Under Fire

by Griffin, W. E. B.

“I like the Marine,” one of the ladies said to one of her sisters, speaking, of course, in Japanese.

  “Thank you very much,” McCoy replied, in Japanese. “And I like you, too, but I am a married man.”

  All three ladies tittered behind their hands.

  “So what?” the first lady asked.

  “My wife is much stronger and larger than I am, and when she is angry she beats me severely,” McCoy said.

  All three ladies tittered delightedly again, and Taylor laughed. The three Marines looked baffled and very curious.

  “. . . as I was saying before the lady asked me if all Marines have dongs the size of their little fingers, or whether you three were just shortchanged—”

  “She didn’t ask that,” one of the Marines challenged, seriously. “Did she, sir?”

  “You don’t think I made that up, do you, Sergeant?”

  After a long moment, the sergeant said, “No, sir, I guess not.”

  He looked at his lady, then dropped his eyes to his genitals.

  “As I was saying,” McCoy went on, “a weapons carrier will be here shortly after dark to take us where we are going. I don’t think the chow there will be as good as the chow Sergeant Jennings tells me you can get here. Your choice. But you’re finished with the booze, and in an hour, you will be all dressed and sober and with all the bills paid. Are there any questions?”

  All three said, “No, sir.”

  “You have anything, Mr. Taylor?”

  “I think you covered everything,” Taylor said.

  “Sergeant Jennings?”

  “No, sir.”

  “In that case, men, carry on,” McCoy said. “I will see you in an hour.”

  He did an about-face and marched out of the room, with Taylor and Jennings marching after him.

  [FOUR]

  ABOARD HMS CHARITY 33 DEGREES 10 MINUTES NORTH LATITUDE, 129 DEGREES 63 MINUTES EAST LONGITUDE (THE EAST CHINA SEA) 0635 16 AUGUST 1950

  Lieutenant Commander Darwin Jones-Fortin, RN, saw the face of Lieutenant David R. Taylor, USNR, peering through the round window in the interior bulkhead. He waved at him, then pointed first at the door in the bulkhead—Taylor nodded his understanding—and then at the sailor standing behind the helmsman, indicating that he should go to the door and help undog it.

  Undogged and unlatched, the heavy steel door swung open as Charity buried her bow in the sea, and it was all the sailor could do to hold it. Taylor came onto the bridge and leaned against the bulkhead, then was followed by McCoy.

  “Permission to come on the bridge, sir?” Taylor called out.

  “Permission granted,” Jones-Fortin said. “Both of you.”

  Taylor waited until the moment was right, then came quickly across the deck to where Jones-Fortin sat in his captain’s chair. McCoy followed him. The ship moved, and McCoy half slid, half fell across the deck, ending up crashing into Taylor.

  “Smooth as a millpond, what?” Jones-Fortin said. “Seriously, is this weather going to be a problem? I’m afraid we’re in for a bit of it. Possibly, very possibly, worse than what we’re getting now.”

  “Are we?” Taylor said.

  “And Charity is of course a destroyer,” Jones-Fortin added. “She doesn’t ride as well as the Queen Mary, or, come to think of it, better than any other man-of-war that comes to mind.”

  “Try a destroyer escort sometime, Captain,” Taylor said. “Or even better, an LST. Although calling an LST a man-of -war is stretching the term considerably.”

  “Is that the voice of experience speaking?”

  "I had a DE during the war,” Taylor said. “And LSTs since.”

  “I was the first lieutenant on a DE some time ago. I’ve always thought the RN assigned to DEs people they hoped would get washed over the side. I’ve never been aboard an LST in weather.”

  “Truth being stranger than fiction, when I was sailing LSTs through these waters after the war,” Taylor said, “I used to think back fondly on the smooth sailing characteristics in rough seas of the Joseph J. Isaacs, DE-403. In weather like this, the movement of an LST has to be experienced to be believed.”

  “I wonder how my men took to waking up in a storm like this,” McCoy said. “They were still feeling pretty good when we came aboard.”

  “Didn’t someone once say, ‘the wages of sin are death’?” Jones-Fortin said. “I suspect that a number of my crew are in the same shape.”

  McCoy chuckled.

  “But I’m afraid, McCoy,” Jones-Fortin went on, “that I have to correct you. This isn’t the storm. This is what they call ‘the edges’ of the storm. The storm itself is farther north, coming down from China into the Yellow Sea.”

  “Right on our course to Inchon, right?” Taylor said.

  “I’m afraid so,” Jones-Fortin said. “There’s an overlay of the latest weather projection on the chart. Perhaps you’d like to have a look. We have a decision to make.”

  He indicated the chart room, aft of the wheel.

  “Thank you, sir,” Taylor said, and went for a look.

  “Did you see what I saw?” Jones-Fortin asked when Taylor returned.

  “I think so, sir,” Taylor said, and turned to McCoy: “Ken, the way the storm is moving—and as the captain said, it’s a bad one—I don’t think we can put the boats over the side tomorrow morning. And maybe not even the morning after that.”

  “You mean it would be risky, or we just can’t do it?”

  “Tomorrow, we just can’t do it. Period. The morning after that, maybe, with more of a chance of something going wrong than I like.”

  “So what do we do?” McCoy asked.

  “That’s up to Captain Jones-Fortin,” Taylor said.

  “It’s a bit over six hundred miles,” Jones-Fortin said. “I think Charity can make fifteen knots, even through the storm. A little less when it gets as bad as I suspect it’s going to get, a bit more when there are periods of relative calm. That would put us off the Flying Fish Channel lighthouse in forty hours—sometime before midnight on 18 August. As Mr. Taylor saw, the storm will still be in the area at that time. Whether or not it will have subsided enough for us to safely put the boats over the side—or for you to be able to safely make Tokchok-kundo in them—by 0300 of the nineteenth is something we won’t know until then.”

  “And if it doesn’t clear, sir, then what?” McCoy asked.

  “Then we shall have to spend the daylight hours of the nineteenth steaming in wide circles offshore. Or, for that matter, we could steam farther south, to the northern edge of the storm, and follow its movement southward and see where we are, and when.”

  “You mean we would move at the speed of the storm, sir?” McCoy asked.

  “It’s moving now,” Taylor said, “somewhere between fifteen and twenty miles an hour.”

  “As we followed it, we’d be out of it?” McCoy asked.

  “That would depend, Ken,” Taylor said, tolerantly, as if explaining something to a backward child, “on how close we were to it as we followed it.”

  “I will, of course, defer to the judgment of Captain Jones-Fortin,” McCoy said. “And even to yours, Mr. Taylor. But if there were some way we could get out of the storm, that would be this landlubber’s choice.”

  “Well, Mr. Taylor,” Captain Jones-Fortin said, “another option would be to steam on an east-northeasterly course, hoping to find calmer waters on the storm’s eastern edge.”

  “Your decision, of course, Captain,” Taylor said, but his tone of voice made it clear what he hoped Jones-Fortin’s decision would be.

  “Then that’s what we’ll do,” Jones-Fortin said.

  “What that means, Ken,” Taylor said, “is that it probably won’t get much worse than it is now.”

  “Wonderful,” McCoy said.

  [FIVE]

  ABOARD HMS CHARITY 39 DEGREES 06 MINUTES NORTH LATITUDE, 123 DEGREES 25 MINUTES EAST LONGITUDE (THE YELLOW SEA) 0405 19 AUGUST 1950

  “Have a look at that, Mr. McCoy,” Captain Jones
-Fortin said, pointing out the spray-soaked window of the bridge. “What is it they say, ‘all good things come to those who wait’?”

  There was a bright glow of light coming through the cloud cover.

  “Is that the northern edge of the storm?” McCoy said.

  “Not exactly,” Jones-Fortin said. “We are in the northern edge of the storm—I’m sure you will not be much surprised to learn that the weather people have finally decided what we have been steaming through is a hurricane—and that light you see is dawn coming up over what I devoutly hope will be calm waters.”

  “Me, too.”

  The Charity didn’t seem to be tossing as much as she had been for the past forty hours, but McCoy wasn’t sure if this was the case, or wishful thinking.

  Ten minutes later, Jones-Fortin turned to McCoy again.

  “Master mariner that I am, Mr. McCoy, it is my professional judgment that in, say, ten minutes, it will be safe to step into my shower and have a wash and a shave. If you feel a similar need, may I suggest you go to your cabin, and then join me for breakfast in the wardroom in twenty minutes?”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “If you’d be so kind, ask Mr. Taylor to join us.”

  “Yes, sir, of course.”

  Jones-Fortin raised his voice. “Number One, you have the conn. I will be in my cabin.”

  “Aye, aye, sir.”

  “If, in your judgment, the situation continues to improve, in ten minutes order the mess to prepare the breakfast meal.”

  “Aye, aye, sir.”

  Twenty minutes later, McCoy and Taylor walked into the wardroom. Jones-Fortin was already there, wearing a fresh, crisply starched uniform of open-collared white shirt, shorts, and knee-length white socks. Taylor was in his usual washed soft khakis, and McCoy in Marine Corps utilities.

  A white-jacketed steward handed them a neatly typed breakfast menu the moment they sat down, and poured tea from a silver pitcher for them.

  A moment later, another steward delivered what McCoy at first thought was breakfast for all of them. But he set the entire contents of his tray—toast, six fried eggs on one plate, and a ten-inch-wide, quarter-inch-thick slice of ham on another—before the captain, then turned to McCoy and Taylor.

  “And what can I have Cooky prepare for you, gentlemen? ”

  They gave him their order.

  “Shortly after joining His Majesty’s Navy,” Jones-Fortin said, as he stuffed a yolk-soaked piece of toast into his mouth, “I learned that the hoary adage, ‘If you keep your stomach full, you do not suffer from mal de mer,’ did not apply at all to Midshipman the Honorable Darwin Jones-Fortin. Quite the contrary. If I eat so much as a piece of dry toast in weather such as we have just experienced, I turn green and am out of the game. I trust you will forgive this display of gluttony. I haven’t had a thing to eat since we left Sasebo.”

  “I haven’t been exactly hungry myself, sir,” McCoy said.

  “On the subject of food,” Jones-Fortin said. “Is there anything we can give you from Charity’s stores to better the fare on Tokchok-kundo?”

  “You’re very kind, Captain,” Taylor said.

  “Bread, sir,” McCoy said. “The one thing I really miss when I’m . . . I really miss fresh bread.”

  “I’ll see to it.”

  “When do you think we’ll be getting to the Flying Fish, sir?” Taylor asked.

  “It’s about two hundred twenty miles. The storm is moving southward at about fifteen knots. That should put us off the lighthouse somewhere around 2100. It’ll be dark then, and I think the seas will have subsided.”

  “But how would we find Tokchok-kundo in the dark?” McCoy asked. “The original idea was to head for shore in the dark, but to arrive there as it was getting light.”

  “And I think we had best stick to that, too,” Taylor said. “I don’t want to try running in the channel in the dark.”

  “Then that means we’ll have to arrange things to arrive at the original hour.”

  “Three days late,” McCoy said.

  “Unfortunately,” Jones-Fortin agreed.

  “They’ll be worried about us,” McCoy said. “On Tokchok-kundo and in Tokyo.”

  “They’ll know, of course, about the storm,” Jones-Fortin said. “Tokchok-kundo’s been in it.”

  “And General Pickering will be worried about that, too,” McCoy said.

  “He does have quite a bit on his plate, doesn’t he?” Jones-Fortin said.

  There was something in his voice that made McCoy look at him.

  “It came out somehow,” Jones-Fortin said. “Fitz—Tony Fitzwater, my brother-in-law—said that Sir William had heard that General Pickering’s son had gone down.”

  “That’s right,” McCoy said.

  “That’s rotten luck,” Jones-Fortin said. “It must be really tough for a senior officer to lose a son. I mean, more so than for someone not in the service.”

  “There’s a chance that Pick—Major Malcolm Pickering, who’s my best friend—”

  “Oh, God, I am treading on glass, aren’t I?” Jones-Fortin interrupted.

  “—may walk through raindrops again,” McCoy finished.

  “Oh?”

  “There’s some reason to believe he survived the crash,” McCoy said. “I think he has. He’s done that before. And is running around behind the enemy’s lines waiting for someone to come get him before the North Koreans capture him.”

  “And they really can’t go looking for him, can they?” Jones-Fortin said, sympathetically.

  “If I wasn’t on my way to Tokchok-kundo, I’d be looking for him,” McCoy said.

  “I thought, when we were in Pusan, that you told Dunston to ratchet up the search operation?” Taylor said. “You don’t think that’s going to work?”

  “That was a tough call,” McCoy said. “I don’t know who Dunston’s agents are, or who they’re working for. Agents have been known to change sides. Ratcheting up the search also ratcheted up the risk that the North Koreans will learn we’re looking for someone, and they would know we would only be running an operation like this for someone important. All I may have done is ratchet up the search for him by the North Koreans, if they even had one going. Or, if they’ve already caught him, it would let them know they have an important prisoner.”

  “And yet you ordered this . . . search?” Jones-Fortin asked.

  McCoy nodded.

  “I decided if I was in his shoes . . .”

  “Tough call, Ken,” Taylor said. “But I’d have made the same one.”

  “I rather think that I would have, too,” Jones-Fortin said. “Thank God, I didn’t have to.”

  [SIX]

  ABOARD HMS CHARITY 37 DEGREES 41 MINUTES NORTH LATITUDE, 126 DEGREES 58 MINUTES EAST LONGITUDE (THE YELLOW SEA) 0405 20 AUGUST 1950

  HMS Charity was dead in the water.

  Captain the Honorable Darwin Jones-Fortin, RN, in starched and immaculate white uniform, Lieutenant (j.g) David R. Taylor, USNR, and Captain K. R. McCoy, USMCR—both in Marine utilities—were on her flying bridge, looking down to the main deck where, in the glare of floodlights, a work gang was loading the supplies into the two lifeboats bobbing alongside.

  The work was being supervised by a wiry chief petty officer, also in immaculate whites, who stood no taller than five feet three and weighed no more than 120 pounds, but whose bull-like “instructions” to his work detail could be easily heard on the flying bridge.

  “I’ve always felt,” Captain Jones-Fortin said, “that this sort of thing is best handled by a competent petty officer; that the only thing an officer attempting to supervise the accomplishment of something about which he knows very little does is to create confusion.”

  “How about ‘chaos,’ sir?” McCoy replied.

  “The voice of experience, Captain?” Jones-Fortin asked dryly.

  “Unfortunately,” McCoy said. “I can still remember some spectacular examples from my days as a corporal.”

  The chief jum
ped nimbly into one of the lifeboats, started its engine, motioned for two of the Marines standing on the deck to get into the boat, waited until they were in it, sitting where he thought they should be sitting, and then he nimbly moved to the second boat and—this time with some difficulty—got the engine started.

  He motioned for the other two Marines on deck to get into the boat, seated them, then looked up toward the flying bridge.

  “We seem to be ready for the officers, Captain,” he called, in a deep voice that did not need the amplification of a bullhorn.

  “They will be down directly,” Jones-Fortin called. “Good show, Chief!”

  Jones-Fortin offered his hand first to Taylor and then to McCoy.

  “Best of luck,” he said. “We’ll see you again soon.”

  The chief watched from the deck as Taylor—nimbly—and McCoy—very carefully—both got into one boat.

  Taylor checked McCoy out on the engine controls again, then signaled to the chief to let loose the lines. Then, very carefully, he took the tiller and moved the boat alongside the second.

  “Just follow me, Ken,” he said. “You steered the Wind of Good Fortune—you can steer this.”

  McCoy nodded and took the tiller.

  Taylor jumped into the second boat, signaled for its lines to be let loose, and then shoved it away from Charity’s hull with a shove with his foot. Then he took the tiller, advanced the throttle, and moved away from Charity.

  McCoy waited until ten feet separated the boats, then advanced his throttle.

  The floodlights went out a moment later. It took Mc-Coy’s eyes what seemed like a very long time to adjust to the darkness. When they had, he saw that Taylor’s boat was getting farther away.

  He eased the throttle forward a hair.

  Moments after that, Jones-Fortin’s amplified voice called, “Godspeed, gentlemen!” across the darkness.

  When McCoy looked over his shoulder, he could barely see HMS Charity.

  Thirty minutes later, a bump on the just barely visible horizon changed slowly into the lighthouse at the entrance to the Flying Fish Channel.

  And thirty minutes after that—by then it was light—the houses on the shore of Tokchok-kundo came into view. As they came closer, the damage the storm had caused became visible.