Time and Tide

by Thomas Fleming

  "Why don't these bastards admit they're beaten?" George Jablonsky wanted to know.

  To keep from growing crazy, he had shaved himself bald and planned a career as a professional wrestler. Others had grown beards. Flanagan had not gotten a haircut in weeks. The captain seemed to understand. He let them break trivial rules as long as they did their jobs.

  "They like dying for a noble cause. I dig that," Flanagan said. "It's better than dying for no particular reason."

  That was what the sailors hated about the kamikazes. They destroyed the exultant sense of survival everyone experienced for a day after the battle of Leyte Gulf. Everyone had to resume wondering if he would get killed. But dying no longer seemed noble, sacrificial. There was no danger of losing the war. No one had to worry about mothers and sisters and fiancées being bombarded by Japanese battleships, bombed by Japanese planes, raped by Japanese armies. Dying now would be dumb, meaningless. It would be like getting drunk and falling overboard. Or getting hit by a shell from another American ship. It made the idea of death more intolerable.

  Homewood sat down beside Flanagan at the mess table, with double portions of everything on his tray, as usual.

  "How's it look topside?" Flanagan asked. He was worried about his bet with the aerographer. The sunny skies had vanished. Thick gray clouds were scudding up from the south.

  The ship suddenly rolled thirty degrees to starboard. Trays, food, sailors went sliding across the compartment in a crashing, cursing torrent.

  "I think you're gonna lose fifty bucks," Homewood said. He had hooked his legs around a table leg and continued to eat his ham and beans.

  They were about to discover the kamikazes were not the only Pacific wind that could kill.

  "Why doesn't Halsey get us the hell out of this?" George Tombs asked.

  The executive officer gazed uneasily at the forty-foot swells looming around them. A gale-force wind lashed spray against the bridge's windshields. Ahead, two destroyers were trying to refuel from a hulking oiler. They had spent the last two hours at it. Twice the hoses had parted, spilling thousands of gallons of oil into the heaving ocean.

  "He wants to get in one last punch at the airfields in the Philippines," Captain McKay said

  The kamikazes were driving everyone zooey, from the sailors to the admirals. Here was Bull Halsey, trying to refuel the Third Fleet in the path of an oncoming typhoon. He should be running for the open ocean, but he was sure if he could get in one more strike at the airfields of Luzon the kamikazes would disappear. Halsey was allowing his contempt for the Japanese to muddle his judgment. The kamikazes were not going to disappear. You could hide the flimsy planes they were using on obscure dirt airfields in the jungle, in mountain caves, you could move them around on trucks. It was the Japanese answer to American steel and high explosives, to the enormous fleet, the swarms of planes advancing across the Pacific toward them. They would triumph through spiritual supremacy, now that the last of the Combined Fleet, their hope of physical supremacy, lay at the bottom of the ocean.

  As daylight faded, the destroyers still had not managed to refuel. A sinister red glow filled the western sky. The sea was deep black, with white spindrift whipping off the tops of the waves. McKay called the aerographer to the bridge. "Where do you locate this storm, Eric?" he asked.

  "I don't have all the reports they're getting on the flagship," he said. "I'm using the old seaman's rule of thumb. 'Face the wind and the center lies ten points to your right.'" He put his finger on the map. "Just about here."

  "We're sailing right into it?"

  "If I'm right."

  "What do you think, Boats?"

  "It's a good rule. I seen a lot of captains use it out here," Homewood said.

  By morning the wind had risen to sixty knots. Saltwater was blowing horizontally at bridge level, making it almost impossible to see anything dead ahead. An unearthly wail emanated from the radar antennas as the wind whipped through them. Conversation on the bridge was possible only in shouts. Waves kept building to awesome heights. The barometer began to fall with meteoric speed, going from twenty-nine to seventeen in the space of an hour.

  The wind began whirling counterclockwise, driving waves to new heights and making it impossible to maintain a headway of more than three knots. The ship was rolling thirty and forty degrees to port and starboard. The weight of her five-inch and forty-millimeter guns had never been figured into her original design. There was a serious possibility of capsizing.

  Over the radio came frantic reports from captains of destroyers and escort carriers. Destroyers were rolling seventy degrees. One call from the Monaghan simply said, "We're going over." Then there was silence. On the escort carriers planes ripped loose and caught fire. Aboard the Jefferson City there was another worry.

  "Captain," said Edwin Moss on the telephone, "I don't like the way the bow is working. We're taking water through a half dozen sprung plates. I'm afraid it could snap off if this storm gets any worse."

  It got worse. The wind rose to a hundred knots, with gusts that screamed to a hundred twenty. The sea and sky blended into a blinding wall of flying water. On human skin, it was like a sandblaster. Lookouts, signalmen, anyone who exposed his face to it sought shelter with blood streaming from his forehead and cheeks.

  Edwin Moss reported water was pouring into the ship through supposedly watertight hatches. The chief electrician's mate reported some of this water had caused short circuits in the main electrical switchboard, located just above the steering-engine room. They were fighting a half dozen small fires down there. Oz Bradley said that with each roll to starboard the forced draft blower intakes were sucking a thousand gallons of water into the fire rooms.

  That was only the beginning of the ordeal in the fire rooms. They turned off the blowers, and the temperature soon rose to 140 degrees. Another wild roll to starboard burst open the hatch on the weather deck that Amos Cartwright had loosened for emergency escape. Water cascaded down on the boilers. Marty Roth clawed his way over blistering steam lines and up the escape ladder inside the ventilator. Hundreds of gallons of water poured down on him while he fought to close the hatch. Twice he got knocked off the ladder and started falling. Clawing frantically, he grabbed a rung after a few feet and returned to the struggle. Half drowned, he finally got the hatch dogged shut and spun the wheel to secure it.

  As he returned to the fire room, drenched and seared, he could have sworn he heard Amos Cartwright's voice whisper, Nice goin', Jewboy. Nobody on watch said a word to him. They were too busy trying to rig hose pumps to get rid of the three feet of water on the deckplates. With every roll they grabbed the overhead pipes or anything else that offered a grip. Otherwise they were flung from one side of the work space to the other with the sloshing tidal wave of oily water. One watertender first class had blood streaming from a cut over his eye. A fireman first class had broken his arm. He crouched on the ladder, whimpering, "We're goin' over. I know we're goin' over."

  By now Captain McKay had been on the bridge for twenty-four consecutive hours. So had Executive Officer Tombs. From the after steering room came ominous reports of the loss of lubricating oil suction on the port engine every time they rolled to that side. They had to shut down the engine to prevent a catastrophic burnout. Commander Moss reported the bow was starting to wobble one or two degrees off the keel. There was three feet of water in the mess compartment. Another cascade of water knocked out the main switchboard. Below decks, the only light came from the eerie red battle lamps.

  "What do we do, Art?" Tombs shouted.

  "Shut down the engines," McKay said.

  "What?"

  "It's an old merchant captain's trick. I heard one of them describe it in a bar in Shanghai fifteen years ago. I can still hear him saying, 'You can't fight a typhoon.' Now that I've seen one, I'm sure he's right."

  Tombs clearly did not agree with him. "You're sure you want to do to it, Art?"

  “Yes."

  "Shut them down," Tombs said to the
engine telegrapher operator.

  The sailor shoved the annunciator handle to zero. Almost instantly, Oz Bradley was on the telephone from the engine room.

  "Is that signal correct?"

  "Yes," McKay said.

  "Captain," cried a quavering voice over the telephone, "this is Emerson Bushnell. Have the engines failed?"

  "No. I shut them down."

  "Is that a good idea?"

  "We'll soon find out"

  "Is there anything I can do?"

  "Try prayer, Chaplain."

  In the engine rooms and fire rooms, where faith in the ship's survival was essentially faith in the power plant, fear rampaged. "Parker was right, the bastard's crazy," cried the machinist's mate known as the Throttleman. "He's been waitin' for a chance to kill us."

  "Shut up," Oz Bradley said. "He knows what he's doing."

  "Have you ever heard of anybody turnin' off the goddamn engines in a typhoon?" the Throttleman screamed.

  "I'm not a fucking sailor and neither are you," Bradley answered.

  The words tormented him, but they were true. He had to admit for the first time that their ultimate survival on the ocean depended on the seamanship of the captain, on knowledge and skill that predated his beloved engines.

  "I'm goin' up. I'm gonna get topside before we roll over," the Throttleman screamed.

  He started scrambling up the ladder to the upper level, where Bradley was standing. Oz blocked him. "Get back to that goddamn throttle," he said.

  The machinist outweighed Bradley by fifty pounds. But twenty-five years of giving orders were on Bradley's side. The Throttleman retreated to the deckplates. He could not look at anyone in the engine room. He just slumped in front of the throttle mumbling, "I got nothin' left. I got nothin' left."

  In the CIC, Radarman Whizzer Wylie looked at his blank screen and started to blubber. "We're going over, just like those destroyers, Lieutenant."

  Harold Semple put his hands over his ears. "Tell him to stop, Lieutenant, please. He's making me nervous."

  "The captain knows what he's doing," Montgomery West said. He realized that was a statement of faith, not fact. He did not have the slightest idea whether Arthur McKay was doing the right thing. Shutting off the engines made no sense to him. It seemed to expose the cruiser to the uncaring violence of the sea.

  Flanagan followed the chaplain around the ship looking for an inspirational story for the next edition of The Hawthorn. He did not find one. In compartment after compartment, the sailors told Bushnell to get lost. They were all enraged at discovering this new variety of death at their throats. They seemed to hold the chaplain responsible. Jerome Wilkinson was particularly vicious. "We ain't interested in prayers, Chaplain," he said. "Go get us some extra life preservers."

  As usual, Bushnell saw it as a personal failure. Flanagan tried to console him as he reeled back to his office. "They've been out here too long."

  Ahead of them in the dim passageway, lit only by the glow of the battle lamps, Flanagan saw a shadowy figure. The ship rolled violently to starboard and threw him against the bulkhead. When he got to his feet, he found the chaplain clutching the wheel of a fire hose, staring into the dimness, terrified.

  "What's wrong?" Flanagan asked.

  "I saw him. Captain Kemble."

  Flanagan peered down the passageway. The figure had vanished.

  Only in F Division was the panicky rage held to a minimum. Homewood assured them Captain McKay had made the best choice. "You watch," he said. "We'll get knocked around some but we'll ride it out. She'll find her own way now. Them engines were just gettin' us into trouble, tryin' to fight a hundred-knot wind."

  "Are you just bullshitting us, Boats?" Flanagan asked. Homewood shook his head. "We're gonna find out this old lady's a ship, not just a hunk of floatin' machinery."

  For the next two hours, the Jefferson City lay hove to, while gigantic pyramid-shaped waves whirled and crashed in frenzy around her. Again and again from the bridge they looked up at moving mountains of water on all sides. The cruiser slid up and down these foaming slopes and rolled violently in the troughs between them. But she was no longer fighting the typhoon. She was surrendering to the storm's power like a confident woman yielding to an angry lover. The strain on the engines and bow vanished. Her essential shipness, the buoyancy her designers had created in the complex spaces of her hull, sustained her in the chaos of wind and water.

  Their escape from the typhoon was so sudden it seemed miraculous. It was like emerging from a thundercloud in a plane. One minute they were in a soup of wind and spray, the next they were drifting on a sea with a half mile visibility and only a mild swell.

  On the bridge, George Tombs ordered the engines ahead one third. He regarded Captain McKay with something close to awe. "I thought we were finished for a while, Art. Without you, I think we might have been."

  "Just trying to earn my salary, George," McKay said.

  Mail Call

  When the Jefferson City pulled into Ulithi Atoll, the Navy's forward base in the western Pacific, Admiral Spruance and his staff came aboard. Bull Halsey had gone home for a rest, and the J.C. became a flagship again.

  Byron Maher, Spruance's chief of staff, handed Captain McKay a letter. The return address was in Hawaii. Above the street number was written: "Kemble." In his cabin, McKay opened it and a piece of blue paper fell out. He picked it up and recognized Win's handwriting.

  "It is a long way to go," said Yuan Chen. "There are rivers too swift for any boat, Mountains that no chariot can cross. What am I to do?"

  “Humility shall be your boat,” said Po Chu-i. “Pliancy shall be your chariot.”

  "It is a long way to go," said Yuan Chen.

  "The lands are not inhabited. There are no villages where I can buy provisions. I should die before I reached my journey's end."

  “Lessen your wants, husband your powers

  And you will have no need to buy provisions on your way.”

  “You will cross many rivers and come at last to a sea So wide you cannot see the further shore.”

  “Yet you will go on, without knowing whether it will ever end. Here all that came with you will turn back. But you will still have far to go.”

  “He who needs others is forever shackled.”

  He who is needed by others is forever sad.

  I would have you drop these shackles, Put away your sadness And wander with me in the kingdom of the Great Void.

  In The Middle Of The Darkness

  "The Marines asked for a ten-day bombardment. Kelly Turner gave them three. As usual, Spruance is letting the son of a bitch do it his way."

  Byron Maher's voice was weary. He had been working eighteen hours a day on the plans for Iwo Jima for two months. He leaned back in his chair, his big round face sagging.

  "What do you think?" Arthur McKay said.

  “I don't think we should go near the goddamn place. We're only doing it because the Army Air Force tells us they can't hit anything over Japan at thirty thousand feet, and they're afraid to come lower because their fucking B-29s might get shot down. We killed five thousand kids to take Saipan, Guam and Tinian for these wonderful planes. So far as I know, they haven't hit a single target selected for them. Especially the aircraft factories. We put them at the top of the list. The Japs are still turning out thousands of planes for these kamikaze maniacs to fly into our ships."

  That night Captain McKay, dreamt he was aboard a ship under sail. Great white clouds of canvas loomed above him. He was wearing a strange uniform. It was dark blue, with two rows of parallel gold buttons down the front of the jacket and four gold stripes on the sleeves. On his head was a short-brimmed blue hat, with no braid on it. The ship was a man-of-war. Old-fashioned cannon lined the decks, and they boomed furiously at a fort in the distance. The fort fired back and splashes rose near the ship. But he was more interested in what was happening around the fort. Men in blue uniforms rushed toward it and were driven back by the furious fire of the defenders
.

  "Rapid fire, rapid fire," the captain shouted at the men working the cannon on his ship.

  But it did no good. The men attacking the fort were driven back again. Hundreds of bodies were sprawled in front of the walls.

  "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" the captain cried.

  Captain McKay awoke bathed in sweat. He went out on the wing of the bridge and lit a cigarette. The ghostly shapes of over a thousand warships and transports filled the fifty square miles of Ulithi Lagoon. About half the invasion fleet for Iwo Jima, including his son's Third Marine Division, had arrived the previous day.

  That dream had surfaced from his research for his unwritten book on the Union Navy in the Civil War. It was the attack on Battery Wagner at the mouth of Charleston Harbor on July 10, 1863. The assault, a harebrained scheme of the Army general in command of the expedition, had been repulsed with heavy Union losses. One of the dead was the son of the captain of one of the Union ships. The captain had gone ashore and spent the night sitting beside his son's body in an Army hospital.

  "We have lost a son on earth but gained a friend in heaven," he had written to his wife the next day. "At the moment I am more sad than proud. But when we have sufficiently mingled our tears, I hope that condition can be reversed."

  Did he really mean it? Arthur McKay wondered. How did he reconcile himself to stupidity and incompetence and arrogance, which had killed his son almost as certainly as Confederate bullets? There was not a word of reproach in the letter — not a trace of hatred for the Southern slaveocracy that had started the needless war.

  He had tried to find out more about the captain. But he had dwindled to a name in the national archives. Only this one letter, reprinted in a New York newspaper, had survived.