All McKay's instincts said no. It was still wiser to hold the ship steady and give the gunners a chance to get the plane. But it had not worked the last time. The men at the guns and the fire control instruments were no longer functioning at a hundred percent. Maybe nothing was going to work, once one of these death planes got close to the ship of its choice.
Was Win Kemble aboard, laughing at this new war, which neither skill nor courage could win? Madness. "All right, George, let's try it," McKay said.
A kamikaze roared past at two thousand yards, heading for the Enterprise. Cruisers on both sides, including the Jefferson City, blazed away at him. Again they scored hits, there was a burst of flame — but the plane hurtled into the big carrier that the J.C. had stopped three torpedoes to preserve off the Santa Cruz Islands in the Solomons more than two years ago. Fire and smoke towered into the sky.
"God damn it," George Tombs said.
Another kamikaze made the same run, only a few feet above the water. The guns of the cruiser opposite them spoke. A forty-millimeter shell hurtled into the starboard hatch of the Jefferson City's pilothouse and exploded against the opposite wall. Everyone was knocked flat by the blast. Captain McKay staggered to his feet and found a chunk of smoking metal in the chest of his flak suit. One after the other, the rest of the men on the bridge stood up, amazed that they were still alive. The engine room telegrapher was bleeding from a shell splinter in his cheek. Otherwise, no one was hurt. They had been saved by their shoot suits.
"Bogey at one eight five," gasped the bridge talker.
"Left full rudder," George Tombs said, swinging the ship to starboard to give more guns a shot at him.
A mistake. The kamikaze was already a ball of flame. He might have fallen short or missed the ship if they had stayed on course and let the after guns handle him. Now he had a target even a dead man could not miss. Maybe George was in a daze from the explosion of that shell. Maybe it was the captain's fault for letting George change his battle plan. Passivity, his old weakness, haunting him one last time?
"Oh, Christ," George gasped, seeing what he had done.
A passage from Moby Dick flickered through McKay's mind and vanished before he could grasp it. Later he realized it was Starbuck's plea as the whale charged the ship. Is this the end of all my bursting prayers? All my life-long fidelities? My God stand by me now!
The burning plane smashed into forty-millimeter mount one just aft of the bridge. Flames leaped as high as the stacks. The ship jerked convulsively as another bomb exploded deep in her midsection.
"I hope that isn't in sick bay," McKay said.
"Fire on the main deck," roared the boatswain's mate of the watch.
The bomb exploded in the passageway outside sick bay, where dozens of wounded were waiting for treatment. At least twenty were killed instantly. The blast blew in the bulkheads of sick bay, killing more men in bunks on that side as well as pharmacist's mates and men assigned to sick bay at General Quarters. An inferno roared in the passageway, threatening to incinerate or suffocate the survivors. But the flames were snuffed with almost miraculous speed by men from Repair Two.
"Take the wounded to the wardroom dressing station. We'll work there," Dr. Cadwallader said.
Dr. Levy stared numbly at the smashed bodies and pieces of bodies in the passageway. His eyes kept blurring, a loud ringing, almost a clang, echoed in his skull. He was in no shape to operate. "Dr. Cadwallader," he said, "you're going to have to take over the surgery. I'm seeing double."
"Dr. Levy," Cadwallader said, "I hate to admit it, but you're ten times the surgeon I'll ever be. I think it might be better to use some old-fashioned Navy medicine to cure your double vision.
"What do you suggest?"
"Stand still."
Levy stopped in the dim, smoke-filled passageway. Cadwallader belted him in the face. The blurring disappeared and the ringing diminished.
"Do that again," Levy said.
This time Cadwallader walloped him. The ringing subsided to a buzz. 'Thanks," Levy said.
"The pleasure was all mine," Dr. Cadwallader said.
On the bridge, Captain McKay listened to the grim reports from Damage Control. Everyone on forty-millimeter mount one and in the starboard five-inch mount had been killed by the second kamikaze. Those guns were out of action. The bomb had wrecked sick bay and added another set of punctures in the hull amidships. The Jefferson City was now down eight feet. Another twenty men were dead, at least sixty wounded.
From flagship Eldorado came another message: "Ragtag, can you resume bombardment at 1330?"
"Reply affirmative," Captain McKay said.
Once more, while her doctors struggled to save the wounded and her repair parties fought the rising water on the lower decks, Navigator Lee fretted over his charts and helped guide the ship to within a mile of Okinawa's shore. They still had no steering power on the bridge. Orders were sent to men in the after steering station, deep in the stern of the ship, as they threaded the shoals and reefs.
Two miles farther out, the battleship Mississippi hurled fourteen-inch shells over their heads. Directions for the Jefferson City crackled over the radio from Marine spotters ashore. While smoke curled from her charred deck amidships, the main battery's two surviving turrets thundered, and the eight-inch shells crashed into a Japanese strong point the Marines had christened Plasma Ridge.
The spotters shouted their approval of the destruction. Gunnery Officer Mullenoe walked the shells up and down the mile-long ridge. "If there's anyone left alive up there he's got to be wearing armor plate," the spotter said.
As dusk fell, the ship withdrew to rejoin the rest of the fleet at sea. From flagship Eldorado, a blinker flashed a message. Minutes later, the J.C.'s chief signalman handed it to the captain. You've got a lot of sand, Ragtag.
It was as close as Admiral Turner could get to admitting he was wrong.
From Admiral Spruance in flag plot came another message. The performance of the Jefferson City today is in the highest traditions of the American naval service. My congratulations to you and your men.
Captain McKay read both messages over the PA system to the crew.
The harbor of Keramaretto, a mountainous island fifteen miles off the southern tip of Okinawa, was not a place anyone in the fleet wanted to visit.
“You think we got it bad, look at those poor bastards," Homewood said to Flanagan and other members of F They stared at grotesquely twisted superstructures and hulls with gaping holes. Most of the kamikazes' victims were destroyers that had been on the radar picket lines. Among them loomed the battleship Tennessee, with her signal bridge burned out, and the attack transport Lauderdale, which had been shot up by American guns during the last attack.
Small boats buzzed around the harbor carrying wounded to white-hulled hospital ships. On the warships, flags were all at half mast as they buried their dead. The Jefferson City soon joined them in this funereal business. Flanagan stood among the mourners on the fantail while Chaplain Bushnell droned through a eulogy to "our lost heroes." George Jablonsky lay among the shrouded corpses. If Jack Peterson had lived, Flanagan would have been on the gun director for forty millimeter mount one. He would have been incinerated by that kamikaze, along with his gun crew. The three mesquiteers snuffled and rubbed their noses beside him. They too would be lying next to their buddies if Jack had not died.
If. If. If. Flanagan was too tired to think beyond the word.
A few feet away, Harold Semple sobbed into a handkerchief. Edna McKenzie was among the dead. Sick bay had been her General Quarters station. She had been tender and kindhearted to the last, even though her nerves had disintegrated. If only he could live up to her example, he would be such a better person, Harold thought forlornly.
After the ceremony, the bodies were transported to a cemetery on the beach. A Navy repair ship came alongside and divers went down to investigate the damage to the hull. Other experts descended into the darkness around the propeller shafts.
&nb
sp; Two hours later, Captain McKay was reporting what they found to Admiral Spruance. The propeller shafts had been knocked out of line by the blast from the first kamikaze's bomb. The propellers themselves were bent and unstable. The damage to the hull required the attention of a dry dock if the cruiser hoped to survive a major storm.
"I'm afraid we're going to have to part company, Art," Spruance said. "You deserve some leave time, anyway. I was tempted to send you back after Sammy died. I'm sure Rita needs you badly."
"I haven't heard a word from her."
Spruance stared straight ahead. He could not become entangled with personal lives. War required one man whose brain retained the cold calm of God. "We'll write up the orders immediately," he said.
As Spruance and his staff prepared to transfer to the battleship New Mexico, the news swirled through the Jefferson City like a typhoon. It started with the Marines, who heard it from the orderlies who were guarding the admiral. Harold Semple heard it from Whizzer Wylie, who heard it from Lieutenant West. It prompted. Semple to abandon all thoughts of resuming a liaison with Jerome Wilkinson.
Home! To skies without kamikazes. Home. To a world of rustling silk sheets and lacy dresses. Harold dashed off a letter to Mort Lyman asking if he was forgiven.
"Maybe the goddamn war will be over by the time they finish the repairs," Flanagan said to Homewood.
Dusk was falling over the harbor of Keramaretto. They were topside, looking at the gouged, battered ships around them in the gloom.
"It won't," Homewood said.
"How the hell do you know?" Flanagan said.
"I don't know how I know some things. I'm just tellin' you. We ain't finished with the war. It ain't finished with us."
Home Front
Into Long Beach Harbor the Jefferson City limped once more, after a slow difficult voyage from Okinawa. The damaged propeller shafts and screws had made it impossible for her to run at over twenty knots. At sea, they had been shocked to hear that President Franklin D. Roosevelt had died. But the new President, Harry S. Truman of Missouri, made it clear that nothing essential had changed. America and her allies were still committed to a fight to the finish — the unconditional surrender of Germany and Japan.
On the forecastle, the crew mustered by divisions in their long-unused dress whites. On the bridge, George Tombs conned the ship to buoy twenty-two in the outer harbor. As the buoy man began running the anchor chain through the buoy's big metal grommet, every ship in the harbor blew her whistle and siren. Factory whistles and automobile horns and police sirens ashore added to the racket.
"I knew we did a great job out there, Art," Tombs said. "But I didn't realize it was this good."
"Don't let it turn your head, George," Captain McKay said. "I think it has something to do with the German surrender."
Minutes later, a message from the radio room confirmed his guess. Germany had surrendered unconditionally the previous day. Truman had just announced it at the White House.
"Do you think the Japs will fold now?"
"No," McKay said.
Home. Arthur McKay paced the empty rooms of Clinch Meade's house, overlooking the Pacific. It was as good a home as any. He had never lived in any house he had thought of as home except the house in Hawaii. Maybe the whole country was his home.
At Pearl Harbor, he had asked Mildred Meade if he could have the house for a month. She had agreed, of course. When he candidly admitted that Rita had yet to answer one of his letters, Mildred had grown confused. He could see her wondering if he planned to spend the month with Lucy — or some other woman — then wondering why she was so firmly excluded from his feelings. They shared a common wound now. Her eyes had filled with tears as she struggled to tell him how awful she felt about Sammy.
Arthur McKay had wanted to tell her how much he regretted the impossibility. He had always thought he would have been happy with Mildred. But she would have made any sensible Navy man happy. Why was life so often grotesquely out of joint? Was it because history or fate insisted on people playing multiple roles? Mildred Rogers Meade had wanted to match her heart to some noble cause. But she was also the inheritor of a fortune that her grandfather, Henry Huttleson Rogers, had built on rapacity and amoral cunning. It was fitting that she and most of the fortune should be captured by a modern version of the same piratical breed.
The day dwindled into dusk. Still no Rita. No wife. Only silence on the long distance telephone. Should he get on a plane and burst into their Washington, D.C., house, perhaps finding her in bed with Ernest J. King? No. He had issued the best, the most honest invitation he could write. He could only wait and hope. Meanwhile — McKay opened the bar. He gazed at the rows of bottles with familiar names. Old Overholt. Canadian Club. Ballantine's Scotch.
There was a limit to loneliness. He would give Rita another twelve hours.
"Teresa? It's me. Frank."
The blank face stared past him at the blank wall of the California State Mental Hospital in Sonoma.
"I tole you it'd be a waste of time," the Negro ward attendant said. "She don't talk to nobody."
"I'm back from the Pacific in one piece. In spite of those bad dreams you had about me. Jack Peterson got killed. So did a lot of other guys on the ship. But I'm back. I just wanted you to know I still care about you. I'd like to help you if I can."
The eyes remained blank. Her face had shrunk. It seemed withered, as if she was growing older at an accelerated pace. Her arms were pipe stems.
"She looks starved. Don't you feed her?"
"She don't eat. You got to cram it down her throat."
"What are those burns on the side of her head?"
"From the shock treatment. They keep givin'm to her but they don't do no good."
"I'm going East to see, my parents, Teresa. The first time in almost three years. I'm not looking forward to it. I'd rather stay out here with you — if you were okay."
Silence. Wherever Teresa had gone, she refused to talk about it. Flanagan told her about the kamikazes, about Kruger going crazy, about editing the ship's paper. Finally he ran out of things to say. He became part of Teresa's silence.
With a sigh he walked to the door. "Goodbye," he said.
"Go fuck yourself," Teresa said.
"Yes, my friends, I think we can safely rejoice in God's blessing on this chosen people. The success He has bestowed on our men in uniform is proof of it. We have triumphed because we have fought the good fight. We have fought for justice and brotherhood and freedom. I am confident that our remaining enemy, Japan, will be swiftly subdued and we will welcome the victors from this battlefield with the same heartfelt thanks for God's blessing that we offer now for our victory over Germany."
It was wrong, Edwin Moss thought, looking up at his father's exalted face in the pulpit of Morristown's First Presbyterian Church. The Reverend Woodrow Wilson Moss was making the war sound easy. Easy to win, easy to understand. When anyone who fought in it found it incomprehensible.
It had been difficult to understand even before the kamikazes. But the suicide bombers stretched understanding over a horizon the mind could not reach. Wars are inevitably streaked with madness; loss of control lurks at the edges of everyone's soul. But the kamikazes were like a comet in the sky, a blaze of fearsome meaning that eluded thought.
Eleanor and his four children sat beside Moss in the pew. She was raising them as Catholics, something that had troubled him for a long time. Now it seemed of utterly no importance. The war had opened spaces in his mind that organized religion could not touch. There were fundamental experiences more important than opinions on the Trinity and whether faith or good works were crucial to salvation.
Moss studied his oldest son, Woodrow, fourteen. The boy had just told him he was thinking of going to Annapolis. Moss had had to force a smile, summon words of insincere approval to his lips. He did not want his son to practice the truths he had learned within the narrow world of the Navy. Yet he could not imagine where else he could learn these truths. Co
mmander Moss was confused. Perhaps there was something else he had yet to learn.
Later, at a reception in the garden of the manse, a broad-beamed lady approached him and Eleanor. "You must be so proud of him," she said.
"I am," Eleanor said.
Moss realized that Eleanor had not said a word about his career since he arrived home. That subject too had been transcended by a deeper caring the war had taught her as well as him.
"Where will you be stationed now, Commander?"
"Stationed? I'm going back to my ship. The war isn't over. We still have to invade Japan."
Eleanor was holding his hand as he said this. He felt a tremor run through her body. He wondered if he had told her too much about the kamikazes.
Later, at the dinner table, his father said, "You're awfully quiet, Eddy. I guess you're itching to get back into action."
"What?" Moss said.
"You want to get out there and finish them off. The Japs," his father said.
Commander Moss looked across the table at his son. His answer was intended for him and no one else.
"No," he said. "You're wrong. I wish I didn't have to go. I wish none of us did."
Montgomery West did not know what to do or say. He read the story in Louella Parsons' column for the third time.
It told how a certain English actress was two-timing a naval hero. Such disloyalty, such dishonor, should forever bar her from getting a part in Hollywood.
Uncle Mort's welcome-home present. It was a sort of climax or anticlimax. Nothing had gone right since he arrived. Gwen had dragged him to parties at which people asked him inane questions about the war and he gave them curt answers. He got the feeling she was using him to re-establish her standing in Hollywood. It stank. He began to think he hated Hollywood. He could not tolerate another artificial smile. All he wanted was Gwen, her touch, her lips, her body. Gwen and quiet. A place where Delegate could not get at him. Where burning kamikazes did not fill his radar screen.
"I've got the perfect answer," he finally said, after staring at the paper for five minutes. "I'll marry you."
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