by Herman Wouk
“The battle wagons peeled off and went ahead a couple of hours ago. I guess maybe that’s them. Or maybe it’s planes. Somebody’s giving that beach hell.”
“Well, this is it,” said Willie, a little annoyed at the thumping of his heart. “If there’s no change, I relieve you.”
“No change.”
Harding shuffled off the bridge. Now the sound of the shore bombardment came rolling across the sea to Willie’s ears, but at this distance it was a mere trivial thumping, as though sailors were beating out mattresses on the ship’s forecastle. Willie told himself that these vague noises and little colored flashes represented hellish destruction that was being rained on the Japs, and tried for a moment to imagine himself as a slant-eyed soldier crouching and shivering in a flaming jungle, but the picture had the unsatisfying false effect of a magazine story about the war. In plain fact, Willie’s first glimpse of combat was a disappointment. It appeared to be an unimportant night gunnery exercise on a very small scale.
The night paled to blue-gray, the stars disappeared; and day was brightening over the sea when the fleet came to a halt, three miles offshore. Attack boats began to drop from the davits of the transports, clustering and swarming on the water like beetles.
And now Willie Keith found himself in an honest-to-goodness war; one-sided, because there was still no firing from the beach, but the real deadly business, none the less. The green islands trimmed with white sand were already aflame and smoking in many spots. Tubby old battleships, targets of so many journalists’ sneers in peacetime, were briskly justifying thirty years of expensive existence by volleying tons of shells into the tropic shrubbery every few seconds, with thundering concussions. Cruisers and destroyers ranged beside them, peppering at the atoll. Now and then the naval fire stopped, and squadrons of planes filed overhead and dived one by one at the islands, raising clouds of white smoke and round bursts of flame, and sometimes a skyscraping mushroom of black, as an oil dump or ammunition pile went up with a blast which jarred the decks of the Caine. All the while the transports kept disgorging attack boats, which were fanning out along the gray choppy water in neat ranks. The sun rose, white and steamy.
The appearance of the atoll was not yet marred by the attack. The orange billows of flame here and there were decorative touches to the pleasant verdant islands, and so were the freshly blossoming clouds of black and white smoke. The smell of powder drifted in the air, and, for Willie, somehow completed the festive and gay effect of the morning. He could not have said why. Actually, it was because the odor, with the incessant banging, reminded him of fireworks on the Fourth of July.
Keefer paused beside him for a moment on the port wing. Wisps of black hair hung out from under the gray dome of the novelist’s helmet. His eyes glittered in their deep shadowed sockets, showing all the whites. “Like the show, Willie? Seems to be all ours.”
Willie swept an arm around at the swarms of ships closed in on the frail-looking islands in the pearly sunrise. “Multitudes, multitudes. What do you think of the Navy at this point, Tom?”
Keefer grinned, twisting one side of his mouth. “Christ,” he said, “the taxpayers ought to be getting something for their hundred billion dollars.” He bounded up the ladder to the flying bridge.
Queeg appeared, hunched almost to a crouch, his head moving ceaselessly to and fro over the bulky collar of his kapok life jacket. His eyes were squinted nearly shut, and he seemed to be smiling gaily. “Kay, Mr. OOD. Where’s this bunch of LVT’s we’re supposed to take in to the beach?”
“Well, I guess it’s that bunch there, sir, by APA 17.” Willie pointed to a huge gray transport some four thousand yards off the port bow.
“APA 17, hey? You’re sure that’s the ship they’re supposed to come from?”
“That’s what the orders said, sir. Jacob Group Four from APA 17.”
“Kay. Let’s get over to APA 17. Standard speed. You keep the conn.”
The captain vanished behind the bridgehouse. Willie stalked into the wheelhouse, swelling with self-importance, and began barking orders. The Caine dropped out of the screen and headed toward the transports. The roaring and blasting of the battleship salvos grew louder with each hundred yards that the Caine moved inward. The ensign was feeling a little dizzy and exalted, as though he had drunk a highball too quickly. He went from wing to wing, taking bearings on the APA, calling for radar ranges, shouting rudder changes with inebriated confidence.
A long line of attack boats emerged from the clusters around the APA and headed for the old minesweeper. Willie went looking for the captain and found him perched on a flagbag, out of sight of the transports and the beach, smoking, and chatting casually with Engstrand. “Sir, Jacob Group Four seems to be heading our way.”
“Kay.” Queeg glanced vaguely out to sea, and puffed at his cigarette.
Willie said, “What shall I do, sir?”
“Whatever you please,” said the captain, and giggled.
The ensign stared at his commanding officer. Queeg resumed telling an anecdote about the invasion of Attu to the signalman. Engstrand rolled his eyes momentarily at the officer of the deck, and shrugged.
Willie returned to the pilothouse. The attack boats were bumping toward the Caine in showers of spray. Peering through binoculars, Willie could see an officer standing in the stern of the leading boat with a large green megaphone under his arm. Spray flew all over his life jacket and khakis, and drenched the backs of the crouching marines in front of him. The glasses gave a prismatic blurriness to the boat and its occupants. Willie could see the men shouting at each other but could hear no sound; it was like a glimpse of a worn-out silent movie. He didn’t know what to do next. He thought the ship ought to be stopped but he was afraid to make such a command decision.
Maryk came into the wheelhouse. “Say, where’s the captain? We’re going to run those birds down!”
The ensign pointed out of the starboard doorway with his thumb. Maryk strode across and glanced back at the flagbag. “Well,” he said quickly. “All engines stop.” He took a battered red cardboard megaphone from a bracket under the port window, and walked out on the wing. The Caine slowed and rocked. “Boat-a-hoy,” Maryk called.
The officer in the attack boat called back, in a voice that came faintly over the water, young, strained, and unmistakably Southern, “Jacob Group Four. Ready to proceed to point of departure.”
Queeg poked his face in at the doorway of the pilothouse, exclaiming irritably, “What’s going on here? Who said anything about stopping? Who’s yelling to whom here?”
The executive officer shouted to the captain from the other wing, “Sorry, sir, it looked like we were overshooting these boys, so I stopped. It’s Jacob Four. They’re ready to proceed.”
“Well, all right,” called the captain. “Let’s get it over with, then. What’s course and distance to the point of departure?”
“Course 175, distance 4000, sir.”
“Kay, Steve. You take the conn and get us there.” Queeg disappeared. Maryk turned toward the attack boat, and the boat officer put his megaphone to his ear to catch the message. “We-will-proceed,” the executive officer boomed. “Follow-us. Good-luck.”
The boat officer waved the megaphone once, and crouched low in the boat as it began to churn forward again. His little landing craft was only fifty yards from the side of the Caine now. It was an LVT, one of the numerous land-and-water monsters evolved in World War II; a small metal boat incongruously fitted with caterpillar tracks. It could waddle on land or wallow through the sea for short distances, and though it could perform neither feat well, it existed because it could do both at all. Willie pitied the drenched men in the little craft, which pitched and rolled on the open sea like a toy.
Maryk steered for the atoll. There was nothing between the Caine and the Japanese island of Enneubing (which the Navy had nicknamed “Jacob”) but a few thousand yards of choppy water with whitecaps. Willie could see details on the beach now: a hut, an aban
doned rowboat, oil drums, shattered palm trees. He thought he had never seen a green so deep and rich as the green of Jacob Island, nor a white so white as its sands. There were two pretty orange fires on it, showing above the treetops; and not a movement of life anywhere. He looked around at the string of LVT’s bobbing behind, and noticed a sailor in the lead boat frantically waving semaphore flags. The ensign signaled with his arms, “Go ahead.” The flags rapidly spelled out, C-H-R-I-S-T S-L-O-W D-O-W-N. Several times the sailor fell off his signaling perch as the LVT dived into foaming troughs. Curtains of spray were dousing the attack boats every few seconds.
Queeg came around the bridgehouse and scurried up to Willie. “Well, well, what is it?” he said impatiently, and “What the hell do they want?” and “Well, can you read it or can’t you?”
“They want us to slow down, Captain.”
“That’s too goddamn bad. We’re supposed to be on the line of departure at H-hour. If they can’t keep up with us we’ll throw over a dye marker when we reach the spot, and that’ll have to do.” Queeg squinted at the island, and ran into the pilothouse. “Jesus, Steve, do you want to run up on the beach?”
“No, sir. About fifteen hundred yards to go to the line of departure.”
“Fifteen hundred? You’re crazy! The beach isn’t fifteen hundred yards away-”
“Captain, the cutoff tangent on Roi Island is 045. Tangent now is 065.”
Urban, at the port alidade, called out, “Left tangent Roi, 064.”
The captain darted out on the port wing and pushed the little signalman aside. “You must be blind.” He put his eye to the alidade. “I thought so! Zero five four and that’s allowing nothing for set and drift along the line of bearing. We’re inside the departure point now. Right full rudder! Right full rudder!” he shouted. “All engines ahead full! Throw over a dye marker!”
The stacks puffed billows of black smoke. The Caine heeled sharply to starboard and scored a tight white semicircle on the sea as it sped. around on the reverse course. Within a minute the LVT’s of Jacob Group Four were a line of bobbing specks far astern. Near them on the sea was a spreading stain of bright yellow.
Later in the day, however, the Caine steamed bravely through the channel between Jacob and Ivan, together with a hundred other ships of the attack force. The American flag was flying on both islands. The Caine dropped anchor in the lagoon. Queeg ordered the posting of armed guards all along the sides of the ship to shoot any stray Japanese swimmers, and dismissed the crew from battle stations. There was nothing else to do. Hemmed in by transports, cargo ships, and destroyers, the Caine couldn’t have fired at the beach even if ordered to. The grateful sailors left their gun posts, where they had been lolling for fourteen hours, and most of them went below at once to sleep. Sensitive as cats to the likelihood of danger, they knew that none threatened any more at Kwajalein. Willie’s eyes stung with sleepiness, too, but he went up to the flying bridge to watch the show.
It was a queer battle, the fight for Kwajalein, to be a young man’s initiation into warfare. Possibly it was the queerest that has ever been fought. It had been won thousands of miles away, months before a shot was fired. The admirals had guessed correctly that the Mikado’s “unsinkable carriers” were short of an important commodity: planes. Too many Japanese aircraft had been clawed out of the sky in the broils around the Solomons. As for warships, the remaining ones had become precious to the empire; and frugally guarded weapons are no weapons at all. With the mere arrival of the American array of ships and men, the battle was theoretically over. There was nothing at Kwajalein but a few thousand Japanese soldiers to face the monstrous fleet rising out of the sea; they were blasted into utter impotence in a few hours by an avalanche of bombs and shells. A white flag should have flown from each island at sunrise, by all the logic of war. Since the Japs appeared illogically unwilling to surrender, the naval bombarders set about annihilating them with an oddly good-humored, ribald ferocity.
Willie enjoyed and applauded the spectacle with no thought of its fatality. Under a garish pink-and-blue sunset, the bombardment was taking on the air of Mardi Gras. The green islands were blazing in wide red splotches now. Pretty crimson dotted lines of tracer bullets laced across the purple waters; the gouts of flame at the big guns’ muzzles grew brighter and yellower in the twilight, and concussions regularly shook the atmosphere, while the smell of powder hung everywhere, strangely mingled, in the puffs of the breeze, with the spicy sweetness of crushed and burning tropic foliage. Willie leaned on the bulwark of the flying bridge, his life jacket dumped at his feet, his helmet pushed back from his damp forehead; and he smoked, and whistled Cole Porter tunes, and occasionally yawned, a tired but thoroughly entertained spectator.
This cold-bloodedness, worthy of a horseman of Genghis Khan, was quite strange in a pleasant little fellow like Ensign Keith. Militarily, of course, it was an asset beyond price. Like most of the naval executioners at Kwajalein, he seemed to regard the enemy as a species of animal pest. From the grim and desperate taciturnity with which the Japanese died, they seemed on their side to believe they were contending with an invasion of large armed ants. This obliviousness on both sides to the fact that the opponents were human beings may perhaps be cited as the key to the many massacres of the Pacific war. The Kwajalein invasion, the first of these, was a grand classic of sea warfare, a lesson for the generations. There has never been a more wisely conceived and surgically executed operation. As a young man’s first taste of war, however, it was too rich, too easy, too fancy, too perfect.
Whittaker poked his head over the top of the ladder to the flying bridge, and said, “Chadan, Mistuh Keith.” Stars were already winking in the sky. Willie went below, and fell to with the other officers on an excellent steak dinner. When the table was cleared, Willie, Keefer, Maryk, and Harding remained around the green baize, drinking coffee.
“Well,” said Keefer to Maryk, lighting a cigarette, “what did you think of the performance of Old Yellowstain today?”
“Knock it off, Tom.”
“That was something, wasn’t it, turning tail before we ever got to the line of departure and leaving those poor slobs in the LVT’s to navigate for themselves?”
“Tom, you weren’t even on the bridge,” said the executive officer shortly. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I was on the flying bridge, Steve, old boy, seeing and hearing everything.”
“We dropped a marker. They knew just where they were-”
“We dropped when the cutoff bearing was out almost twenty degrees-”
“Ten degrees. The captain read fifty-four, not sixty-four-”
“Oh, you believed that?”
“-and our advance while turning carried us another six or seven hundred yards. The dye marker was probably right on.” Keefer turned on Willie suddenly. “What do you say? Did we funk off like a scared rabbit or didn’t we?”
Willie hesitated for several seconds. “Well, I wasn’t on the alidade. Urban could easily have read the bearing wrong.”
“Willie, you had the deck all day. Did you ever see Captain Queeg on the side of the bridge that was exposed to the beach?”
The question startled Willie, and in a shocking flash he realized that he never had. The shuttlings and disappearances of the commanding officer during the day had puzzled him extremely, especially since it had been Queeg’s custom in previous maneuvers to stay fixed in the wheelhouse, where he could hear the TBS and watch the helmsman. But the novelist’s suggestion was monstrous. Willie stared at Keefer and could not speak.
“Well, what’s the matter, Willie? Did you or didn’t you?” Maryk said angrily, “Tom, that’s the goddamnedest remark I’ve ever heard.”
“Let Willie answer, Steve.”
“Tom, I-I was pretty busy trying to keep myself straightened out. I wasn’t worrying about the captain. I don’t know-”
“You do and you’re lying, like an honorable little Princeton boy,” said the noveli
st. “Okay. Take a bow for trying to protect the honor of the Caine and the Navy.” He got up and carried his cup and saucer to the Silex. “That’s all very well, but we’re responsible for the safety of this ship, not to mention our own necks, and it’s not wise to be anything but realistic.” He poured fresh coffee, light brown and steaming, into his cup. “There is a new fact that all of us have got to live with, and let’s face it, lads. Queeg is a poltroon.”
The door opened, and Queeg came in. He was freshly shaved, still were his helmet, and carried his life jacket under his arm. “I’ll have a cup of the same, Tom, if you don’t mind.”
“Certainly, Captain.”
Queeg sat in the chair at the head of the table, dropped his life jacket on the deck, and began rubbing the steel balls in his left hand. He crossed his legs and danced the upper one, so that his whole slumping body bobbed rhythmically. He stared straight ahead, with a peevish, pouting look. There were heavy green shadows under his eyes, and deep lines around his mouth. Keefer put three spoons of sugar in a cup of coffee and set it before the captain.
“Thanks. Hm. Fresh, for once.” These were the last words spoken in the wardroom for ten minutes. Queeg glanced swiftly at the officers from time to time and returned his eyes to his coffee cup. At last, draining the last mouthful, he cleared his throat and said, “Well, Willie, as long as you don’t seem to be doing much of anything, how about letting me see some decodes, here? There are about twenty-seven numbers I’m still waiting for.”
“I’ll get on it right away, sir.” The ensign opened the safe and languidly brought out the code devices.
“Tom,” said the captain, staring into his empty cup, “my records show that Ducely’s twelfth officers’ qualification assignment is due today. Where is it?”
“Sir, we’ve been at battle stations since three o’clock this morning-”
“We’re not at GQ now and haven’t been for two hours.”
“Ducely’s entitled to eat, and clean himself, and rest, sir-”
