Time and Tide

by Thomas Fleming

  A section eight was a medical discharge. The chaplain suddenly realized he was dealing with a faker, a coward. "What's your duty station?" he asked.

  "Forward engine room."

  "By God, get out of this bunk and get down there, or I'll see you spend the next six months in the brig."

  The sailor had a big round face, like a character in a cartoon strip. It wrinkled into a wet fist. "No," he sobbed. "I want my mamma. I want to go home to my mamma!"

  Harold Semple's tears mingled with the sweat streaming down his face as he stood shoulder to shoulder with seven other dripping, stinking members of Deck Division One in the virtually airtight handling room under five-inch mount one. He could not understand what was happening. Yesterday there had been love and a dream of a happy future. Jerome Wilkinson had kept all his promises. He brought his Prettyboy chocolate sundaes and apple pie, the same desserts the officers enjoyed in the wardroom. He had given him a safe, comfortable assignment with a damage control party, under the armored deck. In turn, Semple had become as passionate, as giving as any woman. The Great Ape himself admitted he had never known such love.

  Today Semple was in hell again. With no warning, Wilkinson had ordered him back to the handling room. He said they were shorthanded; some of the men assigned to the handling room had collapsed. They were in sick bay blubbering like babies, wailing for their mothers. Everyone was afraid of dying. You could smell it along with the stink of unwashed bodies. You could smell the fear in the handling room.

  They discharged their fear on him, mocking his return to hell. "Hey, Prettyboy," grunted the swarthy brute behind him as he slammed a fifty-five-pound shell into Semple's arms.

  "What's wrong? Boats get tired of your sweet little ass? That's what always happens, you know."

  Was that true? Was he one of a hundred prettyboys whose hearts had been broken by those monstrous arms, those greedy lips? No, he could not believe it. Semple could not believe that the man he loved would abandon him to these animals.

  "Lay off him," said a voice at the end of the shell line. "We could all be dead in another half hour."

  Semple did not know his defender's name. They were about the same height. He was slim and blond, with the widest, saddest eyes Semple had ever seen.

  "How come you're not jealous, Klein?" sneered someone in the center of the shell line.

  "I'm not the type," Klein said. His voice was as sad as his eyes.

  "We know what type you both are," said the brute behind Semple. "What do you say you give us all blow jobs before we go?"

  "Captain, radar reports two groups of ships, bearing three one two and three one zero true, distant two seven zero zero zero yards and three two zero zero zero yards."

  "My God," Captain McKay whispered to himself. All Callaghan had to do was alter course to 150 or 145 degrees true and they would cross the Japs' "T." One ship after another would be in position to deliver devastating broadsides into the middle of the oncoming enemy squadron. It was Cape Esperance all over again, with an even better chance for a total victory. The Japs were coming down to blast Henderson Field, not to fight a sea battle. Their decks were probably covered with high capacity bombardment shells. A hit from a single salvo would blow them into the stratosphere.

  Captain McKay switched on the TBS and reported the sighting to Admiral Callaghan in the San Francisco. He had stayed aboard that ship even though she was still not equipped with the latest radar. He was depending on the Helena and the Jefferson City to give him the ability to see across miles of darkened sea.

  Three minutes later, at 0127, McKay was astonished to hear the TBS croak, "All ships alter course two points to starboard to course three one zero."

  Callaghan was sailing straight into the Japanese fleet! Commander Parker's breath and words mingled in an explosion. "Is he out of his fucking mind?"

  The next several minutes were even more incomprehensible. They pounded through the night toward their approaching foes, closing the gap between them at a combined speed of forty knots. The range fell down, down, with the talker's drone: "One three zero double zero, one two zero double zero." Callaghan obviously wanted to get close enough to give his cruisers a chance against the battleships' longer-range guns. But he was in danger of forfeiting the immense advantage of surprise.

  "Why don't we open fire?" Parker asked hoarsely.

  "I don't know," Captain McKay said. He was beginning to think Callaghan intended to imitate Nelson's maxim, "No Captain can do very great wrong if he lay his ship alongside the enemy." But Nelson did not have radar, destroyers capable of thirty-five knots, torpedoes.

  Again McKay was at Savo Island with Win, trapped in a vise of command stupidity, in imminent danger of dying, of conning his ship into the jaws of destruction under orders from a man whose ideas were two hundred years out of date.

  On the TBS McKay could hear Callaghan asking the Helena for ranges, bearings, courses, composition of the enemy force. If the admiral heard any answers, his ears were better than any aboard the Jefferson City. The radio circuit was jammed with requests for information from other ships and questions about when to open fire. Most of the time it was a rasping gargle.

  "San Francisco changing course! Bearing three one five!" cried the talker.

  "Left full rudder," Parker shouted.

  They could hear Admiral Callaghan shouting into his TBS, demanding to know what was happening in the van of the column. Back came a flash from the destroyer squadron commander. "Enemy destroyers sighted three thousand yards, crossing port to starboard."

  "There goes our surprise," McKay said.

  Now Callaghan had to give the order to open fire. The Japs were less than five miles away, in easy range of their six- and eight-inch guns. The Jefferson City's radar had them nailed. "Range nine five double zero," the talker said.

  No order came. Instead, for another eight minutes the TBS dissolved into a babble of voices getting and giving target bearings without anyone bothering to say whether they were true or relative, visual or radar. It was Cape Esperance all over again.

  "Stand by to open fire," Admiral Callaghan roared above the babble.

  An instant later, before a single gunnery officer could press his firing button, the lead American cruiser, the Atlanta, and behind her the San Francisco and Jefferson City were bathed in the eerie glow of Japanese searchlights.

  "Counterilluminate. Open fire," cried Commander Edwin Moss in main forward.

  "Forty millimeters, get those searchlights," Mullenoe said.

  Flanagan could see nothing but glare. He poured a stream of shells at it, while around him the deck leaped, his head ballooned, his chest crumpled with the concussion of the five- and eight-inch guns opening fire.

  The Japanese searchlights vanished. He had a wild image of dead and dying sailors in the shattered superstructures of their ships. But that too vanished as an American ship ahead of them was hit by salvo after salvo from the Japanese. It reeled out of the column gushing flames.

  "There goes the Atlanta," Commander Parker cried on the bridge.

  Captain McKay winced at the vicious things he had said about Admiral Norman Scott in his letter to his wife. He had been maligning a man who was about to die. No one was left alive on the Atlanta's shattered bridge, he was sure of that.

  From the San Francisco came Admiral Callaghan's thunderous voice. "Odd ships commence fire to port, even to starboard."

  "Holy shit, are we odd or even?" Parker shouted.

  "Odd," McKay said. "But it doesn't matter. There are plenty of targets."

  Shells shrieked overhead. Phosphorescent fountains rose on both sides of the ship. They were in the center of the Japanese fleet. According to plan; the cruisers' five-inch guns fired star shells that burst above them on both sides of the battle line. In their flickering glow, the huge pagodalike superstructures of two Japanese battleships were visible, along with at least ten smaller ships.

  It was a melee, the sort of sea fight even eighteenth-century admira
ls considered a violation of the principles of naval tactics and strategy. Only the wild amateurs of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries had indulged in such slugfests, in which brains and training became irrelevant and not even raw courage guaranteed a ship's survival.

  Two tremendous explosions lifted the dying Atlanta out of the water for almost half her length. She had been hit by torpedoes from the Japanese destroyers. Another salvo of heavy shells from one of the Jap battleships gouged her superstructure and hull. Ahead of her, an American destroyer twisted and turned like a frantic rabbit in enemy searchlights while salvos churned the sea around her. One hit home, and she exploded and vanished so suddenly it seemed a visual trick.

  "On target," shouted Jack Peterson at the range finder as the Jefferson City pumped salvo after eight-inch salvo into one of the Japanese battleships. Flames engulfed her from bow to stern. But her fourteen-inch guns kept booming. "Jesus Christ, those guys are tough," Peterson yelled.

  "Are we winning, Jack?" Camutti yelled from his post an inch or two from Peterson's right knee, inside the spinning range finder. They were all a little drunk from some booze Peterson had liberated from the master at arms's distillery.

  "We ain't losin'," Peterson howled, picking out another target, a burning cruiser off the port quarter. The main battery poured a salvo into her.

  "It's the goddamnedest fireworks you've ever seen," Peterson yelled.

  On the bridge, it was almost impossible to see anything. They were blinded by the repeated flashes of their own guns. It was equally impossible to think. Blast after blast seemed to tear apart the center of one's brain. Captain McKay could only hope the men at the radar screens and computers and throttles below him were doing their jobs. All he could do was keep the ship on the chosen course.

  The helmsman kept muttering prayers under his breath. "Shut up for Christ's sake," Commander Parker barked. He pulled a flask from his pocket and took a quick gulp.

  "Cease firing own ships," shouted Admiral Callaghan over the TBS.

  It was incredible. "Ignore that order," Captain McKay said. He got on the TBS. "What the hell's going on, Admiral? Do you really want us to cease firing?"

  "Yes. We're firing on the Atlanta! Change course to zero zero zero.”

  As they swung due north, the San Francisco's guns fell silent. An instant later, Japanese searchlights gripped her in a glowing vise. A screaming deluge of metal smashed into her bridge—fourteen-inch shells from the other Japanese battleship. Flames engulfed the decks from the bridge to the stern. Arthur McKay realized he would have to regret saying cruel things about another dead admiral. No one on the San Francisco's bridge survived those hits.

  "Jesus Christ, it's gotta be our turn next," shouted Parker. "One of us better get the hell out of here. I'll go to Batt Two."

  "Commander Parker, you will remain on this bridge. That's an order," Captain McKay said.

  Parker said something that was lost in the thunder of another salvo. McKay could only read the first three words on his lips, You fucking bastard.

  Parker was shaking so violently, McKay thought he was going to fall to the deck in a convulsion. With each crash of the five-inch and eight-inch guns, he seemed to dwindle, as if he were a human-sized stuffed animal from which the sawdust was being pounded by the concussions.

  A ferocious thud shook the forward part of the ship. "Captain, there's a live shell in turret one," the telephone talker cried.

  Captain McKay grabbed the earphones and heard Ensign Richard Meade speaking to the gunnery officer. "It's an eight-inch. I don't know why it hasn't detonated. I can hear it pulsing like a big heartbeat. I've ordered the men out." Main deck and others down the narrow passageway into the handling room below them. When Captain McKay transferred Meade to turret one, he had taken Chase with him. Meade had told the captain that Johnny deserved equal credit for the good record they had racked up in five-inch mount one. The captain had warmly approved his request. He said it was exactly the sort of leadership he wanted his officers to display.

  Now there was no one left inside turret one but Meade and Chase. The Japanese shell continued to thud like a heartbeat or a muffled drum. Instinctively, both men knew there was only time for one of them to get out that hatch. Their eyes met and Meade knew exactly what he had to do.

  For Ensign Babyface the world had suddenly become very simple. He would not have to worry about deciding between mother and father, between the honor of a Navy career and the profit of the family corporation. Honor was here in this random projectile, his treasure, his price, now and forever. Honor and a kind of pride that Johnny Chase, better than anyone, understood. Their eyes met and Meade said, "Get going."

  Chase dove out the hatch headfirst and landed in the arms of his men. He knew they would be waiting for him. A second later the shell went off. Chase looked up at the flames gushing from the hatch. "That's how you win a Congressional Medal of Honor," he said.

  On the bridge, the explosion coruscated over the telephone circuit into the center of Captain McKay's skull. Ensign Richard Meade would not go far in the Navy after all.

  A shaken Commander Moss said, "Turret one disabled by a direct hit. All other guns continuing to fire."

  "Flood the handling room and forward magazine," McKay said to the talker. "Tell Damage Control to get up there and tell me how things look."

  Far down in the ship, the men at the flood control panel board threw switches that sent water surging into these compartments. From the bridge, McKay could see flames roaring from every aperture of turret one. Even the arms of its secondary range finder were spouting fire. In a moment a life raft lashed to the top of the turret was ablaze.

  "Tell Damage Control to douse that fire. Change course to three zero zero," Captain McKay said. "Give us flank speed."

  "Let me go below. I'll handle it," Commander Parker begged.

  McKay ignored him. He knew the fire was going to attract salvos from every Japanese gunnery officer still afloat. He had to concentrate on saving his ship.

  A thunderclap sent tremendous geysers of water leaping hundreds of feet in the air only a few dozen yards off the port bow. Those were fourteen-inch shells. One of the Jap battleships was after them.

  "Right full rudder," McKay said.

  The Jefferson City heeled to the right. The Japanese fired at the top of the roll. It would take them another sixty seconds to get off the next salvo. McKay kept his eyes on the second hand of his watch, barely visible in the glow of the binnacle light. "Left full rudder," he said, at fifty seconds.

  The ship heeled to port. It would take about thirty seconds for the salvo to come in. Right to the second, another thunderclap exploded two hundred yards to starboard, where they would have been if they had stayed on the previous course. Now, count another sixty seconds before the next zag and pray the Japanese gunnery officer was not thinking one step ahead of him.

  "Where the hell is Damage Control! That fire is like a goddamn beacon," Parker shouted.

  "Commander Parker," McKay said, his eyes on his watch, "I'd appreciate it if you would shut your mouth. Left full rudder!"

  Sixty seconds later, an enormous roar filled the bridge. On target? McKay wondered. At least it would be quick. Fourteen-inch shells would obliterate everything and everyone from here to the main deck. Rrr-oooom, the half-ton messengers of death rumbled over their heads. The thunderclap was off the port beam this time.

  "I'm going back to Batt Two so someone'll be alive to run this ship," Parker cried.

  He fled to the armored conning tower aft, where six inches of reinforced steel would protect him against everything but a direct hit. Captain McKay let him go. He was confident he could deal with Parker any time he chose now. Never again would he or anyone else be able to accuse Arthur McKay of freezing under fire. But McKay was not thinking about his reputation. The only thing that mattered was the survival of the Jefferson City.

  "Tell Damage Control to douse that fire," Captain McKay said, his eyes on his watch. "Ri
ght full rudder!"

  "Flanagan! Get your ass down here. You guys on mount one, follow me." It was Boats Homewood, summoning them to fight the fire inside and outside turret one. The walls of the turret were glowing red. Homewood jammed fire hoses up the ejection slots — the small openings where the shell casings were discharged. "Get down," Homewood shouted as another fourteen-inch salvo hurtled toward them with the roar of a dozen runaway locomotives. It exploded off the starboard bow. Shrapnel clanged off the turret.

  Flanagan clung to the nozzle of his hose as the ship careened through the darkness, slewing from port to starboard while more salvos of fourteen-inch shells tore the sea all around them. In five minutes the fire inside was doused and Homewood ordered Flanagan to join him on top of the turret. He sprayed the ladder with water and foam but it was still so hot Flanagan cried out with pain when he touched it. Come on, it's burnin' my hands too," Homewood bellowed, climbing ahead of him.

  They reached the top just as another salvo came roaring in to explode off the port bow. "Use your knife, cut away them lines," Homewood shouted, hacking at ropes holding the raft to the turret. The ship lurched to port, and the flames seared Flanagan's face. Another salvo thundered out of the night to land to starboard. "How do you like the way the old man's chasin' them salvos?" Homewood shouted. "Didn't I tell you he's a winner?"

  Every time the ship heeled to port or starboard, Flanagan had to fall to his knees to stay on the tipping turret. Homewood did not even seem to notice the wild lurches. He stayed on his feet, hacking at the ropes, ignoring the flames swirling around him in the wind. As Flanagan gazed up at him, Homewood became transfigured, mythical. He was Paul Bunyan, John Henry, translated to this nightmare world of sea and fire.

  "Now heave," Homewood roared. An appalled Flanagan followed his example and thrust his hands into a mass of flame. The raft sailed through the air and went sizzling into the sea.

  As dawn's gray light seeped across the glassy surface of Iron-bottom Sound, the Jefferson City was still afloat. Wisps of smoke rose from fire-blackened number one turret. On her bridge, Captain Arthur McKay almost savored the exhaustion that blended with his disgust. He had saved his ship. He could take some pride in his performance on the bridge. But he no longer gave a damn about pride or courage or glory. He did not even care about his own survival. It was his responsibility to his crew, his concern for them as human beings as well as sailors, that had gotten him through the night.