Sentinels of Fire

by P. T. Deutermann

  I had no answer for that except “Yes, sir.” The captain got up, dusted off his trousers, and then saw my bloody pant leg. He blinked. “You didn’t tell me—”

  “A gouge, that’s all,” I said. “I was lucky. Hurts more than I expected, but it’s no big deal, not compared…”

  The captain nodded. “I was at Savo Island in Quincy,” he said, almost whispering. “A complete slaughter. I still have nightmares. Then Juneau. Did you know I was one of ten survivors, out of a crew of seven hundred? We took a Long Lance during that night fight, crawled out with the San Francisco the next morning. We were making twelve knots with a broken keel.”

  He stopped for breath. I held my silence. He wasn’t here. He was back at Guadalcanal.

  “A Jap sub found us. Two cripples. We were down by the bow, but we were making it. Took one torpedo hit, and goddamn me if it wasn’t right where the first one got us, only this time the forward magazines let go. I woke up in the water, with maybe a hundred other guys. They finally found us, too many days later. We were down to ten.”

  “Ten?”

  “Yup. They haven’t published that number, have they? No, they haven’t. November 1942. I should have gone home after that. Gone back to the Eastern Shore and farmed some chickens. Dug myself a Victory Garden, but no, I asked to stay. Now look at me. I should have turned myself in six months ago, but I remember thinking, this shit isn’t over, and I’m not any worse for wear. Went on to XO in a tin can, chasing bird farms with Halsey and Spruance, then got command of Malloy. Going from island to island, doing shore-bomb, rescue-plane guard, odd jobs. One more island, one more landing: How tough could it be? Then these kamis … It’s just too much, XO. Too much. You’re gonna have to take it. I’m done. Just didn’t realize it until now.”

  “We’ll figure something out, Captain,” I said. “In the meantime, I need you to take a turn about deck, with me. People need to see you. Then we’ll get the doc in.”

  “Sure, I can do that,” he said, “but how long until sunset?”

  The two of us walked the topside decks of the ship for the next forty minutes, seeing and being seen by all the people who were picking up the pieces on the weather decks. The captain did well. Once out in the sunlight, he straightened up and became himself again, greeting many of the crewmen by name while I trailed along. Chief Lamont caught up with us after about five minutes as word got around that the CO was topside. How he heard remained a mystery, but it was one of his skills.

  Doc Walker found us on the 01 level amidships and told the captain they were ready on the fantail. Ready for what, I wondered. We walked aft, and went down to the main deck, through the K-gun depth-charge racks, past the quarterdeck, and out onto the fantail. There, laid out in two rows, were our dead. Their remains were in black rubber body bags, and there were six lying out there in the sunlight. Two sailors in dungarees, white duty belts, white leggings, and white hats were standing watch over them, each with an M-1 rifle resting incongruously on his shoulder. As I stood there, Doc took the captain to each one of them, unzipped the bag so the man’s face was visible, and then told the captain who the man was, where he was from, and what he was “famous” for within his division. Then they’d move on to the next one.

  I later found out that this was where the captain gathered personal details that he would later connect to when he wrote the letters of condolence to their families.

  “We’ll do it together this time,” he said to me quietly as we walked away. “It’s your job to draft the letters, and then mine to personalize them. Not fun.”

  I couldn’t think of anything to say to that. That night, right after sundown but while there was still some daylight, we buried our shipmates who’d been killed in the strafing attack. We hadn’t assembled the whole crew for the burial ceremony because there were still contacts being reported around Okinawa, but everyone from the after gun batteries stood in respectful attendance, just beside their guns. The captain and I had changed into choker whites; he read the prescribed words and the psalm. The honor guard, three sailors, also in their dress whites, fired a three-gun rifle salute, and then the bodies were consigned, one by one, to the deep. Our honor guard folded the flags, which would be boxed up later and sent home to families, along with the letter of condolence and personal effects. Throughout, Captain Tallmadge had conducted himself with grace, dignity, authority, and absolutely no sign of the mental state he’d revealed earlier.

  If he can manage that, I thought, with all the emotion entailed in sliding someone you knew into the deeps of the Pacific Ocean, then we can overcome this problem. I just have to figure out how.

  FIVE

  The following morning broke hazy, with seas so calm the water resembled one infinite mirrored surface all the way to the horizon. The only movement of air was a faint stirring created by the ship’s own movement. We’d gone to GQ just before sunrise, as usual, and were now steaming at modified GQ as long as Combat held no incoming air contacts. The captain had decided to stay up on the bridge, so I had quietly called a department heads’ meeting in my stateroom. I got to sit on my bunk while the four of them crowded into the tiny cabin.

  I blew out a long breath. “Okay, guys,” I said. “As I suspect you all know, there’s something going on with the skipper.” I looked at each of them in turn. Jimmy Enright, Mario Campofino, Marty Randolph, and Peter Fontana all nodded. Then the sound-powered phone squeaked. I sighed.

  “XO.”

  “XO, Combat. There’s an LSMR”—Landing Ship, Medium, Rocket—“coming up from Okinawa, ETA around noon, with a med team embarked. We also now have two sections of CAP assigned. If you hear aircraft engines, it’s them headed out for their barrier stations. They’ll come overhead for positive ID as friendlies.”

  “Thank you,” I said and hung up the phone. I relayed the word to the department heads. “Now,” I continued. “As to the CO. I believe he’s mostly exhausted.”

  “As opposed to Section Eight?” Mario asked.

  “He’s not nuts,” I said. “He’s not babbling or doing bizarre things other than hiding when the shit starts.”

  Jimmy Enright raised a hand. “Begging your pardon, XO, but that is bizarre behavior for the skipper of a warship, especially out here. I don’t want to sound like a sea lawyer, but I think this situation needs to be reported to the commodore and that you should assume temporary command until we get further instructions.”

  I sighed again. “You’re technically right, of course, but if we do that, they’ll simply haul him off the ship and send him home in what, for him, would be total disgrace. I think we owe him more than that and better than that. You all have served with him longer than I have, but my impression is that he’s been a singularly good CO.”

  “XO,” Marty said, “what do Navy Regs say? If the CO becomes incapacitated, you already have the authority to relieve him, as long as you report it to the squadron commodore, right? I mean, if you don’t, and something happens and he gets killed in his cabin, they’re gonna look pretty hard at you.”

  “What’s the word going around the ship?” I asked, dodging his question.

  Mario said that there were some rumors, but so far, nothing vicious or alarming. Then he weighed in. “So why don’t we simply get the doc to give him something, put him asleep for a coupla days. See how he comes back from that.”

  “I’d vote for that,” Peter said. “We’d all feel like shitheels starting a major flap when it could be simple exhaustion. Remember who we’re talking about here—this isn’t Captain Bligh. This is our skipper.”

  “You know what?” Mario asked. “There’ll be at least one medical officer on that LSMR. Make sure he sees the captain, talks to him—you know, tell him he has to make a report to the CO on the condition of our wounded? Then if the skipper starts acting strangely, you’ll know what you have to do.”

  “That’s part of the problem,” I said. “He acts perfectly normal, except when that GQ alarm goes and the kamikazes show up. You all s
aw him last night at the burial service. Dignified, sad, but reading that scripture like a bishop. He was the only officer that the crew wanted to see doing that.”

  “But…” Marty said.

  “Yeah, but. He told me yesterday that he’s lost his nerve. I think the scariest part of that was that he knows it and admits it. It’s like he doesn’t know what to do now.”

  “Oh, I think he does, XO,” Marty said. “If he knows he’s lost his nerve, that he panics when the Japs arrive, he should be ordering you to assume command, turning himself in to the commodore, and requesting his own immediate relief. You’ve been in carriers. Isn’t that what the aviators do when they can’t face carrier landings anymore?”

  I hadn’t thought of it that way, although the captain had proposed just that. Proposed, not ordered. Marty was right … and yet.

  I just couldn’t bring myself to force that issue. Malloy was a fully trained ship of war, thanks mostly to Captain Tallmadge’s personal tutelage over the past eight months. It hadn’t been that way under the previous skipper, if I could believe the longest-serving department heads. Captain Tallmadge was also older than most of the other skippers in the squadron, having entered the Naval Academy after two years of college. As far as I could see he exhibited none of the careerism that was beginning to infect the fleet as the war against Japan was obviously drawing to a climax, with some overly ambitious officers scrambling to get wartime commands before the opportunity for “glory” disappeared. Everyone knew that there would be no more fleet carrier battles, or ship-versus-ship duels, because the formerly majestic Imperial Japanese Navy was, for the most part, asleep in the deep. The only thing remaining was the invasion of the Japanese home islands, once Okinawa had been taken.

  Just prior to my coming aboard, the captain had warned the department heads that Okinawa was going to be different from the previous island assaults. Not only did the Japs consider it one of the home islands, the introduction of the kamikaze as a full-time, planned campaign meant that the Navy was now going to be in just as much peril as all those doughboys tramping ashore.

  “It’s one thing when a pilot is trying to drop a bomb on you,” he’d said, prophetically. “It’s quite another when he wants to come aboard and has no intention of ever going home again. This is going to be bad.”

  So bad, I thought as I considered Marty’s words, that our beloved skipper had taken up running and hiding when the guns trained out to go to work.

  “Okay,” I said. “I’ll make the sure the doc who comes in with the LSMR has some face-time with the captain. In the meantime, let’s keep this problem among ourselves. We’ll meet again tonight after the LSMR leaves. Mario, I need an updated damage report—what’s been repaired, what they’re working on, and what’s beyond our capability. Marty, same deal with the guns and their crews. And remember, gents: We’re still very much in Injun Country.”

  * * *

  The LSMR hove into view thirty minutes past noon, pursued by a large cloud of diesel exhaust from engines badly in need of some work. It looked somewhat similar to the much bigger LST: Landing Ship, Tank. Shaped like a shoe box with a blunt bow up forward, her job was to stand offshore and fire barrages of five-inch rockets into the active battle zone. The little ship had not been modified for picket line duty and thus retained almost all of her rocket launchers. The only visible changes had been a few topside modifications to allow temporary berthing for wounded being transferred from the warships to one of the hospital ships or tenders anchored off Kerama Retto. There were large red crosses painted on her sides and main deck, not that that seemed to matter to the kamikazes. The skies over the picket area had been clear of bogeys all morning, with not even any Jap recon aircraft being detected. Everyone hoped the Japs were taking the day off for some reason, but I suspected they were assembling something special for the combined American and British armada surrounding Okinawa.

  Doc Walker and I met the doctor, who was first up the boarding ladder, and handed over Walker’s summary of the wounded, listed on a triage basis. The doctor, an impossibly young-looking medical officer except for those dark circles under his eyes, scanned the report and then asked to be taken to sick bay so he could set up shop. Four hospital corpsmen came up from the LSMR, which was rubbing and bumping alongside our much larger sides. They brought up several bulky medical kits and bags of replacement medical supplies. Once the med team was on board, the LSMR rumbled away to take up a station a thousand yards from Malloy. She had one twin forty and three twenty-millimeter gun mounts, and Malloy’s officer of the deck had reminded the LSMR’s skipper to keep them manned and ready. That worthy gave the OOD a sharp look and reminded him that the picket line wasn’t where most of the kamikazes came to do business. Our OOD, an ensign, was suitably chastened and saluted the offended skipper of the LSMR—a lieutenant.

  I took the doctor aside for a moment and told him that our skipper was suffering from what looked like acute exhaustion. He asked me if I wanted him to deal with the ship’s wounded or the skipper first. I told him the wounded came first, but that I needed him to see the captain before the team disembarked.

  “Acute exhaustion,” he said. “There’s a lot of that going around, especially on the destroyers up here. How are you holding up?” he asked, glancing at the white bandage showing under my torn khaki trousers. Now that I got a closer look at him, he didn’t seem so young anymore.

  “Better than he is,” I said. I pointed at my right leg. “This hurts, but APCs seem to work it down to a dull roar.”

  He said he’d look in on the CO as soon as he could. I went up forward to meet with the chief engineer and get a status on the main steam plant. They’d been working on a way to relight the two forward boilers with only half a stack, and we were now back to full power available. After that I went to the captain’s cabin and briefed him on what was going on. He took it all on board and then asked me about the department heads’ meeting he’d heard called over the 1MC. I didn’t equivocate. I told him what we’d talked about and how everyone felt. The captain smiled.

  “You’re a good guy, XO. Thanks for your honesty, and it may well be that I’m much more tired than I thought, but you should know that when the GQ alarm goes, so does my plumbing.”

  I had no answer for that.

  “I think maybe Marty and Jimmy are right,” he continued. “I should go topside, write in the log that I’m no longer capable of performing my duties and that I have ordered you to take command. That way there’s no whiff of insubordination, or worse.”

  “There’s no chance of anybody in this ship thinking about mutiny, Captain,” I said. “In fact, we’re all trying to cover for you, and that’s because we need you and your experience. Each time I make a tactical decision, you very politely say ‘That was good, XO,’ but then you come up with something that never crossed my mind. I want to stay alive out here. We all do. The longer we’re here, the less likely that becomes. Waltham was the fourth destroyer lost up here in three weeks. We need you to tell us what to do.”

  “Malloy’s a lucky ship, XO,” the captain said. “That’s more important in war than any alleged brilliance at the top.”

  “We’re lucky because you’ve trained us and you always are one step ahead of everybody else when the kamis come.”

  “Not anymore, XO,” he said with a sigh. “Right now I’m several steps behind you when I start crapping my trou while trying not to throw up with fear. You’re ready, XO. I think I’m done. Let’s think about the ship, okay? The ship and the three hundred or so souls on board, not as many as we had before yesterday, but still—that’s a valuable crowd.”

  I was trying to formulate an answer when the GQ alarm sounded. The OOD on the bridge came up on the announcing system: multiple bogeys, sixty miles, high, inbound, but crossing.

  I didn’t want to, but I glanced back at the captain. His face had begun to go rigid, and his eyes seemed to be losing focus.

  Great God, I thought. This is real.

 
; “Go,” the Captain whispered. “Please.”

  I sighed, put my hand on his shoulder, and gave it a squeeze. Then I headed for the bridge.

  “We need to get the med team back on board the LSMR,” I said to the OOD as I came out into the pilothouse, donning my battle gear.

  “Yes, sir,” the OOD said. “We have time?”

  “The radar indicates the raid is crossing, meaning they’re headed for the main fleet dispositions around Okinawa. Signal that LSMR back alongside, and let’s get all those people plus our most seriously hurt out of here. And tell ’em to move it.”

  The OOD got on the bitch-box to the signal bridge, and moments later we all heard the clacking of the signal searchlight. The LSMR CO must have already figured out why all our topside mounts were suddenly crawling with gunners, because as soon as the signal light started up, he turned his ungainly craft toward Malloy with a great burst of diesel exhaust.

  “Okinawa med team to the starboard side, on the double. Kamikazes, inbound,” came blaring over the 1MC. That ought to do it, I thought. Then I remembered that I’d been supposed to get the medical officer and the captain together.

  Decision time: If I did that now, the captain would leave with the LSMR, probably in medical restraints. On the other hand, we hadn’t tried the rest-and-respite treatment yet. I hated to solve this problem without even giving the Old Man a chance. I took a deep breath, then went out to the starboard bridge wing, where I could see the medical team and five of Malloy’s wounded in stretchers being assembled next to the sea ladder. The LSMR was nearly alongside.

  “As soon as they’re clear, have Doc Walker come up here. Then go to fifteen knots and start the dance.”

  “Aye, aye, XO. Bridge is manned and ready for GQ.”

  “Good. Log all this, please.”

  I went into CIC to take a look at the air plot. The enemy aircraft were forty miles out now, and it did look like the main blob of radar video was headed south. We had to assume, however, that a few of them would peel off to go kill the nearest picket destroyer.