BRAT and the Kids of Warriors

by Michael Joseph Lyons

  Commander Allen’s chair squeaked as it swiveled around, bringing Jack back to full attention.

  The commander said, “Jack, and ladies, how are you today? Doesn’t look like your mother made it up here with you.”

  Leave it to Rabbit to blurt out, “Nope—she’s still barfin’.”

  And leave it to Queenie to intervene smoothly. “Actually, Commander Allen, she would have loved to have been here. She asked me to pass on her regrets. What Kristen was trying to say, sir, is that Mom is a bit under the weather.”

  “Tell her I hope she feels better and we see her at dinner tonight.” Then, looking right at Jack, he said, “Let me introduce you to Master Chief Petty Officer Cramer. He is my AB, which, by the way, means Able Bodied Seaman. He is my lookout.”

  The kids all shook hands with Chief Cramer.

  He studied Jack. “You’re pretty good at math if you figured out how to convert knots to miles per hour. One day maybe you’ll be sitting in a chair like this. Would you like to be a boat driver?”

  “It certainly looks fascinating, and, well, a bit complicated,” said Jack, studying all the electronics, switches, levers, and scopes.

  Footsteps sounded on the metal catwalk.

  Commander Allen glanced around and said, “Jack, let me introduce you to Alexander Knox. His dad is Commander Knox. He and his family are also being transferred to Germany. Commander Knox is an old friend of mine, and I wanted you boys to meet.”

  Everyone nodded hello. The kid looked just a little older than Jack.

  “Alex, we were just starting to talk about how things work around here. And, yes, Jack, it does take a lot of training,” said Allen. “Here’s how we operate. I’m called the OOW, which means the Officer of the Watch. From this seat I have tactical command of the ship. I drive and the chief, as I said, is my lookout.”

  “Are you the captain of the ship?” asked Rabbit.

  “No,” said Commander Allen, with a bit of a smile, “but as OOW, it is usually my duty to sit in the captain’s chair to drive the ship. There are times when the captain takes the seat to drive during critical maneuvers. At other times he is up here on the bridge to observe us as we do our jobs.”

  “What’s an example of a critical maneuver?” Jack asked.

  “When we come into the port of Bremerhaven. The captain will make sure we safely navigate around other ships in the channel. We’ll slow down as we get close to port. When we’re about a mile out, a small boat will come alongside and a pilot will come on board.”

  “An airline pilot?” asked Rabbit. Queenie’s glare communicated, You’re too young for this conversation, so keep your big trap shut.

  “No, not an airline pilot,” said Allen, again smiling at Rabbit. “He’ll be a harbor pilot. We’ll lower a long, narrow set of stairs called the accommodation ladder, which is suspended over the side of the ship. It allows someone to board the Upshur from another boat. Have you seen the metal staircase hanging off the starboard side of the ship?”

  The three McMasterses nodded yes.

  Jack noticed that Alex didn’t bother nodding, but his expression said he’d seen it a million times. Probably because his dad was Navy and he’d been around ships his whole life. Not like Jack, who was just figuring out that sailors called narrow staircases ladders.

  “The pilot will jump from his boat onto those stairs and come aboard the Upshur. Once on the bridge, he’ll help the captain get the ship safely navigated through the harbor. Ports like Bremerhaven are very big and crowded. The pilot spends his whole life getting everything from large naval ships, to cargo ships, to small boats, safely in and out of the harbor. It’s his job to get us safely docked up. That, Jack, is what we call a critical maneuver.”

  “I see, sir,” Jack said.

  “If you want to be an OOW or AB, you need to understand not only all this equipment, but how it relates to the inner workings of the engine room, as well as everything else on the ship. Our steam-turbine engines crank one giant shaft, which turns the two propellers that drive this ship. But they really have to crank, because this ship is 533 feet long, and she weighs over 11,200 tons. If we want to make nineteen knots, the engines have to generate 13,500 horsepower. Understanding how everything works on this ship takes years of training.”

  Looking around, Jack said, “I don’t see any gas pedal, or break, like in a car. So how do you speed up or stop?”

  “For that, we communicate with the engine room,” said Commander Allen.

  “With a telephone?”

  “No. We certainly have a telephone as well as a speaker system that we can broadcast over, but for controlling the ship we use the engine telegraph. This round device with the big levers lets us communicate the speed we want: stop, stand-by, slow, half, full, etc. We use it to transfer precise orders from this bridge to the engine control room to change speed or direction.”

  “Keen-o,” Jack said, loving its precision.

  Alex pointed to an electronic screen. “Is this the radar scope?”

  The commander nodded. To Jack he said, “Do you see how the green line circles around the scope? That’s the electronic read coming in from that radar tower over there.” He pointed out the window to a pole coming up out of the ship with a rectangular panel spinning on top of it. “This gives us a view of anything in the skies around us. See that little green blip on the screen? That tells us that there’s an aircraft flying off our starboard side.”

  Everyone stared out the windows looking for the plane.

  “But I don’t see a plane,” said Queenie, confused.

  “No, you wouldn’t,” said the commander. “Look at the screen and the rings coming out from the center of the scope. The green blip is out just beyond the fourth ring. Each ring is a mile. That plane is more than four miles out from us. The human eye can’t see that far, but the radar can see fifty miles in any direction, even in fog. It’s our eyes in the skies.”

  Alex walked over to the other scope. “So this one’s the sonar?”

  “Sure is. Think of it as a radar scope, but instead of being our eyes in the skies, it’s our eyes under the water. You still have the green line going around, refreshing the images on the screen. And you still have rings going out, telling us how far away things are. For example, this sonar would let us know if a submarine were tracking us. Not something we worry much about today, so most transport ships don’t have sonar, but this one does.”

  “Commander, you might want to have a look at this,” Chief Cramer interrupted. He pointed to the sonar screen. Quite near the ship were three small, very faint blips.

  Commander Allen mused, “They’re too small to be ships of any real size and they’re not showing up very brightly on the screen.” He sounded casual, but his eyes never left the scope; the three blips became five blips and seemed to be closing in on the ship.

  “Interesting.” The chief sounded more intrigued than worried. “It’s unlikely a seagoing vessel that small would be out this far. If I am not mistaken, they’re whales. Given our current location, I’d guess we have right whales off our port side.”

  The kids hurried to the window but couldn’t make them out.

  “What’s a right whale?” Alex asked.

  Everyone looked at the chief, who seemed to know the most.

  “Let’s see. They’re definitely large whales, and it seems to me they’re normally black, with whitish patches on their heads and bellies. Anyway, sightings of them are getting rare these days, because whalers hunted them almost to extinction. But sometimes you can still spot them in the North Atlantic.”

  “Why do they call them right whales?” Queenie asked.

  The chief rubbed his chin. “If I remember correctly, they got their name from the whalers who figured they were the ‘right’ whales to hunt. You see, when killed, instead of sinking to the bottom of the ocean, they remain afloat
. Also, they would come close to boats, because they’re naturally curious and friendly. You know, today might just be your lucky day to spot them.”

  “Let’s get down on deck and see ’em!” exploded Rabbit.

  It was pretty clear Rabbit was getting ready to bolt, and that the other kids were eager to whale watch. Commander Allen obviously knew when he was upstaged. “Excellent idea. Go check it out, and let me know if you spot any. I’ll see you all at dinner tonight.”

  They hurriedly thanked the commander for showing them the bridge and were out of there in a flash. Rabbit, as usual, was in the lead, screaming, “Which one’s the port side? Which way do we go?”

  Jack was trying to remember port from starboard when Alex streaked by, yelling, “This way—follow me!”

  They bounded out onto the deck where they’d had their spittin’ contest. This time, four kids leaned over the rail of the rolling ship. The swells were a pleasant five or six feet, and the sky, though gray, was clear of rain. They all stared over the gunnel. Nothing but ocean.

  “This is Nowheresville,” Queenie said.

  “Be patient,” Jack said. “I have this odd feeling they’ll show up.”

  So they stared out into the gray for the longest time. No whales.

  Finally Alex offered up, “My dad says that sometimes when you see everything, you see nothing.”

  “What does that mean?” Queenie demanded. You’d think it was the dumbest thing she’d ever heard.

  But Alex didn’t seem the least put off by her, perhaps because they were about the same age. He just went on explaining some expert advice that might help in the situation, without seeming to care if she thought he was crazy. In that respect, he was a lot like Jack.

  “We’re looking out at this big ocean, and we don’t see anything. Right?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” said Jack.

  “My dad says if you try and do that, you’re likely to miss what you’re looking for. The Navy uses a trick called grid search. You imagine the ocean has crisscrossed lines on it, like a bunch of tic-tac-toe lines. Then you search one little section of the grid at a time. Get it?”

  “Yeah, I guess so,” said Jack. “Break it down into squares and look for the whales in one square at a time. Right?”

  “You got it.”

  They all tried that for a while. Still nothing.

  Jack mused, “The bridge of the Upshur was pretty righteous.”

  “Definitely,” said Alex.

  Queenie started chanting, “Upshur, Upshur, Upshur, Upshur. Ever notice that the longer you repeat a word, the stranger it sounds?” She resumed, “Upshur, Upshur, Upshur . . .”

  They all started saying it.

  “Upshur, Upshur, Upshur . . .

  “Upshur, Upshur, Upshur, Upshur . . .

  “Upshur, Upshur . . .”

  They started laughing as it began to sound more and more bizarre.

  “Upshur, UPSHUR, U-P-S-H-U-R, Up Shur . . .”

  “What a crazy name,” said Queenie. “What in the world does it mean?”

  Alex said, “Maybe upchuck, like in barf, puke, ralph, upchuck. I mean, think about it. What do most people do on this ship? They upchuck. And it sounds like Upshuuuurrrrrrr—you know shuuuurrrrrrr, like the noise you make when you’re puking.”

  Jack jumped in. “The Navy started out with the USS YOU’RE FOR SURE GONNA PUKE, but figured that name was too long, so they shortened it to Upshuuuurrrrrrr.”

  Queenie nodded. “That’s probably what happened. Except the name was still too long, so they settled on the code word Upshur. That way passengers would come aboard not knowing they were on the greatest puke machine ever invented.”

  “So the USS Puke became the USS Upshur,” Alex said. They all started chanting, “Upshur, Upshur, Upshur . . .”

  Jack waved his arms to cut off the symphony. “We’re wrong. Here’s the real story: The ship rocks so much, the first crew thought the ship would roll right over and drown ’em, so the Navy renamed it Upforsure to convince them they weren’t gonna die.”

  Laughing, they changed their chant to “Up? Sure! . . . Up? Sure! . . . Up? Sure! . . .”

  Eventually, the cold North Atlantic wind pushed them along the deck toward the rear of the ship. At that point, the girls complained they were frozen and went inside, but Jack and Alex decided on one more grid search. Just as they’d made up their minds to quit, it happened. Jack was on his third-to-last grid square when, for just an instant, he saw a massive tail flip above the surface of the water. Then it disappeared.

  Jack shouted, “Did you see that?”

  “Where?”

  “Right over there,” pointed Jack. Tracing the grid with both arms, he showed Alex how to find the spot. “It’s about three grid squares—”

  “I see him!” Alex yelled. “Honest to God, I just saw him! Did ya see the size of that tail?”

  Just as quickly as the whale had appeared, any chance of its return seemed to vanish. But both boys knew it was headed for the rear of the ship.

  “We’ve gotta find a way to see astern,” said Alex. “How, I don’t know.”

  “Astern?” Jack asked.

  “Behind the ship. We need a way to see out of the rear of this ship.”

  “I know one,” screamed Jack, and he took off running. “Follow me!”

  With Alex on his heels, Jack re-entered the ship. Grabbing onto the ladder railings, he slid down on his hands, feet never touching a stair.

  Jack yelled over his shoulder, “That grid-search stuff really works!” Two more quick turns and he raced into the mess facility.

  Alex still had no idea where they were headed. He just made it his business to keep up.

  Jack raced across the dining area and through the double doors into the galley. Halfway across the kitchen, in the midst of all the clatter and chaos of Navy cooks putting the final touches on lunch, he ran right into Chef Porteaux. Wrong time for kids to show up; the lunch crowd would be there in fifteen, and he still had a lot to do.

  “Chef Porteaux, there’s a school of whales astern and we’re headed out there to see them.”

  It was obvious the chef was not buying their story and was about to throw them out.

  “I’ll go with them and check it out, Chef,” said a voice from behind them. Ernie.

  Rolling his eyes as if in no mood to deal with this, the chef nodded his okay to Ernie. They headed for the rear of the galley.

  Within seconds, Chef Porteaux yelled, “Hold up!”

  Jack’s heart stopped. He was sure if they didn’t get there soon they’d miss the whales entirely.

  But instead of changing his orders, Chef Porteaux simply said, “Chief Steward, I seriously doubt there are whales in these waters, but just in case there are, come and get me.”

  Ernie saluted.

  The three trekked through the galley, the store, and the garbage corridor to get out onto the back deck.

  As they hurried, Jack said, “Ernie, this is my friend, Alex.”

  “Nice to meet ya, Alex. Any friend of Jack’s is a friend of mine.”

  “So what’s the real story, Jack?” Ernie asked, once outside, looking at the empty ocean.

  Jack just stood there, staring out at the big Atlantic. “Faith, Ernie. Have a little faith.”

  Sure enough, a couple moments later, Ernie saw a massive, black whale pop his head out of the water. The giant beast couldn’t have been any farther away than a pitcher is from home plate. His head immediately vanished, but his back rolled up above the churning water of the ship’s wake, as he blew twin streams of water. They seemed to come from two different spouts on top of his head.

  Ernie looked stunned. “I think I better go get Chef.”

  As if out of nowhere, not one, but five right whales surfaced off the rear of the ship. The boys could only
stare.

  It didn’t take long before they were joined by Chef Porteaux and a bunch of the mess cooks, who shared their awe of this fabulous display of nature. Jack was relieved the whales weren’t in any hurry to leave. They seemed to know they’d drawn a crowd. And they certainly seemed to like playing in the ship’s wake.

  It dawned on Jack that he needed to notify Commander Allen. He leaned over to Alex and said, “I’ll be right back.”

  “Where you going?”

  “I gotta get back up to the bridge and let them know we’ve spotted the whales.”

  “That will take forever and they may be gone by then. Let’s see if Chef Porteaux can call up to the bridge.”

  Jack was both surprised and pleased when Chef Porteaux agreed to let the commander know. Somehow, even the girls managed to get the word where to come. Minutes after they showed up, Commander Allen arrived with a very special spectator, the ship’s captain, who studied the whales intently. Turning, the captain smiled down at Jack and Alex. “Commander Allen tells me you two are the sharp-eyed boys who first spotted these whales.”

  They both said, “Yes, sir.”

  “Nice to meet you,” said the captain, shaking hands with Jack and Alex. “And nice find, boys. I don’t know if you realize it, but this is a rare sight. This is the first time I’ve seen the right whales in more than twenty transatlantic crossings.”

  “You bring all the soldiers to Germany?” asked Rabbit, eyes wide.

  “No, young lady.” The captain smiled down at her. “One ship could never transport all the troops needed in Germany. We have over fifty Army, Navy, and Air Force bases there, with more troops than anywhere else in the world. You’re going to a very exciting place.”

  Jack and Alex eyed each other.

  The captain turned to Chef Porteaux and said, “Why don’t you have someone bring us some roast-beef sandwiches and Cokes, so we can have a little lunch out here, while we watch.”

  And that’s how the kids came to have lunch with the captain of the ship.

  Everyone was mesmerized by the whales playing in the foam.

  “Hey, that’s funny. That one over there has a giant mustache in his mouth,” blurted Rabbit.