Pacific Glory

by P. T. Deutermann

  As they walked quickly through all the medical spaces, Glory sensed that the doctor was in a hurry. She asked him why.

  “If we hit another goddamned mine, we don’t want to be down here, do we.”

  She hadn’t thought of that, and stepped up the pace. She’d been dealing with patients who’d survived sinking ships for two years. It had never occurred to her that she might become one herself. After checking the four operating rooms, they went forward to make sure the recovery wards were empty, and promptly got lost. Glory felt a surge of fear when she realized that neither one of them knew exactly how to get back topside, and the fact that they were both holding on to the passageway bulkheads to stay upright wasn’t helping.

  Then they heard a noise that sounded like an injured animal. It was coming from beyond the large steel door ahead of them, on which the words MAIN GALLEY were printed. She realized that the door was really a watertight hatch. The doctor went ahead and grasped the operating handle.

  “Wait!” Glory called from behind him. He turned to look at her. She pointed toward the bottom of the door, which was dripping beads of water from the bottom up to about a foot above the hatch coaming.

  “Oh, hell,” he said. “It’s flooding. We can’t open this door.”

  At the sound of his voice, the whimpering noises from the other side grew louder. “I think we have to,” she said. “There’s someone in trouble on the other side.”

  “We do, and if that’s the ocean, we’ll never get it closed. That could sink the ship.”

  They stared at each other, intensely aware that they were probably right at or even below the waterline, especially with the ship down by the head. Then the sound became a man’s voice, but it was masked by a burbling noise, as if he were trying to shout through water.

  “We can’t just leave him,” Glory said.

  “Okay,” the doctor said. “Damned thing’s probably going to sink anyway. Stand back.”

  He lifted the handle but forgot to step out of the way. The water pressure on the other side immediately punched the door open and pinned him between the bulkhead and the hatch. A wall of greenish water two feet high swept past them into the OR passageway, nearly knocking Glory off her feet. Beyond the hatch they saw a tangle of piping that had come down from the overhead. One of the pipes was pumping water into the galley passageway, and beneath the mess they could see the figure of a man on his back trapped by all the debris. They plunged into the pile of metal, heaving and twisting as best they could until the doctor grabbed her arm and pointed. They could see the man’s Oriental face, which was now under perhaps six inches of water. His eyes and mouth were wide open.

  The doctor swore. It was too late. They climbed back over the pile of piping and tried to close the hatch. They had to wait another minute for the water level to equalize between the two spaces, but then they were able to get it closed and dogged back down. Their khaki trousers and shoes were soaked. Glory felt exposed with the wet fabric clinging to her lower body, but the young doctor was more interested in all that water.

  “That whole compartment is going to fill up eventually,” the doctor said. “We’ll have to tell somebody about that. Maybe the engineers can get that water pipe shut off.”

  “Fine,” she said, “but first, how do we get out of here?”

  “Let’s try going back the way we came,” he said, and together they went squelching back up the slippery inclined tiles toward the operating rooms.

  It took them ten minutes to find their way back out of the medical complex and up to the boat decks. The sun had set, and now most of the light came from the ship’s own gallery lights. They reported to Stembridge, who went up the ladders to the bridge to tell the captain what they’d found below. Glory went to find Sally.

  “Everybody’s here,” Sally said. “There’s a destroyer right out there, but I think it’s stopped.”

  “I would, too,” Glory said.

  Sally eyed Glory’s wet trousers. “What happened to you down there?”

  Glory explained, and Sally shivered at the thought of the man drowning under all that wreckage with help so close.

  They could see the shape of the destroyer and its running lights. Behind it in the distance were four smaller shapes, each with a white bow wave visible in the twilight. The hospital ship’s bow-down attitude seemed to have stabilized, as had the port list. Glory stared out at the twinkling reflections of the ship’s lights on the flat seas. She wondered how close they were to any more mines. The fact that the destroyer wasn’t approaching worried her, and it was clear that the quiet crowd on the boat decks fully understood why the rescue ship hadn’t closed in. The topside speakers came on.

  “Deck department lay down to the fantail to receive tug and hawser.”

  They watched as a six-man crew went aft along the main deck to take a hawser from one of the tugs. A grim-faced captain came down from the bridge to reassure the medical people. He told them that the two mines had essentially blasted the same part of the ship, but at least she was no longer flooding.

  “That tin can out there is providing navigation positioning for the tugs. They’ve turned on the navigation aids ashore so we can get a three-point fix in reference to the minefield. We’re in it, but just barely. The tug will hand up that towing hawser and pull us in the direction of safety. Then they plan to put the rest of the tugs alongside and take us into the shallows near Pearl.”

  “Why not into the harbor?” Stembridge asked.

  “We’re too far down by the head,” the captain said. “They’ll send out some caisson floats, get the bow up, then we can get over the reef. That’s going to take all night, folks, so if you want, go inside to the lounge nearest the boat decks and have a seat. But keep your jackets handy.”

  “How did this happen?” one of the doctors asked.

  “The navigator made a serious mistake, that’s how. Anyway, this will be your last night on board. Mine, too, probably.”

  It did take all night, and Glory found herself making a bed out of a sofa in the lounge, using another life jacket as a pillow. The ship’s main galley had been fully flooded by the broken water line, but the captain’s galley managed a soup-and-sandwich meal at about eight that evening. By the next morning, the ship was being held just off the entrance channel while partially flooded caissons were cabled onto the remains of the bow. While this work was going on, the medical staff was removed by personnel boats from the naval station and returned to the landing at Hospital Point. It was only later in the day that she learned that the destroyer had been USS Evans, where Marsh Vincent was the XO.

  * * *

  Marsh wrapped up his day at 1800 and went to the O-club for dinner. Then he walked over to the nurses’ quarters. The carrier group was going to sail in the morning. He wanted to see Glory if that was possible, but when he got there Sally met him out on the front verandah.

  “Glory’s exhausted,” she said. “She’s asleep. But you can visit me if you’d like.”

  “My secret admirer,” Marsh said with a warm smile. “You bet.”

  Sally brought out two beers from the nurses’ secret hoard, and they sat out in the shadows of the verandah. Marsh had not known that Glory or the other medical people had been on board the Salvation.

  “You had a close call,” he said. “One more mine, or if either one had hit her on the side, she’d have gone down like a ton of bricks. As it was, they barely got the caissons out there in time.”

  “I guess sometimes ignorance is bliss,” she said. “They didn’t tell us much, just to muster up on the boat deck and stay near the lifeboats.”

  “You were there, too?”

  “I was the musterer-in-chief on the boat decks,” she said proudly. “I even gave an order, and everyone obeyed.”

  He gave her a mock salute. “Well done there, Chief Sally. If you weren’t so pretty I’d shanghai you for the trip west right this minute.”

  Her eyes sparkled. “Then we wouldn’t have to write, would w
e,” she said.

  “Those letters have been wonderful,” he said. “I didn’t realize how much I missed getting mail until you started writing. I got one from Glory, but then I guess she got busy.”

  Some of the sparkle went out of her eyes, and Marsh realized he’d just made an error, mentioning Glory.

  “She’s more than busy these days,” Sally said. “Superman has practically made her into his chief of staff for the expansion project, and she still has OR duties.”

  “Superman?”

  “Oh, that’s just what everybody calls him. Dr. Stembridge, chief of surgery. Tall, dark, handsome, very fast in the OR, knows everything, sees everything, jumps buildings with a single bound … and he keeps Glory flying along behind him every minute.”

  “Got it,” Marsh said. He wondered if their association extended beyond the hospital and then realized he had no right to ask that question. “Will any of the staff here come west with the new hospital ships?”

  “Not if they keep running into minefields,” Sally said, “but yes, that’s part of the expansion project. Superman is running training classes on mass casualties, triage, and what he calls two-stage surgeries. That’s where they do a minimal, stabilizing repair, move on to the next patient, and then come back later and do it right.”

  “This sounds like invasion planning to me,” he said.

  “You’d know more about that than we would.”

  “Not necessarily. We know the carrier’s flight schedule each day, and when they expect air attacks. Beyond that, the tin cans are mostly in the dark. Our world stops at the visible horizon. Has Beast been by?”

  She made a face and looked down at her shoes for a moment.

  “Okay, what happened?”

  She told him about Mick’s late-night visitation. Marsh just shook his head. “Did he get into trouble for all that?”

  “No one knows. The whole quarters got to listen to him until Glory sent him packing. After that, we haven’t heard.”

  “I was going to try to see him on this visit, maybe run into him at the club.” He looked at his watch. “I’ve got to get back. We’re sailing in the morning. That’s a secret, by the way.”

  “Sure it is,” she said. “Only the whole base knows.”

  He laughed. “A lot different from December 1941, isn’t it.”

  “Except in our business,” she said. “If anything, we’re seeing more casualties than in ’forty-two.”

  “This war’s getting bigger and bigger,” he said. “After Midway I think we were down to two aircraft carriers in the whole fleet. Now the new Lex is one of six carriers, and that’s just in our task group.”

  “The Japanese must know how this is going to end,” she said.

  “They worship death,” he said. “An ‘honorable’ death in battle is the highest achievement they can attain in their lives. I believe we’re going to have to kill every stinking one of them before this is over.”

  “On that lovely note, Commander,” she said.

  “Sorry,” he said. He covered her hand with his. “You will keep writing, won’t you? I live for your letters.”

  “Of course I will. I’ll even try to get Glory to write at least once.”

  He looked her in the eye. “Forget Glory,” he said.

  “Can you forget Glory?” she asked.

  “I’m trying,” he said. “I’m learning that everything I ever thought about her existed mostly in my own pointy little head. So now I’m trying to grow up.”

  She squeezed his hand. “Don’t be too hard on yourself, Commander Marsh. Glory Lewis breaks hearts just by walking by. She puts the rest of us way back into the shadows.”

  “Not that far back, secret admirer.” He leaned forward and gave her a brief kiss on the cheek. “Stay out of minefields, okay?”

  She reached up, put both arms around him, and gave him a lingering kiss on the lips. “Hurry back, Commander Marsh,” she whispered. “Life is short.”

  * * *

  Marsh flagged down a base taxi that was headed back to the destroyer piers. There were two other lieutenant commanders in the cab. One was a submariner and the other a destroyerman. Based on the fumes, they’d had a great evening. The destroyerman asked Marsh what ship he was on. Marsh told him he was XO in Evans.

  “XO,” the submariner said. “Pretty damned young to be an XO, aren’t you?”

  Marsh shrugged. “I don’t feel that young anymore,” he said.

  The other two laughed at that. It turned out that the submariner was the exec on a fleet boat, and the other officer the exec on his destroyer. The submariner leaned forward from the backseat. “Care for a little advice there, XO?” he asked.

  “Absolutely.”

  “Find a handkerchief, get that lipstick off your face. Otherwise someone on the mess decks with a grudge might write your wife.”

  “Not a problem,” Marsh said. “Don’t have a wife.”

  “Well, in that case, leave it right there. The crew’ll love ya.”

  He nudged the other officer, and they both laughed hysterically, as only drunks can. Marsh smiled, but for entirely different reasons.

  * * *

  Glory didn’t know who had come up with the idea for a hospital staff beach party on Waikiki, but it hadn’t taken too long to organize. Everyone was ready for a break, and the hospital’s commanding officer had managed to tap into some money from something called the welfare and recreation fund at the base. The party was held on a Sunday afternoon behind the Royal Hawaiian Hotel, and only the duty section personnel remained in the hospital. Everyone else had shown up at the beach via the Navy shuttle bus system that ran from Pearl to downtown Honolulu once an hour. There was beer and soft drinks stuffed into ice-filled GI cans, along with a hard-liquor tiki bar back up the beach.

  Glory had come with a group of nurses, including Sally and three of the other OR supervisors. They’d all changed in the outdoor ladies’ bathhouse and then joined the crowd of doctors, nurses, admin people, orderlies, and some staff officers from Admiral Nimitz’s Pacific Fleet headquarters up on the hill at Makalapa. The ratio of men to women was about six to one, which suited most of the ladies just fine. Glory, like many of the other women present, did not know how to swim, so she confined her water activities to wading in the shallows, while other more adventuresome people swam out to the protective reef and tried their hand at surfing. She was also being careful not to get her new one-piece bathing suit wet, as she was afraid that it might become much too revealing. She’d bought the suit downtown on impulse almost six months ago, and this was the first time she’d actually worn it out in public. Sally, her adventuresome roommate, had talked her into it.

  Late in the afternoon a crew from the hotel came down and fired up a pit-style barbecue. Glory had to move her beach blanket once the smoke started up. As she was doing so, she saw Stembridge waving her over to his little group under a clump of palm trees. She recognized two of the women there but none of the men. Stembridge introduced her as Glory Lewis, surgical coordinator at the hospital. The men were all staff officers from the Pacific Fleet headquarters. She listened absently to all the names and then joined the group on a large beach blanket, sitting next to a Captain Somebody, who was wearing a Hawaiian shirt over his khaki swim trunks.

  Behind the group was a small beach hut, containing a narrow bar and a lone bartender who was presiding over an oversized Waring blender. Stembridge signaled that they needed another round. A moment later the barman brought frozen concoctions of some kind to the group, and she took one. She sniffed the glass. It smelled of crushed pineapple and various tropical fruits. Thank God, she thought, it’s not one of those head-breaking mai tais. In fact, she didn’t smell any liquor at all. She took a sip. It was delicious.

  “Like it?” the captain asked. He was in his fifties, gray-haired, and discreetly giving her bottom the once-over whenever he thought she wasn’t looking.

  “Yes,” she said. “It’s nice. What’s it called?”


  “Missionary’s Downfall,” he said with a grin. “They take a ripe pineapple, slice the top off, extract the core, then make vertical cuts in the fruit from the inside. Then they fill it with Five Islands gin and put the top back on. Set it outside in the sun for a few days so the pineapple begins to ferment, then chill the whole thing. Usually they bring it out with a straw, but tonight they scooped out the good stuff and blended it with ice. One’s lovely. Two, and you’ll be the star of the evening.”

  She smiled. “Thanks for the warning. I’m not much one for stardom.”

  “You ought to be in the movies,” he said, letting his leg drift over to hers. “You’re certainly beautiful enough.”

  “Thank you, kind sir,” she said demurely, knowing where this was going. She looked over at Stembridge and flashed a silent “help” look at him. He said something to the cute young nurse at his side, got up, and came over to where Glory was sitting.

  “Like that stuff?” he asked.

  “In a careful sort of way,” she said. “The captain here was explaining how it’s made.”

  “That’s a state secret, Captain,” Stembridge said. “Takes all the fun out of it. Glory, come meet the fleet surgeon.”

  He offered his hand and pulled her to her feet. She smiled at the crestfallen captain and walked across to meet yet another doctor, tugging her rubbery swimsuit down in the back. She noticed that Stembridge didn’t let go of her hand as he introduced her to the senior doctor in the Pacific Fleet. She quietly disengaged and then shook hands with the elderly captain, who was visibly on his second or perhaps even third Downfall. He was so drunk, in fact, that all he could do was nod and smile, nod and smile. She looked at Stembridge.