“That HASP love tap didn’t help things,” the doctor said. “If you were looking for a way out of naval aviation, this could certainly be your ticket. But that’s not what you want, is it?”
“Absolutely not,” Mick replied. “All I can do is fly and kill Japs, and that’s all I want to do. But lately I’m getting the impression that the fleet carrier Navy is equating spit-and-polish procedures with Japs in the water. I admit to being a little rough around the edges, but I’m starting to wonder if the Navy really needs people like me anymore.”
The doctor, a fifty-year-old commander in the Medical Service Corps, got up and shut the door to his office. Then he produced a pack of Camels, offered one to Mick, and lit one for himself. Mick had been an indifferent smoker until he’d quit the booze, but now he was well and truly hooked.
“Naval aviation is changing, Lieutenant,” the doctor said. “I’m seeing it every day. Back in early ’forty-two, it was all about survival. Extended peacetime, the Depression, the pay cuts, all that turned a Navy career into a longevity game where people kept their jobs by keeping their heads down. Someone had to die or retire for someone else to get promoted. The Japs helped thin out the upper ranks here in Pearl, but now the smoothies are getting into it. Careers are being advanced, reputations polished. I’m seeing senior aviators more afraid of screwing up than they are of Jap fighter pilots. You academy?”
Mick nodded.
“From the size of you, I’ll bet you played ball and you were good at it.”
“They seemed to like me back then,” Mick said. “Called me Beast. They even had a special cheer whenever I lined up.”
“Yeah, I went to an Army-Navy game once in Philly. Great stuff. And you’ve seen some good action?”
“I got a carrier at Midway, if that counts.”
The doctor nodded. “That where you ran into Oxerhaus? On the Yorktown?”
Mick was surprised. “You know him?”
The doctor took a deep drag on his cigarette and then ground it out in his ashtray. “Yeah, I know him. Had to deal with him back in Pensacola, before he became air boss on the Yorktown. Guy’s a prick, always has been. Did you know his wife left him for another brownshoe?”
“What flavor brownshoe?”
“Three guesses, Lieutenant, and the first two don’t count.”
“An SBD guy?”
The doctor nodded. Mick just shook his head.
“So the first thing we have to do is get you out of Oxerhaus’s clutches, or he’ll bury you there at that naval station. The way we do that is to send you back stateside for treatment. Special surgery, maybe, then some rehab. I’m thinking the training command, back at Pensacola.”
“Will surgery fix this?” Mick asked, holding up his battered hand.
“Probably not,” the doctor admitted. “Eventually, the circulation in that hand is gonna shut down, and then you may lose it. But I’ve got the authority to order you back stateside, and that will get your ass out of that paperwork cage.”
“When could I go?”
“I’ll write the orders today, and I’ll write the medical report in such a way that the docs back there will get the bigger picture. After that, it’ll be up to you to figure out how to get back to a big-deck and killing Nips. Deal?”
Mick finished his cigarette. “Best offer I’ve had all year,” he said. “Deal.”
* * *
Marsh was surprised to see a letter on his bed when he got back to the cabin. It was one of those tiny airmail envelopes, smelling faintly of a woman’s perfume. It had been mailed three weeks ago, according to the frank from the Fleet Post Office in Pearl.
Glory?
The return address only had initials, but there it was: the nurses’ quarters at Pearl.
Glory had written him. He felt his heart leap.
He opened the letter, trying not to tear the flimsy paper. His hands were wet from the rain, and he immediately smeared the ink on the top of the almost transparent paper.
Dear Mr. Vincent,
I hope you are well and keeping safe, or as safe as you can be out there. I so much enjoyed seeing you the last time you were here. The days seem to fly by, as they probably do for you, too. We’re all working as hard as ever, and I’m sure you know why better than we do. There are more people coming on staff every day, it seems, and new medicines and techniques as well. Our mutual friend has been reassigned to work with a senior surgeon in preparation for an even bigger upgrade to the facilities.
I hope you have time to write back. I’d love to get to know you better. Until then, keep safe.
A secret admirer
Marsh re-read the letter and then smiled. This had to be that young nurse he’d met on the front porch of the nurses’ quarters when he’d gone to see Glory. He was a little disappointed that it wasn’t Glory herself writing him, but he could understand that, too.
Glory was never very far from his thoughts, when he had time to think, which wasn’t that often. The ship had been going full bore since leaving Pearl as the Big Blue Fleet waged a war of attrition on various Jap bases in the Solomons and farther north. In a way, though, he knew she was moving away from him. Truth be told, he had to admit, it was only in his imagination that she’d ever been moving toward him. He had hoped that with Tommy gone he might have a chance to resume at least his long-distance love affair. After the Pearl visit, even he could see that she was still very much in love with her departed husband, and that no man was going to invade that longing anytime soon. Nevertheless, he’d jumped at the chance to start a correspondence with her as a way of maintaining contact. There was always the chance that she’d finally grow tired of mourning Tommy, and if that happened, he wanted to be right there, if only on paper.
A secret admirer. He smiled again. Sally, that was her name. Sally something, beginning with an A. Well, he’d certainly write back—it was nice getting mail from someone, and she had mentioned “our mutual friend.” Perhaps by writing Sally he might keep in touch with Glory. They were roommates in the quarters, and sometimes they probably talked about people they knew. Or wrote to.
There was a knock on the door. The bridge messenger said the captain wanted to see him on the bridge.
“Be right up,” Marsh said, folding the letter and putting it in his to-do basket.
NINE
Pearl, October 1943
Glory was proud that she had not become seasick, although the flat, calm waters off Honolulu may have contributed to her achievement. She and fifty other medical staff from the hospital were on board the Navy’s newest hospital ship. Superman had set up an orientation tour so that people from whom the advance base invasion augmentation teams would be formed would at least know what a hospital ship looked like.
This one looked a lot like an ocean liner, which she had been just seven months ago when they painted her white, then put a green stripe around her sides and enormous red crosses on her stacks, sides, and top decks. The main dining room and ballroom had been converted to operating theaters, and the forward and after holds to medical supply storage compartments. The six hundred individual staterooms could hold up to four patients each. The ship’s crew was made up of all merchantmen, not Navy, and, of course, there was no armament onboard whatsoever. Everyone knew there were no guarantees that the Japs would respect all those red crosses, especially after they’d sunk the Australian hospital ship Aurora in 1942. This one, called the Salvation, was almost thirty thousand tons, much bigger than Aurora, and she’d just finished a three-week fitting-out period in the naval shipyard at Pearl.
Today’s sea trial, as Stembridge called it, was mostly for the benefit of the shipyard engineers, who ran ship’s systems tests while the medical people checked out the operating rooms and all their equipment. They’d come out of Pearl early that morning and had circumnavigated the island of Oahu for the entire day. Glory was truly tired after a day of going up and down companionways, into the main holds, and through all of the sickbed staterooms with Stembridge
as he conducted a whirlwind inspection, he with a flashlight and she with a large notebook, writing down what seemed like a few thousand discrepancies. They’d then done a mock operation in one of the four ORs, where they quickly discovered that the anesthesiology systems had everything but a way to pipe the various gases to the table, among other things.
It was now an hour before sundown. Glory stood with Stembridge up on the starboard side of the navigation bridge, right behind the ship’s expansive pilothouse. Stembridge was comparing notes with the ship’s superintendent from the shipyard. Glory had stepped out of her uniform shoes and was enjoying the feel of cold steel against her aching white-stockinged feet. The island of Oahu lay to starboard at about twelve miles, pale green in the yellowing light of late afternoon. The city of Honolulu was in view as they sailed past Diamond Head. Farther to the west she could see the masts of warships in the Pearl lagoon, interspersed with yard cranes at the shipyard.
The master of the ship, a ruddy, round little man with the face of a leprechaun, stepped out onto the bridge wing to have a cigarette and a mug of coffee before entering port. He was a merchant officer from the Moore-McCormack Lines, from whom the ship had been requisitioned. His uniform was a navy blue jacket with four stripes, white trousers, and an open-collar white shirt. With that face, Glory thought, the four stripes looked incongruous, but based on how the crew treated him, he was fully in command.
Up above, on the signal deck, two Navy signalmen were shooting the breeze with the ship’s civilian signalman. One of the Navy guys pointed toward Pearl and said, “Hey, we’re getting a light.” The other Navy man turned around, squinted over at Pearl, and then asked the merchant sailor, a fifty-year-old with a large gray beard, to uncover the ship’s signal light. Glory stared across the water in the direction of the naval base and finally saw a lone, yellow light winking at them urgently from among the forest of masts and stacks. The older Navy signalman told the other one that he would read while the other wrote down the message. The merchantman with the beard seemed content to let the Navy guys do their stuff, exchanging a wink with the master one level below, the old hand letting the eager beavers play Navy.
“Probably a challenge,” Stembridge said at her elbow.
“What’s a challenge?”
“A code, either a number or a word, that changes every day. Any ship approaching Pearl gets challenged. If she doesn’t come up with the right code word in reply, they tell the Army at Fort DeRussy over there to open up with their sixteen-inch coastal guns.”
She gave him an arch look. “Of course they do,” she said, believing not a word of it.
“Baker Tare, stand by to write,” called out the reader. He was looking through a pair of binoculars clipped to the top of the lamp while holding down the light’s signaling arm to give the signal lamp at the base a target. The other man began filling out the message blank, which he held on a clipboard.
“Easy, Mike, Easy, Roger, Golf, Easy—emergency.”
The master, overhearing that, frowned, took his cigarette out of his mouth, and flipped it over the side. Then he listened to the reader calling out the rest of the message.
“Yoke, Oboe, Uncle, break it—You.”
“Able, Roger, Easy, break it—are.”
“Sugar, Tare, Able, Nan, Dog, Item, Nan—break it—standing.”
“Item, Nan, Tare, Oboe—break—into.”
“Mike, Item, Nan, Easy, Fox, Item—oh shit!– minefield!”
Glory heard the master’s china mug shatter on the deck. She had just turned to see where he’d gone when suddenly a mountainous thump hit the ship and lifted the bow twenty feet into the air, followed by an enormous explosion of dirty, smoke-filled water that rose a hundred feet and then fell back onto the forecastle like a tidal wave. The ship shuddered along her full length and then began to slow, her bow dipping down into the sea before coming back up again.
Glory found herself sprawled on the deck, along with Stembridge and the ship’s superintendent. All three of them had turned to the ornate wooden railing to begin pulling themselves upright when the ship hit a second mine, again at the bow. This one produced a smaller water column but seemed to punch the ship much harder. A third mine went off in a sympathetic detonation off the starboard side, but far enough away that they saw it rather than felt it. The ship, which had only been making ten knots, slowed to a stop, and this time the bow was not coming back up. As Glory watched in horror, the forward-most sixty feet of forecastle deck folded down right in front of the H-shaped kingpost and collapsed into the sea. The kingpost followed it in a rattling crash of dismounted winches and thrashing wire cables.
The master, white-faced, stepped out onto the bridge wing and told the signalmen to send out an SOS to the naval station. Glory could hear other voices shouting inside the pilothouse. The master ran back in, shouting orders of his own. The ship’s superintendent followed him into the pilothouse, yelling something about organizing a shoring party. Above them, the Navy signalman began to work the signal light’s metal arm so fast Glory could hardly see his hand. The merchantman with the beard was nowhere to be seen.
“Let’s get below,” Stembridge said, grabbing her arm. “Get all the troops in one place. This damn thing might sink on us.”
As if he’d been overheard, the ship’s announcing system crackled to life on the topside speakers all along the upper decks.
“This is the captain. We’ve hit a mine. Two mines. Engineering department damage control team muster at the number three hatch with shoring gear. All medical passengers assemble on the port side, that’s the seaward side, boat deck, with your life jackets. Lifeboat captains lower away the portside lifeboats to the rail and stand by.”
As they hurried across the catwalk behind the pilothouse to get to the port side, Glory felt the deck beginning to tilt. She realized they were going slightly downhill. They stopped to let some crewmen, already in their life jackets and steel helmets, come racing up the portside stairway ladder. The looks on their faces said it all.
“Where’s your life jacket?” Stembridge asked.
“I have no idea,” she said, feeling suddenly like an idiot.
They rushed down the first ladder, and then Stembridge saw a life jacket locker mounted to the inboard bulkhead. He opened it, gave one to her, and then began strapping one on himself.
Glory just looked at it. It was blue-gray in color, soft and spongy, with a confusing array of white strings hanging down like the tentacles on a jellyfish. It had a tarlike smell. She might technically be a naval officer, but she had no idea what to do with this thing.
“Turn around and hold out your arms,” Stembridge ordered. He pulled the jacket first over one arm and then the other, whirled her around to face him, and began tying strings. “I think we can get all of our people into two boats. I’ll deal with the boat captains; you corral everyone and get a muster. Make sure no one’s still belowdecks. Got it?”
She nodded, which was difficult because he had knotted the neck string right up under her chin. He was looking down into her eyes.
“Scared?”
The downward tilt on the ship was increasing. “Yes.”
“Good. Focus. Everyone else will be scared, too, so they’ll do whatever someone in authority tells them to. Give orders, not suggestions. Tell everyone to muster together, near one or two boats. Then get a head count.”
They felt the engine trembling, followed by a whipsawing motion through the ship’s structure that rattled the outside fittings. The engine shut back down. Stembridge appeared to be listening.
“Propeller shaft’s probably broken,” he said.
“Is that bad?”
“Means we can’t back out of the minefield,” he said. “Hope Pearl’s sending tugs. Right. Let’s go.”
The portside boat deck was already crowded with the people from the naval hospital, all struggling with the unfamiliar life jackets. A half-dozen ship’s crewmen, also in life jackets, were busy lowering the six portside
lifeboats to the railing level. The ship was heavily down by the bow now and continuing to list to port. As Glory arrived, she heard the crewmen directing some of her people to grab boat ropes so that the boats didn’t swing out too far from the railing. There were gates in the railing, all of which were now open. She saw Sally Adkins, called her over, and then told her to help take a muster of the medical people. Sally promptly told the nearest people to fall into ranks. Most of them just looked at her.
“Just like OCS, goddammit,” she yelled. “Now fall in.”
Glory saw one of the merchant seamen nodding approvingly as the pretty, blue-eyed blonde took charge. She looked for Stembridge but couldn’t find him in all the commotion. The noise on the boat deck subsided as doctors, nurses, orderlies, and med techs fell into ranks, looking like rows of blue-gray pumpkins in their bulky kapoks. Glory heard a whoosh, followed by a second one, as the bridge personnel fired red distress rockets into the evening air. Then Stembridge appeared.
“Do we have everybody?”
“Sally’s taking a muster,” she said. “When do we get into the boats?”
“The captain thinks they can contain the flooding to the forward holds, but they can’t use the engines. The problem is we’re adrift on the edge of a minefield.”
“How in the hell—”
“Navigation error. They turned toward Pearl too soon. There’s a destroyer coming out, and she’s bringing tugs. The captain recommends we stay aboard for now.” He surveyed the uneven ranks of medical people, the front row holding on to the life rails to keep upright. “Let me talk to everybody. You take one of the docs and do a quick tour of the OR spaces. Make sure no one is down there.”
All the lights were still on inside the ship, but it was deathly quiet as they went down two decks to what had been the dining and ballroom area. Salvation was not a steamship. She had a diesel-electric power plant, where a set of large marine diesels drove generators, which in turn drove a single electric motor coupled to the propeller shaft. They could hear the diesels idling a few decks below, and, except for the unusual slant of the deck and some dangling light fixtures and overturned furniture, they would never have known the ship had hit not one but two sea mines. Ordinarily there would have been up to twelve hundred passengers and crew on board, but now there was only the basic crew, the shipyard engineers, and the medical team.
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