Herman Wouk - The Caine Mutiny

by The Caine Mutiny(Lit)

  He still had not the slightest understanding of why he had really come; he blamed himself for a late flare of desire crudely masked as a need for advice. He had no way of recognizing the very common impulse of a husband to talk things over with his wife.

  Next day his plane left on schedule, in a sunny morning. His mother waved bravely from the sight-seer's boardwalk as the plane took to the air. Willie stared down at the buildings of Manhattan, trying to find the Hotel Woodley; but it was lost among the dingy piles of midtown.

  33

  The Court-Martial-First Day

  Naval Courts and Boards opens with a melancholy section en-titled "Charges and Specifications." It is only a hundred twenty-three pages long; not half as long as a twenty-five-cent mystery novel; and within that small compass the Navy has discussed all the worst errors, vices, follies, and crimes into which men may fall. It begins with Making a Mutiny and ends with Unlawful Use of a Distilling Apparatus. In between are such bloody offenses as Adultery, Murder, Rape, and Maiming, and also such nasty peccadilloes as Exhibiting an Obscene Photograph. These are sad, wearying, grisly pages, the more so for their matter-of-fact, systematic tone.

  This shopper's list of crime, however, did not provide a charge or specification for the peculiar offense of Lieutenant Stephen Maryk. Captain Breakstone had quickly perceived that, though the affair was more like a mutiny than anything else, Maryk's invoking of Article 184 and his subsequent le-galistic conduct made a conviction for mutiny unlikely. It was the queerest sort of twilight situation. In the end he fixed on the catch-all charge provided for rare or complicated offenses, "Conduct to the Prejudice of Good Order and Discipline," and with much care he drew up the following specification:

  In that Lieutenant Stephen Maryk, USNR, on or about December 18, 1944, aboard the U.S.S. Caine, willfully, with-out proper authority, and without justifiable cause, did re-lieve from his duty as commanding officer Lieutenant Commander Philip Francis Queeg, USN, the duly assigned commanding officer of said ship, who was then and there in lawful exercise of his command, the United States then being in a state of war.

  The judge advocate, Lieutenant Commander Challee, ex-pected no difficulty at all in proving this specification. He was an earnest, bright young officer, holding his high rank on a temporary war promotion. A slight undercurrent of guilt was running through his days in San Francisco. He had requested the legal duty after several years at sea, because he wanted to spend time with his beautiful wife, a photographer's model; and he was a little ashamed of having had his request granted. He therefore pursued his duties with exceptional zeal, and he honestly regarded the conviction of Maryk, at the moment, as his personal war aim.

  Challee estimated that the prosecution had a prima facie case. A charge of mutiny, he knew, would have been harder to prove. But Captain Breakstone's mild specification, in his view, was a plain description of the plain facts. The defense could not possibly deny that the event had occurred; Maryk had signed logs describing it. The key words were without proper authority and without justifiable cause. To establish their truth, Challee simply had to prove that Queeg was not and had never been a madman. He had the deposition of Cap-tain Weyland in Ulithi, who had interviewed the captain of the Caine right after the mutiny. Three Navy psychiatrists of the San Francisco hospital, who had examined Queeg for weeks, were ready to testify in court that he was a sane, nor-mal, intelligent man. At the investigation twenty chiefs and enlisted men of the Caine had averred that they had never seen Queeg do anything crazy or questionable. Not one officer or man, except the two parties to the mutiny, Keith and Stilwell, had spoken unfavorably of the captain. Challee had arranged for the appearance of several presentable sailors and chiefs to repeat their testimony.

  Against this array there was only Maryk's so-called medical log. The board of investigation had dismissed it as "a whining collection of trivial gripes," commenting that all it proved was Maryk's latent and long-standing disloyalty. Challee was con-fident that the court would feel the same way. Every officer past the rank of junior-grade lieutenant had served, at one time or another, under an oppressive eccentric. It was simply a hazard of military life. Challee was fond of telling anecdotes which topped anything in Maryk's log.

  The judge advocate knew that Greenwald had only one good point of attack: the question of criminal intent. He an-ticipated an eloquent harping on the fact that Maryk had acted for the good of the service, however mistaken his diagnosis of Queeg had been. Challee was fully prepared to demolish the specious sophistry which would follow, that Maryk was in-nocent of any offense.

  He reasoned that Maryk, by willfully ignoring the whole weight of military tradition, and summoning up the mutinous effrontery to depose his commanding officer on the basis of such a wild error of judgment, had ipso facto convicted him-self of "conduct to the prejudice of good order and discipline." If this were not true, if the precedent set by Maryk were to go unpunished, the entire Navy chain of command was in jeop-ardy! Any commanding officer who seemed queer to his exec was in danger of being summarily relieved. Challee was certain that a court of officers, especially a court headed by the austere martinet, Captain Blakely, would see that point. He counted, therefore, on a quick, satisfying victory over Barney Greenwald.

  His estimate of the case was a good one. He erred only in his guess of Greenwald's probable strategy.

  Willie Keith returned to the Chrysanthemum about eleven o'clock in the morning. He dropped his bags in his room and looked through the other rooms for Caine officers, but found only empty rumpled bunks. Then he heard faintly from the shower a bellowing of

  "Partez-moi d'amour

  Rrrrrredites-moi des choses tendres..."

  and he knew that Keefer was back. He found the novelist dry-ing himself before a mirror, standing on wooden clogs. " `Ja vous aim-uh-' Willie, you old Dickens lover! How are you, my lad?"

  They shook hands. Keefer's tanned body was scrawny, and his face was drawn as though he had not eaten in a week, but he was gay, and his large eyes gleamed oddly.

  "Where's everybody, Tom?"

  "Hither and yon. Ship's leaving drydock today so most of the boys are aboard. Steve's out with his defense counsel some-where-"

  "Whom did he get?"

  "Some lieutenant off a carrier. Used to be a lawyer."

  "Good?"

  "Can't tell. Steve seems to like him. Mumbling, shambling kind of guy- All kinds of hell breaking loose, Willie. Do you know about your pal Stilwell? He's gone crazy." Keefer flipped the towel around his shoulders and seesawed it briskly.

  "What!"

  "Diagnosis is acute melancholia. He's up at the base hospital. He was getting kind of funny there aboard ship, you know-"

  Willie remembered very well Stilwell's brooding, sallow, pained face. Twice on the homeward voyage the sailor had asked to be relieved of the helm because of a blinding head-ache. "What happened, Tom?"

  "Well, I wasn't here. The story is that he took to his sack and just stayed there for three days, not answering musters, not going up for meals. Said he had a headache. Finally they had to carry him to the hospital. He was all limp and foul, Bellison says-" Willie wrinkled his face in horror. "Well, it was in the cards, Willie. One look at him and you know he's one of these tense burning-up-inside ones. And no education, and a year of riding by Queeg, and the mixed-up emotional background, and on top of it all a general court for mutiny hanging over him-it isn't mutiny, any more, by the way. That's another thing- Got a cigarette?... Thanks."

  Keefer wrapped the towel around his middle and clacked out to the saloon, exhaling a gray cloud. Willie followed, saying eagerly, "What's all this about the mutiny?"

  "Steve's going to be tried on a charge of conduct to prejudice of good order and discipline. I told you that dried-up captain was out of his head, recommending trial for mutiny. I still don't think you guys have anything to worry about. The legal boys know they have a damn shaky case-"

  "What about Stilwell? Is he going to appear, or
what?"

  "Willie, the guy's a vegetable. They're going to give him elec-tric-shock therapy, I hear- How'd you make out on leave? Did you marry the girl?"

  "No."

  "I had a pretty good leave," said the novelist, pulling on white drawers. "I think I've sold my novel."

  "Hey, Tom! That's swell! What publisher?"

  "Chapman House. Nothing signed yet, you know. But it looks okay-"

  "Gosh, it wasn't finished yet, was it?"

  "They read twenty chapters and an outline. First publishers I showed it to." The gunnery officer spoke casually, but power-ful pride rayed out of his face. Willie regarded him with round eyes. The growing pile of yellow manuscript in Keefer's desk had been half a joke, after all. Novelists were mythical figures to Willie-dead giants like Thackeray, or impossibly remote, brilliant rich men like Sinclair Lewis and Thomas Mann.

  "Will-will they give you a big advance, Tom?"

  "Well, as I say, nothing's definite. If it all works out, five hundred or a thousand dollars." Willie whistled. "It's not much," Keefer said, "but for an incomplete first novel, well-"

  "It's marvelous, Tom, marvelous! I hope it's a huge best seller! It will be, too. I told you long ago I wanted the millionth copy, autographed. That still goes."

  Keefer's face relaxed in a foolish rosy smile. "Well, don't rush things, Willie-nothing's signed-"

  Steve Maryk's spirit failed him in the very first moments of the court-martial, when the members of the court were sworn. Seven officers stood on a dais in a semicircle behind a polished red-brown bench, their right arms raised, staring with religious gravity at Challee as he intoned the oath from a battered copy of Courts and Boards. Behind them on the wall between the wide windows was a large American flag. Outside, green-gray tops of eucalyptus trees stirred in the morning sunlight, and beyond them the blue bay danced with light. It is a cruel un-conscious trick of planning that has placed the court-martial room of Com Twelve on Yerba Buena Island, in such fair surroundings, with such a beckoning view. The square gray room seems all the more confining. The flag hangs between the eyes of the accused and the free sunlight and water, and its red and white bars are bars indeed.

  Maryk's eyes were drawn to the face of the president of the court, Captain Blakely, who stood at the center of the bench, squarely in front of the flag. It was an alarming face; a sharp nose, a mouth like a black line, and small far-seeing eyes under heavy eyebrows, with a defiant, distrustful glare. Blakely was quite gray, and he had a sagging dry pouch under his jaw, bloodless lips, and shadowy wrinkles around the eyes. Maryk knew his reputation: a submariner, up from the ranks, beached by a heart condition, the toughest disciplinarian of Com Twelve. Maryk was shaking when he sat down after the oath, and it was the face of Blakely that had made him shake.

  One regular lieutenant commander and five lieutenants made up the rest of the board. They had the look of any six naval officers passing at random in a BOQ lobby. Two of the lieutenants were reserve doctors; two of them were regulars of the line; one was a reserve of the line.

  The large wall clock over Challee's desk ticked around from ten o'clock to quarter of eleven while various legal cere-monies, incomprehensible to Maryk, were performed. For his first witness, Challee called Lieutenant Commander Philip Francis Queeg.

  The orderly went out. Everyone in the room watched the door. The ex-captain of the Caine entered, tanned, clear-eyed, in a new blue uniform, the sleeve stripes bright gold. Maryk had not seen him for almost two months. The change was startling. His last vivid recollection was of a little stooped pot-bellied figure in a gray life jacket and wet khakis, clinging to the engine telegraph, the bristly face green and twisted with fear. The man before him was erect, confident, and good--looking-and youthful, despite the few blond strands over a pink scalp. Maryk's nerves were jolted.

  Queeg took his seat on a raised platform in the center of the room. His manner during the opening questions was courteous and firm. Never once did he glance in Maryk's direction, though the exec sat to the right of him, only a few feet away, behind the defense desk.

  Challee went quickly to the morning of the typhoon, and asked the ex-captain to narrate the events in his own words. The reply of Queeg was a coherent, rapid sketch, in formal language, of the mutiny. Maryk admitted to himself that the facts were presented correctly; the external facts. Slight shad-ings of what had been said and done, and, of course, a com-plete omission of any details of how the captain had looked and behaved, sufficed to turn the whole picture inside out. As Queeg told the story, he had simply made every effort to hold fleet course and speed, and in face of worsening weather had managed to do so right up to the moment when his executive officer had unexpectedly run amuck and seized command. Thereafter, by staying on the bridge and judiciously suggesting necessary maneuvers to the frenzied exec, he had brought the ship safely through the storm.

  The court members followed the account with sympathetic interest. Once Captain Blakely transferred a long ominous stare to the defendant. Before Queeg was finished Maryk had totally despaired. He looked to his counsel with frightened eyes. Greenwald doodled with a red crayon on a pad, drawing multitudes of little fat pink pigs.

  "Commander," said Challee, "can you account in any way for your executive officer's act?"

  "Well," said Queeg calmly, "it was a rather serious situation. The wind was force 10 to 12, the waves were mountainous, and the ship naturally was laboring very badly. Mr. Maryk had shown evidences of growing nervousness and instability all morning. I think when we took that last bad roll he simply went into panic and proceeded to act irrationally. He acted under the delusion that he and he alone could save the ship. His worst weakness was conceit about his seamanship."

  "Was the Caine in grave danger at that moment?"

  "I wouldn't say so, no sir. Of course a typhoon is an ex-treme hazard at all times, but the ship had ridden well up to that moment and continued to ride well afterward."

  "Have you ever been mentally ill, sir?"

  "No, sir."

  "Were you ill in any way when Mr. Maryk relieved you?"

  "I was not."

  "Did you protest the relief?"

  "As forcefully as I could."

  "Did you attempt to resume command?"

  "Repeatedly."

  "Did you warn your executive officer of the consequences of his act?"

  "I told him he was performing a mutinous act."

  "What was his reply?"

  "That he expected to be court-martialed, but was going to retain command anyway."

  "What was the attitude of Lieutenant Junior Grade Keith, the officer of the deck?"

  "He was in a state of panic as bad as Maryk's or worse. He consistently backed up Maryk."

  "What was the attitude of the rest of the officers?"

  "They were perplexed and submissive. Under the circum-stances I don't suppose they had any alternative."

  "What was the attitude of the helmsman?"

  "Stilwell I considered the worst troublemaker on the ship. He was emotionally unbalanced, and for some reason was very devoted to Lieutenant Junior Grade Keith. He gladly partici-pated in defying my orders."

  "Where is Stilwell at present?"

  "I understand he is in the psychiatric ward of the hospital here, with a diagnosis of acute melancholia."

  Challee glanced at the court. "Is there anything else, Com-mander Queeg, that you care to state in connection with the events of 18 December aboard the Caine?"

  "Well, I have thought a lot about it all, of course. It's the gravest occurrence in my career, and the only questionable one that I'm aware of. It was an unfortunate freak accident. If the OOD had been anyone but Keith, and the helmsman any-one but Stilwell, it would not have happened. Keefer or Hard-ing or Paynter would have repudiated Maryk's orders and probably snapped him out of it in a hurry. A normal sailor at the helm would have disregarded both officers and obeyed me. It was just bad luck that those three men-Maryk, Keith, and Stilwell-were combined
against me at a crucial time. Bad luck for me, and worse luck for them."

  Maryk took the crayon from Greenwald's hand as Queeg spoke and scribbled on the pad, I can prove I wasn't panicky. The lawyer wrote underneath, Okay. May not be necessary, and around both statements he drew a large pig.

  "The court would like to question the witness," said Blakely. "Commander Queeg, how long have you been in the naval service?"

  "I am completing my fourteenth year, sir."

  "In that time you have taken all the prescribed physical and mental examinations incident to entrance to the Academy, graduation, commissioning, promotion, and so forth?"