Sentinels of Fire

FIVE

The following morning broke hazy, with seas so calm the water resembled one infinite mirrored surface all the way to the horizon. The only movement of air was a faint stirring created by the ship’s own movement. We’d gone to GQ just before sunrise, as usual, and were now steaming at modified GQ as long as Combat held no incoming air contacts. The captain had decided to stay up on the bridge, so I had quietly called a department heads’ meeting in my stateroom. I got to sit on my bunk while the four of them crowded into the tiny cabin.

I blew out a long breath. “Okay, guys,” I said. “As I suspect you all know, there’s something going on with the skipper.” I looked at each of them in turn. Jimmy Enright, Mario Campofino, Marty Randolph, and Peter Fontana all nodded. Then the sound-powered phone squeaked. I sighed.

“XO.”

“XO, Combat. There’s an LSMR”—Landing Ship, Medium, Rocket—“coming up from Okinawa, ETA around noon, with a med team embarked. We also now have two sections of CAP assigned. If you hear aircraft engines, it’s them headed out for their barrier stations. They’ll come overhead for positive ID as friendlies.”

“Thank you,” I said and hung up the phone. I relayed the word to the department heads. “Now,” I continued. “As to the CO. I believe he’s mostly exhausted.”

“As opposed to Section Eight?” Mario asked.

“He’s not nuts,” I said. “He’s not babbling or doing bizarre things other than hiding when the shit starts.”

Jimmy Enright raised a hand. “Begging your pardon, XO, but that is bizarre behavior for the skipper of a warship, especially out here. I don’t want to sound like a sea lawyer, but I think this situation needs to be reported to the commodore and that you should assume temporary command until we get further instructions.”

I sighed again. “You’re technically right, of course, but if we do that, they’ll simply haul him off the ship and send him home in what, for him, would be total disgrace. I think we owe him more than that and better than that. You all have served with him longer than I have, but my impression is that he’s been a singularly good CO.”

“XO,” Marty said, “what do Navy Regs say? If the CO becomes incapacitated, you already have the authority to relieve him, as long as you report it to the squadron commodore, right? I mean, if you don’t, and something happens and he gets killed in his cabin, they’re gonna look pretty hard at you.”

“What’s the word going around the ship?” I asked, dodging his question.

Mario said that there were some rumors, but so far, nothing vicious or alarming. Then he weighed in. “So why don’t we simply get the doc to give him something, put him asleep for a coupla days. See how he comes back from that.”

“I’d vote for that,” Peter said. “We’d all feel like shitheels starting a major flap when it could be simple exhaustion. Remember who we’re talking about here — this isn’t Captain Bligh. This is our skipper.”

“You know what?” Mario asked. “There’ll be at least one medical officer on that LSMR. Make sure he sees the captain, talks to him — you know, tell him he has to make a report to the CO on the condition of our wounded? Then if the skipper starts acting strangely, you’ll know what you have to do.”

“That’s part of the problem,” I said. “He acts perfectly normal, except when that GQ alarm goes and the kamikazes show up. You all saw him last night at the burial service. Dignified, sad, but reading that scripture like a bishop. He was the only officer that the crew wanted to see doing that.”

“But…” Marty said.

“Yeah, but. He told me yesterday that he’s lost his nerve. I think the scariest part of that was that he knows it and admits it. It’s like he doesn’t know what to do now.”

“Oh, I think he does, XO,” Marty said. “If he knows he’s lost his nerve, that he panics when the Japs arrive, he should be ordering you to assume command, turning himself in to the commodore, and requesting his own immediate relief. You’ve been in carriers. Isn’t that what the aviators do when they can’t face carrier landings anymore?”

I hadn’t thought of it that way, although the captain had proposed just that. Proposed, not ordered. Marty was right … and yet.

I just couldn’t bring myself to force that issue. Malloy was a fully trained ship of war, thanks mostly to Captain Tallmadge’s personal tutelage over the past eight months. It hadn’t been that way under the previous skipper, if I could believe the longest-serving department heads. Captain Tallmadge was also older than most of the other skippers in the squadron, having entered the Naval Academy after two years of college. As far as I could see he exhibited none of the careerism that was beginning to infect the fleet as the war against Japan was obviously drawing to a climax, with some overly ambitious officers scrambling to get wartime commands before the opportunity for “glory” disappeared. Everyone knew that there would be no more fleet carrier battles, or ship-versus-ship duels, because the formerly majestic Imperial Japanese Navy was, for the most part, asleep in the deep. The only thing remaining was the invasion of the Japanese home islands, once Okinawa had been taken.

Just prior to my coming aboard, the captain had warned the department heads that Okinawa was going to be different from the previous island assaults. Not only did the Japs consider it one of the home islands, the introduction of the kamikaze as a full-time, planned campaign meant that the Navy was now going to be in just as much peril as all those doughboys tramping ashore.

“It’s one thing when a pilot is trying to drop a bomb on you,” he’d said, prophetically. “It’s quite another when he wants to come aboard and has no intention of ever going home again. This is going to be bad.”

So bad, I thought as I considered Marty’s words, that our beloved skipper had taken up running and hiding when the guns trained out to go to work.

“Okay,” I said. “I’ll make the sure the doc who comes in with the LSMR has some face-time with the captain. In the meantime, let’s keep this problem among ourselves. We’ll meet again tonight after the LSMR leaves. Mario, I need an updated damage report — what’s been repaired, what they’re working on, and what’s beyond our capability. Marty, same deal with the guns and their crews. And remember, gents: We’re still very much in Injun Country.”

The LSMR hove into view thirty minutes past noon, pursued by a large cloud of diesel exhaust from engines badly in need of some work. It looked somewhat similar to the much bigger LST: Landing Ship, Tank. Shaped like a shoe box with a blunt bow up forward, her job was to stand offshore and fire barrages of five-inch rockets into the active battle zone. The little ship had not been modified for picket line duty and thus retained almost all of her rocket launchers. The only visible changes had been a few topside modifications to allow temporary berthing for wounded being transferred from the warships to one of the hospital ships or tenders anchored off Kerama Retto. There were large red crosses painted on her sides and main deck, not that that seemed to matter to the kamikazes. The skies over the picket area had been clear of bogeys all morning, with not even any Jap recon aircraft being detected. Everyone hoped the Japs were taking the day off for some reason, but I suspected they were assembling something special for the combined American and British armada surrounding Okinawa.

Doc Walker and I met the doctor, who was first up the boarding ladder, and handed over Walker’s summary of the wounded, listed on a triage basis. The doctor, an impossibly young-looking medical officer except for those dark circles under his eyes, scanned the report and then asked to be taken to sick bay so he could set up shop. Four hospital corpsmen came up from the LSMR, which was rubbing and bumping alongside our much larger sides. They brought up several bulky medical kits and bags of replacement medical supplies. Once the med team was on board, the LSMR rumbled away to take up a station a thousand yards from Malloy. She had one twin forty and three twenty-millimeter gun mounts, and Malloy’s officer of the deck had reminded the LSMR’s skipper to keep them manned and ready. That worthy gave the OOD a sharp look and reminded him that the picket line wasn’t where most of the kamikazes came to do business. Our OOD, an ensign, was suitably chastened and saluted the offended skipper of the LSMR — a lieutenant.

I took the doctor aside for a moment and told him that our skipper was suffering from what looked like acute exhaustion. He asked me if I wanted him to deal with the ship’s wounded or the skipper first. I told him the wounded came first, but that I needed him to see the captain before the team disembarked.

“Acute exhaustion,” he said. “There’s a lot of that going around, especially on the destroyers up here. How are you holding up?” he asked, glancing at the white bandage showing under my torn khaki trousers. Now that I got a closer look at him, he didn’t seem so young anymore.

“Better than he is,” I said. I pointed at my right leg. “This hurts, but APCs seem to work it down to a dull roar.”

He said he’d look in on the CO as soon as he could. I went up forward to meet with the chief engineer and get a status on the main steam plant. They’d been working on a way to relight the two forward boilers with only half a stack, and we were now back to full power available. After that I went to the captain’s cabin and briefed him on what was going on. He took it all on board and then asked me about the department heads’ meeting he’d heard called over the 1MC. I didn’t equivocate. I told him what we’d talked about and how everyone felt. The captain smiled.

“You’re a good guy, XO. Thanks for your honesty, and it may well be that I’m much more tired than I thought, but you should know that when the GQ alarm goes, so does my plumbing.”

I had no answer for that.

“I think maybe Marty and Jimmy are right,” he continued. “I should go topside, write in the log that I’m no longer capable of performing my duties and that I have ordered you to take command. That way there’s no whiff of insubordination, or worse.”

“There’s no chance of anybody in this ship thinking about mutiny, Captain,” I said. “In fact, we’re all trying to cover for you, and that’s because we need you and your experience. Each time I make a tactical decision, you very politely say ‘That was good, XO,’ but then you come up with something that never crossed my mind. I want to stay alive out here. We all do. The longer we’re here, the less likely that becomes. Waltham was the fourth destroyer lost up here in three weeks. We need you to tell us what to do.”

“Malloy’s a lucky ship, XO,” the captain said. “That’s more important in war than any alleged brilliance at the top.”

“We’re lucky because you’ve trained us and you always are one step ahead of everybody else when the kamis come.”

“Not anymore, XO,” he said with a sigh. “Right now I’m several steps behind you when I start crapping my trou while trying not to throw up with fear. You’re ready, XO. I think I’m done. Let’s think about the ship, okay? The ship and the three hundred or so souls on board, not as many as we had before yesterday, but still — that’s a valuable crowd.”

I was trying to formulate an answer when the GQ alarm sounded. The OOD on the bridge came up on the announcing system: multiple bogeys, sixty miles, high, inbound, but crossing.

I didn’t want to, but I glanced back at the captain. His face had begun to go rigid, and his eyes seemed to be losing focus.

Great God, I thought. This is real.

“Go,” the Captain whispered. “Please.”

I sighed, put my hand on his shoulder, and gave it a squeeze. Then I headed for the bridge.

“We need to get the med team back on board the LSMR,” I said to the OOD as I came out into the pilothouse, donning my battle gear.

“Yes, sir,” the OOD said. “We have time?”

“The radar indicates the raid is crossing, meaning they’re headed for the main fleet dispositions around Okinawa. Signal that LSMR back alongside, and let’s get all those people plus our most seriously hurt out of here. And tell ’em to move it.”

The OOD got on the bitch-box to the signal bridge, and moments later we all heard the clacking of the signal searchlight. The LSMR CO must have already figured out why all our topside mounts were suddenly crawling with gunners, because as soon as the signal light started up, he turned his ungainly craft toward Malloy with a great burst of diesel exhaust.

“Okinawa med team to the starboard side, on the double. Kamikazes, inbound,” came blaring over the 1MC. That ought to do it, I thought. Then I remembered that I’d been supposed to get the medical officer and the captain together.

Decision time: If I did that now, the captain would leave with the LSMR, probably in medical restraints. On the other hand, we hadn’t tried the rest-and-respite treatment yet. I hated to solve this problem without even giving the Old Man a chance. I took a deep breath, then went out to the starboard bridge wing, where I could see the medical team and five of Malloy’s wounded in stretchers being assembled next to the sea ladder. The LSMR was nearly alongside.

“As soon as they’re clear, have Doc Walker come up here. Then go to fifteen knots and start the dance.”

“Aye, aye, XO. Bridge is manned and ready for GQ.”

“Good. Log all this, please.”

I went into CIC to take a look at the air plot. The enemy aircraft were forty miles out now, and it did look like the main blob of radar video was headed south. We had to assume, however, that a few of them would peel off to go kill the nearest picket destroyer.

“The main task force know this is coming?”

“Yes, sir, as soon as we first saw ’em. Extra CAP are being launched, and our own guys are ten miles from first intercept.”

“Watch the surface search for low-fliers,” I said. “Don’t fixate on that big gaggle unless it turns our way.”

Jimmy nodded. “Already on it,” he said. He looked around briefly and then asked me, “Didn’t happen, did it?”

I sighed and shook my head. “Talk later” was all I could muster.

Jimmy grunted and moved away toward his GQ station next to the dead-reckoning tracer table.

“Combat, Bridge. LSMR is away to starboard. Coming to fifteen knots.”

I nodded at Jimmy, who acknowledged the message on the bitch-box. Then I went back out to the bridge. As I stepped out, the bitch-box came up with a big surprise.

“Bridge, Sonar. We have a possible sonar contact, bearing three four zero true, range fifteen hundred yards.”

What?

I moved swiftly to the bitch-box. “Echo quality?” I asked.

“Sharp, slight up-Doppler, XO. Looks good.”

“Bridge, Combat. Intermittent radar contact, three four three true, eighteen hundred yards.”

“Low-flier?”

“No, sir, surface — it’s gone now.”

Periscope, I thought. Move!

“Left full rudder, all ahead flank, emergency!” I yelled, startling the helmsman and lee helmsman, but not so much that they didn’t respond. The helmsman almost torqued the brass helm off its axle. The lee helmsman grabbed the two brass engine-order telegraph handles and pushed them all the way forward to flank ahead, then all the way back to full astern, and then again all the way to flank ahead in a shower of bells. The engineers down below understood that sudden flank speed command and spun the big steam admission valves. Malloy’s hull shook with a rumble from astern as the screws dug in and our one and one-half stacks spat out plumes of smoke.

By issuing conning orders, I had automatically assumed the conn. “Steady three four zero,” I ordered. “Combat, tell Sonar to prepare for urgent depth-charge attack. Set depth two hundred fifty feet.”

“Two five oh feet, Combat, aye!”

We waited for a very long sixty seconds as Malloy accelerated. Then the report I’d been expecting came, “Bridge, Sonar, torpedo noise spokes, two niner zero relative.”

The ship was deep into a left turn, which should mean those torpedoes would miss astern. Having fired, the Jap sub would be diving hard by now and also turning away. He knew exactly what we would do next. Our sudden maneuver would save us, but the hull and propeller noise of the flank bell would make the sonar useless. We’d have to wing it.

“Slow to fifteen knots. Combat, take us in on your best EP and drop. Tell the boss what we’ve got.”

“Drop on best estimated position, Combat, aye,” Jimmy replied.

“Torpedo noise spokes are null-Doppler,” Sonar reported. Then, “Torpedo noise spokes are down Doppler.” Good news: Down-Doppler meant they were going away. Our maneuver had worked. A moment later, two lookouts reported seeing wakes passing behind us. I, along with the rest of the bridge crew, blew out a long breath. Then I remembered that LSMR. Where exactly was—

A thunderous explosion ripped the afternoon air from about a half-mile on our starboard quarter. I ran out to the starboard bridge wing in time to see the fireball that had been the LSMR, loaded to the gills as she was with five-inch rockets — and Malloy’s casualties — turn into a red and black ball of fire and smoke from which a few dozen shore-bombardment rockets ripple-fired in all directions. As the huge cloud expanded, there was nothing to be seen of the LSMR. We all stared in awe, shocked by the suddenness of it and the realization that we’d just lost more shipmates.

“Bridge, Combat. Rolling the pattern.”

I shook myself out of my dry-mouthed trance and back to the present menace. Malloy ran over the best estimated position of the Jap sub and began to roll multiple depth charges off our fantail. The chances of getting the sub were minimal, but it was worth a try, if only to make the bastards go deep and stay deep now that we were hurling five-hundred-pound depth bombs into the sea. I ordered CIC and sonar control to go back into search mode. As long as there were no kamis coming, we’d work this problem instead. The familiar eruptions began astern, each one kicking the ship in the keel, even at two hundred fifty feet.

A sub, I thought. A goddamned sub. We’d all been so focused on the terror from the skies that we’d forgotten all about Jap subs. I told Combat again to get a report out that we had a Jap sub in the picket area, and that the LSMR was gone. As CIC and the sonar team worked together, the OOD followed course and speed recommendations from Combat, while the sonarmen in the back corner of CIC searched the scope for their elusive prey through all the underwater chaos created by our own depth-charge attack and sudden maneuvers.

“No echoes,” Sonar reported. As expected.

I called Combat. “Expanding square search around the datum, but stay within three miles of our picket station.” As much as I would have loved to kill a Jap sub, the bosses had made it clear: You’re an early warning radar picket ship; remain on station. Period.

We settled into the antisubmarine search routine. I kept the ship doing an expanding square sonar search at a relatively quiet speed: going east for a thousand yards, then north for fifteen hundred yards, then west for two thousand yards, and so on. At six thousand yards from datum, we’d reverse it and collapse the square back to our picket station. On a radar screen looking out fifty miles, three miles of ship’s motion were inconsequential. Plus, the search meant we were never on a straight course for more than a few minutes.

I stayed on the bridge for the first hour. If we picked the sub up on sonar, we’d drive in and conduct a second depth-charge attack. Chances were, however, that the sub, having scored a kill, would go deep and then creep the hell out of there, lie low for a while, and then try his luck against another one of the picket ships. Just to keep him interested, however, I had the fantail crew roll two or three depth charges at random points and depth settings along the search pattern.

I decided this would be a good time to talk to the captain. The guns were silent, and there was no immediate threat that we knew about, or could find. I told Jimmy Enright I was going below. He didn’t ask why, and I didn’t say why.

I tried for some coffee as I went through the wardroom, but the pot was empty. I stepped into the forward passageway and knocked on the skipper’s door.

“XO,” he said as I stepped into his cabin. “Quite a day, wasn’t it. Just when you think the Jap navy can’t do that, they appear. Like at Pearl.”

“We lost the LSMR,” I said, “and more of our people, too.”

He paled at that news. I wondered if he’d been in here for the whole submarine incident or if he’d gone walkabout topside again.

“I didn’t know that,” he said. “I heard the depth charges, listened to the 1JS circuit, but no, I didn’t know that.” He hung his head for a minute. I suspected he had just realized that he could have been aboard that LSMR. “What happened to the air raid?” he asked.

“Went to Okinawa,” I said. “We haven’t heard what happened yet.”

“Well, besides eavesdropping on the 1JS, I went up to Combat for a while. Gave ’em the shush signal and just sat in a corner. Looked like an effective piece of teamwork to me.”

“We probably scared that sub with the urgent attack, but I don’t think we did any more than that. The water conditions are lousy out here for sonar.”

There was a knock on the door, and then Doc Walker came in.

“XO,” he said. “You sent for me, sir?”

I looked at the captain. He looked back at me and then at the doc. “We both did,” he said. I gave a sigh of relief and told Doc to come in.

By sundown, there had been no more air raids or sub contacts. We’d run through the best estimated position of the LSMR and found nothing but a small diesel oil slick and a few shattered wooden pallets. No bodies, no survivors. Jap torpedoes were still the most lethal weapons in the war at sea. One full ton of high explosive, running at over fifty miles an hour. They didn’t just hit a ship — they punched into her hull, then went off, breaking her back.

What had they been thinking down there in the AOA, I wondered, sending up a fully loaded LSMR to the picket line? Then I remembered — the LSMRs down in the amphibious objective area ran around fully loaded as a matter of ready routine. That was why they were there. When the Marines or Army ground-pounders needed precision artillery support, they called their artillery battalion. If they weren’t available, they called a destroyer, which could fire with pinpoint accuracy as long as there was a spotter out there in the weeds to correct the fall of shot. When they got themselves backed into deep shit and needed a barrage covering everything in front of them, they called an LSMR. They didn’t want to hear Wait one, I need to go rearm.

Face it, I thought: Nowhere out here was safe until all the kamis had been destroyed. The initial fleet intel reports had estimated a few hundred operational Jap planes left on Formosa and Kyushu, the southernmost home island. Someone had failed to tell the Japs. There seemed to be an endless supply of the damned things. Everyone had talked of Okinawa as the last stepping-stone before the big invasion. It was turning out to be more like a tombstone.

We set the modified GQ watches and fed the crew as full darkness fell. I got the word out that I wanted the department heads in the wardroom right after eight o’clock reports. Then I went to find the captain. He was still in his inport cabin, actually looking rested and just finishing up his evening meal.

“XO,” he said, “I’ve just taken a handful of little blue pills the doc gave me. From what he told me, I’m going to go night-night for a while.”

You’re going night-night for about twenty-four hours, I thought, but I wasn’t going to tell him that.

“Yes, sir,” I said. “It’s full dark outside, so there shouldn’t be any kamikazes.”

“What’s our fuel?” he asked.

I didn’t know. Once again, he’d come up with a question that I should have had the answer to at all times. Destroyers burned oil at a prodigious rate. It was our responsibility to tell our bosses when we got to 50 percent fuel onboard. They’d either send an oiler to us or call us down to the AOA to refuel by barge.

“I’ll find out, sir,” I had to admit. That was the old Naval Academy response for situations where a plebe had no idea of what the correct answer was.

“Fifty-two percent,” he said with a weary smile, “but I cheated. I just called the snipe.”

I sighed. “I should have known that,” I said.

“You will, XO,” he said. “Once I’m gone.”

“You’re going to rest for a day or so,” I said. “Then you’re coming back topside to run this show.”

He gave me a strange look. “Maybe,” he said. “Maybe not. In the meantime, get some black oil lined up.” He yawned, then smiled again. “That’s an order, by the way.”

“Aye, aye, sir,” I said, bracing up like a plebe and putting a little drama into it. He smiled again, but there was also some sadness there. He knew.

“You’ve got to get word to Commodore Van Arnhem,” he said. “CO incapacitated, XO assuming temporary command. Something like that.”

“How will he react to that?” I asked.

“Dutch Van Arnhem is one of the good guys,” the captain said. “Longtime tin can sailor, comes across as really stern and gruff, but he’s a kind man at heart and smarter than most people realize. Might explain why he’s a commodore, what?”

“Why isn’t he up here with his squadron?”

“Because Spruance’s staff thought he’d be more useful at KR, coordinating logistical support for his destroyers. Besides, what would he do up here that individual COs aren’t already doing?”

I wouldn’t mind having him here right now, I thought. The captain yawned again, and I took my leave.

I met with the department heads in the wardroom at 1945. The ship was still conducting the expanding square search, but more for the purpose of giving the Combat team something to do. The Freddies maintained their long-range air search around the clock, but the rest of the troops in Combat didn’t have much to do because we all knew the kamis didn’t come at night. Not yet, anyway. Two of the big-decks down near Okinawa had some of the new, radar-equipped night-fighters on board, but so far they hadn’t been launched. If the Japs surprised us with night missions, we’d surprise them back.

I briefed the department heads on the captain’s status and the fact that he’d been given some sedatives. I asked Jimmy Enright if he’d seen the skipper in CIC during the antisubmarine action. He looked surprised. “No, sir. Absolutely not.”

“He said he went up there.”

“XO, that space is twenty by thirty-six, without all the gear and the whole GQ team. I can guarantee that he did not come into Combat this afternoon.”

Which meant that either he thought he had gone up there, or he was trying to fool me into thinking he wasn’t that far out of whack. Either way … I didn’t have to say any of that out loud — they all understood.

“XO,” Jimmy said, “it’s time, especially if he’s been sedated by the doc. I recommend you formally relieve him. I recommend we get a message off to the commodore, ask to go down to the anchorage at Kerama Retto for fuel, and—”

“You recommend?” I snapped. “If we’d put him on the LSMR today, like you recommended, he’d be dead like the rest of them.”

The wardroom went quiet. The four department heads began to study the green felt tablecloth in front of them. I hadn’t meant to let fly like that. These four officers were my only allies. Two of them wanted me to become captain, two of them wanted to wait and see what happened, but they were all still fully supporting my efforts to grapple with the problem. It didn’t help that the first two were probably right. Even the captain had told me to do that.

“I apologize for that, Jimmy,” I said. “I was out of line.”

“Hard to argue your point, though, XO,” he said ruefully, “but I understand your frustration. So what the hell are we gonna do?”

“Mario,” I said, “are we at or close to fifty percent fuel?”

“Close as dammit, XO.”

“Okay,” I said. “Jimmy, get a fuel request off to CTF 58. Let’s secure from anti-submarine stations. It’s dark as a well-digger’s ass out there tonight, so I doubt we still have a sub problem. You reported both the sub contact and what happened to the LSMR?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Any reaction?”

“Roger, out.”

Roger, out meant message received, nothing more, nothing less. Thank you for your interest in fleet defense. Now go away. They must have had a busy day down around Okinawa today, I thought. I was beginning to wonder if we were ever going to take that bloody island. And then Japan itself? Would this goddamned war ever end? What was wrong with these people? Had the whole war been all about just killing Americans?

“Don’t request to leave station,” I said. “Just send a fuel request. If they send a tanker up here, then they can refuel all the rest of the pickets, too.”

“If we have to go down there, then…?”

“I’ll deal with that when the time comes. Right now, I need a cigarette and some fresh air. I’m going topside.”

“You don’t smoke, XO,” Marty said, ignoring the incongruity of a cigarette and fresh air.

“Doesn’t mean I couldn’t use one right about now. Find the doc; tell him to find me.”

Thirty minutes later I was standing next to the captain’s chair on the bridge. This night was seriously dark. We’d stopped pretending to look for the Jap sub and had resumed a broad weave through the still calm waters north of Okinawa. The bedspring radar array ground away into the night, looking for Japs. The ship was semi-buttoned-up, with enough hatches open to let air get below. Despite that relaxation, we still had two of the three five-inch mounts fully manned up with sleeping gun crews, and the same for the two quad forty-millimeter mounts aft. The galley had put the word out that there would be soup and horsecock sandwiches — the crew’s quaint sobriquet for bologna — available all night. The Chop knew that right now, coffee and food were his main responsibilities up here on the picket line.

I wanted to climb into the captain’s chair, but naval etiquette was quite firm about that: only the captain got to sit on the bridge. Everyone else stood. That’s why they were called watch standers. Besides, I would have been asleep in about thirty seconds. Still, it was tempting.

“XO?” The chief corpsman had materialized beside me.

“Doc,” I said. “How are our wounded?”

“Hurting,” he said. “The four most serious—” He stopped. There was nothing more to be said. The four most serious were communing with the fishes. I motioned that we needed to go out onto the bridge wing to talk privately.

“You saw him,” I said. “What’s your take?”

“Not qualified to give one, XO,” he said. “I’m a hospital corpsman, not a doctor.”

“Don’t go all sea-lawyerish on me, Chief,” I said.

He smiled in the darkness. “Okay,” he said. “He’s gone around the bend. You left, and we talked for a while after I gave him the injection.”

“The injection? He said pills.”

“See?” the chief asked. “You know his record?”

“The Quincy at Savo, then Juneau. Yeah, I know it.”

“He should never have been sent to command. I’ve been a CPO for eight years. As the ship’s doc, I work for the XO, but I talk to the CO. Two different animals, with two very different jobs. You trying to make a decision here, XO?”

“I surely am, Doc.”

“Make it, then. I’ll back you up. He’s lost it. I love the guy, but he’s lost it, and sunrise is only seven hours away.”

“I’d hoped that twenty-four hours of oblivion might do the trick,” I said.

“He’s as likely to come out of that in a catatonic state as normal,” the chief said. “Once the fear demon takes over, his subconscious mind will prefer the somnambulant state to full consciousness.”

“You know this?”

“No, sir, I’m a hospital corpsman, remember? But I’ve seen my share of shell-shock victims. I was on Guadalcanal, and before I came to Malloy I did temporary duty at Saipan. I know what it looks like, and I’m pretty sure that’s what I’m seeing.”

“I do not want to do this, Chief,” I said.

“It’d be no different if he’d received a head wound and was incapacitated, XO,” the chief pointed out. “For that matter, he’s incapacitated right now, and, like I said, I have no idea of how or if he’ll come out of that. Tell you what, you make the log entry, and I’ll cosign it. If there’s a problem later, you can say that you took the best medical advice you could get at the time. Come sunrise, though, we need a captain. These fucking Japs ain’t never gonna quit.”

I nodded. The chief was right: I’d been making too much of a production over this. The Old Man was out of it, however you looked at it. We absolutely did need a functioning CO. I decided I would make the log entry, inform the commodore, and then get back to the present danger, which was, as the doc had pointed out, only hours away. If the powers that be didn’t like it they could shanghai some unsuspecting three-striper and get him up here as soon as possible. I’d welcome him with open arms.

“Okay,” I said. “Let’s go take care of business. You want to check on the skipper one last time?”

“Sure, XO,” he said. “Be right back.”

I stood next to the chart table and opened the deck log. I sat there, trying to figure out what to write down. Then I remembered Navy Regs. I had the bridge messenger go find the duty yeoman and get him to bring me the Book. It was no help. Chapter eight enumerated a lot of things about the commanding officer, but not what to do if he became incapacitated. Pacific Fleet Regulations probably did, but by now I was weary of all this vacillation. The chief corpsman came back to the bridge.

“Sound asleep,” he reported.

“If we get attacked at dawn, will he be able to wake up?” I asked.

“I should think so,” Doc said. “What I gave him doesn’t induce a coma; it just sedates. But when the guns get going, he’ll get going, too.”

I thought of the skipper’s earlier comment in that regard and then made a simple entry in the deck log that said I was temporarily relieving Commander C. R. R. Tallmadge, USN, of command of USS Malloy due to his medical incapacitation. I signed, the doc signed, and then I had each of the line department heads come to the bridge and sign as well. Then I went back to my cabin and drafted a personal-for message to Commodore Van Arnhem, our destroyer squadron commander, informing him of the situation, changing the term “medical incapacitation” to “mental incapacitation,” and then had the chief radioman send it by encrypted, operational-immediate message.

That ought to get us an oiler up here, I thought, and probably the commodore, too.