Mister Roberts

by Thomas Heggen

  Everything seemed to go wrong. Lieutenant Carney took over the job of First Lieutenant, and everything went wrong out on deck. Carney proved to be flagrantly incompetent, and under his direction the loading or unloading took hours and sometimes days longer than it should. There was a lot of bitterness about that. The ship got some bad water at one of the islands, and there was an epidemic of diarrhea. Martin, a second division man, fell from the second deck level to the bottom of number three hatch, fracturing his pelvis and breaking both legs. Everyone was in an ugly humor. The Captain ordered that any man caught in his bunk after reveille go on report. Furthermore, he saw to it that Mr. LeSueur, the executive officer, enforced the order. The first morning nine-tenths of the crew were on report. Mr. LeSueur himself became nasty and treacherous. There were any number of quarrels and fights. There was an almost daily fist-fight, and once Cornwall, the Captain's boy, took a knife to Jake Bailey, the chief steward, and cut him up severely about the arms.

  The ship's dispirit was so extreme that nobody bothered, or thought to bother, the Captain's palm trees. There were now four of them replacing the two that disappeared the night of Roberts's going-away party. The Captain had decided that Roberts was solely responsible for the palm-tree business, and after a while he secured the watch on the wing of the boat deck. He got very apoplectic whenever he talked about Roberts, and for two weeks he coarsely assured everyone available that he would tear Roberts apart if he ever saw him again. Meanwhile, the four little palm trees in their five-gallon Foamite containers stood in a neat, unguarded row on the wing, and nobody thought to touch them.

  But the biggest change of all was in Ensign Pulver. From a remarkably genial young man he became overnight a remarkably disagreeable one. He had been slow and almost unknown to wrath. Now, he was in his best mood merely surly, and in his worst, which predominated, he was downright belligerent. He was insufferable. He picked quarrels with the other officers over trifles. He shouted at and abused the steward's mates. One night at dinner he almost came to blows with Ed Pauley over the issue of a napkin. After that he wasn't on speaking terms with Pauley. He wasn't, in fact, on speaking terms with most of the other officers. The Doc was about the only one who would have anything to do with him these days. He gave up his reading program altogether and took to sitting moodily in his room and playing endlessly on the harmonica, over and over, the only tunes that he knew: "Row the Boat Lightly" and "Flow Gently, Sweet Afton." He drove everyone in officers' country nearly to distraction. And he took to roving the ship restlessly late at night, and to sitting up all hours in a folding chair on the quarterdeck. He was very lost.

  He heard twice from Roberts after he left the ship. After the farewell party, Pulver wrote ahead to Roberts's home in Chicago. In that letter he told Roberts how the Captain blamed him for the second sabotage of his trees, and he reproduced as well as he could the texture of the Captain's threats against Roberts. He told Roberts of the four palm trees. Roberts wrote back about three weeks later. He said that the palm trees should certainly be dumped as a scientific experiment to determine whether they squared in number each time, or merely doubled. Roberts was at home then on a twenty-five-day leave. He said he'd write again when he got his new orders.

  Ensign Pulver received Roberts' second letter on the same day that he got the news of his death. That was on August first, a few days before the first atomic bomb was dropped, a few weeks from the end of the war. The Reluctant had been underway for a week, and it was late in the afternoon when she finally anchored in Ennui Bay. Steuben, the yeoman and mail clerk, was sent over to pick up the mail. There was quite a bit of mail, and it wasn't until after the movies, almost nine o'clock, that he got it all distributed.

  Ensign Pulver got four letters. He took them to his room, lay down in his bunk, and opened them in the order in which they lay. The first was from his mother, who advised him to stay away from Japan. The second was from a girl in San Francisco whom he had known carnally, and with whom he was trying to maintain friendly relations against his possible return to the States. The tone of her letter assured him that prospects were still good. The third letter was from Lieutenant Roberts. The date-mark was three weeks old. It said that he was now on a destroyer, and that he'd been flown out all the way from the States to catch it. He was replacement for the First Lieutenant, who had gone off his nut and had been transferred to a hospital ship. Roberts sounded very pleased with the duty, and mentioned that there was on board a fellow named Fornell who had gone through the University of Alabama with Pulver. Roberts wrote: "Fornell says that you and he used to load up your car with liquor in Birmingham and then sell it at indecent profit to the fraternity boys at Alabama. How about that?"

  Pulver smiled happily when he read that. So Roberts and Fornell were on the same ship!

  The last letter was from Fornell. It said that the can was now on its way to Pearl after taking a Kamikaze while running up and down off Kyushu. It said that the plane had gotten in just after they had secured from a four-hour G.Q., in the course of which six planes had come around and two had been shot down. This suicide must have been waiting very high, Fornell said, and it dropped straight down and hit on the port side of the bridge structure. It had killed everyone in a twin-forty battery and it had gone on through and killed Roberts and another officer drinking coffee in the wardroom. All told, four officers and seven men had been killed. Fornell added that Roberts hadn't been aboard three weeks, but that he seemed like one hell of a nice guy.

  Ensign Pulver read the letter through to the end and then he folded it carefully into the envelope and placed it and the other letters in the space behind his mattress where he kept all of his mail. He had now the knowledge that Roberts was dead, but, as often happens, there was a lag between the fact and the implication, the wound and the pain. Pulver didn't feel much of anything. In his life, he had never had anything very unpleasant or extraordinary happen to him and now he didn't know quite what to do. He smoked a cigarette and finally decided that it was his responsibility to tell somebody.

  He couldn't think right away whom to tell. A little curiously, he thought that it shouldn't be just anybody; it should be someone whom Roberts would want to know. It should be one of the people whom Roberts had liked best. They should know first, Pulver decided; the others could know in time. The Doctor, he must surely tell the Doctor; and Dowdy, Dowdy must know too. These two came immediately to Pulver's mind, and right now there weren't any others. He went to find the Doc.

  But the Doc wasn't in his room and he wasn't in any of the other rooms. He must then be down in sick-bay, and Pulver didn't want to tell him there. He set out to find Dowdy. He went out on the quarterdeck and he found him right away. Lights had been rigged on the mast-table, and he could see Dowdy out on deck supervising removal of the hatch beams from number three. Pulver called to him. Dowdy nodded, and when the winch operator laid the beam safely on deck he came over.

  Dowdy stood before him, passive and incurious. He had been working with wire cable, and he kept his leather gloves on.

  Pulver said: "Mister Roberts is dead. I just got the word in a letter."

  Dowdy didn't say anything. He looked up quickly and then he looked at him steadily. Pulver felt that every muscle of his face, every nerve and every pore, was under that gaze.

  Pulver went on: "He got orders to a can and the can got hit by a suicide plane off Japan. There were eleven of them killed altogether." He didn't know anything else to say.

  Dowdy held his gaze for a moment longer. Then, abruptly, he broke it off. "Thanks," he said. He turned then and walked away. Pulver saw that while he stood there Dowdy had removed his gloves.

  He was beginning now to feel the pain. It was dull and desolate and smothering. He went back into the house and found the Doc. The Doc was undressing for a shower. He stepped out of his shorts and wrapped a towel about his waist as Pulver came in.

  "Hi, Doc," Pulver said. He leaned back wearily against the opened door.

  "H
i," said the Doc. He looked curiously at Pulver.

  "Roberts is dead," Pulver said in a flat voice. "He was on a can and the can took a suicide plane off Japan."

  The Doc let out a soft whistle and sat down slowly on the edge of his desk. He studied Pulver with the same fixity as Dowdy.

  "How did you find out?" he said finally.

  "I got a letter from a guy I know who was on the same ship. A guy I used to know in college."

  The Doctor nodded slowly. He twisted his mustache and looked down at the deck.

  Pulver spoke with sudden anguish: "Isn't that rough, Doc? You know how he batted his head to get off of here? You know how he wanted to get in the war? And then, as soon as he gets out there, he gets killed." His voice was almost pleading.

  The Doc nodded and chewed his lip. "That's funny," he said thoughtfully.

  "Funny?"

  The Doc looked up. "I don't mean funny, Frank," he said softly. He paused for a moment. "I mean that I think that's what he wanted."

  Ensign Pulver was startled. What did the Doc mean? He was about to ask, but now the pain was getting bad, and suddenly he didn't want to talk any longer. He stood away from the door. "Well," he said vaguely, "I just thought I'd tell you."

  The Doc didn't seem to hear right away. He was staring at the deck again. Then he said quietly: "I'm glad you did." And as Pulver started haltingly out the door, he called after him: "I'm awfully sorry, Frank."

  Pulver turned around and nodded acknowledgment; then he went on down the passageway. He came to the wardroom and he thought of telling the people there. But the moment he looked in, he saw it was impossible. Carney and Billings were playing acey-deucy. Keith was sitting at one table writing letters, and Ed Pauley was drinking coffee. Moulton was over at the turntable playing records. It was all just the same. It was just as every night, days without end. Nothing had happened; and now Pulver saw that, in plain truth, nothing ever could happen to these men. The higher centers where action was absorbed, where thought impinged and desires spoke, had been determinedly shut off and allowed to atrophy, and all that remained was an irritable surface with an insatiable hunger for triviality. Apathy then was not a state of negation, but a faith of positiveness, and to practice it was to surrender to it. It had seemed to the men of this ship the only possible faith that could accommodate the facts of their existence, and at its demand they had reduced life to the monotone reflex that was only efficient, and, in the last analysis, the only possible, survival. Ensign Pulver had lived this life for over a year without objection and often with enjoyment. Now it seemed to him horrible. He winced that he had thought to tell these officers of Roberts's death and let them make of it a moment's diversion.

  Abruptly he withdrew and plunged down the passageway. He went outside and walked along the rail of the house. On the starboard side, in the dark of the house, he found a place at the rail with no one about. He stood there a long time, staring at the dark plane of water, pierced here and there by shafts of yellow light. He studied the high, coldly remote red light atop the radio tower on the island. Roberts was dead. He felt a need to cry, and he looked around him furtively, and then, furtively, he tried it. Self-consciously, he whimpered aloud, but the sound was so strange to him that he stopped. Crying wouldn't help. Nothing would help, but suddenly, there was still something to do.

  He went up the starboard ladder to the wing of the boat deck. He went over to the Captain's palm trees, standing in their neat, mute row, and one by one he picked them up, four of them, and threw them over the side. When he finished, he was panting more than could be accounted for by the exertion. He brushed his hands together carefully and went inside on the boat deck. A little detachedly he wondered: would there be eight of them out tomorrow, or sixteen?

  The Captain was sitting, reading, in the large chair of his cabin. In the cone of harsh light from the floor lamp he looked old, and not evil, but merely foolish. He glanced up at the knock on the opened door.

  "Yeah," he said gruffly, "what is it?"

  Ensign Pulver leaned a casual hand on the door jamb. "Captain," he said easily, "I just threw your damn palm trees over the side."

  The End.

  THE REAL “USS RELUCTANT”

  ON BROADWAY, IN THE NOVEL AND ON THE GIANT SCREEN, SHE WAS KNOWN AS “USS RELUCTANT”, BUT IN THE REAL LIFE OF WAR, SHE WAS THE “USS VIRGO” (AKA-20)

  By Hugh M. Heckman

  The U.S. Navy attack transport USS Virgo (AKA-20) was just like any of the multitude of identical and anonymous supply ships that served the Navy's fighting task forces in the Pacific during World War II, hauling Marines and soldiers and their gear from island beach to island beach and making sure the mail got through.

  Yes, the Virgo was a totally unremarkable ship, except for one thing: she led a double life. You see, the Virgo was also the AKA601, the USS Reluctant, the ship that carried its wacky captain and crew over history's horizon as the setting of the novel, play and then movie, "Mr. Roberts."

  Until Lieutenant Thomas Heggen (in whose imagination "Mr. Roberts" came to life) reported onboard at Eniwetok in the Marshalls on 12 July 1944, the Virgo was only the Virgo, doing an unspectacular job that kept her hopscotching around the western Pacific, but which never the less often took tier only a whisker from harm's way.

  Constructed in New Jersey, Virgo was commissioned on 15 July 1943. She displaced almost 14,000 tons along an overall length of 459 feet, and she had five cargo holds to carry the articles of her trade: weapons, vehicles, ammunition and anything else that port directors wanted, 350,000 cubic feet worth. To move her cargo ashore, Virgo came with eight 50-foot LCM's and seventeen LCVP's, which were 36-foot personnel boats.

  Virgo's baptismal assignment was to carry Marine Corps equipment to New Zealand, arriving on 6 October, and becoming a unit of the Fifth Amphibious Force to prepare for the Gilbert Islands invasion. She took on Marines and arrived off Tarawa Atoll on 20 November, and on that day had the stomach-churning experience of being straddled by shells lobbed by Japanese shore batteries. But she landed her men on Betio Island and stood by to evacuate wounded, taking them to safety at Pearl Harbor and arriving on the second anniversary of the Japanese surprise attack.

  After loading more supplies and Army troops, Virgo received her next orders, to Kwajalein Atoll, also in the Marshalls. She arrived on 30 January 1944. Virgo's next few months were hectic ones, as she ferried troops and supplies and rehearsed amphibious landing techniques at places like Bougainville in the Solomons, New Guinea, and Guadalcanal.

  When Saipan in the Marianas was: invaded on 15 June, Virgo was offshore, her troops held in reserve., Although her Marines weren't needed, the stiff Japanese resistance pushed the Guam invasion schedule way off schedule. So she went to Eniwetok to wait, and it was there that Thomas Heggen reported as assistant communications officer, and where Virgo began its transformation into the Reluctant.

  Heggen was no stranger to the service fleet, but had never been so close to the combat front. He'd joined the Navy a few days after Pearl Harbor, serving as a yeoman on the battleship South Dakota as she fitted out at the Philadelphia Navy Yard. He went from there to an officer program at Notre Dame and received orders to the tanker USS Sallinas (AO-19), which was assigned to the North Atlantic run. After a fight with a fellow officer that put him in the hospital for six months with an injured hand, Heggen had a new ship once again failing to find a combat billet. This time it was another tanker, the USS Agawam, and he found himself on the run between New Orleans and the Caribbean refineries on Aruba. Then, his request for transfer was approved, and he headed for his new ship in the far Pacific, where gunfire was in the plan-ofthe-day.

  With Heggen installed, Virgo sent her Marines ashore on Guam and returned to Eniwetok before heading out again for rehearsals for the imminent Palau Islands operations. It was during this period, on 10 August, when another person reported onboard, a person who was to unknowingly play a leading role in the birth of "Mr. Roberts." In fact, he reported a
nd then took command of AKA-20 Lieut. Cmdr. Herbert Randall, USNR, an unpolished merchant marine officer who didn't take kindly to Navy ways.

  Randall conned Virgo to Peleliu Island in the Palaus, carrying Marines and Navy men. She remained off Peleliu from 15 September through 4 October, acting as a casualty station and repair base for small boats. There followed a long stay back in the States; Virgo, with hundreds of eager returning veterans embarked, left Tulagi Island in the Solomons for San Francisco and an overhaul that lasted from 29 October to 4 January 1945.

  By the middle of February, she was off Iwo Jima, replenishing destroyers. After picking up construction equipment in the Philippines, Virgo made for Okinawa, where the skies were full of Japanese suicide planes. She anchored there for 15 days and went to general quarters 32 times for air raid alerts.

  After another Pacific odyssey to San Francisco, Virgo was heading back to the sprawling Navy base at Ulithi in the Carolinas when the war with Japan ended on 15 August. But she kept right on going, all the way to Tokyo Bay, and stayed there until 10 April 1946 as a store ship. On 18 September 1945, however, Heggen was detached and left for the West Coast on a tanker going that way.

  Packed in his seabag were pages he'd typed in his Virgo stateroom, which were stories he called collectively "The Iron-Bound Bucket" (the crew's fond nickname for Virgo) but which would later come to be known, in an edited form, as "Mr. Roberts." Virgo's World War 11 campaign was over; the Reluctant's was just beginning.

  As assistant communications officer, Heggen had found himself with considerable free time on his hands. And he used it writing stories based on what he saw, heard, felt and did on Virgo, as she steamed from "Tedium to Apathy and back again-with an occasional side-trip to Monotony," as Heggen later put it.

  It can safely be said that, if Heggen and Virgo had not crossed ways, there never would have been a "Mr. Roberts." Almost every funny incident in the story had its root in something that really happened on the AKA20, especially the behavior of Commanding Officer Randall. For most people who saw the play, or the movie starring James Cagney and Henry Fonda, the very symbol of the Reluctant were a couple of potted palm trees, the captain's personal property, on each side of the signal bridge. The trees were NOT a product of Heggen's creativity.