The frogmen

by Robb White

  The incoming lists of dead and wounded gave every day a pall of sadness. At first there was confusion and disorganization and anger, but as the months went by and Current Deaths got itself straightened out and Miss Belchess built her little kingdom of people and the old commander sat watching the funerals, it was time for Amos to go.

  Amos had simply asked the commander to let him go—just take the fat orange pen and sign something that would allow him to go to sea. But each time he asked, the commander would discuss it with Miss Belchess, who would point out that the organization chart for Current Deaths called for two ensigns.

  In compliance with Navy Regulations, Amos had then submitted written official requests properly addressed to the Chief of Naval Personnel:

  subject: Sea duty, request for.

  l. I request that I be transferred to sea duty in any ship in any ocean.

  (Signed)

  Amos Wainwright.

  Such requests required an endorsement by his immediate superior, and so the commander took the fat pen and always wrote:

  FIRST ENDORSEMENT

  1. Not approved.

  2. This officer performs his duties in his present assignment with such outstanding ability, devotion and intelligence that his work is considered essential to the war effort.

  And that was as far as his requests got; they never even left the room. Miss Belchess took sadistic pleasure in dropping them back on his desk, saying with a smile, "We can't all be heroes, can we, Ensign?"

  By the time the Navy had recovered from its defeat at Pearl Harbor and had begun to move in the Pacific, Amos was growing desperate. All his classmates in NROTC were either already at sea or were in flight training at Pensacola.

  When the long lists of dead men began coming in

  from the Battle of the Coral Sea, two of Amos' classmates among them, he had confronted the commander with another, and stronger, request.

  "Please listen to me, sir," he had said as the commander sat with his feet on the window sill watching a funeral. "Things are all organized in here now, sir. It's just routine. Anybody—a 4-F or some handicapped person who wants to help—anybody can do my work as well as I do."

  "Well, now," the commander said without missing a detail of the funeral, "we couldn't do that. You're a vital part of my organization; you're very essential."

  Amos took a deep breath to calm himself and then said, "Commander, Navy Regulations say that a request for transfer has to go to the Chief of Naval Personnel. It can't be stopped along the line, no matter what the endorsement on it is. The trouble is, sir, that my requests never get past you. Don't you think that's a violation of Navy Regs?"

  The commander didn't answer until the gun salute at the funeral was over. Then he said, "Well, now, son, there's a war on, you know. And so we have to break some of our little rules. Got to get this war won, you know." He swiveled around and smiled. "What we're doing in Current Deaths is just as much a part of winning the war as being out there shooting the guns, son. And you do such good work, Amos, such outstanding work, that I just can't let you go."

  "But anybody could do it!"

  "No. You're really essential here. Miss Belchess couldn't get along without you."

  Amos turned slowly away and walked back to his desk.

  He decided that Friday afternoon would be the best time, because on Fridays the commander was even more careless than usual about the papers he signed.

  All week long Amos picked his men carefully, judging each selection on whom the man worked for and how much trouble it would cause.

  He chose a yeoman who worked for the Bureau's personnel officer, a first-class in the training division, and a chief petty officer who worked in the office of the Secretary of the Navy himself.

  He worked up the forms for each of them, reporting them as KIA—killed in action—in line of duty, but did not work up the notification of next-of-kin telegrams and the rest of the paperwork connected with a KIA report.

  On Friday afternoon Amos watched Miss Belchess fining up the papers on the commander's desk. As soon as she had finished, he picked up the phone and dialed her private number. Turning his back to her he put a handkerchief over the mouthpiece. "Miss Belchess," he said, "Commander Safford would like to see you in his office. Room 1229."

  "What about?" she asked irritably.

  "I'm just the yeoman," Amos said.

  "All right!" she said.

  Amos took the handkerchief off and watched her

  get up with a peeved look and march out of the room.

  Amos also got up and went to the commander's desk. The commander was still stirring his ink in the mortar and was watching the horses pulling the caisson for an Army burial.

  Amos slipped the three KIAs into the precision of the other forms without disturbing them at all and walked slowly back to his desk. At last the commander sucked up the purplish ink and, wiping the pen with a tissue, began that automatic signature.

  Amos was trembling as the commander signed the forms, never stopping, never reading.

  He signed the last one as the hands of the clock reached 4:30. He then stood up, said to no one in particular, "Good night, mates," and went out.

  Amos sat perfectly still as a yeoman gathered up the forms, stuffed them into their envelopes, and carried them to the mail chute.

  He remembered the next day as just a lot of noise. First there was good-humored noise from the men he had reported killed in action and who had discovered that report on their desks when they arrived for work. All three of them came up to Current Deaths to find out how it had happened.

  And then the officers the three men worked for had come and the Secretary of the Navy had called the commander personally, really chewing him out.

  After that the noise became ugly, with Miss Belchess screaming that he was deliberately trying

  to ruin her position in the Civil Service and the commander threatening him with an unsatisfactory fitness report.

  And finally it had come.

  "All right, young man," the commander said, reaching into his desk drawer for the fat orange pen, "you've been asking for sea duty. Well, you're going to get it."

  He didn't get it. Within twenty-four hours Amos was out of Current Deaths, but instead of sea duty he was transferred to an officers' pool, where officers, mostly junior in rank, waited for assignment to duty.

  Amos waited in the bleak Bachelor Officers' Quarters for a long time, watching men who had arrived after he had, get sent to duty while he stayed on.

  Those weeks of waiting gave him time to recognize that what he had done in Current Deaths had been childish and dangerous. And yet, eventually, he again began to feel the same frustration, the same desperation.

  He had to get out of this pool.

  The officer in charge of the pool, a lieutenant commander with a Naval Academy ring, looked tired and sick. Something was physically wrong with him that made him move awkwardly, and apparently with pain.

  The lieutenant commander wouldn't even listen to him. "You'll be assigned when your turn comes," he said.

  "It's already come," Amos told him. "A hundred

  officers who got here after I did have gone. I'm still here."

  "What's your name?" the man finally asked.

  "Wainwright, Amos."

  Moving in that awkward, painful way, the man opened a drawer and got out a thin file of papers. "Oh," he said, "Wainwright." He looked up at Amos. "What makes you think any command in the Navy would want you?"

  It startled Amos and made him mad. "What do you mean, sir? I don't claim to be some ace ensign out of Annapolis, but I've had two years of NROTC and that's a lot more than most ensigns I've met."

  The officer looked down at one of the papers in the file and began reading from it. "Ensign Wainwright is inefficient, careless, and incompetent. He is also insubordinate, disrespectful, and untrustworthy. I recommend that he be discharged from the Naval Service."

  The words hit Amos like something solid.
r />   "Who said that?" he asked in a weak voice.

  "Your last commanding officer."

  "What is that?" Amos asked, leaning over to look at the piece of paper.

  "That, Ensign, is an unsatisfactory fitness report."

  "It isn't true," Amos said.

  "Are you questioning the judgment of your superior officer?"

  "I have to," Amos said. "Let me tell you what happened."

  The man picked up a paper cup of coffee and

  swiveled his chair half around. "Go ahead. Tell me. But I've heard it all before, Ensign."

  Amos told his story badly, not making real to this sick, tired officer his feeling of desperation. It came out just a whining tale of a dissatisfied man.

  When he had finished, the lieutenant commander asked without looking at him, "Is that what really happened?" Yes, sir.

  "You sent in official requests asking for sea duty?"

  Amos got some of the requests out of his pocket and laid them in front of the officer.

  The lieutenant commander read them slowly. "Outstanding . . . efficient . . . intelligent . . . devoted . . ." At last he looked up at Amos. "These never got beyond the commander?" No, sir.

  "He violated Navy Regulations. He had no right to do that. And he certainly had an abrupt change of mind." The lieutenant commander leaned back in his chair. "I got an unsatisfactory fitness report a long time ago, and it's followed me everywhere I went in the Navy. It kept me from getting good duty. It kept me from getting promoted. But it didn't keep me from getting shot."

  "Isn't there anything you can do about that, sir?"

  "No. It becomes part of your record. It follows you for the rest of your life."

  "Whether you deserve it or not?"

  "I'm afraid I deserved mine. But I don't think you deserve yours, Wainwright. That commander in Cur-

  rent Deaths is an old, dying man who's been out of the real Navy for so long he's forgotten the damage an unsatisfactory report can do."

  Amos looked down at the fitness report and saw now that all the blanks had been filled in with a typewriter; only the signature had been written— with that fat, orange pen. "I wonder if he even knew what he was signing," Amos said. "He couldn't type." He picked up the report and read it. "Nobody would want what that says I am, would they?"

  "Would you?" the man asked.

  Amos picked up his cap and started to leave.

  "Where're you going?"

  "Current Deaths," Amos said. "He's got to change that."

  "He can't. Even if he wanted to, he can't change it. He signed it, and it is now an official part of your record."

  "Who can?"

  "Nobody."

  The lieutenant commander picked up the fitness report and read it slowly. Then he pushed it toward the front of the desk. "I need a cup of coffee," he said, rising painfully out of the chair. "If, when I come back, I can't find that fitness report and you're not here to help me find it, all I can do is look for it. That's all I can do."

  "Is it?" Amos asked.

  "Since there're no copies, it's lost," the man said. "I won't be gone long." He limped away.

  Amos got the fitness report, folded it neatly with his other papers, and put it in his pocket.

  He was squaring away his cap when a loud voice startled him.

  "Now where'd he go?"

  Amos turned to see an angry-faced yeoman with a sheaf of papers in his hand. "To get some coffee."

  "I keep telling him he ought to stop drinking so much of that Java. He can't take it. . . . You in the pool, Ensign?"

  "In the deep end."

  "Got any orders?"

  "I'm available for sea duty only."

  "Then you're my boy, sir," the yeoman said. "As of right now, you're O-in-C of the UDT detail. Here're your TRs, twenty-two men. The train leaves at 1500."

  "You sure this is sea duty?"

  The yeoman laughed. "It's a lot more sea duty than most people want. I haven't got time to make up your orders, so what's your name?"

  Amos told him his name, rank, number, and designator.

  "Okay, Mr. Wheelwright, bear a hand; the train won't wait."

  "Wtfmwright."

  "Yeah," the yeoman said, halfway down the hall. "Wingwright."

  Amos hesitated a moment, remembering that the yeoman hadn't written anything down—not even his

  name. But then he slapped his cap on and marched out. He was in the real Navy, where pieces of paper weren't weapons.

  In the gloomy station Amos tried to hide his embarrassment as he called the roll of the UDT detail. All the men standing beside the train were older than he was and had been in the Navy years longer than he had. There were Navy Master Divers, first-class petty officers, and chiefs with hash marks up to their elbows. The only man who seemed to be under thirty was a long, gangling radioman-first named Nash.

  There were only twenty-one men there. Amos checked the muster. "Reeder, C? Anybody know him?"

  "That's him draped over that crate," Nash said.

  Reeder looked as though he'd been hauled through a garbage dump. His white hat and neckerchief were missing. His jumper had been ripped half apart. His whole uniform was a mess. "What's the matter with him?" Amos asked.

  "Says he got into a fight," Nash said.

  "Hey, Reeder!" Amos said. "Let's get aboard."

  The man pushed himself up to his feet and ambled over. "You call me?"

  "We're shoving off. When you get on the train, see if you can get cleaned up, will you?"

  "Who're you, Ensign?"

  Amos hesitated a second. "I'm Officer-in-Charge here. So get cleaned up as soon as you get aboard."

  As Amos settled down in a seat beside Nash, he

  thought about that crippled lieutenant commander. He didn't even know his name and hadn't thanked him for what he had done.

  Maybe, Amos thought, as he walked along the beach as close to the water as he could, that man didn't do me such a great favor, after all. Where am I now? On an island in the Pacific six thousand miles from Ottumwa, Iowa, where I'm supposed to be. And, he thought, they'll have some more court-martial charges against me for not being there.

  A dead Marine pfc was lying in the sand, the sea gently lapping around his combat boots.

  Amos stopped and looked down at him. What would happen, Amos thought, if I took this man's uniform and changed myself into a private in the Marine Corps? I could just join up with all the rest of them; be just another leatherneck, with no name, no papers, only a number. The war might be over before anybody even found out.

  That would be sea duty. Not Iowa, and missing pieces of paper.

  Not knowing why, he stooped, got the Marine by the shoulders, and pulled him higher up the beach so that the water didn't lap around his feet.

  Then he walked slowly on, noticing now that there was a row of flags in a ragged line across the island. Small, limp, red flags on sticks stuck in the ground.

  He could see the end of the island curving around to the east. At one time, a thick grove of palms had stood there, but they lay ahead of him now in a huge

  tangle of shattered trunks like broken bones, the palm fronds turning brown in the sun.

  On the other side of a little rise, some sort of machine was working, the exhaust from the engine shooting up in gray spouts and the noise of it sounding angry.

  Suddenly a straight-up exhaust stack appeared above the ground and then the snout and blade of a bulldozer. The driver was stripped to shorts but wore his helmet and had a rifle slung over his shoulder. A red cowboy bandanna covered his nose and mouth.

  He spun the dozer around in the sand and went plunging down out of sight again, the black blanket of flies shifting from his front to his back.

  Amos left the beach and started up the rise, climbing over the shattered palm trees and skirting the bomb craters, half-filled with stinking water, greenish slime on the surface.

  At the top of the rise he could see the dozer rumbling along, pushing what
seemed to be limp logs toward a deep trench.

  The things weren't logs, Amos discovered as he came down the slope. They were dead men, their stomachs bloated and purple.

  The dozer rolled them over to the trench, some of them breaking open, and pushed them in. Then it backed up and pushed a load of dirt in on top of them.

  As the machine swung around, the driver spotted Amos and grabbed for his rifle, but apparently Amos'

  dress-blue uniform convinced him, and lie didn't shoot. Amos waved to him, and he slowed the diesel to a pant and just sat there, pointing the rifle, as Amos came up to the tread.

  The driver looked him over carefully and then pushed the rifle around on his back again. He unwound the bandanna and stood up in the seat. "Where's the detail?" he asked.

  "What detail?"

  "What have they done, sent an ensign up here to cover me? I need a detail. There's a live Japanese behind every one of these logs and in every hole. They've been shooting at me all morning. Is that all you brought?"

  "AH what?"

  "The gun. Man, I need a detail with M-is or BARs. Look at the hole in this thing!"

  He pointed to where a bullet had pushed the metal of the seat back into a little cup before it tore on through. "Missed me by an inch. I asked for a detail"

  "I don't know anything about that," Amos told him. "I'm looking for something to get me to Iowa."

  The driver stared down at him. "I think I'm losing my mind."

  "That's two of us," Amos said. "The beachmaster told me to look around up here."

  The man sat slowly down in the seat. "I told them this morning I wasn't going to stay out here by myself, and all they send me is an ensign. An ensign in Stateside blues with nothing but a carbine."

  "The beachmaster said that maybe somebody would know about COPRA up this end of the island," Amos insisted.

  "Do you see anything up there? Any anything?"

  "There's too much junk/'