There was also the fascination of watching a brother officer fighting for his life, and what a brother officer: a Congressional Medal of Honour holder, even if the medal had not yet been pinned to his tunic! Everyone knew that the Navy would have preferred not to allow matters to reach this public denouement, certainly in the middle of such a life and death struggle as was now being waged only a few hundred miles to their north, that indeed considerable pressure had been brought to bear upon Commander Waite to withdraw his charges, but that the commander had refused. Nor could anyone doubt, looking at the expression on the commander’s face as he took his seat to give evidence, that he was determined to send his erstwhile executive officer at least to prison for a very long time, if not to execution.
Walter McGann looked very smart in his white tropical uniform, as did his father, sitting beside him and the defence attorney, Lieutenant Caldwell. They faced the three desks behind which sat the admiral and two senior captains who would pass eventual judgement, and behind them were clustered the spectators and the various witnesses. But this was the crux of the trial.
‘Would you tell this court, sir,’ said the prosecutor, ‘what exactly happened on the night in question?’
‘My ship was located by Japanese submarines during the attack on the Japanese squadron north of Savo,’ Commander Waite said. ‘We were heavily depth charged, and forced to surface. As we did so, Lieutenant McGann appeared to go beserk and attempted to take command.’
‘What exactly did he do, Commander?’
‘He struck me on the jaw, and rendered me unconscious.’ There was a rustle in the court, with glances being exchanged. To strike a superior was about the most heinous crime anyone could commit.
The judges allowed the noise to settle unchecked, and the prosecutor gladly waited for silence. Then he asked, ‘When you recovered consciousness, what did you find?’
‘That my ship was under fire and sinking.’
‘What was your reaction to this?’
‘My immediate reaction was to see to the safety of as many of my personnel as possible. However, before I could do so, Mr McGann had thrown me into the sea.’
‘What happened then?’
‘I was dragged into an inflatable dinghy, which saved my life.’
‘And in that dinghy you, and your fellow survivors, managed to make the island of Savo. A feat for which you are to be congratulated, Commander. Was Lieutenant McGann with you?’
‘No. I believe he reached the island on his own.’
‘But he joined your force?’
‘Yes.’
‘And what happened then?’
‘He again seized command, gave orders, and insisted upon leading us on a most hazardous voyage down the coast of Guadalcanal, a voyage in which two more of my men lost their lives.’
‘Thank you, Commander Waite.’
‘Lieutenant Caldwell?’ invited the admiral.
Caldwell stood up. ‘May I begin by asking you, sir, when you took command of Tecumsah?’
‘In April,’ Waite replied.
‘And after trials you sailed her to Pearl Harbour, is that correct?’
‘Yes.’
‘There you were given Lieutenant McGann as executive officer?’
‘Yes.’
‘Is this line of question relevant, Lieutenant?’ inquired the admiral.
‘Yes, sir, I think it is.’
‘Well, I’ll allow you another couple of minutes on it, but you’d better make your point pretty rapidly.’
‘Yes, sir. Had you seen action before Lieutenant McGann joined your ship, Commander Waite?’
‘I had not been that fortunate, Lieutenant.’
‘But Lieutenant McGann had. In fact, he had just been recommended for the Congressional Medal of Honour for his feat in bringing back to base a submarine which was virtually sinking. Is that correct?’
‘I don’t like the tenor of these questions, Mr Caldwell,’ the admiral said. ‘Have you any more of them?’
‘Yes, sir. I would like to ask Commander Waite about the actions he took during the Battle of Midway in June.’
‘I cannot see that any action the commander took on that occasion can have any bearing upon this case, Lieutenant.’
It was a direct warning, Walt knew. If Caldwell persisted and attempted to make the point that Waite had refused to fire on the Hiryu, or any other ship, he would be attacking the character of the witness, and not helping the defence in any way; if he had been dissatisfied with his commander Walt should have asked for a re-posting and accepted the possible stigma that would have accompanied such a protest.
Caldwell had also understood that he was not going to be allowed to prove that Waite was a coward. He returned to the immediate subject. ‘You have said that your ship was depth charged and forced to surface. Will you tell the court, sir, what action you proposed to take when you reached the surface? Presuming that enemy destroyers were still in the vicinity.’
‘I had not yet determined on a course of action, Lieutenant. I have always believed that first things come first. My ship was badly damaged and could not remain submerged. I intended to appraise the situation on the surface when I saw what it was.’
‘Did you at any time give the order to surrender your vessel, Commander Waite?’
‘A commanding officer,’ Waite said with great deliberation, ‘must carry every possibility in his head at all times. I will admit that it crossed my mind that we might be forced to surrender the ship, depending on the circumstances I found when we surfaced. Had that possibility not crossed my mind, I would have been guilty of failure properly to assess the situation. I did not, however, give any order that could be construed as surrendering to the enemy.’
‘Will you tell the court where and when Lieutenant McGann struck you?’
‘On the conning tower, as I emerged.’
‘You did not gain the cockpit with a signalling torch in your hand?’
‘I do not recollect picking up a signalling torch, Lieutenant.’
‘I must inform you, sir, that Lieutenant McGann will testify that you did. And that it was his opinion you intended to use it to signal surrender to the enemy.’
Waite stared across the court at Walt. ‘Then he has a better memory than I have. As well as being psychic.’
‘It seems to me that we are missing an important point here, Lieutenant,’ interrupted the admiral. ‘You have said that you intended to appraise the situation when you surfaced, Commander. Obviously you could not do so, because you were knocked unconscious before you could see what was happening. But you regained consciousness soon afterwards. How would you have appraised the situation then, had you had the opportunity?’
‘I am afraid, sir, that I would have been forced to consider the situation as irreversible. Tecumsah had surfaced between two Japanese destroyers, and as I have stated, a shell from one of the enemy vessels had already struck the foredeck.’
‘Had you been in command, would you then have surrendered your vessel?’
‘I am afraid I would, sir. We could no longer fight, we were about to sink. My ability to serve my country as commander of my ship was at an end. My next duty was to serve my men. Had I been allowed to surrender, I believe I could have saved many more than just eight. Or nine,’ he added as an afterthought.
Walt watched the two captains nodding. They both knew what an awful decision that would have been, and yet they would both have taken it. Little lumps of lead began to form in his belly.
‘Mr Caldwell,’ the admiral said. ‘I apologise for that interruption, but it seemed to me that point should be cleared up.’
‘Yes, sir,’ Caldwell agreed, unhappily. He knew he had lost that round, indeed, the entire case, unless he could prove that Waite had determined to surrender before the submarine had surfaced. But he didn’t know, because Walt himself didn’t know, how many of the survivors, if any, had seen the incident with the flashlight. ‘When you reached the island of Savo, Commander, with yo
ur little band of survivors, what decisions did you make?’
‘My determination of the situation was, as before, based upon the welfare of my men,’ Waite said. ‘We were no longer a fighting unit. We had no weapons. Survival was what mattered. Savo was found to be unoccupied by the Japanese. I was at that time unaware that the Allied fleets had been withdrawn from the vicinity of Guadalcanal. It was my decision to remain where we were — we were able to obtain food and water — until we ascertained the true situation.’
‘But Lieutenant McGann did not agree,’ Caldwell said, ingenuously.
‘Lieutenant McGann did not agree with any of my dispositions, Lieutenant.’
‘When you finally left Savo to make your way south, did you or did you not call out to the Japanese on the beach at Guadalcanal?’
‘For God’s sake, Lieutenant, my men were being slaughtered in cold blood. Of course I called out, asking the enemy to stop the massacre. I hope to God you would have done the same.’
Caldwell took a long breath. ‘What happened when you called out to the Japanese to cease firing?’
‘Lieutenant McGann struck me again.’
‘And made you unconscious again?’
‘Yes.’
Caldwell was conscious of a huge sigh from behind him. ‘Thank you, Commander Waite, I have no further questions.’
*
‘I have no recollection of any actions taken by Commander Waite when Tecumsah was forced to surface,’ said Ensign Jonssen. ‘I had been aft with the torpedo tubes, and I gained the conning tower when the order to abandon ship had already been given.’
‘Do you recall Commander Waite announcing his intention to surrender to the Japanese on Savo?’ Caldwell asked.
‘No, sir,’ Jonssen said. ‘We all knew we might have to. We were in a pretty desperate situation. We had no weapons, apart from a few knives.’
‘Did you gain the impression that Lieutenant McGann considered you were in a desperate situation?’
‘Objection, sir,’ the prosecutor said.
‘Sustained,’ the admiral said. ‘We are attempting to deal with questions of fact, Mr Caldwell.’
*
‘I cannot positively say what Commander Waite intended to do when Tecumsah surfaced, sir,’ said Chief Malone, with an apologetic glance at Walt. ‘Things were happening pretty quickly around them.’
‘And I assume you have no recollection of what Commander Waite intended to do on Savo,’ Caldwell said, despairingly.
‘He was depressed,’ Malone said. ‘We all were. With the exception of Lieutenant McGann,’ he added brightly. ‘Lieutenant McGann was the one who climbed the coconut tree, and he was the one who organised our escape to the south.’
‘An escape in which two more men were killed,’ said the prosecutor, cross examining.
‘Well, sir, that was because … well, someone called out.’
‘Don’t you think the Japanese knew you were there even before you called out?’
‘Well, sir, I can’t answer that.’
*
‘It’s all up to you, Walt,’ Caldwell said. ‘But Burnside is going to try to crucify you.’
He was right. The judges allowed Caldwell considerable latitude in his direct examination. He drew Walt’s opinion of Waite into the court, establishing that in Walt’s opinion the commander had a negative attitude towards combat, and that Walt had serious doubts as to his superior’s ability to stand up to pressure. ‘Will you tell us what happened when Tecumsah was struck by depth charges?’
‘She was obviously badly hit. We could no longer remain submerged,’ Walt said. ‘Commander Waite gave orders to surface, and these orders I carried out.’
‘Go on.’
‘He then declared that we should surrender on gaining the surface. I could not agree with that.’
‘Did you consider his decision constituted a dereliction of duty?’
‘Yes,’ Walt said.
‘And on the island, did the commander again state his intention of surrendering to the enemy?’
‘Yes,’ Walt said.
‘And you again considered this a dereliction of duty?’
‘Yes.’
‘When you were proceeding along the coast of Guadalcanal, and the Commander called out to the Japanese not to shoot, what was your reaction?’
‘That his shout informed the enemy where we were, and that he had to be shut up as rapidly as possible.’
‘Thank you, Mr McGann.’
‘Mr McGann,’ said Commander Burnside. ‘I will be very brief. Did you, or did you not, on the night of 8 August last, strike Commander Waite, the captain of your ship.’
Walt inhaled. ‘Yes, sir, I did.’
‘Did you, or did you not, then usurp the command of USS Tecumsah?’
‘Well,’ Walt said, ‘the captain was unconscious.’
That raised a laugh, but it was not shared by the judges.
‘I have just one more question, Lieutenant,’ Burnside said. ‘You have said, and your counsel has made much of this point, that there was a difference of opinion between Commander Waite and yourself as to whether or not Tecumsah was sufficiently damaged to be surrendered to the enemy. Now, Lieutenant, I would like you to tell the court, having disagreed with your commanding officer to the point of striking him, in the course of an action, and rendering him unconscious, and thus taking command of the ship, as was obviously your intention, what was your appraisal of the situation when you gained the conning tower after surfacing?’
‘That the ship was lost,’ Walt said quietly.
‘So your disagreement with your commanding officer was in error, because he was right.’
‘No, sir. Neither of us knew he was right when he wished to surrender the ship.’
‘He was right, Lieutenant. And you were wrong. As well as guilty of mutiny. I have no further questions.’
‘Let me ask you one more thing, Lieutenant McGann,’ Caldwell said in re-examination. ‘When you gained the conning tower of Tecumsah on that August morning, and you recognised that your ship was lost, what was your intention then?’
‘I ordered the gun made ready, so that we could at least try to take one of the destroyers with us,’ Walt said.
‘Thank you, Mr McGann.’
*
Lew himself made the speech for the defence. ‘I am here, obviously,’ he told the judges, ‘because Lieutenant Walter McGann is my son. But I would have hoped to be here no matter who was accused of this act of mutiny. You know, and I know, we all know, that we are engaged in a war to the death with a brave, ruthless, determined foe. Where we do not oppose him with an equal bravery, an equal determination, an equal ruthlessness, we are going to lose. As we have lost too often already in this war. We are not fighting a conflict.by the rules of the last century, by the rules of gentlemen against gentlemen. We are fighting for survival, and even more are the Japanese fighting for survival. There were, just for example, only three hundred and fifty Japanese soldiers on the island of Tulagi. They had nowhere to go, so they stood and fought. When the marines finally finished that job, there were only three Japanese left alive. That is a measure of the opposition. If we are going to defeat these people, we are going to have to be even more ruthlessly determined. The men on Corregidor showed us how to do that. In their determination to buy us time, they fought until their ammunition was destroyed. USS Tecumsah was badly, perhaps even mortally, damaged. But she still possessed her torpedoes — all of her torpedoes, because she hadn’t fired any in the entire combat — and she still possessed a three-inch gun. This gun Lieutenant McGann wished to use to open fire on the enemy, in the hopes of inflicting an equal amount of damage on him before sinking. The thought of surrender does not seem to have crossed his mind. Gentlemen, I will say to you that the only way we are going to win this war is if the thought of surrender is banished from all our minds, no matter what the circumstances, no matter how grave the danger. Wars are not won by surrenders, or by thoughts of surrender. Co
mmander Waite may have a point when he says that a commanding officer should entertain every possibility before making a decision … but there is one possibility which should, which must, be rejected by every fighting man in the United States armed forces, in this war: the possibility of surrender as long as a single shot can be fired against the foe. On the night of August 8, Lieutenant McGann fulfilled, in my opinion, the highest, the only, principle upon which we dare engage the enemy. Thank you.’
There was a round of applause, which the admiral allowed to ripple for several seconds before tapping his desk with his gavel. ‘Commander Burnside?’
‘We are not here today to enquire into Lieutenant McGann’s courage, sir, with respect to Captain McGann’s admirable sentiments,’ Burnside said. ‘There is not a man present here today who does not know that Lieutenant McGann is a hero, and was prepared to act the hero again on the night of August 8. But, sir, the question before this court is as I stated at the beginning of this trial: did Lieutenant McGann strike his superior officer while under fire from an enemy. Lieutenant McGann has admitted that he did. Well, then, did Lieutenant McGann commit this assault to prevent his superior officer from surrendering his command to the enemy? Lieutenant McGann says he did. But this was a personal and private opinion. Commander Waite tells us he had not, and could not, make up his mind what action to take as he had not yet been able to assess the true situation. Nor can there be any doubt, because it is admitted by Lieutenant McGann, that the true situation was catastrophic, and that surrender was the only logical course for Captain Waite to follow. Lieutenant McGann may have wanted to go down with guns blazing in the spirit of John Paul Jones. Commander Waite was more conscious of the lives of his men. We may differ in how we consider these opposing approaches to the matter. But, however heroic it may be to defy the enemy to one’s last breath, no commander can be blamed for wishing to save the lives of his men, when, in his opinion, their power to resist has ended. Equally, no subordinate officer can be allowed to usurp the authority of his superior, merely because he differs with him on a best course of action, unless that action can be established, at the time, to have constituted treason or cowardice. Commander Waite is neither a traitor nor a coward, sir. He acted according to his best judgement as captain of USS Tecumsah. In these circumstances there can be no possible argument with the facts, that Lieutenant McGann struck his commanding officer in battle, and that he is thus guilty of mutiny. Thank you.’
The Passion and the Glory Page 22
