A CALL TO COLORS: A NOVEL OF THE BATTLE OF LEYTE GULF

by JOHN J. GOBBELL

  By the spring of 1861, Judah had completed his survey work and the Big Four incorporated their operation as the Central Pacific Railroad on 28 June of that year. Newly elected California governor Leland Stanford was elected the railroad’s president, Collis Huntington became vice president, Mark Hopkins the treasurer, and Charles Crocker the construction manager. Again Judah went East to solicit backing from Congress. The Civil War had broken out and Judah found a change. Congress’ mood was more receptive than it had been before, as railroads were now considered critical to winning the war. Judah laid the foundation for the Pacific Railroad Bill in May 1862, and it was signed by President Lincoln the following July. The major provisions of the bill stated that the Central Pacific Railroad would be constructed over the High Sierra, thence continue east until it met the Union Pacific Railroad, which was authorized to build west from Missouri.

  The project officially began on January 8, 1863 at Front and K streets in downtown Sacramento, with the first eighteen miles of road being completed northeast to a little town called Central, California, later becoming Roseville. When this was done, it turned out that the Big Four only wanted government funding to build a local infrastructure. The first forty miles of track satisfied a government requirement, and with coffers full of government money, the Big Four reduced their activities.

  But Judah wanted to complete his vision of building the great continental railroad. So again he sailed for the East Coast, via Panama, with the idea of finding new investors to buy out the Big Four. But tragedy visited the ship carrying Judah. He contracted yellow fever in November and died.

  Judah’s dream didn’t die with him, however. Enthusiasm in California for the railroad resumed among the Big Four. By the following spring, track reached Rocklin, California. By 1864, construction of the Central Pacific Railroad was well up the hill, with the Big Four in full control.

  As the Civil War wound down and more money became available, the workforce on the mountain shot up from twelve-hundred to two-thousand. By July 1865, it was up to four-thousand men. One problem was that the rail-bed was now striking deep into gold country. Many seeking to work for the railroad were actually looking for free transportation over the mountain so they could jump ship and prospect for gold. Soon, only one in four remained, giving Charles Crocker a terrible labor problem. It was the exasperated Crocker who came up with the idea of employing Chinese as a more stable workforce. “At the peak of construction over the mountain, Crocker’s workforce exceeded ten-thousand men, many of them Chinese.

  Enormous challenges faced Crocker and his construction crew: bridges, trestles, and tunnels had to be built. There were an amazing fifteen tunnels in all – one 1,659 feet long. Slowing them were avalanches, bitter-cold blizzards, and sweeping snowslides. Sometimes Crocker’s Chinese accomplished superhuman tasks. For example, at Cape Horn, overlooking the gorge of the North Fork of the American River, they were lowered down cliffs for initial rock cutting, dangling from bosun’s chairs twenty-five-hundred feet above the river.

  The logistics were phenomenal. “t any one time there were at least thirty ships at sea, bringing materials around to San Francisco and up the Sacramento River Delta. More than five hundred kegs of powder were used each day to blast tunnels, passes, and rail-bed for the grade. Fighting the elements, and oftentimes each other, the Central Pacific crews reached the summit of 7,032 feet on August 30, 1867. By the following December, the track extended to the Nevada state line. Waiting out a bitter winter, track was laid to what became Reno, Nevada, by May 1868. The track reached Wadsworth, Nevada, by the following July.

  The race was on. Fully energized construction crews of the Union Pacific drove west from Omaha while the Central Pacific crews drove east from Wadsworth. Crocker’s workforce swelled to nearly twenty-five thousand supported by more than five thousand teams delivering six hundred tons of supplies daily. In nine months, a blink of the eye, the Central Pacific crews laid track over five hundred miles to link up with the Union Pacific in a little-known whistle-stop in Utah named Promontory. There, the golden spike was driven on 10 May 1869.

  The mountain was conquered; the transcontinental railroad was completed in record time. An instant success, it more than paid for itself. Many grew rich including the Big Four in California. Double-tracking over the mountain began almost immediately. But this presented incredible engineering challenges, the whole program not completed until 15 October 1925. Even so, traffic on the mountain grew with each passing year.

  * * * * *

  They hit an air pocket and Sabovik put down his book. It was 8:30 and the clouds were white and broken, the day promising to be clear and beautiful. Nitro was up and looking out the left-side windows. He turned, waved, and resumed his spectating.

  Sabovik looked out his own window. Off to the right, Lake Tahoe glistened in the sunlightt, the magnificent sharp-edged Sierras beyond, seeming to extend forever. Closer in, the town of Truckee drifted beneath their right wing, where flashes of railroad track snaked down the mountain into Nevada. about five miles east, a train worked its way upgrade toward Truckee and the summit. It was incredibly long, with two engines in front, two more “helpers” in the middle and a single at the back. The wartime traffic ran over the mountain at an unprecedented rate, almost every other block occupied, in addition to many of the sidings. The Donner Pass route was the single most important rail line in the Western United States Sabovik reckoned that if there was any funny business to be done, a saboteur would begin here; just too many tempting targets. But his reports said the grade over the mountain was well protected.

  The U.S. Military Railway Service, part of the U.S. Army, provided a security force consisting of guard shacks at strategic locations manned on a twenty-four-hour basis. They observed bridges, tunnels, underpasses, and the like. But that was not Sabovik’s concern. What he wanted to know was if anyone could tamper with the cargo while it was en route.

  The R4D hit another pocket. The plane lifted suddenly.

  “Whoops.” Collins staggered across the aisle and took his place beside Sabovik, threading his belt buckle. “Lumpy seas,” he grinned. “I knew there was a reason I couldn’t be an anchor-clanker.”

  Sabovik muttered, “Jarheads don’t know what’s good for them.”

  Nitro pulled his belt tight just as the plane jiggled again and nodded to Sabovik’s book. “Too bad,” he said.

  “Have you read it?”

  “Ummm. It’s a good book. You can’t help but feel sorry for the guy.”

  “Judah?”

  “Right. This guy is the ultimate jarhead. I mean, he knew how to march. Think of all the time he spent tramping around those mountains down there, surveying for the best grades. Dragging around mules and horses, living around campfires, bitter-cold blizzards, fighting snowstorms, and wind, and hunger-crazed gold diggers out to kill for their next meal. Hell, the Donner Party had just cannibalized each other a few years before; when was it?”

  “1846.”

  “Yeah, 1846. People eating each other to stay alive.” Nitro shook his head slowly and pointed out the window. “Look down there. Donner Lake. Now we just fly over it,” he snapped his fingers, “as easy as that.”

  Sabovik sighed. “Okay, Nitro, he was a jarhead.”

  “Right. I mean, this guy has a really powerful vision and puts it all together. Then his California backers start screwing with him and he travels east with his wife to find new money. He already has the support of Congress. “ll he needs are a few investors to jump in and take the place of these California jerks. But fate deals him a terrible card. He catches yellow fever and dies a couple of days after his ship docks in New York.” Nitro Collins shook his head. “The poor guy set everything in motion but didn’t get to see it happen.”

  Sabovik looked forward to the Nevada plains stretching before them. “Well, it did happen after all, didn’t it?”

  Nitro lay back his head. “I just feel sorry for the poor bastard, that’s all.”

 
Nitro really felt it, Sabovik could tell. He wondered why he couldn’t summon the same basic feeling. “Yeah, poor bastard.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY ONE

  19 August, 1944

  Southern Pacific Freight Yards

  Sparks, Nevada

  The R4D, bucking headwinds, was ten minutes late to Fallon. En route to the Sparks freight yards, their jeep waited at a grade crossing for five minutes while an impossibly long train rolled out of the yard on its way to Omaha. Then Sabovik and Collins ran around the yard for another fifteen minutes looking for X 4293 amid an enormous array of rail equipment.

  The two were easily distracted as engines snorted, cars rumbled, and whistles hooted. At one heart-stopping moment, Nitro yanked Sabovik out of the way of a pounding troop train. “n embarrassed Sabovik had forgotten to look both ways after a freight train ripped past in the opposite direction.

  At 1156 they trudged out of breath, up to a quietly hissing black cab-forward locomotive, the numbers 4216 stenciled on her sides and front. Behind was her oil tender, the letters SOUTHERN PACIFIC down its side. After 4216, another cab-forward engine, number 4205, patiently waited, also hissing. Sabovik spotted two more cab-forward engines about two-thirds of the way back. Clearly a lot of power was required to drag this 106-car consist over the Donner Pass.

  Sporting a silver facade, engine 4216, the lead engine, was a behemoth. In the railroader’s lexicon, she was an AC-10 class 4-8-8-2 locomotive. The 4-8-8-2 meant that a set of four wheels in front was followed by sixteen massive sixty-three-inch-diameter drive wheels arranged in groups of four; two groups or eight wheels, to a side. Each group of drive wheels was powered by a common driveshaft connected to a steam chest driven by two enormous twenty-four-inch-diameter pistons. The AC-10 stood for the tenth design in a proud series of “articulated compound” engines specifically built to haul freight over the Sierras. The cab-forward design was unique in placing the smokestack in back, which meant that stack gases didn’t asphyxiate engineers and firemen in tunnels or snow sheds. Moreover, the articulated engine’s drive wheels were hinged separately from the after section, allowing the 125-foot-long engine to negotiate curves more easily. The weight of the after section was supported by a set of two rear wheels.

  A bearded man with an engineer’s cap leaned with both forearms at the right-side window, smoking a cigar.

  “Looking for X 4293 westbound,” panted Sabovik.

  The man puffed on his stogie. “Right.”

  “Are you the X 4293 going to Roseville?”

  “Right. You our riders today?”

  “Affirmative.”

  The man reached over his shoulder and called into the cab, “Rudy, you got those train orders?” Oil-stained papers were jammed into his hand. “Names?”

  “John Sabovik, commander, United States Navy; Alexander Collins, captain, United States Marine Corps.”

  “Okay.” The man checked his watch, took another puff, and looked back at his train. “Come on up.” He picked up a walkie-talkie, spoke, and then leaned out his window and waved toward the rear of the train. “Better hurry, we pull out in another minute.” He reached up and pulled a lanyard, sounding four loud short blasts on the whistle. The engine behind answered. The two down the line answered as well.

  Sabovik twirled a finger in his ear and said to Nitro, “Now, that whistle has the sound of authority.”

  “I’ll say.” Nitro grunted as his boot caught the post of a yellow rectangular signboard.

  “Easy, Nitro.” Sabovik looked back. The signboard was posted with two digits: 60/45.

  “Least of my problems. Lucky I haven’t been run over.”

  “Let’s not press our luck.” Sabovik walked up to the locomotive, grabbed the ladder, and scrambled up through an open doorway. Inside, he was greeted by a maze of hissing pipes and gauges. Everywhere, heat and raw energy enveloped him. And his nostrils were assailed with the odors of hot oil, raw steam, and hydraulic fluid.

  Two overalled men regarded the them curiously. Sabovik shook hands with the bearded one. “John Sabovik.”

  “Welcome aboard, Navy. Ben Sodawski.” He was no more than five-seven and wore an engineer’s cap, his beard heavily salt and pepper.

  The fireman, a portly man in a black cap, pumped Sabovik’s hand once and said in a German accent, “Bergman. Rudolph Bergman.” Then he gave a broad gap-toothed smile. “Please call me Rudy.”

  “You the engineer?” asked Sabovik of Sodawski.

  Sodawski checked his watch and looked backward out the window. “One and the same,” he said, looking directly at Sabovik. They were within a foot of each other and Sabovik almost jumped. The engineer’s combination of one brown eye and one blue eye was a bit unsettling.

  To break the silence, Sabovik nodded outside to the signpost. “What do those numbers mean?”

  Sodawski and Bergman traded glances. Then Sodawski said, “It’s a speed board. The 60 is the speed limit for passenger trains, 45 the speed limit for freight trains.”

  “Oh.”

  The walkie-talkie squawked. Sodawski picked it up and said, “Roger.” He turned to Sabovik and said, “Excuse me, we just got a highball.” He yanked a lanyard over his head, sounding two blasts on the whistle. He grabbed a giant lever, then pulled back on another. On the cab’s left side, Bergman began twisting valves and easing a set of levers.

  It hit Sabovik that the cab crews in the three other engines were doing the same thing. Despite all the heat and smells and sweat, he realized this was a well-orchestrated dance, as each six-thousand horsepower locomotive dug in its driving wheels. The cab-forward’s four great steam chests blasted into the noontime sky as the engines took the strain. Couplings clanked down the line, the helper engines gathering their part of the load. The 106-car train began its journey to California.

  As a boy, Sabovik had stood in awe of the cab-forwards as they thundered through the San Fernando Valley, hauling long trains up over the 3,799-foot Tehachapi Pass and into the San Joaquin Valley. Even now, as an adult, it was difficult to suppress his excitement as the engine wound through a dizzying combination of switches, snaking it way out of the Sparks freight yard. Soon westbound X 4293 was on the main double-tracked grade heading west toward the state line. The day was warm, and before them the dark blue Sierra Nevada’s jagged peaks were topped by duck-egg-blue skies.

  Looking about the cab, Sabovik was reminded why he never liked naval engineering. As with boiler rooms aboard ship, he was greeted with an impossible array of valves, gauges, levers, all surrounding the waist-level firebox. “ malevolent red glow emanated from a peephole.

  “... you see she’s oil-fired...”

  Rudy Bergman was explaining the workings of the locomotive with exaggerated hand gestures. Nitro caught Sabovik’s glance, rolled his eyes, then went back to nodding and smiling at Bergman.

  Sodawski yelled, “You been aboard one of these before, Commander?”

  “No, I haven’t. By the way, my name’s John.”

  “Call me Ben. Or my friends call me Soda Whiskers.” He yanked his beard.

  “Which do you prefer?”

  “Don’t matter.” Sodawski waved to a thermos on a small shelf. “Coffee?”

  “No, thanks.” Then Sabovik asked, “You and Bergman been teamed up for long?”

  “No. Actually, this is our first time.”

  “Really?”

  “More to the point, John, it’s my first time. They just promoted me to engineer. Not only that, they made me lead engineer. Now, that’s gotta mean something.” Sodawski looked over and tossed a smile, his one blue eye glinting. “Before that, I was a fireman, just like Rudy.”

  Sabovik didn’t know what to say except, “Congratulations.”

  “You sure you want to ride with us?” He jabbed a thumb toward the rear. “We’re hauling ammo, you know.” His hands wiggled out an explosion. Kaboom!

  “No, this is fine, thanks.”

  “Why are you here, anyway?” Sodawski pushed a sma
ll lever. Air hissed.

  “Security check. Making sure the ammo doesn’t go ‘Kaboom!’”

  “Well, glad you’re not one of those top-of-the-mountain boys.”

  “Who?”

  “Military Railway guys. Got nothing to do but freeze off their asses up there and pester us for hot coffee.”

  “When do you--”

  “Lookit that damn fool.” Sodawski pulled his air horn lanyard, sounding two long blasts, a short and another long. “It’s Popovits.”

  A man in an ancient stake truck was racing them on an adjacent road. Thick black smoke poured out the tailpipe as its driver hunched over the wheel. “ faded label on the door read, POPOVITS FARMS. Half a mile ahead, Sabovik saw where the road crossed over the tracks. His eyes darted about the compartment, looking for a speedometer. There: forty-five miles an hour.

  “Dammit, he’s pulling ahead,” growled Sodawski. With a fisted hand, he bumped a massive lever, then sounded five blasts on his whistle. Engine 4041 answered. So did the others, although Sabovik hardly heard them with all the noise.

  The speedometer worked its way to fifty, and they pulled even with the truck. It was going to be close if Nitro’s eyes were any measure. Right now, they were wide open, perfectly round, and his “dam’s apple jumped up and down as he peered out the window.