Stan, that guy conductedevery single experiment himself—wouldn’t let anybody else take thechance.”
“Boy, he should have got a medal for that!” Stan exclaimed.
“He did! Distinguished Service Medal,” March said. “And the Lung is oneof the biggest things ever invented to make subs safer. Simple—really,like most good things. The good thing about it is that there’s noconnection at all with the outside. Most such devices had a valvesystem for letting the exhaled air out into the water. But the valvesjammed shut—or open—too often. There’s nothing like that to go wrong inthe Momsen Lung.”
“How does it get rid of the carbon dioxide that you breathe out?” Stanasked.
“There’s a can of CO(2) absorbent inside it, that’s all,” Marchexplained. “Of course, in time it wouldn’t absorb any more, but howlong are you ever going to use a Momsen Lung at one stretch, anyway?”
“Ten or fifteen minutes, I suppose,” Stan replied.
“Sure,” March agreed. “And the can of absorbent can take care of yourcarbon dioxide for a lot longer than that. And the rest of it is reallyjust as simple. It’s an airtight bag that straps over your chest.There’s a mouthpiece you clamp between your teeth for breath, and anose clip to close your nose so you won’t breathe through it. When thebag’s filled with oxygen—there you are!”
“Wonderful!” Stan said. “But doesn’t that bag of oxygen, plus your owntendency to float, send you shooting up to the surface in a hurry?”
“It would if you let it,” March replied. “That’s why there always hasto be a line or cable up to the surface, so you can hold on to it andkeep yourself from ascending too quickly.”
“And get the bends,” Stan concluded. “If anything, I know I’ll go moreslowly than they tell me.”
The next morning they had a chance to look more closely at the MomsenLungs before they put them on, with the instructor explaining theirworkings and showing the students how to adjust them. March did not seeScott, the radioman, among the group, although all the others were thesame that had gone through the pressure test the day before. He spoketo the young pharmacist, asking about Scott.
“Got a cold,” was the reply. “Just a little nose cold, but theywouldn’t let him do the escape test with it.”
“Too bad,” March said. “But he’ll be able to catch up with the rest ofus soon.”
The Chief Petty Officer in charge was explaining the test to the men,as they got into their swimming trunks.
“First we’ll have twenty pounds of pressure in the chamber,” he said,“just to be sure noses and ears are in good shape before going into thewater. And then you’ve got a long climb ahead of you. You see, thebottom of this tower is a hundred feet from the surface at the top. Youwon’t be taking the hundred-foot escape for quite a while yet. Today wego up to the eighteen-foot level.”
March thought that ought to be simple. He had been almost that farbeneath the water sometimes when he went in swimming. But then heremembered that this test was to teach the men the proper use of theMomsen Lung, the rate of climb up the cable to the surface. It wasn’tthe pressure at eighteen feet that would bother anyone, unless it wassomebody who had some deep fear of being under water.
“Such a person wouldn’t very well select the submarine service,though,” he said to himself. “Of course some people have these fearswithout knowing it. Nothing has ever happened to bring it out, that’sall.”
The time in the pressure chamber seemed like nothing after theirfifty-pound session of the day before, and soon the students foundthemselves ascending to the eighteen-foot level of the tower.
“Up at the top,” the Chief was saying, “there are plenty of men readyto take care of you. Nothing much is likely to go wrong with such ashort escape, but we don’t leave anything to chance. So if you gettangled in the cable or decide to go down instead of up, or anythinglike that, there’s a few mighty good swimmers to do the rescue act.There’s one thing to remember—we send you men up one after the other,pretty fast, just the way you’d be doin’ it if you were getting out ofa sub lyin’ on the bottom of the ocean. So get away from the cable buoyfast, and without kickin’ your legs all over the place. You’re likelyto kick the next one in the head, especially if he has come up a littletoo fast.”
“How fast are we supposed to go, Chief?” one of the men asked.
“About a foot per second,” the officer replied. “You hold yourselfparallel with the cable, body away from it a little bit, and letyourself up hand over hand. You can put your hands about a foot aboveeach other, and count off the seconds to yourself. We’ll be timing youat both ends, so you’ll find out afterwards whether you went too fastor too slow. Then you’ll catch on to the rate all right.”
March was among the first men
who stepped into the bell at theeighteen-foot level. The water of the tower came up to his hips and waskept from going higher in the little compartment by the pressure of theair forced into the top of the bell-shaped room. He saw a round metalpipe shaped like a very large chimney extending down into the water.
“That skirt goes down a little below the water level in here on theplatform,” the Chief said. “When you go up, you fasten on your Lung,duck under the skirt, and go straight up. First, I’m going to check tobe sure that the cable’s set okay.”
March and the others watched closely as the Chief adjusted his noseclips and mouthpiece deftly, turned the valve opening the oxygen intothe mouthpiece, and ducked under. In a moment he reappeared and removedthe Lung.
“All set,” he said. “Okay, you—” he pointed to the young pharmacist,“you go first. Your Lung’s filled with oxygen, plenty of it. There’sthe carbon dioxide absorbent in there to take up everything you breatheout. Remember to go up hand over hand, about a foot per second. Anddon’t be surprised if a couple of guys go floatin’ past you in thewater on your way up. There’re other instructors swimmin’ around upthere and once in a while one of ’em swims down to see how you’remakin’ out. All set?”
“Yes, Chief,” the pharmacist answered. March thought he lookedcompletely calm, though he felt himself growing excited at even thisshort escape.
“Okay, mouthpiece in place,” the Chief said, making sure that thestudent did it correctly. “Now, nose clips on—that’s right. Finally,open the valve so you can get the oxygen. Okay?”
The pharmacist nodded that he was all right. “On your way, then, mylad,” the Chief said. “Duck under.”
March watched the young man duck under the water and disappear as hewent under the metal skirt. Then he saw the Chief go under, too, rightbehind him. Up above, he knew, the instructors would see a tug on theyellow buoy fastened to the cable, and would begin their timing of thefirst ascent. One of them would dive down and have a look at thestudent coming up, would make him pull away if he were hugging thecable too closely, speed him up or slow him down if necessary, with agesture and a pat on the shoulder.
Suddenly the Chief reappeared.
_Hand Over Hand He Ascended_]
“Okay, you,” he said, pointing to March. As he put the mouthpiece inplace, he thought how strange it was that in the tower in a pair ofswimming trunks he was just plain “you” to the Chief Petty Officer,while in uniform outside he would be “sir.”
“Right now,” March thought as he adjusted the nose clips and turned thevalve, “this man’s my superior and my teacher. A young officer canlearn plenty from these boys who’ve had so much experience, if theygive themselves a chance by forgetting for a few minutes that they’recommissioned officers.”
As the Chief patted his shoulder, March ducked under the water, foundthe bottom of the round metal skirt, and went under it. Looking up, hesaw the long shaft of darkness made by the walls of the tower, and thefilmy, cloudy circle of half-light at the surface which suddenly seemeda great distance away. His hands had already found the cable, and heheld on to it as he felt the upward tug of the Lung which tried tocarry him swiftly to the top.
Putting one hand about a foot above the other he began to count tohimself, hoping that his counts were about a second apart. For everycount he put his hand up what he judged to be another foot in distance.Then he realized that his legs were unconsciously starting to twinethemselves around the cable, and he pulled them away, holding his bodystraight up and down a short distance away from the escape line.
“That’s funny,” he told himself. “I guess I always twined my legsaround a rope when I was going down it, so I want to do the same thinggoing up.”
He looked up again quickly and saw legs kicking above him. That wouldbe the pharmacist pulling away from the buoy. How much farther did hehave to go? It was hard to judge the distance. He had reached a countof nine, so he should be halfway if he had been putting his hands afoot apart.
His eyes blinked at a form moving up close to him. He saw a man intrunks floating toward him in the water, waving his arms slowly. No, hewasn’t waving—he was swimming! He wore a pair of nose clips but noMomsen Lung. One of the instructors from above, March concluded.
The man motioned his arms upward urgently. Unmistakably March knew thathe had been going too slowly, so he increased the tempo of his countslightly. And before he knew it, his eyes blinked in the sunlight andhe felt water running down his face. He was up!
“Clips off! Valve off!” an instructor in the water beside him said.
March moved away from the buoy toward the side of the tank, where hesaw other men standing on the little platform, and as he did so heremoved his nose clips with one hand, shut the oxygen valve. Then heremembered that it had not felt a bit strange to breathe through hismouth instead of through his nose.
“I guess as long as your lungs get the oxygen they need, you don’t muchcare how it gets there.”
He felt a hand helping him as he climbed up on the little platform atthe top of the tower. Standing there, he removed the mouthpiece andthen took off the lung itself. As he dried himself and slipped into hisrobe, the man behind him broke the surface and started toward the edge.
Suddenly March felt a little dizzy. He had looked out the window andhad seen how high he was from the ground. And then he smiled.
“What would Scoot think of me?” he thought, “getting dizzy even for asecond only a hundred feet off the ground?”
Down below was the river, and March saw a sub making its way downtoward Long Island Sound. It looked very tiny and slim.
“How did it go, sir?” asked a voice behind him. He turned and saw thepharmacist.
“All right, I guess,” March replied. “Didn’t mind it, anyway. I guess Iwas a little slow. They had to send a man down to hurry me up.”
“They sent one down to slow me down,” the pharmacist said, “but I cameout just about right. They told me it was a better sign if you went tooslow than too fast.”
“I suppose it indicates you’re not overanxious about being underwater,” March said.
A familiar head broke the water of the tank and March saw Stan Bigelowmoving over toward the platform. When he had got out and removed hisLung, he smiled at March.
“Nothing to it, was there?” he called. “I’d like to try the fifty-footlevel right away.”
“Same here,” March said, “but I guess we wait a day or two.”
Later, when they _did_ make the fifty-foot escape, they found that itwent just the same as the eighteen-footer. Sure, it took fifty seconds,but the sensations were about the same. There was more pressure on theears, but not enough to bother anyone. March was very surprised to hearthat one of the enlisted men, near the end of the group, had suddenlygone panicky just before it was his turn to go.
“Had he gone through the eighteen-foot test all right?” March asked theChief Petty Officer in charge.
“Yes—just too fast,” the man replied. “But lots of them do that atfirst. He must have been holding himself under control for that one,though, and the thought of the fifty was too much for him.”
“Too bad,” March said. “Will they transfer him back to his old branchof the service?”
“No—they’ve decided to give him another chance,” the Chief said. “TheDoc—the psychological one—thinks it’s just a fear the guy never evenknew he had. He’s goin’ to talk to him a bit to see if he can find outwhat caused it. Then maybe he can get rid of it. He won’t be able to godown in a pigboat until he handles the fifty-foot escape okay, butwe’ll keep him on for a while to give him another crack at it. Good manin every other way, as far as I can see.”
March learned later that the man was one of the fire controlmen who hadridden out on the bus with him.
“Gee, I hope he makes it,” Scott, the radioman, said to March when theytalked it over. “He’s a swell guy. Cobden’s his name, Marty Cobden. Andhe’s got his heart set on bein’ a submariner, dreams about
it at nighteven. Never had the faintest notion he was scared of anything, least ofall just fifty feet of water.”
“Did he go swimming much?” March asked.
“I asked him that, too,” Scott replied. “He says he liked to swim buthe didn’t like to dive. But he wasn’t _scared_ of it!”
Scott had got over his cold and had caught up with the rest of them,making the eighteen-foot and fifty-foot escapes without difficulty.
“Well, we’re qualified now to go to school here,” March said. “And wecan even go down in a sub. But when do we take the hundred-foot escape?”
“Don’t have to,” Scott said. “But most of ’em try it, sir—some timelater. They all want to see Minnie and Winnie.”
“Minnie and Winnie?” March asked. “Who are they and _where_ are they?”
“They’re mermaids,” Scott said without a smile. “Beautiful mermaids.And they’re painted on the walls of the tank down at the hundred-footlevel. Only one way to see ’em—and that’s to make the escape. An’ youget a diploma when you’ve done it.”
“I’ll see you there, Scott,” March said. “We’ll both have a look atWinnie and Minnie one of these days.”
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March Anson and Scoot Bailey of the U.S. Navy Page 5
