Final Harbor

Chapter 15

The press conference in the Palmer House Hotel ballroom in Chicago had been wearing. The highly competitive reporters from the four Chicago newspapers, the wire services and the radio stations had bombarded Captain Hinman with questions. Most of them he fielded easily, a veteran now of Washington and three press conferences in New York.

Joan Richards had warned Hinman about a reporter from the Chicago Tribune and had described the man so he’d know him if he spoke up. The Tribune was violently anti-Roosevelt while at the same time it was fervently pro-war. Colonel McCormick, the newspaper’s owner, had for years trumpeted that he had won World War I because of his promotion of the machine gun as a weapon.

The Tribune’s reporter let the other reporters ask Captain Hinman the usual questions before he bulled his way to the front row of reporters confronting Captain Hinman.

“Captain,” he said in a loud voice, “all of us admire your ability as a submarine commander and your courage. But I wonder, my editors wonder, sir, is this all there is to you? Do you ever think about being a pawn in Roosevelt’s war? Do you ever think about anything except what you see as your duty?”

“I wasn’t aware that this was ‘President Roosevelt’s war,’ as you call it, sir.” Hinman was speaking slowly, carefully. “It is common knowledge that the United States was attacked at Pearl Harbor by the Empire of Japan. No provocation had been offered to Warrant such an attack. Over two thousand Americans died in that sneak attack. We are responding to that infamous attack. We are fighting, I think, for our own lives, our freedom, the freedom of all nations.”

“All of us sorrow for those who were killed in that attack, Captain, and I won’t argue here with you whether there was a provocation or not. I think there was. I imagine yours is a vendetta, isn’t it? Your wife was killed in that attack, wasn’t she? I offer you my deepest sympathy, sir.

“But answer my question: do you and all those like you in the military forces ever think about why you are fighting Roosevelt’s war?”

“I think about the war, yes.” Hinman was fighting to keep his anger under control. The remark about Marie’s death had been uncalled for. “I think about it a great deal. I imagine that the more than twenty members of your own editorial staff think about it in much the same way all of us think about it. I am right, am I not, more than twenty of your newspaper’s reporters and editors are now in military service?”

“Your adviser should do her homework, Captain,” the reporter nodded toward Joan Richards, who was standing to one side of Captain Hinman. “If she had she’d have told you that almost all of our people who are in uniform are there because they were drafted. That’s not offering their services. The others are war correspondents. They’re doing their job to make sure the American people know what you, ah, professional fighting men are doing.”

“I give honor to those who are drafted, Mister,” Hinman said evenly. “The concept of the military draft is not to shanghai men into the military service, it is to insure that we have adequate numbers of trained men to defend our liberty. I honor war correspondents as well. They go into battle situations without any weapons. The American press has, I think, always distinguished itself in finding ways to report the truth, to report honestly to the American public and the world.”

“That’s a very pretty speech, Captain. I hope your lady aide didn’t write it out for you. But if you honor war correspondents so much why don’t you allow them to go to sea with your submarines? How do we know you sank two Japanese oil tankers and a destroyer if no unbiased reporter was there to see it?” The reporter’s tone was bantering but underneath the apparent humor Hinman detected the bitterness in the man.

“I would welcome a reporter aboard my ship, sir,” Hinman said. “But I must point this out to you: A submarine is a small, very sophisticated fighting ship. Every man aboard must be not only a specialist in his own rating, he must also be familiar with everyone else’s specialty. That demands a high level of intelligence. If, sir, you are qualified in that latter respect, please volunteer!”

The gust of laughter that swept the ballroom ended the Tribune reporter’s questioning and as the other reporters took up the questioning Hinman relaxed. When it was over Joan Richards poured him a cup of coffee in his hotel suite.

“He sucked you in!” she said accusingly. “I warned you about that brass-plated bastard and he nailed you and you fell for it!”

“What the hell else could I do?” Hinman snapped.

“I’ll tell you what you could have done! You didn’t have to get in that crack about his intelligence! All you had to do was explain why people on submarines have to know a lot more than the average sailor and then ask him, ask him, Captain, to help you find a war correspondent who could qualify to make war patrols on your submarine!

“You’ve got to try to get these bastards on your side, sir! You’ve got to be all sweet reason and helping-hand-Mary. For God’s sake, don’t let your balls rule your head!”

“There are times, Lieutenant,” Hinman said gravely, “when you sound like a torpedoman working on a fish that won’t run right. You have the damndest vocabulary I ever heard in a woman!”

“The only reason for language is to communicate, Captain, to let others know what you want, what you think, to let them know precisely what you want and what you think.” She poured coffee for herself and refilled Hinman’s cup.

“That applies to everything, right down to boy-girl things. I’d much rather have a man I liked and whom I knew liked me come right out and ask me to go to bed with him than to have him fool around and just hope that I was getting the message!”

“I didn’t know that ladies talked like you do in this year of Our Lord, Nineteen and Forty-Two,” Hinman said with a small grin. “It’s traditional, isn’t it, that a certain amount of courtship adds spice? Would you do away with all the small courtesies, the fun of the courtship?”

She shook her head and her crisp black curls danced. “No, Captain, but have you ever thought that a girl can get weary waiting for the stupid jerk to sweep her off her feet and into bed? Sure, a courtship can be fun. It can also be damned boring!

“Times are changing! You saw those women working in the shipyard in Brooklyn the other day. They call them ‘Rosie the Riveter.’ Those women are doing men’s work and in many cases they’re doing it a lot better than men did! Women are building tanks, they’re making ammunition and they’re even building your submarines.

“Life in this year of Our Lord Nineteen Hundred and Forty-Two, as you so quaintly put it, is changing. Do you think that those women are going to go back to being a person without a voice in things once this war is over?

“That change is going to apply to everything, all across the board. Back in the eighteenth century a woman who liked sex was called a ‘bawd.’ Men made that a bad word because they were afraid of a woman who liked sex. When this war is over women are going to demand that they be treated as equals and that applies from sex to everything you can think of! Our sex has earned the right to be free, to be liberated!”

“Would you call yourself a free woman, Lieutenant?”

“I never considered myself anything but that. I divorced a man I loved because he not only refused to grow up, he refused to allow me to grow up, to admit that I was every bit as much a person as he was.

“Now I’m going to say something else to you because you didn’t flinch when that bastard from the Tribune brought it up. From what I heard in Washington you had a great marriage. From what little I know of you this past week I can’t believe that you would deny your wife the chance to be her own person.”

“I’d rather not talk about that,” he said.

“Sooner or later, sir, sooner or later you’re going to have to talk about it with someone you like and respect and who respects and likes you. Until you do you aren’t going to be a whole man.”

He looked at her solemnly. The doctor in Pearl Harbor had told him the same thing, in almost the same words. He nodded his head briefly.

“Let’s get back to business, shall we? What about the speech this noon?”

“Standard Club,” she said briskly. “The Standard Club is a very exclusive Jewish organization. Mostly Jews of German descent or extraction. Very wealthy people for the most part. Very patriotic people. You had a Jew on your ship, it’s mentioned in the speech. Someone is going to want to know how important he was to you, to the ship, to the attack you made.”

“Every man on a submarine is important,” Hinman said. “We don’t carry any unimportant people.”

“I’ve heard you say that before but even if this guy is a schlemiel give him as much credit as you can. These are very proud people, very proud.”

“I don’t think he was what you said he was, whatever that means,” he said. “In fact, Lieutenant Cohen was vital to our safety. He was on the sound gear. We were too deep to use the periscope and it was his ears, his judgment, that I depended on for the positions of the enemy ships. He’s got ears like, well, I don’t know, a bat, an owl.”

“That’s all you have to say, in just that way,” she said. “If you stumble around trying to find words, fine.

“The parade is at two this afternoon. You’ll be riding in the lead car with the Mayor. He’s a politician. All he’ll be thinking about is how many more votes he’s going to get because he’s with you. Don’t let him bore you. He’s harmless.”

“You’re a little hard on politicians,” Hinman said. “I’ve noticed that before.”

“My father, bless his unreconstructed Republican soul, taught me to look at all politicians with a deep sense of distrust until they proved they were worthy of trust. I’ve never found one worthy of my trust.”

“Not even the President?”

“Not even him. You wanted to get back to business. This evening there’s a dinner here in the Palmer House. That’s speech number seven in the book. I’ve changed a few things in it. I’ve noticed that you tend to stumble a little bit when you run into two or three very short words in a row. So I’ve eliminated those booby traps. You’d better read it. And where I’ve put a red check mark in the margin — get a little more belligerent there.”

“That’s sort of phony,” Hinman protested.

“No it isn’t,” she said flatly. “You’re here to let the people know this war can be won if they help out by buying war bonds and they are certainly doing that! You’re breaking all the records in that department in the short time we’ve been on tour. Me, I’m here to make sure no underhanded son of a bitch trips you up and makes you look bad. I’m trying to do that.”

“You’re an amazing woman, Lieutenant Richards,” Hinman said.

“I know that. And if you tell me that if I were a man you’d like to have me on your ship I’ll burst into tears and run out of the room!” A grin spread across her full lips. “And if you don’t stop calling me ‘Lieutenant’ and ‘Miss Richards’ when we’re alone I’m going to ask for a transfer! I know you have to do that in public but when we’re working alone, two people working at a job, let’s have some of that famous camaraderie you’re always talking about in the submarine force.”

“Very well, Lieutenant junior grade Joan Richards,” he said. Then he smiled. “Joan, kick your damned shoes off and come over here and sit beside me on this sofa and show me where you’ve changed this speech. I thought I was saying the words pretty well.”

“Why should I kick off my shoes?”

“So you won’t throw them at me if I don’t like your changes.”

“You’re leaving me without anything to throw,” she said, her eyes dancing. “I might have to throw my brassiere at you if you get snotty and if that hits you, you’ll know you’ve been hit!”

“You’re talking to a sailor, Miss Joan, a submarine sailor and most submarine sailors are more sailor than other sailors.”

“That’s another thing you’re going to have to face,” she said. Her smile was suddenly gentle. “Some woman is going to be very lucky when you come to grips with that problem and overcome it. Let’s get to work.”