Time and Tide

by Thomas Fleming

  Naturally, the rest of the ship takes a dim view of my overweening power. Recently Mullenoe put out the word that CIC stands for Christ I'm confused. I retaliated by announcing plans to take over the navigator's duties. I might throw in a little night work as engineering officer on the side.

  The captain has gone through some sort of a sea change. After being in the most tremendous funk for six months or so after that story about Parker got out, he is now as serene and smiling as he was when he first came aboard. It's put everybody in a good mood. I even saw Kruger smiling the other day.

  Thank God you're a Navy brat! Otherwise this ship gossip would be a total bore. Or is it anyway?

  Your inveterate sailor, Sinbad

  Dear Dad:

  Mom tells me you're really feeling on the bum since you retired. I'm sorry to hear it. Maybe you ought to look at the bright side. You're young enough to start a new career and you don't have to overwork, with your pension coming in regularly.

  Still I guess you miss the cops. there are a lot of guys on the ship like my boatswain who'd miss the Navy if they got out of it. So I understand a little of how you feel.

  Don't worry about me. We've got a good crew on this ship. We can handle anything the Japs throw at us.

  Love,

  Frank

  Dear Anna:

  I keep wishing we'd get close to Australia and then strip a bearing in a turbine and limp to Sydney for repairs. I passed my water-tender's second class test last week, so I shouldn't be talking this way. I'm a rated man—with responsibilities. Now I've got a striker I'm supposed to be teaching, the way Amos Cartwright taught me. He's kind of a dumb goy but willing to learn.

  I really like teaching. That must be your influence. I'm struggling with some of those German books you sent me. Ye gods, they're skullbreakers. I don't know what the hell Thomas Mann is talking about most of the time. So write me long letters explaining it all, will you? Consider me your culture-striker.

  I'm glad you've made a little progress with the authorities on behalf of your aborigines. What an impression they made on Amos! They really spooked him. He said they made him feel he was in touch with the creation of the world. He loved their idea about everyone living forever in the dreamtime. I hope that's where he is right now.

  We're going into action again. Everyone is hoping this is the last time around. I doubt it. We've been looking for one big battle to end it all ever since we came out here. The Japs won't oblige.

  Your wandering Jew, Marty

  Onward Christian Sailors

  "From now on," Officer of the Deck Lieutenant Wilson Selvage MacComber said, "it's going to be a rout."

  "I hope you're right," Captain McKay said.

  Around them steamed an awesome array known as Task Force 58—six heavy aircraft carriers and six light carriers with over seven hundred planes on their hangar decks, eight battleships, six cruisers and thirty-six destroyers. Just ahead were two of the battleships, the recently launched Missouri and New Jersey. Long streamlined monsters, without a trace of the old battleships' squat gun-platform look, they were capable of hitting thirty-two knots—as fast as any carrier or cruiser. America's productive might was giving the Navy overwhelming superiority in the sky and on the sea.

  Behind them lay another conquest—Kwajalein, the key to the Marshall Islands. It had been captured with amazingly light casualties. Admiral Kelly Turner had applied the bitter lessons learned at Tarawa. For three days, instead of for three hours, this awesome fleet had pounded the Japanese with an incessant rain of shells. The task force's seven hundred planes had dropped additional tons of bombs, and land-based planes flying from Tarawa had added still more destruction. The dazed, decimated Japanese defenders had offered little more than token resistance.

  At this very moment, planes from the carriers were swarming over the great Japanese naval base of Truk, 660 miles southwest of the Marshalls. The battleships and cruisers and destroyers had their turret hoists and handling rooms loaded with armor-piercing shells for the Combined Fleet if they came out to fight. Among the crew, tension ran high. Jack Peterson spun the main battery director back and forth like a dervish. He was sure the decisive battle he had been predicting ever since they had sailed from Long Beach was looming just over the horizon.

  The Jefferson City's CIC radio carried transmissions from the pilots as they argued and kidded with each other about targets and anti-aircraft fire over Truk.

  "You mean those itty-bitty boats down there are warships?"

  "Cut the crap! This is serious business. Those guys are shooting at us!"

  "They are? I thought those puffs all around us were firecrackers for Hirohito's birthday party. Isn't that what we came for?"

  "Eeny meeny miney mo, I just hit a cruiser on the toe."

  Montgomery West tried to keep score on what the pilots claimed they hit. If they were even half right, the Japanese fleet had been wiped out. When he reported this news to Captain. McKay, he grunted skeptically. "Everything looks like a hit to those guys. And every ship looks like a battleship. They're not as bad as the Army boys, but they're cousins under the skin. Check with the admiral's staff for the real score.

  From the Jefferson City's mainmast fluttered the four-star flag of Admiral Raymond. Spruance. Having an admiral aboard complicated life for everyone. Room had to be found for his staff in Officers' Country. The Jefferson City's CIC was sliced in half to create a flag plotting room, where. Spruance and his staff worked. Flag signalmen took over the. Jefferson City's halyards, and flag radiomen commandeered a large chunk of the radio room. Spruance occupied a stateroom reserved for such starry visitors, directly behind the flag bridge.

  "Admiral Icicle" was the nickname the crew quickly chose for the lean severe Spruance. Not that Spruance ever said a word to any of them. He regarded himself as strictly a passenger aboard Captain McKay's ship. But the crew had a chance to study him for two hours each afternoon when the forecastle was cleared by the Marine detachment and Spruance walked briskly up and down, accompanied by one or two of his staff officers.

  Spruance's choice of the Jefferson City for his flagship baffled McKay at first. As Nimitz's chief of staff for the previous year, Spruance obviously knew all about the travails of Captain McKay and the ship. McKay had been one of his students at the Naval War College in 1938, when Spruance was the second-ranking professor on the faculty. But. McKay, as shy as Spruance himself, had not become close to this taciturn man. Had Spruance been ordered by Admiral King to get enough evidence against Captain McKay to send him home in disgrace?

  McKay soon discovered that Spruance disliked Fleet Admiral Ernest J. King at least as much as he assumed McKay did. Spruance's chief of staff, Captain. Byron Maher, was a victim of King's SOB style. A chunky, balding man with the mournful eyes of an abused beagle, Maher had been one of the brighter members of the class of 1917. Given a cruiser when the war broke out, he had run it aground off Hawaii. King had relieved him and vowed he would never get another ship and would never be promoted to admiral. Cominch ignored Spruance's repeated recommendations to make Maher a rear admiral.

  Inevitably, this bond of animosity — and Spruance's recollections of McKay as one of his better students at the Naval War College — led to an invitation. "Art," Byron Maher said, "the admiral wonders if you'd like to join us for a walk this afternoon."

  "I'll be delighted."

  Spruance liked to talk while he strolled. That afternoon he discoursed on the strategy of the war as it was evolving in Washington and Pearl Harbor. He was not happy with it. "We're spending as much time and energy brawling with each other as we are fighting the Japanese," the admiral said.

  "MacArthur wants to invade the Philippines, which will take a good year to capture. He wants to rescue the reputation he lost there in 1941. He should have been court-martialed and retired for losing them in the first place. That fiasco was worse than any mistakes made at Pearl Harbor. King is furious with MacArthur for stealing an entire fleet from him. He w
ants to invade Formosa, but he can't get enough troops out of the Army or the Marines to do it. The Army Air Force says they can bomb Japan to its knees if we get them bases in the Marianas. What do you think, Art?"

  "Why take any more islands? Why not sail this fleet into Japan's home waters and force their fleet to come out and fight? We win and Japan has no choice but surrender."

  "I've already gotten that recommendation from a half dozen aviators," Spruance said, using his term for the carrier admirals. Spruance was still a battleship man, even though carrier planes had won the battle of Midway for him. "What makes you think the Japanese Fleet will come out and fight if they don't think they can win? We don't have the oilers, the ammunition ships, to maintain a fleet this big at sea for a long period of time. And we'd be very vulnerable to their land-based planes."

  McKay sighed. For a moment he was back at the War College, squirming while Captain Spruance urged him to think harder about his estimate of the situation. "It's going to get tougher and tougher to take these islands. From now on, they'll know exactly where we're going."

  "I know," Spruance said. "Kwajalein was a fluke."

  "Maybe we can decide it all at Truk."

  Spruance shook his head. "The aviators got very few capital ships. Mostly auxiliaries. The main fleet was gone before we got there. Maybe we can do a little hunting tomorrow. Tell your gunnery officer to make sure his boys are ready to shoot."

  That was typical Spruance. He treated his staff the same way, as Byron Maher was wont to complain to his classmate McKay. "He'll discuss grand strategy by the hour. But if you want to find out what he plans to do tomorrow, you have to be a mind reader."

  The next day, the carriers launched another strike at Truk. Spruance detached the battleships New Jersey and Iowa, cruisers Jefferson City and Minneapolis, and four destroyers. The heavies steamed in line of battle column, the destroyers scurrying ahead through the placid seas. Soon they were opposite the northern entrance to Truk Lagoon. Inside they could see dark green cone-shaped islands, rising to a height of fifteen hundred feet. Spruance ordered a countermarch, and the American squadron proceeded to plow past the entrance from the opposite direction.

  No one could figure out what the admiral had in mind. McKay invited Byron Maher up to the bridge and asked his opinion. "I think he's just enjoying himself. He's thumbing his nose at the Japs," Maher said. "Imagine how we would have felt if Yamamoto did this sort of thing off Pearl Harbor on December eighth, 1941?"

  "Maybe it's more serious than that," McKay said. "Maybe he's hoping that by humiliating them this way, the war party in their government will collapse and we can negotiate peace."

  Peace. The word stirred an enormous wish for it, in all its meanings, in Arthur McKay's soul. Peace would mean that Sammy was safe, that he could devote himself to regaining Rita's love. Peace would lift the burden of the Jefferson City from his shoulders.

  "What's there to negotiate as long as Roosevelt insists on unconditional surrender?" Maher said. "You should hear what Spruance thinks of that idea."

  As they turned back toward Kwajalein, lookouts sighted smoke just over the horizon. Soon they saw it was coming from two crippled Japanese ships, a destroyer and a cruiser. In between them was a smaller patrol craft, which the destroyers' shells had left burning on the water. Spruance telephoned the Jefferson City's bridge. "Art," he said, "you and the Minneapolis will take the cruiser. The battleships will take the destroyer."

  McKay realized Spruance was looking forward for the first time in his life to a sea battle. At Midway he never saw the enemy fleet. All the destruction on both sides had been wrought by planes. He could have left these cripples to be finished off by Task Force 58's planes. But he wanted the thrill of fighting ship to ship.

  Neither McKay nor his crew shared the admiral's enthusiasm. The smoking cruiser reminded them too much of the Jefferson. City off the Aleutians. The battered destroyer brought back memories of the morning after the Friday-thirteenth night battle off Guadalcanal, when Ironbottom Sound was littered with crippled ships.

  As the New Jersey passed the sinking patrol boat, she opened fire at point-blank range with ten of her five-inch guns.

  The Japanese ship disintegrated into flaming debris. "Jesus Christ," gasped George Tombs. "That isn't war."

  "Yes it is," McKay, said.

  McKay saw two flashes of light on the destroyer's deck. "Torpedoes," he said. "Alert the lookouts. Notify the other ships."

  Tombs shouted the warning over the TBS. The New Jersey turned just in time to escape the deadly fish. A moment later, her main battery and the main battery of the Iowa fired salvos. The destroyer, game to the end, replied with her five-inch popguns for another sixty seconds. Then she crumpled into a mass of extruded burning metal as the huge shells struck her.

  Simultaneously, the Jefferson City and the Minneapolis opened fire. The Japanese cruiser's guns flashed in return, and shells straddled the Minneapolis. But within five minutes this enemy ship too was a smashed burning hulk. Her forward turret somehow fired one last round which fell a thousand yards short of the Jefferson City as she exploded and sank.

  Led by the mighty battleships, the American squadron turned away, letting the Japanese on Truk hunt for survivors, if any. From flag plot came a message. "Admiral Spruance congratulates the Jefferson City on her shooting."

  "I don't know about you," George Tombs said, "but I don't think I'll be able to eat much supper tonight."

  A weight heavier than the burden of command pressed Captain McKay's shoulders. The mixture of dismay and weariness on Tombs's honest face was part of it. Sinking a virtually defenseless ship in broad daylight at point-blank range somehow offended the feelings every sailor shared about their calling. It made them all sick of the war. But the war had its own timetable, its own malevolent life.

  In F Division, the cinch victory created uneasy feelings too. "They went down the way I'd like to go down," Boats Homewood said. "You got to admire their guts."

  "I never thought I'd hate to lay a salvo on any Jap ship," Jack Peterson said “But I guess there's a first time for everything."

  "I don't like easy wins," Boats said. "You got to pay for them later on."

  "There but for the grace of God go I," Flanagan said. "That's what you're saying. Except neither one of you bozos believes in God."

  "Hey, what do you mean," Homewood said. "Sure I believe in Him. I'm a baptized Christian."

  "The kid's right," Jack said. "We don't really believe in Him. I quit when I was sixteen."

  "I never quit," Boats insisted. "I just figure He'll take me the way I am. I take Him the same way."

  "Come to the church service tomorrow," Leo Daley said. "The chaplain wants everyone there, Catholics, Protestants, Jews. Why not atheists?"

  "What's he gonna do, ascend into heaven?" Jack Peterson asked.

  "I don't know. But I'm going," Daley said. "Even Camutti and Jablonsky are going. Why don't you come, Frank?"

  "Why not?" Flanagan said. Something had happened to the chaplain. He was giving much better sermons. He had stopped droning. He was organizing prayer groups in the deck divisions.

  At least five hundred sailors clustered on the fantail the following morning. The captain and a lot of the officers sat in the first rows. It was another beautiful sunny day. The chaplain led them in "Onward Christian Soldiers," and then read some passages from the Bible about great military victories, such as Joshua's.

  "We've got a Joshua on this ship, men," he said. "His name is Spruance and he has just demonstrated how he is going to topple the walls of the Japanese Empire with the ships and planes of the U.S. Navy. That victory over those fleeing cowards yesterday demonstrates beyond all doubt that this war has God's blessing. This ship has God's blessing too; I feel it in my heart. This ship which has endured the perils of the war and remains eager for the fray.

  "I'll tell you what I want to see now I want to see some of you declare yourselves for Jesus. I want all of you to declare for
Jesus in your hearts. He's the one who'll sustain us all as we march on to victory against our despicable foes. Remember the words of the hymn. We're sailing under the cross of Jesus, just as your brothers in the Army are marching under it.

  "Is anyone willing to come forward? Will anyone offer himself as a representative of the whole crew?"

  "I will," Daley cried. "I'm a Catholic, but I believe what you're saying about Jesus."

  "What division are you from?"

  "F Division."

  "I want a witness from every division on the ship. I won't stop until we get one."

  It took another twenty minutes of exhortation, but eventually he got someone from every division. They stood in a circle around him, and Bushnell stretched his arms over their heads. "Lord," he cried, "as those rays of your sun slant down on these men, imbue them with faith in victory, faith in your loving care. Let them spread this faith among their fellows. Captain, will you join in this circle of faith?"

  Flanagan thought the expression on Captain McKay's face was less than enthusiastic. But he joined the circle of sailors and held hands with them as the chaplain made the sign of the cross over them. They sang another stanza of "Onward Christian Soldiers" and the victory service was over.

  Up in main forward, Peterson and Homewood were playing acey-deucey. "What did he say?" Peterson asked.

  "We're sailing into the fray under the cross of Jesus."

  "Christ," Homewood said.

  "That's his last name."

  Emerson Bushnell was invited to dine that evening with Captain McKay. He arrived expecting congratulations for the victory service. Instead, the captain never mentioned it. They discussed their Midwest boyhoods. The chaplain had grown up on his grandfather's farm in Illinois. The captain told the chaplain how his father had sent his mother to him at the Naval Academy with an ultimatum. If he did not leave the Academy, he was going to sell the farm while prices were high, thanks to World War I. McKay had declined to leave and his father had sold the farm and invested the money in wheat futures on the Kansas City exchange. When the war ended, the price of wheat had plummeted, and he had lost everything.