A man's career depended on so many things beyond his control. His own body. His temperament. The commanding officers he got. Would the captain call him a "punctilious fool" in his fitness report? To Moss's surprise, McKay had apologized for saying that to him. He had invited him to his cabin and had a long talk with him about the gunnery department. He urged him to be calmer, more deliberate when he gave orders under fire. Moss had not found the talk reassuring as far as his career was concerned.
"Tell the lookouts to keep their eyes on those clouds," Captain McKay said. "There's too damn many of them for comfort."
"Aye, aye, Captain."
As usual, thick cumuli were piling up on the horizon to the northwest and drifting toward them on the trade wind. It was the rainy season in the Solomons.
Ahead of them, the Columbia was at General Quarters. Her captain was taking no chances on getting surprised by the Rabaul Reception Committee. Moss had suggested Jefferson City imitate her example, but McKay said the men would be at GQ at night. They were making another run up the Slot with Cmdiv 12 to paste the Jap airfield at Munda. He was inclined to let the crew get as much rest as possible. Three destroyers did their usual wolfhound act on their flanks, alert for submarines. One of them, the Casey, was commanded by a Moss classmate. That piece of news did not soothe his stomach, either.
Would the Rabaul Reception Committee let them get by this time without a slash at their jugular? Maybe there was nothing to worry about, with a full supply of proximity fuse shells on board.
Moss got part of his answer ten seconds later. "Bogeys bearing three one five," gasped the talker. "More bogeys bearing zero nine zero."
"They may be ours," Captain McKay said. "The admiral promised us some air cover from the Canal. Sound General Quarters."
The Marine bugler stepped to the PA system and blasted General Quarters. "All hands man your battle stations," roared the boatswain's mate of the watch.
The new executive officer, George Tombs, raced onto the bridge to take command as officer of the deck. Moss dashed to main forward to take charge of the gunnery. The twenty or so American planes looked like Douglas Avengers and Wildcats. They were high in the sky, roaring across the bows of the ships. Toward them growled a veritable cloud of Zeros, at least forty of them. Behind them came at least fifteen Aichi dive bombers and an equal number of torpdeo-carrying Kates. How in God's name were they, going to tell friend from foe when they started tangling overhead?
Mullenoe was in sky forward, checking the readiness of the men on the five-inch and forty-millimeter guns. Moss's stomach throbbed. He always felt superfluous in an air attack. These days he felt even more so. Mullenoe had been promoted to lieutenant commander. Moss no longer outranked him.
That only made Moss more determined to assert his authority. "What's your situation, Mr. Mullenoe?" he asked.
"Oh, I think everything's copacetic, Commander," Mullenoe said. "We've shit, showered and shaved and are all ready for the party."
"Could you give me a more exact report, Commander?"
"All guns manned. Enemy aircraft at three one five, range three miles and closing."
"You may commence firing."
"Thank you, Commander."
Did he hear guffaws on the circuit? Moss's face burned, his stomach twinged, his jaw ached.
"All right, boys and girls," Mullenoe said. "Let's concentrate on the torpedo planes and let the hotshot pilots take care of the dive bombers. If they get us we can say it wasn't our fault, glug glug. On the other hand, they can't claim we splashed the wrong guys."
"Does the CAP know about this arrangement?" Moss asked.
"CIC says they do. Us dumb gunnery types never argue with CIC. Right, Lieutenant West?"
"Right," West said. "It's a court-martial offense."
"See what happens when you give a man without proper credentials some power?" Mullenoe said. "West thinks he's directing this goddamn movie."
"Enough chatter. Why aren't you firing?" Moss said, his voice rising into that upper register the captain had urged him to avoid.
"The Kates are playing hidey-seekey in those clouds, waiting for the dive bombers to get in position. We're dealing with pros, Commander."
Ahead of them, the Columbia began firing. "Columbia has a target," Moss said.
"Mount one," Mullenoe said, "take the leader. Mount two—"
The five-inch guns crashed, sending waves of pain through Moss's head. Overhead, the air was saturated with the roar and whine of diving planes, the chatter of machine guns as the Zeros and the Combat Air patrol tangled in a melee. Moss went out on the wing behind main forward and watched as the situation degenerated into total confusion. Zeros and Wildcats dove to sea level and zoomed skyward again in wild evasion tactics. The Jefferson City's forty- and twenty-millimeter guns blasted at the enemy pursuit planes while the five-inch guns concentrated on the torpedo planes. The proximity fuse worked its magic on a half dozen in the first sixty seconds, but then the clouds of drifting gunsmoke, the dozens of black bursts dotting the horizon, the darting pursuit planes destroyed everyone's concentration.
Moss watched an Aichi dive bomber coming down, with a Wildcat on his tail and a Zero on the tail of the Wildcat. The machine guns of the two pursuit planes breathed speckles of flame along their wings. The Aichi spiraled away in visible agony, his bomb falling far away from the Jefferson City. The American never pulled out of his dive. He kept coming straight down and crashed into the sea only a few hundred feet off their port beam.
More Kates exploded and burned. Lookouts shouted bearings of torpedoes. The Jefferson City sheared to port to comb their wakes. A Zero snaked away from a pursuing Wildcat and raced toward the ship, his machine guns blazing. Flanagan shot him down. But not before the Zero had decimated mount one's gun crew. It was chaos. Another Aichi coming down and no one trying to stop him. "Mullenoe, get that dive bomber," Moss shouted.
"Are you sure he's a Jap?" Mullenoe said.
"Of course I'm sure. I can see the bomb."
Actually he could see very few details through the smoke. But why else would anyone be diving on them? The five-inch mounts elevated abruptly and fired. The concussion almost knocked Moss down. The dive bomber exploded into a ball of flame. He had showed Lieutenant Commander Wiseguy Mullenoe!
Off the port beam, another plane leveled off from a dive and came roaring at them. "Mullenoe, get that Zero bearing two seven five," Moss cried.
"Negative, that's American!" someone shouted over the phone circuit. It sounded like Flanagan.
But Mullenoe had lost control of his air defense team. They were obeying Lieutenant Commander Moss. As the silver plane streaked toward them in the twilight, the five-inch guns boomed. A proximity fuse shell exploded dead ahead of it. The plane pulled up abruptly like a wounded bird, and they saw the blue and white stars on the bottom of its wings. An instant later it tilted to the right and skidded into the sea.
While Moss watched in horror, the plane began to sink. The pilot shoved back the canopy and struggled to get out. He finally managed to topple into the water, where he floated face down. "Away the motor whaleboat," shouted Captain McKay over the PA system. "Is there a strong swimmer who can rescue that man?"
Frank Flanagan raced down ladders to the main deck, kicked off his shoes and dove into the sea. The motor whaleboat was lowered while Flanagan swam through a heavy swell toward the drifting body of the pilot. The air battle was over. The surviving Japanese planes were fleeing toward the horizon.
Lieutenant Commander Edwin Moss went down the ladders like a man descending into hell, condemned by his pride, his envy, his ambition. He did not stop until he reached the safety of his cabin. He sat their looking at his .45 revolver, wondering if Captain Winfield Scott Schley Kemble had chosen the best solution to a ruined career.
Arthur McKay was down on the main deck when they lifted the pilot aboard from the motor whaleboat. He smiled feebly at the captain and whispered, "Looks like the J.C. had my number after all."
It was their old shipmate Lieutenant Andrew Jackson. A moment later he was dead.
"Jesus," Boats Homewood said. "Where in Christ are we ever gonna find enough joss to get this off our backs?"
"Commander Moss," said a voice on the telephone, "the captain would like to see you in his cabin."
To put him under arrest? Court-martial him? McKay could take his pick. He would endure it somehow. By this time Edwin Moss had decided not to kill himself. He had other responsibilities besides his miserable career. He had Eleanor and four children to think about. Above all, Eleanor. It was her love, the knowledge that she at least would forgive him for this blunder, that had sustained him.
He plodded to the captain's cabin. "Sit down, Commander," McKay said.
"It was my fault. I take complete responsibility," he said.
"I want to make that clear. Lieutenant Commander Mullenoe is not at fault in any way."
"I know that. I want you to know that the accident has not been mentioned in the ship's log. That won't prevent it from getting talked about in the Navy. But I don't intend to give it any official standing. There will be no action taken. I regard it as a mistake anyone could have made in the heat of battle."
"Captain, I ... I don't know what to say."
"Don't say anything then."
"I want to say something. I want to admit I've been less than loyal to you lately. I've been critical. I don't deserve this generosity."
"Maybe I've deserved some criticism. There's something else I want to suggest. Since I made George Tombs executive officer, I don't have a first lieutenant aboard. I'd like to move you over to that job. I think you'd make a very good damage control officer. I want to make Mullenoe the gunnery officer."
Moss could only nod. Drink the cup, he told himself. Drink the cup of humiliation as Jesus did. His career was still in ruins.
"Commander," the captain said, "as a rule I don't lecture people. I've always dreaded turning into one of those pontificating old sea dogs I met when I was your age. But let me give you a little sermon about ambition. It's a good thing. You have to have it, in the Navy, in just about every walk of life. But whether you possess it — or it possesses you — makes all the difference."
Suddenly the captain's voice was choked with emotion. "I've seen — I've seen what happens when it possesses a man. I don't want to see it happen to you."
Mail Call
Dear Arthur:
I can't stop crying I hated him and I can't stop crying I know you'll say that's because I've always loved him and I only hated him because he wouldn't marry me but that's only partly true isn't it crazy the way things get partly true and mostly untrue as you go on living? I don't want you to think that I don't love you because I keep crying for Win, it's the guilt, something I've never felt before in my life. Guilt for what I've done to Lucy and that's stirred up the most awful thoughts about the way I treated my father and mother. Oh Arthur how in God's name have you stood me all these years?
But I never dreamt, never once did I dream that such a thing could happen. I thought I was dealing with a man. I thought it was a fair contest — actually unfair considering the grip Win has had on you all our lives — the struggle I've gone through to make you act and think like an independent man with a good brain of your own. I loved the contest and I cordially detested him, Arthur. If I ever loved him it was an adolescent emotion. As an adult I detested him and his arrogant self-assurance. I detested him even more for the way he reduced Lucy to a cipher.
He was not a decent human being, Arthur. You are probably going to hate me for saying this, but I know you are going to hate me anyway, so why not say everything? Win Kemble was not a decent human being. He used you, he used everyone for his own detestable ambitious purposes. Even in China, when he wrote that arrogant letter to the court of inquiry defending you, he was really trying to promote his right to shoot back at every drunken Chinese soldier who fired a bullet at him between Canton and Chungking. He didn't love anybody, not even Lucy. I'm sure of it, even though she'll probably deny it. She'll go on propagating the myth of her tragic hero. Otherwise her life will have no meaning.
That's why my mother stayed with my father. She heard all the stories about his mistresses, about his Chinese and Filipino children. But she had to consider the alternative. She had given her life to the monster, and was there anything to be gained by leaving him? That's why ninety percent of the women stay with the miserable husbands they've married. They want to give their lives some meaning.
With you and me it's been different. That's why I'm so terrified by what's happened. We've grown to love each other more and more. I know that's true, Arthur, though I frequently pretend otherwise. I'm not sure if you do. At this moment I'm sure you don't. You loathe me. All right, loathe me for a while. But don't stop believing in our love.
I can't stop seeing the whole thing exactly as it happened. Win flew to New Orleans to see Admiral Hepburn about Savo Island. I promised you I'd try to talk Cominch into calling off that pompous old porpoise. If Win hadn't written that letter to Knox I think I might have succeeded. Hepburn's questions made it pretty clear he was going to blame the whole disaster on Win. He asked him bluntly why he had sailed west into the night when all the transports and the Marines he was supposed to be protecting were in the other direction. Win went back to Panama and wrote him a letter trying to prove he was only following instructions. He mailed it, but he must have known it wouldn't wash. That night after not saying a word to Lucy at supper (not an unusual performance, I gather) he went upstairs and shot himself. He left a note asking Lucy to cremate his body and sprinkle his ashes over the Pacific off Pearl Harbor.
Oh Arthur, try to forgive me. Start now. Maybe by the time this war is over we can face each other again.
Your wife, Rita
Friend of all my life:
By the time you receive this letter my spirit shall have joined those of my ancestors who spent their days in the service of our imperial majesty, treading the round world in a service we always knew was thankless, whose only justification was honor. I shall be part of the Pacific billows on which you and your strong ship ride, still in pursuit of that elusive dream.
All choices are hard, we always knew that, but choices for those who serve an ideal are hardest. The choice I have made is in behalf of honor, even though I no longer believe in its possibility. Can you understand that? You are the only person I want to understand what I am about to do. Perhaps you are the only person who can understand. It actually began many years ago, when I visited the great seat of empire, our beloved Peking. You were not with me. Perhaps if you were I would not have had this terrible vision, which has haunted me ever since.
I climbed to the top of Jingshan, Coal Hill, where the last of the Ming emperors hanged himself from a locust tree and looked down upon the string of pleasure lakes below me. From the top of Jingshan I saw a line of power running from south to north through the center of the Forbidden City. I saw in my mind's eye the matchless assembly of palaces, temples, gardens and gazebos created for the Son of Heaven. I walked past the grimacing lions of golden bronze, the huge sculpted tortoises, the incense burners, the ancient crinkled rocks. I passed the Palace of Heavenly Purity and the Hall of Supreme Harmony, where thousands groveled before the Emperor on his gold and vermillion throne.
I followed the line of power through these wonders to the Meridian Gate and the Qianmen Gate to the Outer City and finally reached the Temple of Heaven in the south. Three times a year, the Emperor journeyed to this holy place to communicate with the gods. All windows were shuttered for his passing. The city was plunged into silence. At the temple, after suitable sacrifices, he ascended the circular mound. In his divine footsteps I mounted the terraces one by one and stood where the Son of Heaven had once stood and gazed down on his empire. Suddenly for no reason I can explain, my voice cried, "All power is illusion!" The echo instantly surrounded me: Power, Power, Power, Illusion, Illusion!
Oh, my
friend, if you had been with me, I know you would have laughed in your steady farmer's way, you would have stood with your feet firmly planted in the center of our American continent and laughed at the idea — and at me. But without you, those words planted a foreboding in my soul which I have never escaped.
Now the bitter fruit of that moment is ripe. I must taste it. I can only hope that you will not let it poison the memory of our friendship. Farewell.
Win
Dearest Robert:
Undine and Baldur sit watching me as I write this letter in the garden. They are patently jealous because they both know I am not thinking about them — not even the tiniest part of my heart is in their possession at the moment. The sun is beating down on the gum trees, the kookaburras are fluttering from branch to branch. All this peace at Fairy Hill while you dodge bullets and bombs for my sake, for all our sakes.
I wonder if, in years to come, Australians will remember how grateful they feel for you Americans (or should I say we Americans) at this awful time. To think that in a year you have entirely dissipated the terror we felt at the news of the Japanese armada plowing toward us across the Coral Sea. I wonder if anyone in the world will remember how and why you came 6,000 miles to fight the Japanese?
Probably not. My father wrote my mother a memorable letter on this point only a few days before he was killed in France in the last war. He told her that if he died, she was not to go on demanding tributes from anyone for his sacrifice, or hers. He said it was too much to expect of human nature and would only make her miserable. It was enough for "we precious few" to know and remember. That's a rather good philosophy, don't you think?
However, if you think I shall apply it to my own life, if anything happens to you, I assure you that you're wrong. When I lost Napier, I lost (I told myself) a hope for happiness. If I lose you, I lose happiness itself. Do you love me as unashamedly as I hope you do? I know men hate to admit such things. But I hope you still do.
Time and Tide Page 51
