by Jeff Shaara
Mahone said, “On purpose? You mean like, to eat?”
Wakeman leaned in closer. “A little advice, Tommy. Up there in sick bay, if you get some poor moron comes in with a broken bone, and you run out of whatever the hell you use to make a cast, you just get some ice cream from the gedunk stand. Better than any plaster.”
Biggs saw nods around the table. It was a unanimous opinion. “Maybe I’ll skip the ice cream. I heard there were Tootsie Rolls.”
Wakeman said, “Come on. I’ll go with you.”
The mess was breaking up now, orderlies removing the dishes and everything else on the table. Biggs looked back, saw one man breaking down the tables, storage bays opening, the compartment once more becoming their sleeping quarters.
As they moved through the open hatches, Wakeman said, “I’m sure glad you didn’t give Kincaid a reason to bust your ass. He does it just for fun. Damn near broke my jaw once, then dared me to report him. He probably woulda tossed me overboard.”
They reached the gedunk stand, where a crowd of men had gathered. Ice cream and cold drinks were being served by two men behind the counter. They waited their turn, Biggs paying a nickel for the candy, Wakeman doing the same. They moved away through the crowd, Wakeman leading Biggs up and out onto the main deck.
Biggs said, “What’s your rating? If I can ask.”
“Seaman first class. I do a hell of a lot of maintenance, painting, scraping, all the good stuff. My main job is to make damn sure the holystoning gets done right.”
Biggs stopped, suspected a joke. “The what?”
“They didn’t teach you about that in basic?” He looked down, pointed. “See? We got teak decks on this ship, and they gotta be cleaned about once a week. We got bricks with holes in ’em, and we use sticks to push ’em back and forth on the deck. They toss down some sand and lime so it gets real rough. After about a thousand pushes, we wash it all down, and then polish the deck. No idea who came up with the idea, but it works pretty damn good. They say it makes all the admirals real proud to see it. Don’t know about that. I never asked them.”
“Wow. I didn’t know there was so much to do, so much more than just drills. When I got my posting to sick bay, I figured I’d never have much of a chance to learn all that other stuff.”
Wakeman stared at him, then began to laugh.
“What? I say something dumb?”
Wakeman laughed harder, others gathering around, curious. Biggs felt foolish, though he wasn’t sure why.
“Biggs!”
He turned and saw the imposing figure of PO Kincaid, sweat and muscles in a T-shirt.
“Yes, sir. Here.”
“I see you. I had to interrupt my damn gym time to find you. I got orders from the ensign.” He said the rank with a spitting growl. “You’re new, so this is the only time I’m giving you the benefit of the doubt, ever. You’re supposed to check your duty sheet every damn day. Yours ain’t been checked.”
“Yes, sir, I know my duty starts in the sick bay at 0800.”
Kincaid put his hands on his hips, a hard glare that made Biggs back up a step.
“Hospital Apprentice Second Class Biggs, you are to report to the quarter deck aft at 0700, for paint and barnacle removal duty.” Kincaid scanned the others, no one speaking. “Anyone else want to volunteer? We can always use more. Ah, Seaman Wakeman. Wondered where you ran off to. You are to report to holystoning detail, 0700, main deck, forward. The rest of you…get the hell out of my way!”
ONBOARD USS ARIZONA, AT SEA—TUESDAY, MARCH 11, 1941
Despite all the lessons from basic training, a part of him still expected salt air and sunshine. But he seemed to be learning a new lesson every hour. His first duty involved hanging from the port side of the ship, painting the hull. He learned quickly that the paint he was ordered to apply might be painted over again a week later. He also learned that the men who shared this duty came from nearly every kind of job on the ship, except of course for the petty officers. That was another lesson: Petty officers seemed to run everything, in every part of the ship, just as Wakeman had said. It seemed strange to Biggs that he rarely saw any of the actual officers, certainly not the captain. Biggs knew there were places off-limits to him—officer’s country certainly, as well as some of the more technical areas, from communications to fire control centers. As curious as he was, he knew there was almost no chance that he would ever see the bridge or the engine rooms.
With the ship now at sea, Biggs had reported to his posting, and was scheduled to spend seven hours on duty in sick bay. There was another lesson he was learning, that on the first day out of port, sick bay was busy, long lines of men suffering the aftereffects of whatever adventures they had enjoyed during their liberty. A simple hangover didn’t qualify a man to miss duty, so the doctor instructed Biggs to hand out aspirin and bicarbonate, the cure for nearly every ailment Biggs saw.
By late morning, the parade of misery had mostly passed. Biggs sat down for the first time at a small metal table. The doctor, Johnson, sat as well, said, “Busy morning. Some hooch joint in Honolulu must have had a sale on the fuel oil some of these guys drink. How about some coffee? I always have a pot going. It’s better than fuel oil, I promise. And, it’s better stuff than you’ll get with your chow.”
“No, thank you, sir. Never really drank it much. It was a little expensive for my mom to buy. We kinda did without a lot of that stuff.”
Johnson seemed surprised at the answer. “Where’re you from, Mr. Biggs?”
“Palatka, Florida, sir. Near Jacksonville.”
“Can’t say I’ve been there.”
“Can’t say anybody’s been there, sir.”
Both men laughed, and Johnson reached for the coffee pot. Biggs studied him, and Johnson seemed to notice, said, “You’re guessing the details, right?”
“Not sure what you mean, sir.”
“It’s all right. I’ll tell you. Been in the navy for nearly twenty-four years. My accent’s a lot like yours. I grew up in Alabama, a town just like your Palatka. Graduated from Randolph-Macon, then went through med school at Vanderbilt. That’s in Nashville. A few people have been through there. I turned fifty last year, and I made damn sure there was no party. Age is not something to be proud of, like a medal.”
Johnson drank from the cup, stared into the coffee, made a sour look. “Too long in the pot. Need to make a new one. Or, even better, teach you to do it.”
“Happy to, sir.”
“Maybe later. I’ll handle this one.” Johnson dumped the grounds out of the tin pot, bent low, retrieved a canister of coffee from a cabinet. He filled the container, then added water from a small sink, closed the pot. He switched on a hot plate, said, “One of life’s luxuries right here. The skipper allowed me to have it, since I insisted there were a good many medical reasons for me to heat water.”
Biggs appreciated the doctor’s humor, liked the man already.
Johnson rechecked the coffee pot, said, “I was assigned a new doctor couple weeks ago, not much older than you. Dan Condon. They only made him a lieutenant j/g, which seems a little nutty. He makes it all the way through Harvard Medical School and the navy puts him at the bottom of the damn ladder. Good doctor, I think, though he’s only twenty-six. Makes me feel older than hell. Of course, I’m a full-blown commander, so I outrank him all to pieces. But where it counts, we’re dead equals. Don’t you forget that. I have more years of experience, but he runs circles around me when it comes to new surgical techniques. You’ll meet him this afternoon, when he comes on duty. He’ll relieve me at fourteen hundred hours.” He paused. “So, you’re…nineteen?”
“Yes, sir.”
“High school diploma, right?”
“Yes, sir.”
“They wouldn’t have assigned you to sick bay otherwise. College degree and they make you an officer. I’ve known a good many high school graduat
es who are a hell of a lot better at command than some who have a sheepskin.” Johnson glanced at the coffee pot. “I’ve got ten pharmacist’s mates, most of them hoping to go to corpsman school. There are about fifteen corpsmen on the ship, but that number changes pretty often. That sound like something you’d like to do?”
“Maybe, sir. Not sure, not yet anyway.” The words rose up in his head. I just had to get away from home. “The navy gave me good pay, I can see the world, good food, all of that. And, it’s not the army.”
Johnson laughed. “So, you swallowed everything some recruiter fed you, eh? Did he tell you that you’d be scraping barnacles off the hull, or polishing every piece of wood on the ship?”
Biggs didn’t respond.
“I saw the duty sheets for this division, Mr. Biggs. I wondered why you hadn’t reported down here, saw they assigned you to breathe paint for a few hours. Surprised you didn’t stumble in here this morning, like the rest of those unfortunates.”
“I don’t understand, sir.”
Johnson laughed. “It’s called ‘paint drunk,’ Mr. Biggs. The paint they use on the hull has all sorts of wonderful chemicals in it. Has to, so it fights off the salt water and doesn’t peel off the ship. You breathe that stuff all day, it can give you a good punch in the head. Nothing to do but let it pass. Beats me why they make you boys do that. Some of the gunnery people, the mechanic’s mates, carpenters, firemen, the whole bunch of you. They probably told you they need to change the color on this ship maybe once a month. Blue, then gray, then white, then stripes for camouflage, then back to gray again. What color are we now? I’m waiting for purple.”
“Gray, sir. I did feel a little dizzy last night. Didn’t know why.”
“Now you know why. I’d like to make sure you stay in here with me more than out there, doing God knows what job. I’ll put the word in to see if I can exempt you from deck duties. They made me a commander, I guess I can act like one. You put in some good time here, and I’ll recommend you for promotion. I have an instinct for people, Mr. Biggs, and I think you’ll do just fine. You move up the ladder two more ratings, and you’ll officially be a petty officer. That qualifies you to be a pharmacist’s mate.”
Biggs absorbed the words, said, “Not sure I’d do well as a petty officer. Nobody seems to like ’em.”
Johnson laughed. “Nobody said you have to be one of those, Mr. Biggs. There are bullies and loudmouths everywhere in life. Don’t allow a simple promotion to change who you are. Just do your job, be yourself, and be decent to people.”
“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”
Johnson moved over to check the coffee maker, the water beginning to percolate.
“Hurry up, for crying out loud.” He looked toward Biggs now. “I was serious, what I said about the navy before. It’s good duty, and it should pay off for you down the road. You need to appreciate that you’re on one of the oldest and proudest battlewagons in the fleet. We have a good crew and a good skipper.” He wrapped a cloth around the handle of the coffee pot, poured a fresh cup. “It’s not quite ready, but I’m tired of waiting. You know, there’s talk that we might be sent to the Atlantic. That’s where the mess is. Rumors, anyway. I learned a long time ago, talk can be found anyplace you stick your ear.”
Johnson checked his watch. “I’ve got one of the mates, Mr. Vaughan, coming on duty in about twenty minutes. Some of the new men will be joining us when we return to Pearl. Transferring from other ships. I lost a couple of the mates a few weeks ago when their enlistments ran out. Not much I can do to make ’em stay if they don’t want to. You’ll be helping out all of us at one point or another. As long as there’s not some kind of plague spreading through the ship, it won’t be that difficult.”
He sipped carefully at the steaming cup. “Look, there’s not much to do down here right now. Tomorrow, either Dr. Condon or I will give you a serious tour of the facilities here, show you the ropes as best we can. Why don’t you go topside, take a good look around. Stay out of the way, though. And, if anybody questions what the hell you’re doing there, mention me.”
A sudden crash of thunder echoed through the bulkheads, the ship rolling slightly. Biggs jumped, felt a burst of panic, grabbed the table, steadying himself, said, “Good God…”
It came again, Biggs more prepared this time, a hollow rumble that bounced his stomach. He held a tight grip on the table, eyes on Johnson, who gave a sharp yelp, staring down at a spreading coffee stain on his shirt. Johnson blew out a long breath, said, “Well, that hurt like hell. Probably took the hair off my chest. Those fellows catch me every time, just as I’m about to drink from a cup of the hottest brew I’ve made all day. Damned if I don’t have to change another shirt.”
Biggs glanced around the sick bay, but nothing seemed damaged, no cabinets open.
Johnson smiled. “The big guns, Mr. Biggs, fourteen-inchers. Turret One is right above us. You’ll get used to it. One of the reasons we put to sea every week or so is the firing drills. They’re teaching the new fire control fellows how to do the job, the loaders, the men down in the magazines, all of it. You probably know all this, but we’re floating near thirty-two thousand tons. We’re hauling twelve fourteen-inch cannon, and they’ve got a range near twenty miles. Can you imagine that? We can hit targets none of us would ever see.” He paused. “I guess it’s unseemly for a doctor to talk like that. Although, blowing up things from so far away means the doc doesn’t have to deal with it.”
The big guns erupted again, the deck beneath Biggs’s feet bouncing, the ship rolling again.
Biggs waited for more, said, “Wow. I bet it’s really loud up top. Doc…um, sir, you think we’ll get to the shooting war? I know the fight’s in the Atlantic, and you’ve heard talk we might go there. But if we don’t…I mean, I look at this ship, all those others back in Pearl Harbor, and I think, well, there’s a whole lot of firepower, big-time weapons. It would sure do some good against the Germans. I’d just…hate to miss out.”
Johnson was pulling a fresh shirt from a small locker. “One piece of advice, Mr. Biggs. Don’t be in a hurry to go to war, no matter where you are. It’s never like you expect it to be. And something I learned from some of the men in my family, who fought in the Great War: Men march off to war. They don’t march home. If you survive a real war, you’ll come home a very different man. Even on a ship like this one, don’t ever convince yourself that war is easy, or that it’s an adventure. The reason I’m here in this sick bay is not just to pass out aspirin to the drunk and penicillin to the reckless. We have bandages and tourniquets, morphine and operating kits. That drawer over there? There’s an amputation saw. War can be a bloody horror, Mr. Biggs. Even on a battleship.”
EIGHT
Yamamoto
ONBOARD BATTLESHIP NAGATO, ARIAKE BAY, JAPAN—THURSDAY, APRIL 10, 1941
“I offer you most genuine congratulations, Mr. Fukudome.”
Fukudome bowed. “It has been my honor to serve as your chief of staff. But the Naval Ministry has offered me an opportunity that I cannot ignore. I hope you understand, sir.”
Yamamoto sat back, said, “What exactly is your new title?”
Fukudome inflated a little, with obvious pride. “Sir, they have assigned me as chief of the First Bureau. I will answer only to Admiral Nagano.”
Yamamoto knew the details already, but he allowed Fukudome his moment, perhaps the only time the chief of staff would be allowed to impress his commander.
“Serve him well. You will, of course.”
Fukudome bowed again, no words, and Yamamoto saw emotion on the man’s face. Yamamoto stood, said, “Now go. There need be no ceremony here. You have earned your new post, and you must not disappoint.”
“Thank you, sir.”
Fukudome exited the wardroom and Yamamoto leaned forward, resting his hands on the wide table. Perhaps you will serve Admiral Nagano better than you have serve
d me. Nagano is old, not long for the service, and he requires sharp minds around him. Perhaps I am old as well. How long will it be before they begin to speak of me as a mindless old fool? Some already do, no doubt about that. After all, I have strange and dangerous ideas, I dare to insult the old ways. Even some of the new ways—the insanity of the alliance with the Germans.
He had known of several plots to kill him, most of them clumsy, amateur assassins attempting to barge into his office, knives at the ready. But no one in the high command ever claimed responsibility for those threats. Yamamoto suspected the efforts came from farther down the navy’s chain of command. There were an increasing number of younger officers who embraced the army’s style of aggressiveness, or even something more extreme, actively promoting a more rigid loyalty to Germany. They kept mostly to themselves, their politics too radical for their superiors to tolerate. But their number was growing, alarming the highest levels of command. As a moderate, Yamamoto was a tempting target. Despite the clumsiness of the attempts to harm him, many above and around him were concerned that at any moment another attempt might be made on his life, perhaps the next time by someone more professional.
He stared at the entryway to the wardroom, smiled. At least, he thought, if there are assassins here, they would have to be from the crew, and that is called mutiny. I doubt that has happened before in this navy. No, I am at risk only if I am elsewhere. And why? Because I object to outdated strategies? Because I do not scream at newspaper reporters about our place in the world, how we must vanquish our enemies? Because I do none of those things, they send assassins to eliminate me?
He pondered the word. “They.” Who are they, exactly? It would be easy to assume it is the army. There are those who actually believe Japan will be best served if the army and navy engage in a civil war, fighting for supremacy, seeking to gain favor with the emperor by their strength alone. The navy would not win that fight. The army controls too much, and has far greater influence over the government and the citizenry through its ability to create fear, to spread propaganda that serves its purposes. So how would we fight the army? Sail our great ships into Tokyo Bay and destroy the city? Who thinks of such things? And yet, if I speak out, if any of us who are more moderate speak out, we will still be targets, fearing men in dark alleys who carry knives.
