Silent Sea

CHAPTER 24

John Olsen watched the relief-crew officer, who was approaching down the deck. The seamed face and the grizzled patches of gray at the temples were far too old for the pair of silver Lieutenant’s bars on his collar tabs. Probably a Mustang, Olsen thought, a former Chief Petty Officer elevated to officer’s rank. The Lieutenant came up to him and gave Olsen a perfunctory salute.

“You people specialize in losing things we don’t have in spare parts,” he growled. “First you lose the outer door to a torpedo tube. Now both sound heads. I sent a priority message to Pearl Harbor asking for two sound heads, shafts, and associated parts. Haven’t got an answer yet.”

“I’d like to say we’re sorry,” Olsen said, “but we didn’t have much choice. Three destroyers caught us in some shallow water after we sank their oil tanker and drove us down until we hit bottom.”

“I know,” the Lieutenant said. He eyed the gold oak leaf on Olsen’s collar tabs. “I’m Arnold Lever, sir. I used to be a Chief Shipfitter before they hung the gold on me.”

“John Olsen,” Olsen said and stuck out his hand. “Am I out of order in asking when you expect to get the new sound heads?”

“Nah,” Lieutenant Lever said. “I just don’t know. I do know that I looked at a chart of where you hit the bottom. The chart showed mud and shell bottom, but that doesn’t mean that maybe there weren’t a few rocks. You’ve got to go in the dry dock to fit the new sound heads, and when you’re there we’ll check the hull, the screws, ballast-tank openings, the works.”

“What are you talking about in terms of time?”

“Maybe five, six weeks,” Lever said. “I don’t know that, either. I’ve learned to say I don’t know when I don’t know. This place here is about as screwed up as a Navy base could be.”

Mike Brannon scowled when Olsen told him the news about how long they might be in port.

“I don’t like being around that long,” he said slowly. “I’m afraid to open my mouth in the O-Club for fear some white rat will overhear what I’m saying and take it to the Admiral or someone else.” He looked at his wrist watch. “I’ve got to see Admiral Christie in an hour. How about dinner this evening? I want to talk to you about something. I think.” Olsen nodded, wondering what was on his Captain’s mind.

At dinner that night he found out. Brannon made a little design on the tablecloth with his fork, his eyes intent on the fork’s tines. Then he looked up.

“I made a strong pitch today to Admiral Christie that you have your own ship, John. He agreed. You’ll make this next patrol with us and then you’ll go back to the States, to attend Prospective Commanding Officers’ School, which is a damned joke because you’ve had the experience, you have the intelligence, the time in rank to command your own ship. After PCO School I assume you’ll be sent to new construction.”

“I appreciate that, sir,” Olsen said. “But I have to say that I’d just as soon stay aboard with you as your number two boy. I want you to know that.”

“I’m grateful that you feel that way, John. But you’re a career officer. Command will look good in your record later on. Now I’ve got other business.

“We’re going to have two weddings in the next day or so. Bob Lee is getting married and Paul Blake is, too. I had to interview both women the last time we were in port. Both are first rate.”

“So what’s there to worry about?” Olsen asked. “You look as if this is something to be upset about.”

“Well, damn it, both Lee and Blake have asked me to be their best man. I don’t know anything about being a best man. The only wedding I ever went to was my own, and I was so scared that time that I didn’t know what was going on.”

“Well,” Olsen said, “you can cut the load in half by asking the two of them to have a double wedding.”

“That’s a sound idea,” Brannon said. “All right, if you don’t know about the privileges of command here’s a lesson. You argue the case for a double wedding with the two wedding parties and get hold of the chaplain to write out a short brief of my duties as a best man at a double wedding.” He grinned at Olsen.

The wedding was held in the chapel of a church just off St. George’s Square in Perth. The crew of the Eelfish, cold sober by order of Chief Flanagan, were in attendance. Later, at the reception in the hotel where the crew was quartered, Steve Petreshock nudged Jim Rice.

“There’s ol’ Bob Lee’s new wife. Got himself one hell of a good-lookin’ broad. She’s what, five, six inches taller than he is? She’s got that look in her eye. Swings her ass right nice, too. That skinny old Bob Lee is like to be nothing but skin and bones when the honeymoon is over. If he can go the course at all. He looks outmatched.”

“Don’t worry about skinny Bob Lee,” Rice said, a smile splitting his black beard. “I was on watch one night in the Forward Room, and he took a shower in the officers’ shower and forgot his towel. Came out buck-naked, and that skinny old boy is all horn, let me tell you. Don’t sell skinny little guys short, because most of them ain’t.”

Over on one side of the room Mike Brannon was talking with Paul Blake’s new in-laws.

“Our only regret is that Constance will be so very far away,” Mrs. Maybury said. “But we love Paul, he’s such a sweet boy. Don’t you think so, Captain?”

“I don’t think of him as ‘sweet,’ ” Brannon said with a grin, “but I know what you mean. I think of him as a very brave young man, very skilled in his work and an asset to our crew. What you should do, Mr. and Mrs. Maybury, is to visit Paul and Constance in the States when the war is over.”

“Oh, we intend to,” Maybury said. “One of the privileges of being port director, y’know, is being able to travel on the liners at no cost. We intend to visit them and then go on to England. Both of us are second-generation Australians, and neither of us have seen where our people came from.” Brannon excused himself as John Olsen came toward him, beckoning. He walked back across the room with Olsen to where Bob Lee was standing with his bride and Jerry Gold. The new Mrs. Lee walked up to Brannon and stopped, her eyes level with his.

“I haven’t had a chance to talk to you since you were last in port and had to do that interview with me to see if I was fit to be the wife of an American Navy officer.” Her eyes were glinting with laughter. “I’m so glad I passed your inspection, and I want to thank you for the lovely letter your wife wrote to me.

“She did?” Brannon said.

“She did. A lovely letter.”

“Well,” Brannon said awkwardly, “I did write her before we left port last trip. I felt embarrassed, having to interview you and Blake’s fiancée, and I told Gloria about that. I didn’t think she’d write you.”

“But you knew she would if you put my name and address in your letter,” Mary Ann Lee said softly. “Bob has told me that you’re a very tough captain, a regular sea dog. I think you’re a sentimental Irisher and I love you for that.” She stepped closer and kissed him, and Brannon felt the blood rushing up his face. Mary Ann Lee chuckled and turned away.

Time passed slowly for Mike Brannon as he waited for the Eelfish to be dry-docked and the new sound heads fitted. For Brannon it was a critical time. Ashore a vicious political war was being waged, and Brannon wanted desperately to be able to avoid taking sides, something that was becoming more difficult by the day.

Almost two years earlier Admiral Christie, then in command of the largest group of submarines operating in the Pacific, had been summarily relieved of command at Brisbane and summoned to the United States. Christie, an expert on torpedoes, was needed to sort out and break the bottlenecks in torpedo production at Newport Torpedo Station. Admiral Christie’s place at Brisbane was taken by Captain James Fife. Christie left no doubt in anyone’s ears who would listen that Jimmy Fife wasn’t a big enough man to fill Admiral Christie’s shoes.

Christie had hardly settled in Newport when the over-all commander of Submarines Pacific, Rear Admiral Robert English, was killed in an air crash. In the resultant swirl of political maneuvering for the newly vacant job, Christie was recalled to Pearl Harbor and then sent to Fremantle to take over the submarine base there.

Meanwhile, Captain Fife, now in charge at Brisbane, had openly criticized the way Admiral Christie had handled submarines when he was in Brisbane. Fife announced that he would “tighten things up.”

One of the new procedures instituted by Fife was to shift submarines about as if they were pieces on a chess board — and to require submarines to report their positions at frequent intervals. The flow of radio traffic between Brisbane and submarines on war patrol increased heavily. In the course of four weeks four submarines were lost to enemy action, and an investigation was called for. Captain Fife was exonerated of any blame. Admiral Christie disagreed with the findings and began his own investigation. He became convinced that Fife’s demand that submarines report their positions frequently by radio allowed the Japanese to use radio direction finders to locate American submarines — and send antisubmarine forces to sink them.

Christie made his opinions public, and Fife, incensed, offered to resign. General Douglas MacArthur, who was fond of Jimmy Fife, intervened, and the offer to resign was dropped.

Now, two years later and across the continent of Australia at Fremantle, Admiral Christie was again being relieved of command and — again — his relief was Jimmy Fife, now a Rear Admiral.

Rumors about the reason for the change of command were thick, but neither of the principals said a word. Christie, no mean Navy politician, had a few shots left in his locker, and he meant to use them as best he could. His efforts to kill the change of command failed. Admiral Fife, it was said, had friends in high places in Washington. The change of command would go through. The submariners working out of Fremantle began to worry. Admiral Fife was known as a loner, a man who neither drank nor smoked and who disapproved highly of any indulgence in alcoholic beverages, no matter how dangerous or frightening a war patrol had been. Fife was a man dedicated to his work, and he literally lived at his desk, seven days a week from dawn until late at night. By comparison, Admiral Christie was a genial, friendly man who understood submariners and, more importantly, was tolerant of human frailties.

Admiral Fife arrived in Perth on Christmas Eve of 1944. Rather than depart immediately, Admiral Christie announced that he would be around for a while. He was due some well-earned leave before reporting for duty as the Commanding Officer of the Navy Yard at Bremerton, Washington. He made it a point not to discourage plans to hold a big reception to honor him before he left, and he pointedly did not urge anyone to invite Admiral Fife to the reception. Finally, Admiral Christie left, and the officers on Admiral Fife’s staff sighed with relief and turned to the job of purging those officers who had been friendly with Admiral Christie.

Mike Brannon did his best to keep a low profile in this jungle of Navy politics, hardly daring to ask when his ship would be dry-docked, not daring at all to ask that the work be expedited. Finally it was finished, and late in February Brannon was summoned to Admiral Fife’s Operations Office, where he was given a sealed envelope.

“These are your orders, sir,” the Operations Officer said. “You will open them at sea and proceed to your patrol area. Good luck, sir.” He did not rise, did not offer to shake hands.

Safely at sea, Mike Brannon read his patrol orders and handed them to John Olsen, who rummaged around for the proper chart among those he had brought to the Wardroom.

“Bonin Islands?” Olsen said. “Lifeguard duty?” He looked at the chart. “The Bonin Islands are directly in line between Tinian, in the Marianas — that’s where the big aircraft, the B-twenty-nines fly out of — the Bonins are directly in line with Tinian and Tokyo. So now we are going to wet-nurse fliers in trouble. Hell of a way to fight a war in a submarine.”

“The fliers won’t think of it that way if they’re sitting out in that ocean in a little rubber boat,” Brannon said dryly.

Olsen read through the patrol orders without further comment until he came to the last page. “Hey, now!” he said. “We’re going back to Pearl!”

“Good news for you,” Brannon said. “Bad news for Bob Lee and young Blake.”

“Never thought of that,” Olsen said. “Are you going to tell them?”

“I don’t want to, not until we’re headed there,” Brannon said. “I think it would hurt both of them, and there’s just no need to hurt either one. So let’s say nothing.”

“We’ve got to make a pretty big detour to the west,” Olsen said as he consulted the patrol orders. “I guess those people on Iwo Jima are still fighting pretty hard. I talked with some of the officers one night in the O-Club, some guys in intelligence work, and they said the Japanese resistance was way stronger than they figured it would be, that it was a hell of a lot tougher fight than they ever expected. The Marines are supposedly losing a hell of a lot of men.”

“The Marines almost always get the dirty jobs,” Brannon said. “That’s the price you pay for being good.”

“Going to be a hell of a long trip there,” Brannon said, staring at the chart. “How long, in days?”

“About eighteen, twenty days,” Olsen said.

“Might be a good idea to start some sort of a contest,” Brannon said. “Something to relieve the boredom.”

“Acey-Deucey?” Olsen asked. “Every sailor I ever knew thinks he’s an expert at Acey-Deucey.”

“Good idea,” Brannon said. “I happen to be the best cribbage player in the whole Navy, so let’s run two contests. Acey-Deucey and cribbage. First prize will be a fifth of Scotch, courtesy of the ship’s recreation fund.

“Get Chief Ed Morris to draw up the pairings. He’s an operator, that fellow. Figures every angle there is to be figured. He’ll holler foul if someone else makes up the pairings, but if we ask him to do it he can’t yell.”

The two contests kept the spirits of the crew high as the Eelfish ran down the long sea miles to its patrol area. Chief Morris, by dint of very careful pairing and the expert use of a pair of loaded dice, took the Acey-Deucey championship from Fred Nelson.

Mike Brannon worked his way through the cribbage tournament without much trouble until he came to the semifinals. There, in a spirited battle with a young fireman, he managed to triumph, the Engine Room man admitting that the Captain was the best cribbage player that he’d seen since his granddaddy had taught him the game at the age of five.

In the finals, with all the off-watch crew members who could jam into the Crew’s Mess, Mike Brannon went up against Chief Yeoman John Wilkes Booth. Brannon lost the fifth and rubber game to Booth, who, some people said later, was the fastest man with a cribbage peg who had ever played the game.

Eelfish arrived on station off the western side of the Bonin Islands three weeks after leaving Fremantle. Ten days later the radio crackled with the information that the invasion of Okinawa had begun. The fact that thousands of men had died at Iwo Jima, that many thousands more would die at Okinawa, made little impression on the crew of the Eelfish. Invasions, battles on land, were of a different world. Theirs was a world confined to a slim ship that was 312 feet long and 16 feet wide at its widest point. To the uninitiated the submariners on war patrol might seem phlegmatic, without emotion. In truth, most were in a constant state of anger; anger at the Japanese who depth charged them, anger that there was a war and it had been going on for too long a time, anger at their own senior officers, who seemed to care little about them and the officers who served in submarines — and not a little anger at themselves for ever volunteering to go to sea in a submarine.

“I give us three more days on station,” Doc Wharton said one afternoon as he sat in the Crew’s Mess. “I talked to Brosmer and he said we’re one hell of a long way from Fremantle, over four thousand miles.”

“Once we start back how long will it take?” Paul Blake asked.

“About the same as it took to get here, three weeks,” Doc answered.

“You missin’ that stuff you got married for, Blakey?” Scotty Rudolph asked as he brought a platter of freshly baked doughnuts out of the galley. “Damn it, I don’t see why you wanted to get married. You know that no woman is going to cook you chow like you get aboard this ship.”

“Man could lose his appetite looking at you,” Doc Wharton said. “So it don’t make no difference how good you can cook. Blake’s girl is a good-lookin’ kid.”

“Hell, Blakey, I didn’t mean to make you blush,” the ship’s cook said. “You married a nice kid. Got a smart old lady. She asked me how I made Swiss steak at that party we had.” He jumped to his feet as the General Quarters alarm began clanging.

Mike Brannon went scrambling up the ladder to the bridge. “What have you got, Perry?”

Lieutenant Arbuckle turned, the radio telephone handset that had been installed in Fremantle in his hand.

“Mayday message from a B-twenty-nine, sir. He’s got two engines still working, and one of those is overheating. He’s zeroed in on us with his RDF, and he’s on his way here.” The handset buzzed and he held it near his ear as Brannon edged in and put his head close to Arbuckle’s.

“Big Bird to Water Lily. Do you read? Over.”

“Read Big Bird scale ten,” Arbuckle said. “Over.”

“Give us one more signal so we can get you on the radio direction finder again, Water Lily. Big Bird over and out.” Arbuckle held the transmit button on the handset down and counted to fifteen.

“Roger,” the aircraft operator said. “We should be in sight in four minutes. Request Water Lily point bow into the wind. Big Bird over and out.”

“Aircraft rescue party to the bridge,” Brannon ordered. He and Arbuckle moved to the port side of the small bridge as Chief Flanagan led a half-dozen of the crew’s strongest swimmers out of the bridge hatch and down on deck. Steve Petreshock, burdened with a one-man rubber boat, began to unknot the lashings on the boat.

“Belay that,” Flanagan said. “If we need it, okay. If we don’t no sense in having to lash it up again.”

“Water Lily, we have you in sight. You’re pretty damned small. Are you heading into wind? Big Bird over and out.”

“Wind velocity is zero. Repeat zero,” Arbuckle said. “Water Lily is on course three five zero. Repeat three five zero. Wind is zero. Water Lily over and out.”

“Aircraft in sight dead astern, Bridge,” the stern lookout yelled.

“Very well,” Brannon said. Arbuckle thumbed the button on the handset.

“Water Lily has Big Bird in sight. Can you tell us your landing procedure? Water Lily over and out.”

“Roger,” the voice in the handset said. “We’re going to come up from your back end —”

“From astern,” Brannon muttered to himself.

“— and put her down in the water on your right side. Big Bird over and out. Here we come.”

The B-29, trailing a long cloud of thick white smoke from its engines, was in plain sight, only a hundred or so feet above the water, flying straight up the wake of the Eelfish.

“My God!” Brannon half yelled. “That damned thing looks like an apartment house flying at us! What’s that crazy bastard trying to do, land on my afterdeck? Arbuckle, tell that bastard to sheer off to starboard, he’ll hit us!”

The big aircraft settled lower as it raced toward the submarine. Then, hundreds of feet astern, it delicately touched its massive tail to the water, lifted slightly as the abused engines stuttered and protested, and then, again delicately, touched its tail to the water. The tail raised slightly as if protesting and then settled gently, and then all of the plane was touching the water, rushing ahead, throwing up a huge wave of water that slammed into the pressure hull of the Eelfish as the plane’s port wing eased by the starboard side of the submarine’s Conning Tower only a half-dozen feet away.

“All stop!” Brannon snapped. He looked at the plane’s wing, rocking and then steadying as the giant aircraft settled deeper in the water and came to a stop.

“Rig out the bow planes,” Brannon ordered.

“Tell that plane commander that his port wing, that’s his left wing, is over our starboard bow plane, and if he can bring his people out along his port wing we can take them aboard without using a rubber boat,” Brannon said to Arbuckle.

“We can do that,” the aircraft man on the radio said. Brannon leaned over the bridge rail, watching Flanagan tie the end of a coil of twenty-one-thread manila line around his waist and jump down on the bow plane.

The line of airmen inching out along the plane’s wing came steadily toward the narrow end of the wing. Flanagan reached upward and held out a hand to the first man, who leaped down on to the bowplane and was assisted aboard the forward deck by Petreshock. On the deck Doc Wharton looked up at the bridge.

“Seventh man in line is hurt, sir. Might be easier to take him down the Forward Room hatch?”

Brannon, leaning over the bridge rail, nodded and gave the order. A moment later the hand wheel on the top of the Forward Torpedo Room hatch spun. The hatch opened and Jim Rice’s black beard came into view.

“So that’s what it looks like up here,” Rice said. “What the fuck you people doin’ up here, playin’ games?” He braced himself in the hatch as Doc Wharton led the wounded man to the hatch.

“You just sit on my shoulders like you did with your daddy when you was a little tad,” Rice said. “Papa’ll carry you down into the nice submarine, and don’t get any of your fuckin’ blood on the inside of this hatch because I’m the guy has to clean it.” Wharton and Fred Nelson eased the wounded man on to Rice’s shoulders.

“Do I hang on to your beard, Sandy Claws?” the airman said in a falsetto. “Sandy Claws don’t want to let the baby fall, do he?”

“Fuckin’ wise guy, we got,” Rice growled as he eased down the ladder rungs. “You people below, stand by to take this wounded hero off of me before he bleeds all over my dress dungaree shirt.” Relieved of his burden he ran up the rungs of the ladder and dogged down the hatch.

Captain Brannon faced the plane crew on the cigaret deck and introduced himself. A slim, boyish airman stepped out of the group.

“Major John Haskins, U.S. Army Air Force, Captain. I’m the plane commander, sir. We owe you something for this, sir.

“No, you don’t owe us anything.” Brannon looked at the group. “I’ve got to destroy your plane. If you don’t want to watch I don’t blame you. You can go below.” The young Major looked around and swallowed.

“I think I’d like to go downstairs, sir,” he said in a small voice. “I’ve, ah, got a wounded man to see to, sir.”

“I understand, sir,” Brannon said. He watched as the eight men followed the young Major down the hatch.

“Forward deck gun party to the bridge,” Brannon said. “Mr. Arbuckle, haul off about four hundred yards.”

The plane burst into flames on the fourth shot and began to slide under the sea, nose first. The last Brannon saw of it was the huge tail slowly going under. He turned away and went down the hatch.

He found the crew of the plane in the Crew’s Mess drinking coffee while Scotty Rudolph fussed in his galley making steak sandwiches.

“We’ll tell your people we’ve got you,” Brannon said to the plane commander, “if you’ll tell Mr. Michaels here what command we should address the message to. We’re sort of new at this. Never picked up any of you people before.”

“You’re not new at the business, though,” the Major said. “All those Jap flags painted on the side of your whatever it is we climbed up on, those stand for Jap ships you’ve sunk?”

“Yes,” Brannon said. “You check on your wounded man?”

“He’s okay,” Major Haskins said. “Your medico fixed him up. Don’t you have a doctor aboard these ships?”

“No,” Brannon said. “Just a Pharmacist’s Mate.”

“Supposing someone gets really sick, like a heart attack?”

“I don’t know about that,” Brannon said. “In nineteen forty-two, on the Seadragon, a crewman came down with a very bad appendix. The Pharmacist’s Mate made retractors out of spoons. They had some ether and a book on how to take out an appendix. So they operated on the Wardroom table. Both the patient and the Pharmacist’s Mate recovered fully.” The pilot shuddered.

Two hours later a message came instructing Eelfish to rendezvous with a destroyer detached from Iwo Jima to transfer the airmen. Four days later the Eelfish received orders to leave the area and head for Pearl Harbor. Brannon called Bob Lee and Paul Blake to the Wardroom and showed them the orders.

“I know it’s bad news for both of you,” Brannon said. “But try and look at it this way. We’ve invaded Okinawa. The next step is Japan itself, if they don’t surrender first. It’s my opinion that this war is about over. That pilot we rescued, he said he’d been carrying nothing but firebombs and blasting Tokyo. He said the city is almost burned to the ground.

“We know, in submarines we know, that Japan hasn’t been able to get tankers north to Japan, that they haven’t been able to get any cargo ships to Japan. They must be down to the bottom of the barrel on oil, rubber, tin, ore, everything they need. The Germans have surrendered, and I don’t think this war will last past Thanksgiving.”

“And then…” Blake’s voice had a slight quiver.

“Then all you Reservists who have done so damned much to help win this war will be getting out, Paul. Your wife, Mr. Lee’s wife, don’t have to wait on any quota system. I went to the American Embassy in Fremantle and asked about that. Once the war is over, whether you’re in the Navy or out, you just have to send them the boat fare and they can come to the States.”

“It isn’t so bad, Paul,” Lee said. “If we went back to Fremantle we’d be there for what, three weeks? Then we’d be gone again. So we miss that one three-week leave. If the Captain is right we probably will have our wives with us before Christmas.” Blake nodded and went to the door of the Wardroom. He turned.

“Thank you, sir,” he said to Brannon. Bob Lee turned to Brannon.

“He’s so damned young — what, twenty-two?”

“And you’re what, how old?” Brannon grinned.

“Well, twenty-six, sir. We older types can take a little disappointment.”

“Good thing we can,” Brannon said. “I haven’t seen my wife and daughter for two years.”