The 81mm mortar up on deck began thumping out illumination rounds. Then I remembered they’d taken the four torpedo tubes off the command boat. When those illum rounds started popping, only we would be clearly illuminated. For the first time that night, I thought this was it. Higgins had been right. Crazy to come out here.
Cogswell directed the radar operator to change frequencies to the one used by American surface forces around Guadalcanal, and then began calling.
“Range is eight thousand, five,” the operator said. Four miles, I thought. Surely whoever was coming could see us now. Cogswell kept calling out on the new frequency.
“Range is six thousand, nine,” the operator said. “I think they’re slowing down.”
At that moment the green light on the face of the radio transmitter went red. Cogswell keyed it twice, swore and then flung the handset onto the plotting table.
“Fire six more illum rounds,” he yelled up to the mortar crew. I decided it was time to go topside. If a Jap cruiser was about to eat us alive, I wanted to see it. The mortar hurt my ears as it blasted six more illumination rounds into the black sky. When the first one popped, I saw the bow of a large, dark gray ship looming up out of the gloom. Then I saw small white numerals just below the anchors.
American. Now the question was: did they know we were American?
Apparently, they did, because the ship, a totally darkened destroyer, slipped past us at only about 500 yards, followed by two more destroyers and then the cruisers. Cogswell never did make radio contact and the column formation steamed past us as if we didn’t exist. The final flares burned out and we were alone in the dark, rolling uncomfortably from the passing wakes. I started breathing again. Cogswell came topside and looked around.
“Okay,” he said, brightly, as if nothing had happened. “Let’s head back and figure out what the hell happened out here tonight. Is there any coffee?”
We got back to the base an hour and a half later. Everyone involved convened in the command bunker for a debrief. Everyone, that was, except the skipper of the 415 boat. She hadn’t been heard from ever since that last frantic transmission: Japs, Japs, Japs! I joined the after-action debrief. I didn’t know what time it was, but it almost didn’t matter. I was feeling a little bit ashamed of myself for having been scared to death. These guys had been going out, night after night, since August of last year, experiencing the same kind of dangerous confusion we’d been through tonight. And often with the same results. I sat back in a corner, not wanting to intrude.
The first order of business for the commodore was to send out a couple of boats to find the 415 and to notify Cactus that we had a boat missing north and west of Cape Esperance. While the skippers were noisily rehashing the night’s operation, Chief Higgins popped his head in and signaled that we needed to talk. I went outside into what looked like morning twilight.
Higgins had interesting news. A transport had come into Tulagi just after sundown. The harbormaster had dispatched a Mike boat to our base on Santa Isabel with four pallets of medical supplies and replacement equipment. The Mike boat’s skipper, a boatswain mate first class, had told Higgins that the Japs had vamoosed from Guadalcanal. The Army was still chasing down some lone Jap patrols up near the Cape and in the mountains, but the main Jap army was nowhere to be seen. Word was that the whole American force would be shifting north to someplace called Munda on New Georgia Island. As far as Guadalcanal was concerned, we’d won and now the Japs were falling back on their bases to the north.
I told him to come with me into the command center, where he told Cogswell and the assembled skippers the news. Cogswell was bemused. “How the hell did they manage that?” he wondered.
No one had an answer to that question, but one of the skippers asked if this meant we’d be moving again. “Absolutely,” Cogswell said. “Munda is over a hundred miles from here. The Japs have an airfield there. They’re gonna want us closer than that.”
“Who’s ‘they’?” Deacon wondered aloud. “That cruiser-destroyer force went by us tonight like we were just local fishermen. They wouldn’t even talk to us. I’m starting to wonder why the hell we’re even out here.”
I saw Cogswell cringe a little when Deacon said that. The expressions on the skippers’ faces confirmed that Deacon wasn’t alone in thinking that our squadron was just plain superfluous in the eyes of the Navy command structure.
Cogswell sighed and then told everyone to go get some rest. He instructed the radio operators to keep him informed as to the search for the 415 boat. Chief Higgins slipped away with the departing skippers, leaving me alone with Cogswell. I was more than ready to go climb up into my tree but decided that the commodore might appreciate some company. A screamer would have been welcome but the fixings were all locked up. Even the coffeepot on the side table was cold. With the meeting over, the radio operators turned out the lights and retired to their annex.
“Can’t say as I blame ’em,” he said as we sat there in the dark. “I sometimes wonder the same thing. And yet they loved us when we tore up that barge convoy.”
“That night you produced results,” I said. “Tonight was a bust.”
“Ow,” he muttered.
“Meaning no disrespect, Commodore,” I said. “I’m just the squadron doctor. But you got results when you did the planning and rehearsing. Last night we cobbled up a plan and went on out there. I think we’re lucky our big guys didn’t open fire as soon as we came up on their radars. I was scared shitless out there, to be honest.”
Cogswell grunted. “Me, too,” he admitted. “But sometimes we don’t have the luxury of a couple days of planning. Like the 415 boat—he probably ran into the Jap destroyer squadron that was taking out the last of the Jap army. We all assumed it would be a barge effort until the end, but, no, the Japs sent every destroyer they could get their hands on and they by-God pulled it off.”
“Well, then, that’s not our fault, Commodore,” I said. “We were sent out to attack barges. Nobody bothered to inform the Japs that they were supposed to be using barges.”
He laughed, but it was a bitter sound.
“We’re gonna have to carve out our own mission out here,” I said. “And the basis for that is to make ourselves useful, if not essential.”
“Useful how?” he asked.
“That’s for us to figure out, Captain, ’cause the big-ship Navy ain’t gonna do that for us. We’re the Hooligan Navy, remember?”
“We’re the Hooligan Navy because no one owns us, so we’ve had to become goddamn pirates just to survive.”
“Survival was the watchword for 1942,” I said. “This is 1943. America is going on offense. If we want to be part of that, we have to be useful. We have to offer something that the big ships can’t or don’t want to do. Like search-and-rescue for downed pilots. Landing frogmen behind enemy lines. Scouting for minefields—our boats are made of wood; mines eat steel. Hit-and-run raids against enemy bases and outposts. Eyes and ears in the coves, the inlets, and river mouths, where the Japs hide from our aviators. Laying mines in places they’d never expect.”
“Those aren’t missions for boats with torpedoes,” he said.
“You said we were going to get rid of the torpedoes,” I replied. “You were right the first time: we have no business engaging in street fights with cruisers and destroyers. But: we can make life absolute hell for the Japs by just being there when they think they’re safe because none of our cruisers and destroyers are around. They’ll have to have bases just like this one, out of the way, improvised havens, where they can refuel, repair, regroup. Where they know our big guys can’t physically get at them. And then a couple of our guys appear and shoot the place up while they’re having sake and some rice. Think Nathan Bedford Forrest and his professional joy at putting a ‘skeer’ into the Yanks.”
“You make a lot of military sense for a doc,” he muttered.
“That’s because I was gonna be an historian, a Civil War historian. I belonged to a Civil War hist
ory club in premed. We went to battlefields all over the South. Endlessly fascinating, along with the problems of command, military competency, weak generals, strong generals. The problems of the MTB force aren’t new.”
“Jeez, Doc. I thought I knew what I was doing when I came here. I was gonna straighten this outfit up and do some damage.”
“And you did, the first time. The second time the enemy exercised that well-known vote. From my perspective, the Japs are the worst kind of enemy: merciless, fanatic, competent in the field, and willing to die if that’s what it takes. Plus, they’ve been at this since 1937. We’re the new guys on the field.”
“I know in my heart that we are going to defeat them,” he said. “I just know it. I may not live to see it, but things are changing.”
“Yes, sir, I think you’re right. Last year we were all on our asses, just starting to fight back, Midway not withstanding. But then more and more of our ships were sunk. Carriers, cruisers, destroyers. When I told that Aussie doctor what I’d been doing as a surgeon since August, he was dumfounded. You remember the old Speedy Gonzales joke, where he tells the guy whose throat he just cut, this won’t hurt, did it? That’s where I think we are right now: the Japs haven’t yet realized that they’ve invoked the Apocalypse. I think you need to go to Nouméa.”
“Nouméa?” he exclaimed. “And what, go have a drink with Halsey?”
“No, sir, go see his staff. You’re the CO of the forward-most MTB squadron. You want to know how we can best help with what’s coming, and when they say: uh, how’s about you tell us? Then tell ’em.”
He nodded. “Yup,” he said. “Makes sense.”
“Second thing: we need an advocate at headquarters. We need an admiral who’ll assign us missions and also get us the support we need. U.S. Grant was something of an orphan until Shiloh. That was the battle that shocked the nation because of the casualties. People were accusing this nobody Grant of being drunk on that first day. You know what Lincoln did? As horrendously bloody as that battle was, Lincoln asked somebody to find out what it was Grant was supposed to have been drinking, and then ordered that a case of that whiskey be sent to every one of his generals.”
“Doc,” he said. “You’re making perfect sense. I’m just not sure that I can make that good of a case. If I do this, you want to come with me?”
“Halsey’s staff would never listen to a mere doctor,” I said. “But with the Japs evacuating north, shouldn’t we have a little breather before they move us? My patient load is light right now. I could, I don’t know, write something up for you.”
He thought about that, but then his eyes closed and his head began to sag. I realized he was very tired. So was I, for that matter, but I sensed this was important. The unhelpful specter of the 415 boat hung accusingly in the air. I waited for a few minutes and then quietly left him to sleep. The sun was about to come up outside, so I walked down to the mess tent and cadged a coffee and a biscuit. I left the tent and walked down to where one of the boats was tied up to a palm tree on the beach. I sat down on a nearby stump, drank my coffee, and watched the boats grudgingly come to life. The scene was so peaceful I almost expected to see a six-pack of Bettys swooping in. I did notice that the nearest boat had uncovered the 20 mm cannon back aft and that there was a gunner enjoying his morning coffee—but in the gunner’s seat.
I thought about what to gin up for the skipper. It had to make military sense if he was going to get anywhere with a headquarters staff. I asked myself what outfits in the Civil War were analogous to the MTBs, and the answer came immediately. Light cavalry. Southern light cavalry, to be specific. Excellent horsemen even before the war, they were all volunteers, young, fit, used to riding fast and light, many of them foxhunters jumping hedgerows and ditches, and whose main mission was to scout out the enemy’s heavy formations and rob the supply train if they could for food and ammo. Union cavalry were more like today’s tank regiments, with organic supply trains and even some light artillery. The newsreels of 1939 had been full of German tank divisions, whose size, armament, and menacing appearance made the boxy, clunky British and French tanks look like toys. The Reb light horse was more like a bunch of Comanches, small units skilled in the art of the raid. Just like the MTBs should be.
So: start with that. PT boats were already being used for some of those missions when nothing else was available, especially downed pilot rescue. That wouldn’t have worked at Midway, way out in the vast, open ocean, but now that the American Navy was grappling with the Japs among the Pacific island chains and joining forces with Army and Marine units, there’d certainly be a need. Even in my business: on an island, even a big island, you needed a fast boat to take your wounded off the front line and get them to an aid station. At Guadalcanal, shattered ships would crawl back to Cactus, who would send out amphibious boats left over from the initial invasion, slow but with a lot of capacity, to get the wounded off before the ship went down, like the USS Atlanta did, right offshore. But now, as we headed north, there probably wouldn’t be amphibious task forces lingering around beachheads, not with Fortress Rabaul and the Japanese 2nd Air Army within much closer striking range. A plan began to take shape, and I decided to get it down on paper before I forgot it all.
FOURTEEN
Three days later, the commodore caught a hop down to Nouméa from Henderson Field. The deputy chief of staff for operations had agreed to see him and listen to his proposal for a new mission for the MTBs. He left at 0530 from Cactus for the six-hour flight. That afternoon, Deacon was summoned to the bunker to decrypt a message from Nouméa. Several of the skippers and I waited anxiously for Deacon to crank through the laborious process of uncorking the message. He was clearly angry when he finally emerged from the code room.
“I just don’t get it,” he said. “The commodore is on his way down there right now to lay out a new and different mission for the squadron. This—” He waved the message at us. “This is a new mission for the squadron, along with orders for another base move. I ask you: what the hell, over?”
“What’s the new mission?” one of the skippers asked.
“We’re to go to a new pontoon pier the Seabees are building on Lunga Point over on Cactus. Then we’ll support the Army security forces remaining on Cactus as they find and eliminate the remnants of the Jap army still there.”
“How the hell do we support that mission?”
“I don’t know,” Deacon said. “Maybe take army patrols around the coasts of Guadalcanal and insert them where they think Japs might be hiding out. I’m sure some general will tell us.”
“While everybody else goes north with the real war,” another skipper said, somewhat bitterly. “That’s garrison duty. In the rear, with the gear.”
“Sounds like it,” Deacon said. “We must have really pissed off whoever was in charge of that cruiser group.”
Personally, I thought that was likely. There’d probably been an admiral riding one of those cruisers and he’d told Nouméa to get those damned PT boats out of the real navy’s way.
“Any word on the 415 boat?” someone asked.
Deacon shook his head. “She just disappeared. Hell, if Mickey blundered into an entire group of Jap destroyers…”
He didn’t have to finish. I recalled someone saying that PT boats couldn’t really be sunk because they were made of wood. Unless they burned.
It got worse. The next day we received a message from headquarters that Commander Cogswell was being detached and ordered back to the States to take command of a brand-new heavy cruiser in his new rank as a four-striper. Our new commanding officer would be one Lieutenant Commander Stede Rackham, USN. He was en route to the headquarters on Nouméa for in-briefing and then would be here in about a week.
Weedy Tucker, one of the skippers, sat up when he heard the name. “Stede Rackham?” he exclaimed. “Good Lord, that’s Bluto.”
Everybody looked at him. Bluto? Popeye the Sailor Man’s outsize, bearded nemesis in the cartoon strip?
Tucker was shaking his head in wonder. “Bluto. I can’t believe it. Well, I guess I can. Now it really does sound like we’re being banished. And I’ll bet Bluto is, too. Wow. Wow. Wow.”
“You obviously know this guy,” someone said, impatiently. “So: give.”
“I first met him when I was a plebe and he was a company officer back at the boat school,” Weedy said. “Even then he was a pretty unconventional character. I forget which class he is, but he was a varsity football player as a Mid. Then we were shipmates on the Lexington when I was a boot ensign on my first sea tour. I was in the engineering department. He was the ordnance officer in charge of all the ammunition and the ship’s magazines.”
“Character-schmaracter,” Deacon said. “What’s he like?”
“He’s big,” Weedy said. “Correction: he’s huge. Defensive lineman huge. Sometimes things would start to bog down when the ship was trying to get a launch off because his red-shirts got behind, you know, hanging the ordnance. Rackham would come up out onto the flight deck and personally start lifting and hanging bombs that usually took three guys to lift, all the while calling his red-shirts ninety-pound weaklings. Once the launch got off, he’d hand out cans of spinach, which was pretty funny. I think that’s probably where the Bluto stuff started. The enlisted guys loved him; most of the wardroom officers just shook their heads.”
“So how does somebody get command with a background like that?” I asked.
“You know, Weedy may be right,” Deacon said. “Looks to me like somebody senior rescued Commander Cogswell from career oblivion, and now they’re sending this guy because he, like the PT boats, is a problem.”
“Maybe,” Tucker said. “But as I remember it, Rackham got a Navy Cross for something he did at Pearl when the Japs hit. There was a story about him leading a team of divers and welders into the hull of one of the overturned battleships and getting some guys out of the engineering spaces. I gotta say—if he’s our new boss, we won’t be dropping off Army patrols over on Cactus for very long.”
The Hooligans Page 14
