Winter of the World

12

1942 (I)

On the first day of 1942 Daisy got a letter from her former fiancé, Charlie Farquharson.

When she opened it she was at the breakfast table in the Mayfair house, alone except for the aged butler who poured her coffee and the fifteen-year-old maid who brought her hot toast from the kitchen.

Charlie wrote not from Buffalo but from RAF Duxford, an air base in the east of England. Daisy had heard of the place: it was near Cambridge, where she had met both her husband, Boy Fitzherbert, and the man she loved, Lloyd Williams.

She was pleased to hear from Charlie. He had jilted her, of course, and she had hated him then; but it was a long time ago. She felt like a different person now. In 1935 she had been an American heiress called Miss Peshkov; today she was Viscountess Aberowen, an English aristocrat. All the same, she was pleased she was still in Charlie’s mind. A woman would always prefer to be remembered than forgotten.

Charlie wrote with a heavy black pen. His handwriting was untidy, the letters large and jagged. Daisy read:

Before anything else, I need, of course, to apologize for the way I treated you back in Buffalo. I shudder with mortification every time I think of it.

Good Lord, thought Daisy, he seems to have grown up.

What snobs we all were, and how weak I was to allow my late mother to bully me into behaving shabbily.

Ah, she thought, his late mother. So the old bitch is dead. That might explain the change.

I have joined No. 133 Eagle Squadron. We fly Hurricanes, but we’re getting Spitfires any day now.

There were three Eagle squadrons, Royal Air Force units manned by American volunteers. Daisy was surprised: she would not have expected Charlie to go to war voluntarily. When she knew him he had been interested in nothing but dogs and horses. He really had grown up.

If you can find it in your heart to forgive me, or at least to put the past behind you, I would love to see you and meet your husband.

The mention of a husband was a tactful way of saying he had no romantic intentions, Daisy guessed.

I will be in London on leave next weekend. May I take the two of you to dinner? Do say yes.

With affectionate good wishes,

Charles H.B. Farquharson

Boy was not at home that weekend, but Daisy accepted for herself. She was starved of male companionship, like many women in wartime London. Lloyd had gone to Spain and disappeared. He said he was going to be a military attaché at the British embassy in Madrid. Daisy wished it might be true that he had such a safe job, but she did not believe it. When she asked why the government would send an able-bodied young officer to do a desk job in a neutral country, he had explained how important it was to discourage Spain from joining in the war on the Fascist side. But he said it with a rueful smile that told her plainly she was not to be fooled. She feared that in reality he was slipping across the border to work with the French Resistance, and she had nightmares about him being captured and tortured.

She had not seen him for more than a year. His absence was like an amputation: she felt it every hour of the day. But she was glad of the chance to spend an evening out with a man, even if it was the awkward, unglamorous, overweight Charlie Farquharson.

Charlie booked a table in the Grill Room of the Savoy Hotel.

In the lobby of the hotel, as a waiter was helping her take off her mink coat, she was approached by a tall man in a well-cut dinner jacket who looked vaguely familiar. He stuck out his hand and said shyly: ‘Hello, Daisy. What a pleasure to see you after all these years.’

When she heard his voice she realized it was Charlie. ‘Good Lord!’ she said. ‘You’ve changed!’

‘I lost a little weight,’ he admitted.

‘You sure did.’ Forty or fifty pounds, she guessed. It made him better-looking. His features now seemed craggy rather than ugly.

‘But you haven’t changed at all,’ he said, looking her up and down.

She had made an effort with her clothes. She had bought nothing new for years, because of wartime austerity, but for tonight she had exhumed an off-the-shoulder sapphire-blue silk evening gown by Lanvin that she had acquired on her last pre-war trip to Paris. ‘In a couple of months I’ll be twenty-six,’ she said. ‘I can’t believe I look the same as I did when I was eighteen.’

He glanced down at her décolletage, blushed, and said: ‘Believe me, you do.’

They went into the restaurant and sat down. ‘I was afraid you weren’t coming,’ he said.

‘My watch stopped. I’m sorry I’m late.’

‘Only by twenty minutes. I would have waited an hour.’

A waiter asked if they would like a drink. Daisy said: ‘This is one of the few places in England where you can get a decent martini.’

‘Two of those, please,’ Charlie said.

‘I like mine straight up with an olive.’

‘So do I.’

She studied him, intrigued by the way he had altered. His old awkwardness had softened to a charming shyness. It was still hard to imagine him as a fighter pilot, shooting down German planes. Anyway, the Blitz on London had come to an end half a year ago, and there were no longer air battles in the skies over southern England. ‘What kind of flying do you do?’ she said.

‘Mainly daytime circus operations over northern France.’

‘What’s a circus operation?’

‘A bomber attack with a heavy escort of fighters, the main object being to lure enemy planes into an air battle in which they’re outnumbered.’

‘I hate bombers,’ she said. ‘I lived through the Blitz.’

He was surprised. ‘I would have thought you’d want to give the Germans a taste of their own medicine.’

‘Not at all.’ Daisy had thought about this a lot. ‘I could weep for all the innocent women and children who were burned and maimed in London – and it doesn’t help at all to know that German women and children are suffering the same.’

‘I never looked at it that way.’

They ordered dinner. Wartime regulations restricted them to three courses, and their meal could not cost more than five shillings. On the menu were special austerity dishes such as Mock Duck – made out of pork sausages – and Woolton Pie, which contained no meat at all.

Charlie said: ‘I can’t tell you how good it is to hear a girl speak real American. I like English girls, and I’ve even dated one, but I miss American voices.’

‘Me, too,’ she said. ‘This is my home now, and I don’t guess I’ll ever go back, but I know how you feel.’

‘I’m sorry I missed meeting Viscount Aberowen.’

‘He’s in the air force, like you. He’s a pilot trainer. He gets home now and again – but not this weekend.’

Daisy was sleeping with Boy again, on his occasional visits home. She had sworn she never would after catching him with those awful women in Aldgate. But he had put pressure on her. He said that fighting men needed consolation when they came home, and he had promised never to visit prostitutes again. She did not really believe his promises, but all the same she gave in, albeit against her inclination. After all, she told herself, I did marry him for better or worse.

However, she no longer took any pleasure in sex with him, unfortunately. She could go to bed with Boy but she could not fall back in love with him. She had to use cream for lubrication. She had tried to summon again the fond feelings she had once had for him, when she had found him an exciting young aristocrat with the world at his feet, full of fun and capable of enjoying life thoroughly. But he was not really exciting, she now realized: he was just a selfish and rather limited man with a title. When he was on top of her, all she could think about was that he might be passing her some disgusting infection.

Charlie said carefully: ‘I’m sure you don’t want to talk too much about the Rouzrokh family . . .’

‘No.’

‘. . . but did you hear that Joanne died?’

‘No!’ Daisy was shocked. ‘How?’

‘At Pearl Harbor. She was engaged to Woody Dewar, and she went with him to visit his brother, Chuck, who is stationed there. They were in a car that was strafed by a Zero – that’s a Jap fighter plane – and she was hit.’

‘I’m so sorry. Poor Joanne. Poor Woody.’

Their food came, and a bottle of wine. They ate in silence for a while. Daisy discovered that Mock Duck did not taste much like duck.

Charlie said: ‘Joanne was one of two thousand, four hundred people killed at Pearl Harbor. We lost eight battleships and ten other vessels. Goddamn sneaky Japs.’

‘People here are secretly pleased, because the US is in the fight now. God alone knows why Hitler was dumb enough to declare war on the States. But the British think they have a chance of winning at last, with the Russians and us on their side.’

‘Americans are very angry about Pearl Harbor.’

‘People here don’t see why.’

‘The Japanese kept on negotiating right up until the last minute – long after they must have made the decision. That’s deceitful!’

Daisy frowned. ‘It seems sensible to me. If agreement had been reached at the last minute, they could have called off the attack.’

‘But they didn’t declare war!’

‘Would that have made any difference? We were expecting them to attack the Philippines. Pearl Harbor would have taken us by surprise even after a declaration of war.’

Charlie spread his hands in a gesture of bafflement. ‘Why did they have to attack us anyway?’

‘We stole their money.’

‘Froze their assets.’

‘They can’t see the difference. And we cut off their oil. We had them up against the wall. They were facing ruin. What were they to do?’

‘They should have given in, and agreed to withdraw from China.’

‘Yes, they should. But if it was America that was being pushed around and told what to do by some other country, would you want us to give in?’

‘Maybe not.’ He grinned. ‘I said you hadn’t changed. I’d like to take that back.’

‘Why?’

‘You never used to talk like this. In the old days you wouldn’t discuss politics at all.’

‘If you don’t take an interest, then what happens is your fault.’

‘I guess we’ve all learned that.’

They ordered dessert. Daisy said: ‘What’s going to happen to the world, Charlie? All Europe is Fascist. The Germans have conquered much of Russia. The USA is an eagle with a broken wing. Sometimes I’m glad I don’t have children.’

‘Don’t underestimate the USA. We’re wounded, not crushed. Japan is cock of the walk now, but the day will come when the Japanese people shed bitter tears of regret for Pearl Harbor.’

‘I hope you’re right.’

‘And the Germans aren’t having things all their own way any longer. They failed to take Moscow, and they’re on the retreat. Do you realize the battle of Moscow was Hitler’s first real defeat?’

‘Is it a defeat, or just a setback?’

‘Either way, it’s the worst military result he’s ever had. The Bolsheviks gave the Nazis a bloody nose.’

Charlie had discovered vintage port, a British taste. In London men drank it after the ladies had retired from the dinner table, a tiresome practice that Daisy had tried to abolish in her own house, without success. They had a glass each. On top of the martini and the wine, it made Daisy feel a little drunk and happy.

They reminisced about their adolescence in Buffalo, and laughed about the foolish things they and others had done. ‘You told us all you were going to London to dance with the King,’ Charlie said. ‘And you did!’

‘I hope they were jealous.’

‘And how! Dot Renshaw went into spasm.’

Daisy laughed happily.

‘I’m glad we got back in contact,’ Charlie said. ‘I like you so much.’

‘I’m glad, too.’

They left the restaurant and got their coats. The doorman summoned a taxi. ‘I’ll take you home,’ Charlie said.

As they drove along the Strand, he put his arm around her. She was about to protest, then she thought: What the hell. She snuggled up to him.

‘What a fool I am,’ he said. ‘I wish I’d married you when I had the chance.’

‘You would have made a better husband than Boy Fitzherbert,’ she said. But then she would never have met Lloyd.

She realized she had not said anything to Charlie about Lloyd.

As they turned into her street, Charlie kissed her.

It felt nice to be wrapped in a man’s arms and kissing his lips, but she knew it was the booze making her feel that way, and in truth the only man she wanted to kiss was Lloyd. All the same she did not push him away until the cab came to a halt.

‘How about a nightcap,’ he said.

For a moment she was tempted. It was a long time since she had touched a man’s hard body. But she did not really want Charlie. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry, Charlie, but I love someone else.’

‘We don’t have to go to bed together,’ he whispered. ‘But if we could just, you know, smooch a while . . .’

She opened the door and stepped out. She felt like a heel. He was risking his life for her every day, and she would not even give him a cheap thrill. ‘Goodnight, Charlie, and good luck,’ she said. Before she could change her mind, she slammed the car door and went into her house.

She went straight upstairs. A few minutes later, alone in bed, she felt wretched. She had betrayed two men: Lloyd, because she had kissed Charlie; and Charlie, because she had sent him away dissatisfied.

She spent most of Sunday in bed with a hangover.

On Monday evening she got a phone call. ‘I’m Hank Bartlett,’ said a young American voice. ‘Friend of Charlie Farquharson, at Duxford. He talked to me about you, and I found your number in his book.’

Her heart stopped. ‘Why are you calling me?’

‘Bad news, I’m afraid,’ he said. ‘Charlie died today, shot down over Abbeville.’

‘No!’

‘It was his first mission in his new Spitfire.’

‘He talked about that,’ she said dazedly.

‘I thought you might like to know.’

‘Thank you, yes,’ she whispered.

‘He just thought you were the bee’s knees.’

‘Did he?’

‘You should have heard him go on about how great you are.’

‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I’m so sorry.’ Then she could no longer speak, and she hung up the phone.

(ii)

Chuck Dewar looked over the shoulder of Lieutenant Bob Strong, one of the cryptanalysts. Some of them were chaotic but Strong was the tidy kind, and he had nothing on his desk but a single sheet of paper on which he had written:

YO—LO—KU—TA—WA—NA

‘I can’t get it,’ Strong said in frustration. ‘If the decrypt is right, it says they have struck yolokutawana. But it doesn’t mean anything. There’s no such word.’

Chuck stared at the six Japanese syllables. He felt sure they ought to mean something to him, even though he knew only a smattering of the language. But he could not figure it out, and he got on with his work.

The atmosphere in the Old Administration Building was grim.

For weeks after the raid, Chuck and Eddie saw bloated bodies from sunk ships floating on the oily surface of Pearl Harbor. At the same time, the intelligence they were handling reported more devastating attacks by the Japanese. Only three days after Pearl Harbor, Japanese planes hit the American base at Luzon in the Philippines and destroyed the Pacific Fleet’s entire stock of torpedoes. The same day in the South China Sea they sank two British battleships, the Repulse and the Prince of Wales, leaving the British helpless in the Far East.

They seemed unstoppable. Bad news just kept coming. In the first few months of the New Year Japan defeated US forces in the Philippines and beat the British in Hong Kong, Singapore, and Rangoon, the capital of Burma.

Many of the place names were unfamiliar even to seamen such as Chuck and Eddie. To the American public they sounded like distant planets in a science-fiction yarn: Guam, Wake, Bataan. But everyone knew the meaning of retreat, submit and surrender.

Chuck felt bewildered. Could Japan really beat America? He could hardly believe it.

By May, the Japanese had what they wanted: an empire that gave them rubber, tin, and – most important of all – oil. Information leaking out indicated that they were ruling their empire with a brutality that would have made Stalin blush.

But there was a fly in their ointment, and it was the US Navy. The thought made Chuck proud. The Japanese had hoped to destroy Pearl Harbor completely, and gain control of the Pacific Ocean; but they had failed. American aircraft carriers and heavy cruisers were still afloat. Intelligence suggested the Japanese commanders were infuriated that the Americans refused to lie down and die. After their losses at Pearl Harbor the Americans were outnumbered and outgunned, but they did not flee and hide. Instead they launched hit-and-run raids on Japanese ships, doing minor damage but boosting American morale and giving the Japanese the unshakable feeling that they had not yet won. Then, on 25 April, planes launched from a carrier bombed the centre of Tokyo, inflicting a terrible wound on the pride of the Japanese military. The celebrations in Hawaii were ecstatic. Chuck and Eddie got drunk that night.

But there was a showdown coming. Every man Chuck spoke to in the Old Administration Building said the Japanese would launch a major attack early in the summer to tempt American ships to come out in force for a final battle. The Japanese hoped the superior strength of their navy would be decisive, and the American Pacific Fleet would be wiped out. The only way the Americans could win was to be better prepared and have better intelligence, to move faster and be smarter.

During those months, Station HYPO worked day and night to crack JN-25b, the new code of the Imperial Japanese Navy. By May they had made progress.

The US Navy had wireless intercept stations all around the Pacific Rim, from Seattle to Australia. There, men known as the On The Roof Gang sat with headsets and radio receivers listening to Japanese radio traffic. They scanned the airwaves and wrote what they heard on message pads.

The signals were in Morse Code, but the dots and dashes of naval signals translated into five-digit number groups, each representing a letter, word or phrase in a code book. The apparently random numbers were relayed by secure cable to teleprinters in the basement of the Old Administration Building. Then the difficult part began: cracking the code.

They always started with small things. The last word of any signal was often OWARI, meaning end. The cryptanalyst would look for other appearances of that number group in the same signal, and write ‘END?’ above any he found.

The Japanese helped them by making an uncharacteristically careless mistake.

Delivery of the new code books for JN-25b was delayed to some far-flung units. So, for a fatal few weeks, the Japanese high command sent out some messages in both codes. Since the Americans had broken much of the original JN-25, they were able to translate the message in the old code, set the decrypt alongside the message in the new code, and figure out the meanings of the five-digit groups of the new code. For a while they progressed by leaps and bounds.

The original eight cryptanalysts were supplemented, after Pearl Harbor, by some of the musicians from the band of the sunk battleship California. For reasons no one understood, musicians were good at decoding.

Every signal was kept and every decrypt filed. Comparison of one with another was crucial to the work. An analyst might ask for all the signals from a particular day, or all the signals to one ship, or all the signals that mentioned Hawaii. Chuck and the other clerical staff developed ever-more-complex systems of cross-indexing to help them find whatever the analysts needed.

The unit predicted that in the first week of May the Japanese would attack Port Moresby, the Allied base in Papua. They were right, and the US Navy intercepted the invasion fleet in the Coral Sea. Both sides claimed victory, but the Japanese did not take Port Moresby. And Admiral Nimitz, Commander-in-Chief of the Pacific, began to trust his codebreakers.

The Japanese did not use regular names for locations in the Pacific Ocean. Every important place had a designation consisting of two letters – in fact, two characters or kanas of the Japanese alphabet, although the codebreakers usually used equivalents from the Roman A to Z. The men in the basement struggled to figure out the meaning of each of these two-kana designators. They made slow progress: MO was Port Moresby, AH was Oahu, but many were unknown.

In May, evidence was fast building up of a major Japanese assault at a location they called AF.

The best guess of the unit was that AF meant Midway, the atoll at the western end of the fifteen-hundred-mile-long chain of islands that started at Hawaii. Midway was halfway between Los Angeles and Tokyo.

A guess was not enough, of course. Given the numerical superiority of the Japanese navy, Admiral Nimitz had to know.

Day by day, the men Chuck was working with built up an ominous picture of the Japanese order of battle. New planes were delivered to aircraft carriers. An ‘occupation force’ was embarked: the Japanese were planning to hold on to whatever territory they won.

It looked as if this was the big one. But where would the attack come?

The men in the basement were particularly proud of decoding a signal from the Japanese fleet urging Tokyo: ‘Expedite delivery of fuelling hose.’ They were pleased partly because of the specialized language but mainly because the signal proved that a long-range mid-ocean manoeuvre was imminent.

But the American high command thought the attack might come at Hawaii, and the army feared an invasion of the west coast of the United States. Even the team at Pearl Harbor had a nagging suspicion it could be Johnston Island, an airstrip a thousand miles south of Midway.

They had to be one hundred per cent certain.

Chuck had a notion how it might be done, but he hesitated to say anything. The cryptanalysts were so clever, and he was not. He had never done well in school. In third grade a classmate had called him Chucky the Chump. He had cried, and that had guaranteed that the nickname would stick. He still thought of himself as Chucky the Chump.

At lunchtime he and Eddie got sandwiches and coffee from the commissary and sat on the dockside, looking across the harbour. It was returning to normal. Most of the oil had gone, and some of the wrecks had been raised.

While they were eating, a wounded aircraft carrier appeared around Hospital Point and steamed slowly into harbour, trailing an oil slick that stretched all the way out to sea. Chuck identified the vessel as the Yorktown. Her hull was blackened with soot and she had a huge hole in the flight deck, presumably caused by a Japanese bomb in the Battle of the Coral Sea. Sirens and hooters sounded a congratulatory fanfare as she approached the Navy Yard, and tugs assembled to nudge her through the open gates of No. 1 Dry Dock.

‘She needs three months’ work, I hear,’ Eddie said. He was based in the same building as Chuck, but in the naval intelligence office upstairs, so he got to hear more gossip. ‘But she’s putting to sea again in three days.’

‘How are they going to manage that?’

‘They’ve started already. The master shipfitter flew to meet her – he’s on board already, with a team. And look at the dry dock.’

Chuck saw that the vacant dock was already swarming with men and equipment: he could not count the number of welding machines waiting at the quayside.

‘All the same,’ Eddie said, ‘they’ll just be patching her up. They’ll repair the deck and make her seaworthy, and everything else will have to wait.’

Something about the name of the ship bugged Chuck. He could not shake the nagging feeling. What did Yorktown mean? The siege of Yorktown was the last big battle of the War of Independence. Did that have some significance?

Captain Vandermeier walked by. ‘Get back to work, you two girlieboys,’ he said.

Eddie said under his breath: ‘One of these days I’m going to punch him out.’

‘After the war, Eddie,’ said Chuck.

When he returned to the basement and saw Bob Strong at his desk, Chuck realized he had solved Strong’s problem.

Looking over the cryptanalyst’s shoulder again, he saw the same sheet of paper with the same six Japanese syllables:

YO—LO—KU—TA—WA—NA

He tactfully tried to make it sound as if Strong himself had solved it. ‘But you have got it, Lieutenant!’ he said.

Strong was disconcerted. ‘Do I?’

‘It’s an English name, so the Japanese have spelt it out phonetically.’

‘Yolokutawana is an English name?’

‘Yes, sir. That’s how the Japanese pronounce Yorktown.’

‘What?’ Strong looked baffled.

For a dreadful moment, Chucky the Chump wondered if he was completely wrong.

Then Strong said: ‘Oh, my God, you’re right! Yolokutawana – Yorktown, with a Japanese accent!’ He laughed delightedly. ‘Thank you!’ he enthused. ‘Well done!’

Chuck hesitated. He had another idea. Should he say what was on his mind? It was not his job to solve codes. But America was an inch away from defeat. Maybe he should take a chance. ‘Can I make another suggestion?’ he said.

‘Fire away.’

‘It’s about the designator AF. We need definite confirmation that it’s Midway, right?’

‘Yup.’

‘Couldn’t we write a message about Midway that the Japanese would want to rebroadcast in code? Then when we intercepted the broadcast we could find out how they encode the name.’

Strong looked thoughtful. ‘Maybe,’ he said. ‘We might have to send our message in clear, to be sure they understood it.’

‘We could do that. It would have to be something not very confidential – like, say: ‘There is an outbreak of venereal disease on Midway, please send medicine,’ or something like that.’

‘But why would the Japs rebroadcast that?’

‘Okay, so it has to be something of military significance, but not top secret; something like the weather.’

‘Even weather forecasts are secret nowadays.’

The cryptanalyst at the next desk put in: ‘How about a water shortage? If they’re planning to occupy the place, that would be important information.’

‘Hell, this could work.’ Strong was getting excited. ‘Suppose Midway sends a message in clear to Hawaii, saying their desalination plant has broken down.’

Chuck said: ‘And Hawaii replies, saying we’re sending a water barge.’

‘The Japanese would be sure to rebroadcast that, if they’re planning to attack Midway. They would need to make plans to ship fresh water there.’

‘And they would broadcast in code to avoid alerting us to their interest in Midway.’

Strong stood up. ‘Come with me,’ he said to Chuck. ‘Let’s put this to the boss, see what he thinks of the idea.’

The signals were exchanged that day.

Next day, a Japanese radio signal reported a water shortage at AF.

The target was Midway.

Admiral Nimitz commenced to set a trap.

(iii)

That evening, while more than a thousand workmen swarmed over the crippled aircraft carrier Yorktown, repairing the damage under arc lights, Chuck and Eddie went to The Band Round The Hat, a bar down a dark alley in Honolulu. It was packed, as always, with sailors and locals. Almost all the customers were men, though there were a few nurses in pairs. Chuck and Eddie liked the place because the other men were their kind. The lesbians liked it because the men did not hit on them.

There was nothing overt, of course. You could be thrown out of the navy and put in jail for homosexual acts. All the same the place was congenial. The bandleader wore make-up. The Hawaiian singer was in drag, although he was so convincing that some people did not realize he was a man. The owner was as queer as a three-dollar bill. Men could dance together. And no one would call you a wimp for ordering vermouth.

Since the death of Joanne, Chuck felt he loved Eddie even more. Of course he had always known that Eddie could be killed, in theory; but the danger had never seemed real. Now, after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Chuck never passed a day without visualizing that beautiful girl lying on the ground covered in blood, and his brother sobbing his heart out beside her. It could so easily have been Chuck kneeling next to Eddie, and feeling the same unbearable grief. Chuck and Eddie had cheated death on 7 December, but they were at war now, and life was cheap. Every day together was precious because it might be the last.

Chuck was leaning on the bar with a beer in his hand, and Eddie was sitting on a high stool. They were laughing at a navy pilot called Trevor Paxman – known as Trixie – who was talking about the time he tried to have sex with a girl. ‘I was horrified!’ Trixie said. ‘I thought it would be all tidy down there, and kind of sweet, like girls in paintings, but she had more hair than me!’ They roared with laughter. ‘She was like a gorilla!’ At that point Chuck saw, out of the corner of his eye, the stocky figure of Captain Vandermeier entering the bar.

Few officers went into enlisted men’s bars. It was not forbidden, merely thoughtless and inconsiderate, like wearing muddy boots in the restaurant of the Ritz-Carlton. Eddie turned his back, hoping Vandermeier would not see him.

No such luck. Vandermeier came right up to them and said: ‘Well, well, all girls together, are we?’

Trixie turned away and melted into the crowd. Vandermeier said: ‘Where did he go?’ He was already drunk enough to slur his words.

Chuck saw Eddie’s face darken. Chuck said stiffly: ‘Good evening, Captain, may I buy you a beer?’

‘Scotch onna rocks.’

Chuck got him a drink. Vandermeier took a swallow and said: ‘So, I hear the action in this place is out the back – is that right?’ He looked at Eddie.

‘No idea,’ Eddie said coldly.

‘Aw, come on,’ said Vandermeier. ‘Off the record.’ He patted Eddie’s knee.

Eddie stood up abruptly and pushed his stool back. ‘Don’t you touch me,’ he said.

Chuck said: ‘Take it easy, Eddie.’

‘There’s no rule in the navy says I have to be pawed by this old queen!’

Vandermeier said drunkenly: ‘What did you call me?’

Eddie said: ‘If he touches me again, I swear I’ll knock his ugly head off.’

Chuck said: ‘Captain Vandermeier, sir, I know a much better place than this. Would you like to go there?’

Vandermeier looked confused. ‘What?’

Chuck improvised: ‘A smaller, quieter place – like this, but more intimate. Do you know what I mean?’

‘Sounds good!’ The captain drained his glass.

Chuck took Vandermeier’s right arm and gestured to Eddie to take the left. They led the drunk captain outside.

Luckily, a taxi was waiting in the gloom of the alley. Chuck opened the car door.

At that point, Vandermeier kissed Eddie.

The captain threw his arms around him, pressed his lips to Eddie’s, then said: ‘I love you.’

Chuck’s heart filled with fear. There was no good ending to this now.

Eddie punched Vandermeier in the stomach, hard. The captain grunted and gasped. Eddie hit him again, in the face this time. Chuck stepped between them. Before Vandermeier could fall down, Chuck bundled him into the back seat of the taxi.

He leaned through the window and gave the driver a ten-dollar bill. ‘Take him home, and keep the change,’ he said.

The taxi pulled away.

Chuck looked at Eddie. ‘Oh, boy,’ he said. ‘Now we’re in trouble.’

(iv)

But Eddie Parry was never charged with the crime of assaulting an officer.

Captain Vandermeier showed up at the Old Administration Building next morning with a black eye, but he made no accusation. Chuck figured it would ruin the man’s career if he admitted he had got into a fight at The Band Round The Hat. All the same everyone was talking about his bruise. Bob Strong said: ‘Vandermeier claims he slipped on a patch of oil in his garage, and hit his face on the lawn mower, but I think his wife socked him. Have you seen her? She looks like Jack Dempsey.’

That day, the cryptanalysts in the basement told Admiral Nimitz that the Japanese would attack Midway on 4 June. More specifically, the Japanese force would be 175 miles north of the atoll at 7 a.m.

They were almost as confident as they sounded.

Eddie was gloomy. ‘What can we do?’ he said when he and Chuck met for lunch. He worked in naval intelligence too, and he knew the Japanese strength as revealed by the codebreakers. ‘The Japs have two hundred ships at sea – practically their entire navy – and how many do we have? Thirty-five!’

Chuck was not so glum. ‘But their strike force is only a quarter of their strength. The rest are the occupation force, the diversion force and the reserves.’

‘So? A quarter of their strength is still more than our entire Pacific Fleet!’

‘The actual Japanese strike force has only four aircraft carriers.’

‘But we have just three.’ Eddie pointed with his ham sandwich at the smoke-blackened carrier in the dry dock, with workmen swarming all over her. ‘And that includes the broken-down Yorktown.’

‘Well, we know they’re coming, and they don’t know we’re lying in wait.’

‘I sure hope that makes as much difference as Nimitz thinks.’

‘Yeah, so do I.’

When Chuck returned to the basement, he was told that he no longer worked there. He had been reassigned – to the Yorktown.

‘It’s Vandermeier’s way of punishing me,’ Eddie said tearfully that evening. ‘He thinks you’ll die.’

‘Don’t be pessimistic,’ Chuck said. ‘We might win the war.’

A few days before the attack, the Japanese changed to new code books. The men in the basement sighed and started again from scratch, but they produced little new intelligence before the battle. Nimitz had to make do with what he already had, and hope the Japanese did not revise the whole plan at the last minute.

The Japanese expected to take Midway by surprise and overwhelm it easily. They hoped the Americans would then attack in full force in a bid to win the atoll back. At that point, the Japanese reserve fleet would pounce and wipe out the entire American fleet. Japan would rule the Pacific.

And the USA would ask for peace talks.

Nimitz planned to nip the scheme in the bud by ambushing the strike force before they could take Midway.

Chuck was now part of the ambush.

He packed his kitbag and kissed Eddie goodbye, then they went together to the dockside.

There they ran into Vandermeier.

‘There was no time to repair the watertight compartments,’ he told them. ‘If she’s holed, she’ll go down like a lead coffin.’

Chuck put a restraining hand on Eddie’s shoulder and said: ‘How’s your eye, Captain?’

Vandermeier’s mouth twisted in a grimace of malice. ‘Good luck, faggot.’ He walked away.

Chuck shook hands with Eddie and went on board.

He forgot about Vandermeier instantly, for at long last he had his wish: he was at sea – and on one of the greatest ships ever made.

The Yorktown was the lead ship of the carrier class. She was longer than two football pitches and had a crew of more than two thousand. She carried ninety aircraft: elderly Douglas Devastator torpedo bombers with folding wings; newer Douglas Dauntless dive bombers; and Grumman Wildcat fighters to escort the bombers.

Almost everything was below, apart from the island structure, which stood up thirty feet from the flight deck. It contained the ship’s command and communications heart, with the bridge, the radio room just below it, the chart house and the aviators’ ready room. Behind these was a huge smokestack containing three funnels in a row.

Some of the repairmen were still aboard, finishing their work, when she left the dry dock and steamed out of Pearl Harbor. Chuck thrilled to the throb of her colossal engines as she put to sea. When she reached deep water and began to rise and fall with the swell of the Pacific Ocean, he felt as if he were dancing.

Chuck was assigned to the radio room, a sensible posting that made use of his experience in handling signals.

The carrier steamed to a rendezvous north-east of Midway, her welded patches creaking like new shoes. The ship had a soda fountain, known as the Gedunk, that served freshly made ice cream. There on the first afternoon Chuck ran into Trixie Paxman, whom he had last seen at The Band Round The Hat. He was glad to have a friend aboard.

On Wednesday 3 June, the day before the predicted attack, a navy flying boat on reconnaissance west of Midway spotted a convoy of Japanese transport ships – presumably carrying the occupation force that was to take over the atoll after the battle. The news was broadcast to all US ships, and Chuck in the radio room of the Yorktown was among the first to know. It was hard confirmation that his comrades in the basement had been right, and he felt a sense of relief that they had been vindicated. That was ironic, he realized: he would not be in such danger if they had been wrong and the Japanese were elsewhere.

He had been in the navy for a year and a half, but until now he had never gone into battle. The hastily repaired Yorktown was going to be the target of Japanese torpedoes and bombs. She was steaming towards people who would do everything in their power to sink her, and sink Chuck too. It was a weird feeling. Most of the time he was strangely calm, but every now and again he felt an impulse to dive over the side and start swimming back towards Hawaii.

That night he wrote to his parents. If he died tomorrow, he and the letter would probably go down with the ship, but he wrote it anyway. He said nothing about why he had been reassigned. It crossed his mind to confess that he was queer, but he quickly dismissed that idea. He told them he loved them and was grateful for everything they had done for him. ‘If I die fighting for a democratic country against a cruel military dictatorship, my life will not have been wasted,’ he wrote. When he read it over it sounded a bit pompous, but he left it as it was.

It was a short night. Aircrew were piped to breakfast at 1.30 a.m. Chuck went to wish Trixie Paxman good luck. In recompense for the early start, the airmen were eating steak and eggs.

Their planes were brought up from the below-decks hangars in the ship’s huge elevators, then manoeuvred by hand to their parking slots on deck to be fuelled and armed. A few pilots took off and went looking for the enemy. The rest sat in the briefing room, wearing their flying gear, waiting for news.

Chuck went on duty in the radio room. Just before six he picked up a signal from a reconnaissance flying boat:

MANY ENEMY PLANES HEADING MIDWAY

A few minutes later he got a partial signal:

ENEMY CARRIERS

It had started.

When the full report came in a minute later, it placed the Japanese strike force almost exactly where the cryptanalysts had forecast. Chuck felt proud – and scared.

The three American aircraft carriers – Yorktown, Enterprise and Hornet – set a course that would bring their planes within striking distance of the Japanese ships.

On the bridge was the long-nosed Admiral Frank Fletcher, a fifty-seven-year-old veteran who had won the Navy Cross in the First World War. Carrying a signal to the bridge, Chuck heard him say: ‘We haven’t seen a Japanese plane yet. That means they still don’t know we’re here.’

That was all the Americans had going for them, Chuck knew: the advantage of better intelligence.

The Japanese undoubtedly hoped to catch Midway napping, in a repeat of the Pearl Harbor scenario, but it was not going to happen, thanks to the cryptanalysts. The American planes at Midway were not sitting targets parked on their runways. By the time the Japanese bombers arrived they were all in the air and spoiling for a fight.

Tensely listening to the crackling wireless traffic from Midway and the Japanese ships, the officers and men in the radio room of the Yorktown had no doubt that there was a terrific air battle going on over the tiny atoll; but they did not know who was winning.

Soon afterwards, American planes from Midway took the fight to the enemy and attacked the Japanese aircraft carriers.

In both battles, as far as Chuck could make out, the anti-aircraft guns had the best of it. Only moderate damage was done to the base at Midway, and almost all the bombs and torpedoes aimed at the Japanese fleet missed; but in both encounters a lot of aircraft were shot down.

The score seemed even – but that bothered Chuck, for the Japanese had more in reserve.

Just before seven the Yorktown, the Enterprise and the Hornet swung around to the southeast. It was a course that unfortunately took them away from the enemy, but their planes had to take off into the southeasterly wind.

Every corner of the mighty Yorktown trembled to the thunder of the aircraft as their engines rose to full throttle and they powered along the deck, one after another, and shot up into the air. Chuck noticed the tendency of the Wildcat to lift its right wing and wander left as it accelerated along the deck, a characteristic much complained of by pilots.

By half past eight the three carriers had sent 155 American planes to attack the enemy strike force.

The first planes arrived in the target area, with perfect timing, when the Japanese were busy refuelling and rearming their own planes returning from Midway. The flight decks were littered with ammunition cases scattered in a snakes’ nest of fuel hoses, all ready to blow up in an instant. There should have been carnage.

But it did not happen.

Almost all the American aircraft in the first wave were destroyed.

The Devastators were obsolete. The Wildcats that escorted them were better, but no match for the fast, manoeuvrable Japanese Zeroes. Those planes that survived to deliver their ordnance were decimated by devastating anti-aircraft fire from the carriers.

Dropping a bomb from a moving aircraft on to a moving ship, or dropping a torpedo where it would hit a ship, was extraordinarily difficult, especially for a pilot who was under fire from above and below.

Most of the airmen gave their lives in the attempt.

And not one of them scored a hit.

No American bomb or torpedo found its target. The first three waves of attacking planes, one from each American carrier, did no damage at all to the Japanese strike force. The ammunition on their decks did not explode, and their fuel lines did not catch fire. They were unharmed.

Listening to the radio chatter, Chuck despaired.

He saw with new vividness the genius of the attack on Pearl Harbor seven months earlier. The American ships had been at anchor, static targets crowded together, relatively easy to hit. The fighter planes that might have protected them were destroyed on their airstrips. And by the time the Americans had armed and deployed their anti-aircraft guns, the attack was almost over.

However, this battle was still going on, and not all the American planes had yet reached the target area. He heard an air officer on the Enterprise radio shout: ‘Attack! Attack!’ and the laconic response from a pilot: ‘Wilco, as soon as I can find the bastards.’

The good news was that the Japanese commander had not yet sent aircraft to attack the American ships. He was sticking to his plan and concentrating on Midway. He might by now have figured out that he must be under attack from carrier-borne planes, but perhaps he was not sure where the American ships were located.

Despite this advantage, the Americans were not winning.

Then the picture changed. A flight of thirty-seven Dauntless dive bombers from the Enterprise sighted the Japanese. The Zeroes protecting the ships had come down almost to sea level in their dog-fights with previous attackers, so the bombers found themselves fortunately above the fighters, and able to come down at them out of the sun. Just minutes later another eighteen Dauntlesses from the Yorktown reached the target area. One of the pilots was Trixie.

The radio exploded with excited chatter. Chuck closed his eyes and concentrated, trying to make sense of the distorted sounds. He could not identify Trixie’s voice.

Then, behind the talk, he began to hear the characteristic scream of bombers diving. The attack had begun.

Suddenly, for the first time, there were cries of triumph from the pilots.

‘Got you, you bastard!’

‘Shit, I felt that go up!’

‘Eat that, you sons of bitches!’

‘Bullseye!’

‘Look at her burn!’

The men in the radio room cheered wildly, but they were not sure what was happening.

It was over in a few minutes, but it took a long time to get a clear report. The pilots were incoherent with the joy of victory. Gradually, as they calmed down and headed back towards their ships, the picture emerged.

Trixie Paxman was among the survivors.

Most of their bombs had missed, as previously, but about ten had scored direct hits, and those few had done tremendous damage. Three mighty Japanese aircraft carriers were burning out of control: Kaga, Soryu and the flagship Akagi. The enemy had only one left, the Hiryu.

‘Three out of the four!’ Chuck said elatedly. ‘And they still haven’t come anywhere near our ships!’

That soon changed.

Admiral Fletcher sent out ten Dauntlesses to scout for the surviving Japanese carrier. But it was the Yorktown’s radar that picked up a flight of planes, presumably from the Hiryu, fifty miles away and approaching. At noon, Fletcher sent up twelve Wildcats to meet the attackers. The rest of the planes were also ordered up so they would not be on deck and vulnerable when the attack came. Meanwhile the Yorktown’s fuel lines were flooded with carbon dioxide as a fire precaution.

The attacking flight included fourteen ‘Vals’, Aichi D3A dive bombers, plus escorting Zeroes.

Here it comes, Chuck thought; my first action. He wanted to throw up. He swallowed hard.

Before the attackers could be seen, the Yorktown’s gunners opened up. The ship had four pairs of large anti-aircraft guns with five-inch-diameter barrels that could send their shells several miles. Plotting the enemy’s position with the aid of radar, gunnery officers sent a salvo of giant fifty-four-pound shells towards the approaching aircraft, setting the timers to explode when they reached their target.

The Wildcats got above the attackers and, according to the pilots’ radio reports, shot down six bombers and three fighters.

Chuck ran to the flag bridge with a signal to say the remainder of the attack force were diving in. Admiral Fletcher said coolly: ‘Well, I’ve got my tin hat on – I can’t do anything else.’

Chuck looked out of the window and saw the dive bombers screaming out of the sky towards him at an angle so steep they seemed to be falling straight down. He resisted the impulse to throw himself to the floor.

The ship made a sudden full-rudder turn to port. Anything that might throw the attacking aircraft off course was worth a try.

The Yorktown deck also had four Chicago pianos – smaller, short-range anti-aircraft guns with four barrels each. Now these opened up, and so did the guns of Yorktown’s escort of cruisers.

As Chuck stared forward from the bridge, terrified and helpless to do anything to defend himself, a deck gunner found his range and hit a Val. The plane seemed to break into three pieces. Two fell into the sea and one crashed into the side of the ship. Then another Val blew up. Chuck cheered.

But that left six.

The Yorktown made a sudden turn to starboard.

The Vals braved the hail of death from the deck guns to chase after the ship.

As they got closer, the machine guns on the catwalks either side of the flight deck also opened up. Now the Yorktown’s guns played a lethal symphony, with deep booms from the five-inch barrels, mid-range sounds from the Chicago pianos, and the urgent rattle of machine guns.

Chuck saw the first bomb.

Many Japanese bombs had a delayed fuse. Instead of exploding on impact, they went off a second or so later; the idea being that they would crash through the deck and explode deep in the interior, causing maximum devastation.

But this bomb rolled along the Yorktown’s deck.

Chuck watched in mesmerized horror. For a moment it looked as if it might do no harm. Then it went off with a boom and a flash of flame. The two Chicago pianos aft were destroyed in an instant. Small fires appeared on deck and in the towers.

To Chuck’s amazement the men around him remained as cool as if they were attending a war game in a conference room. Admiral Fletcher issued orders even as he staggered across the shuddering deck of the flag bridge. Moments later, damage control teams were dashing across the flight deck with fire hoses, and stretcher parties were picking up the wounded and carrying them down steep companionways to dressing stations below.

There were no major fires: the carbon dioxide in the fuel lines had prevented that. And there were no bomb-loaded planes on deck to blow up.

A moment later another Val screamed down at the Yorktown and a bomb hit the smokestack. The explosion rocked the mighty ship. A huge pall of oily black smoke gouted from the funnels. The bomb must have damaged the engines, Chuck realized, because the ship lost speed immediately.

More bombs missed their targets, landing in the sea, sending up geysers that splashed on to the deck, where sea water mingled with the blood of the wounded.

The Yorktown slowed to a halt. When the crippled ship was dead in the water, the Japanese scored a third hit, and a bomb crashed through the forward elevator and exploded somewhere below.

Then, suddenly, it was over, and the surviving Vals climbed into the clear blue Pacific sky.

I’m still alive, Chuck thought.

The ship was not lost. Fire-control parties were at work before the Japanese were out of sight. Down below, the engineers said they could get the boilers going within an hour. Repair crews patched the hole in the flight deck with six-by-four planks of Douglas fir.

But the radio gear had been destroyed, so Admiral Fletcher was deaf and blind. With his personal staff he transferred to the cruiser Astoria, and he handed over tactical command to Spruance on the Enterprise.

Under his breath, Chuck said: ‘Fuck you, Vandermeier – I survived.’

He spoke too soon.

The engines throbbed back to life. Now under the command of Captain Buckmaster, the Yorktown began once again to cut through the Pacific waves. Some of her planes had already taken refuge on the Enterprise, but others were still in the air, so she turned into the wind, and they began to touch down and refuel. As she had no working radio, Chuck and his colleagues became a semaphore team to communicate with other ships using old-fashioned flags.

At half past two, the radar of a cruiser escorting the Yorktown revealed planes coming in low from the west – an attack flight from the Hiryu, presumably. The cruiser signalled the news to the carrier. Buckmaster sent up twelve Wildcats to intercept.

The Wildcats must have been unable to stop the attack, for ten torpedo bombers appeared, skimming the waves, heading straight for the Yorktown.

Chuck could see the planes clearly. They were Nakajima B5Ns, called Kates by the Americans. Each carried a torpedo slung under its fuselage, the weapon almost half the length of the entire plane.

The four heavy cruisers escorting the carrier shelled the sea around her, throwing up a screen of foamy water, but the Japanese pilots were not so easily deterred, and they flew straight through the spray.

Chuck saw the first plane drop its torpedo. The long bomb splashed into the water, pointed at the Yorktown.

The plane flashed past the ship so close that Chuck saw the pilot’s face. He was wearing a white-and-red headband as well as his flight helmet. He shook a triumphant fist at the crew on deck. Then he was gone.

More planes roared by. Torpedoes were slow, and ships could sometimes dodge them, but the crippled Yorktown was too cumbersome to zigzag. There was a tremendous bang, shaking the ship: torpedoes were several times more powerful than regular bombs. It felt to Chuck as if she had been struck on the port stern. Another explosion followed close behind, and this one actually lifted the ship, throwing half the crew to the deck. Immediately afterwards, the mighty engines faltered.

Once again the damage parties were at work before the attacking planes were out of sight. But this time the men could not cope. Chuck joined the teams manning the pumps, and saw that the steel hull of the great ship was ripped like a tin can. A Niagara of sea water poured through the gash. Within minutes Chuck could feel that the deck had tilted. The Yorktown was listing to port.

The pumps could not cope with the inward rush of water, especially as the ship’s watertight compartments had been damaged at the Battle of the Coral Sea and not fixed during her rush repairs.

How long could it be before she capsized?

At three o’clock Chuck heard the order: ‘Abandon Ship!’

Sailors dropped ropes over the high edge of the sloping deck. On the hangar deck, by jerking a few strings crewmen released thousands of life jackets from overhead stowage to fall like rain. The escort vessels moved closer and launched their boats. The crew of the Yorktown took off their shoes and swarmed over the side. For some reason, they put their shoes on the deck in neat lines, hundreds of pairs, like some ritual sacrifice. Wounded men were lowered on stretchers to waiting whaleboats. Chuck found himself in the water, swimming as fast as he could to get away from the Yorktown before she turned over. A wave took him by surprise and washed away his cap. He was glad he was in the warm Pacific: the Atlantic might have killed him with cold while he was waiting to be rescued.

He was picked up by a lifeboat, which continued to retrieve men from the sea. Dozens of other boats were doing the same. Many crew climbed down from the main deck, which was lower than the flight deck. The Yorktown somehow managed to stay afloat.

When all the crew were safe they were taken aboard the escorting vessels.

Chuck stood on deck, looking across the water as the sun went down behind the slowly sinking Yorktown. It occurred to him that during the whole day he had not seen a Japanese ship. The entire battle had been fought by aircraft. He wondered if this was the first of a new kind of naval battle. If so, aircraft carriers would be the key vessels in future. Nothing else would count for much.

Trixie Paxman appeared beside him. Chuck was so pleased to see him alive that he hugged him.

Trixie told Chuck that the last flight of Dauntless dive bombers, from the Enterprise and the Yorktown, had set alight the Hiryu, the surviving Japanese carrier, and destroyed her.

‘So all four Japanese carriers are out of action,’ Chuck said.

‘That’s right. We got them all, and lost only one of our own.’

‘So,’ said Chuck, ‘does that mean we won?’

‘Yes,’ said Trixie. ‘I guess it does.’

(v)

After the Battle of Midway it was clear that the Pacific war would be won by planes launched from ships. Both Japan and the United States began crash programmes to build aircraft carriers as fast as possible.

During 1943 and 1944, Japan produced seven of these huge, costly vessels.

In the same period, the United States produced ninety.