At night he dreamed that he could hear the shrieks of men being hit by sharks in the darkness. He recalled the excitement when the Black Cat flew close overhead, the noise of its engines hurting his head, the hoarse cries of the guys in the rafts, followed by the smoky roar of the landing craft who had come way out to sea from the beaches of Leyte to pick them up, the Sixth Army boat crews throwing up when they saw some of the wounded. He could still hear the rattle of small-arms fire as they shot at the sharks that had become their constant companions. In his dreams they became Japs, doing what they did best, reveling in death and feasting on helpless sailors.
In the days following the interviews they fed him mush. Baby food, as Sally called it. For some reason all his teeth hurt. Hell, everything hurt, even his hair. Several times he went right out of his head as passing fevers took a bite. He didn’t know how Sally managed to be with him, but she did. Other nurses came and went, but each time the door opened he’d say, “Sally?” They finally got the idea, and then all of them conspired to let her care for him. At night sometimes he would lie there in a cold sweat, breathing in and breathing out, wondering if his heart was going to stop. Each night she would slip into the room and sit down next to him and rub his arms. Then and only then would he fall asleep.
As he submerged, he thought that it might not be such a bad thing if he did die. So many of his people had been lost because of him and his “glorious” decision to turn around and go back against those big black ships. The admiral and the captains had been “honored.” Marsh wished they could have met those of his people who were now no more than tattered phantoms in the dark deeps of the Philippine Sea. The feel of her hand on his arm in the darkness was a potent barrier against his personal despair, but it didn’t assuage his growing sense of guilt.
He was convinced he had killed them, every one. One night he told Sally why he’d really turned around and gone back into the fight. He told her that he was pretty ashamed of his secret reason for making that decision. He’d killed half his crew because of an insult.
“Nonsense,” she’d said. “The Japs killed them. You said it yourself: You had torpedoes left. You just did your duty. They sent you and those other ships out there to break up their attack, and it worked, didn’t it?”
His heart was not so sure.
* * *
When the doctors came in on morning rounds one day, there was a new face in the group. Dr. Stembridge, now Captain Stembridge, CO of the hospital. Marsh recognized him from the New Year’s party, when Glory had paraded herself in front of him with Beast. He remembered the shocked look on Stembridge’s face that night and thinking, I know just how you feel, pal.
“Good morning, Captain,” Stembridge said brightly. “Ready to get up and move around?”
“Absolutely not,” Marsh said.
“Super,” Stembridge replied, ignoring Marsh’s reply. “It’s time, you know. You’re going to get bedsores just vegetating like that. Need to get your muscles working again, get vertical, maybe even get some fresh air.”
Marsh looked at him as if he were nuts. His arm stump still leaked, and he hadn’t even been able to see what horrors were going on with his leg. He looked at his regular docs for moral support.
“We, ah, need the room,” one of them said quietly.
“Oh,” Marsh said. “That’s more like it. But how?”
As if on cue, one of the nurses rolled in a wheelchair. It took ten minutes to get him into it. Marsh didn’t help much by fainting in the middle of the evolution. Stembridge, however, was nothing if not determined, and when Marsh came to he found out that wheelchairs have both seat belts and chest straps. He felt like a jellyfish in that chair and was nauseous the moment the nurse started pushing him out of the room and into the ward. Then he heard voices.
“Hey,” someone called out. “It’s the skipper.”
The nurse slowed his procession between the rows of beds, and for the first time since coming into the hospital, Marsh started thinking about someone other than his piteous self. Still fighting nausea, he greeted the guys, trying not to stare at their bandages, eye patches, burns glistening with ointment, plastered fractures suspended in various slings of torture, or the uneven shapes of legs and arms hidden beneath blankets. They in turn were not so circumspect as they stared at his own amputations, and then some of them began to applaud his appearance.
As guilty as he had been feeling about them, they seemed glad to see him and almost eager to remember the pasting they’d given that Jap battlewagon and the way their guns had blown all the glass out of the giant’s bridge windows, or knocked his scout planes out of the hangar and into the fiery sea.
For the first time Marsh felt the gulf between captain and crew to be filled with something besides official decorum. In their young eyes, and with carefully filtered hindsight, they’d whupped the bastards, and Marsh had led them to it and through it. Marsh knew better, having been out of his head for the three days in the water. They weren’t having it—the captain was back. They were a crew again, albeit one without a ship anymore. Details.
That was when he finally realized that it was time to pull himself together and get back to work. He needed to know who’d made it and who had not. There were condolence letters to be written, medal citations and commendations to be crafted. He needed to reconstitute his chain of command, however slender it might turn out to be. He found himself grinning as he realized what he really needed: He needed an XO.
All of that occupied the next three weeks. The hospital people were extremely helpful, given the fact that every day more wounded were being flown in. Most of the Evans survivors were moved to satellite wards to make room for the never-ending river of broken bodies. Marsh saw less of Sally because she was main hospital staff and he was no longer physically there. She got over to their building as much as she could, but there were days when he didn’t see her at all, and he missed her smiling face. Wisely, he told her that every time he saw her.
Seeing Stembridge had surfaced memories of Glory, and one night he gathered up the courage to ask Sally what she’d heard from Pearl, carefully not mentioning Glory by name.
“Not a thing, actually,” she said, not fooled for a moment. “We exchanged some letters early on when I came out here, but then we sort of lost touch. You know how it is, new assignment here, one emergency after another. We all just put our heads down and hit the deck running. I haven’t even been able to keep up with my regular pen pals. You’re looking so much better these days.”
Marsh understood all that while at the same time wondering if she wasn’t being a tiny bit evasive, as if maybe she and Glory had had a spat before she left for Guam. He could still remember the expression on Sally’s face when Glory had stood up in all her drunken splendor. It had not been one of admiration. God only knew what expression had been on his face seeing Glory half naked, but for weeks afterward, he realized that his romantic image of Glory Hawthorne had been badly damaged that night.
Had Sally just changed the subject?
* * *
The next morning, he had a visitor: Chief Marty Gorman. He was virtually unscratched, looking healthier than anyone out in the wards. His Irish good luck charms were still working. He told Marsh that his raft had become separated from the rest of the cluster and that he’d been in transit from one ship to the next, trying to get back to Guam to rejoin the crew. It had been a struggle because he was not injured, and no one went to Guam unless he was hospital bound.
“You indulged in some serious sweet-talking, I’m guessing,” Marsh told him.
“I surely did, Cap’n,” he said. “A little bribery, the promise of unnatural acts to come, the occasional sideways step at muster. I’ve had experience, you’ll recall.”
“Haven’t we all, Marty,” Marsh said. “It’s been a long, wet road since that night in Winston.”
“Wet being the operative word there, Skipper. I’ve taken to introducing myself as Chief Jonah.”
“That’s m
y line,” Marsh said. “Except I’m waiting for the Court of Inquiry to decide on my punishment for losing yet another ship.”
Gorman laughed. “I’m hearing that admirals will be talking to other admirals about all that,” he said. “Us chickens just happened to be on the wrong ships at the wrong time.”
“What else you hearing?”
“That there’s a commander wandering the halls here, looking for his crew.”
“Benson? He’s here? He kept coming?”
“I am told that command of a destroyer being the Holy Grail for you officers, he did indeed keep coming, and now is ready to meet you.”
Marsh felt a pang of disappointment. Of course he was. He had a future to attend to. Marsh did not. The chief saw his face.
“He looks like a good guy,” he said. “Not a screamer like that Hughes fella, God rest his soul. May I bring him in, Captain?”
Marsh nodded wordlessly. He’d forgotten all about the new, real replacement for Commander Hughes.
Gorman brought in Commander L. J. Benson, prospective commanding officer of USS Evans, or former prospective commanding officer of the former USS Evans. Marsh offered his functioning left hand to Benson’s proffered right hand, and they both grinned at the awkwardness. He was tall, over six feet, and extremely thin, unlike many of the staffies Marsh had seen around Pearl. He had blond, graying hair, piercing blue eyes, and a genuine smile. Marsh sensed that Chief Gorman was right: The crew would like this guy. He already did.
Chief Gorman excused himself. “Still learning how to do all this,” Marsh said. “Sorry about losing your ship, Commander.”
“It’s Larry, and if half the stories I’ve been hearing about that are true, I’m honored to meet you. You getting fixed up?”
“They’re talking prostheses, but for that I have to go back to Pearl. Don’t know when or how that’s all going to work. I’m surprised they didn’t turn you around.”
“Me, too,” Benson said, dropping into a metal chair that was too small for his lanky frame, “but then I got new orders. In Bureau-speak, I’m supposed to take inventory of the surviving crew members, separate the long-term disability cases from the guys who can come back to duty, and then take them back to Boston as the nucleus crew for the new USS Evans. There’s a fresh-caught lieutenant commander already back at the shipyard standing up the rest of the precom crew.”
Marsh nodded. He’d been expecting something like this. “They broke up the crew in Winston when she went down,” he said. “I wasn’t sure what they’d do with my guys. Your guys, I guess.”
“The theory is if they can salt the greenies with some veterans, the postconstruction workup goes twice as fast, and the ship gets into service that much sooner. I’m going to need your input on this little project. Who the experienced guys are, who if anyone should not be part of a precommissioning crew, like that.”
Marsh realized that Benson was already speaking like a commanding officer. “A lot of the experienced guys went to Davy Jones,” he said.
“I understand,” Benson replied. “That must be painful for you.”
Marsh sighed. “There are times I’m sick at heart for what happened. Then I get out in the ward with the crew, and they make it better. Don’t need an XO, do you?”
He smiled. “I wish I could,” he said, “but your Navy career is over. You know that, don’t you?”
“I hadn’t considered it that way,” Marsh said, a little surprised by Benson’s bluntness. “Avoiding the obvious, I guess. One leg, one arm. One claw, one peg leg pretty soon. I guess that would scare the shit out of a bunch of boot recruits.”
Benson laughed. “Yes, I think it would. On the other hand, no one would screw around with the XO, would they?”
“Everybody who survived and who isn’t still hard-down is out in this ward,” Marsh said. “Let’s go meet them, tell ’em what’s going on, and then we can get started.” He paused. “They’re all going to want to go, you know.”
“I was hoping they would,” Benson said.
He helped Marsh climb into his chariot and then wheeled him out into the ward. Their joint appearance got everyone’s attention, and Marsh gave them the skinny. He could see them sizing up the new guy, who was sizing them up right back. When he’d finished, Marsh nodded at Commander Benson to see if he had anything to say. He did.
“Gents,” he said, “the Japs killed the Evans, but there’s a brand-new one almost finished up in Beantown, and I’m going to be the captain. I’m hoping to take many of you back there with me. I need experienced hands who can teach all the boots what to do and how to act, me included. You’ve been through things I’ve only read about, but I’ll do my best to keep you safe while we go out there and kill more Japs. How’s that sound?”
There was a quiet but sincere rumble of approval from the guys. His guys now, Marsh reminded himself. Then Commander Benson turned around, put on his gold-braided cap, drew himself to attention, and saluted Marsh in his wheelchair.
“Captain Vincent, I’m ready to relieve you, sir.”
Marsh was stunned. It was truly a class act. He tried to stand, but he couldn’t. He tried to return Benson’s salute, but as he raised his stump he realized he couldn’t do that, either. Ordinarily the departing CO would make a short speech to thank his crew for their service. Marsh could not find the words for a speech, so he just looked around at all his people, mouthed the words “thank you” several times, and then spoke aloud the words expected of him to Commander Benson: “I stand relieved, sir.”
All he could do then was sit in his chair and try to keep the tears back. The crew clapping and cheering like a bunch of high schoolers from their beds didn’t help.
* * *
The moment Sally saw the Guam-to-Pearl med flight patient manifest with Marsh’s name on it, she knew she’d have to sit down and finally tell him about Glory’s pregnancy. She had ducked his oblique questions about Glory, how she was doing, do you ever hear from her, should I write her a letter, and she was pretty sure Marsh had picked up on her evasions. Almost like an old married couple, she thought wistfully.
They’d become so much closer through their letters, which had been necessarily cryptic about operational matters as the censors demanded. Technically neither of them could talk about what they were doing or where Marsh was, so the only subjects left were personal—feelings, likes, dislikes, plans for the future. Now that they were here, together, those spidery lines on crinkly airmail paper were coming to life. Sally had been much freer with such sentiments than Marsh, but over time she’d gotten him to open up, with the result being that they’d drawn together, as friendship morphed into something else, something more substantial. Her being able to care for him directly when he and the remains of his crew hit Guam had only reinforced their bond—but how strong a bond? she wondered. Telling him about Glory might be the first real test.
She went to see him one evening and wheeled him out onto one of the ward’s porches to watch the sunset. Most of the hospital buildings were up on Agana Heights, overlooking the harbors and facing generally north and west, as if to remind the patients of where their duty still lay.
“Got something to tell you,” she said, even then not sure of how to say all this.
He looked over at her with interest. “That sounds a little ominous,” he said.
“Serious, not ominous,” she replied. “It concerns Glory Lewis.”
He sat up in the chair and immediately winced as his phantom lower leg yelled at him. “Is she okay?”
Sally nodded and then told him the story. As she’d expected, he was stunned. She understood, however reluctantly, that an unreasonably idealized image was dissolving with every word she spoke.
“You asked about her the other day, and I avoided your question,” she said. “I apologize for that, but since you’re going back to Pearl in two days, I thought you should know.”
He took her hand. “Don’t apologize. I fully understand. Do we know, um—”
; “She never so much as said,” Sally replied. “All she told me was that she knew who the father was and that that was all anyone else needed to know.”
“Wow,” he said after a minute’s reflection. “How did the hospital staff people treat her?” he asked. “A commissioned officer, an unwed mother, an unknown daddy—I can just hear the alley cats singing.”
“There was some of that,” Sally said, “but most of the nurses who’d been there for a while treated her with sympathy and, as her term approached, with care. An armchair at meetings instead of one of those folding metal chairs. Subtle changes in her work assignments that didn’t involve heavy lifting. One of the OR supes gave her a wedding ring, so that the men out in the wards didn’t crack wise. She wore it, too.”
“The doctors?”
“They were too busy to be catty. Stembridge was knocked for a loop, as you might imagine, but the hospital CO was very supportive and told her that she could even have the baby at the hospital.”
“Did she?”
“No, she went into a convent downtown in Honolulu for the last four weeks. I thought it was almost medieval, but she was healthy, strong, well nourished, and in the hands of a dozen or so midwives. It was probably a safer place than the hospital.”
“And then?”
“The nuns took over. The baby was a boy, and she says they’ll have no problems placing him, although I wondered about that, in Hawaii and in wartime. A haole boy? Another mouth to feed?”
“A boy,” Marsh said wonderingly. “Wow.”
She examined the expression on his face. He looked like a brand-new father himself. “Marsh Vincent,” she said. “Is there something you haven’t told me?”
He gaped at her and then turned red in the face. “Good Lord, no,” he said. “I mean, all those years I used to dream about her and what it would be like if we got married. Then Tommy’s face would intrude, and I’d kick myself for being silly. So: You have heard from her?”
“No, actually,” Sally said, trying to keep a pang of disappointment from showing in her voice. The love of his dreams still wielded her powers. “The last I heard she was back at work and everything was fine. I left for Guam before she delivered, but the girls back in Pearl wrote. Have you heard from Mick McCarty, by the way?”
Pacific Glory Page 36
