The system evolved by ComSubPac gave us two weeks of freedom in the Royal Hawaiian Hotel. A “relief crew,” complete with skipper—my old friend Eddie Holt—who came with orders detaching me temporarily so that not even legal responsibility for Walrus remained, took over the ship in its entirety. They would see to the completion of our outstanding work items, clean the ship thoroughly after the refit, stand all necessary watches, and turn Walrus back to us as good as new. In the meantime, for two weeks the whole gang of us, crew and officers alike, were billeted in luxury and had nothing to do except lie on the sand or sample the other pleasures of Waikiki Beach.
Jim and I, as skipper and Exec, drew a corner suite with a sitting room between our two bedrooms. The place was nicely furnished, though it was apparent that some of the more delicate furnishings had been removed. Still tacked to the inside of the door was a card giving the prewar rates. Our suite, we immediately noticed, had gone for seventy-five dollars a day. We had been assessed a payment, ostensibly for linen, of one dollar per day each. Our crew, billeted in another wing, got theirs for twenty-five cents a day.
A long, soaking hot bath felt wonderful, after our workout in the fire, and so did the stacks of personal mail which had arrived for everyone. I had several from my mother telling of the doings of the little town in which I had spent my boyhood and of the difficulties of the ration system. There was a note from Stocker Kane, hoping we would meet somewhere in the Pacific, written just before departing on his first patrol; and Hurry, his wife, had also written.
Hurry Kane’s letter was chatty and friendly. She occupied herself with war work, had joined the “Gray Ladies,” took a turn at serving out coffee and doughnuts at the San Francisco USO, rolled bandages three days a week, and in general kept as busy as she could. She made no mention of her loneliness for Stocker, but it was there between the lines—the very fact that she had written to me at all, for the first time after our years of closer-than-average acquaintance, showed that.
The thing which most excited my interest was a paragraph halfway through her letter. “I saw quite a bit of Laura Bledsoe after you all left New London,” she wrote. “Poor girl, having Jim go off to war so soon after they were married was pretty rough on her. She stayed on in the Mohican Hotel for several days—just didn’t seem to know what to do with herself. When she came over to the apartment to help me pack and follow Stocker—that was only the next week—I really felt sorry for her. You men will never be able to understand how it feels to be left behind.”
I debated whether to mention the passage in Hurry’s letter to Jim. There was no reason why I should not, I thought, picking it up. I crossed the sitting room, pushed open the door to Jim’s room, found him sitting half-naked on his bed, smoking a cigarette, with mail strewn all around him. He had received much more than I, and among the pile were many in identical blue envelopes. “How’s Laura?” I asked him.
“Fine. She’s back at her job in New Haven.” Jim stretched his arms, stubbed his cigarette, and flopped back into the pillow. Most of his mail, including several of the blue envelopes, was still unopened and, carelessly pitched on the bed, was now crumpled beneath him. “What’s that you’ve got there?” He wasn’t interested, merely making conversation.
“I just heard from Stocker Kane,” I side-stepped with a half-truth. “He might go to Australia, you know.”
“The lucky stiff! One of my buddies from sub school is down there on the staff. He says there are twice as many women as men around, and they’re all starved for affection. He’s doing his best to help them out, and it keeps him pretty busy.” Jim stretched his arms to either side again, looked up at the ceiling. “Let’s us try to get sent down there, too, skipper. He can’t handle all of that stuff by himself.”
“There are probably twice as many women trying to stay out of your friend’s reach as there are cooperating with his campaign to keep them from being affection-starved,” I growled. I stuffed the letter into a pants pocket.
The Royal Hawaiian was wonderful. Three free meals a day, hours of lying in the sun, surf-boarding, playing billiards, wandering around the streets of Waikiki—it was the ideal life, a wonderful rest. After twenty-four hours of it we were bored stiff.
I took to spending hours in the submarine base, watching the operations board, reading the dispatches as they came in, wandering around the Walrus, and watching the progress of the work on her—much to the annoyance of Eddie Holt, who as Relief Commanding Officer was serving his apprenticeship for his own command. I had wondered why it was that there were so many people always out to welcome every submarine in from patrol or from the States, and likewise to see them off. After I had met my third I ceased to wonder.
Jim’s reaction was nearly the same as mine, except that I did not see him much around the submarine base. He took to disappearing for long periods “in town,” as he put it. And the rest of our crew went their own ways, each according to his own instincts and desires. Hugh and Keith, lively young fellows that they were, quickly found friends among the families still living in their homes in the Moano Valley, Waikiki proper, or elsewhere in the vicinity. And nearly every time I happened to be in town I would run into a Walrus sailor or sailors—sometimes in pairs, more frequently accompanied by a heavily tanned Hawaiian belle.
Despite the fact that he and I shared a suite, I practically never saw Jim at all during the last week of our “recuperation period.” But the mystery was explained when the submarine base threw one of its monthly dances on the BOQ terrace, and Jim showed up with a girl whom he introduced as Joan Lastrada.
She was dark, with masses of black hair, deeply tanned, and very slender. Her face was rather too thin, I thought, giving her full sensual lips an almost oversized appearance. The dance was one of those difficult affairs where there are at least ten men to every woman, and it was hard to get away from the determined stag line. I cut in on Jim once myself, nearly gasped aloud when Joan stepped into my arms from Jim’s reluctantly released embrace.
It was not only her lips that were sensual, I decided, after someone else had taken her away. She was sensual all over. Jim gave her new partner less than half a dozen steps before he claimed her back, and then he led her into a corner as far removed from the stag line as possible. But keeping Joan undiscovered must have been about as hard to do as keeping a gold mine under wraps, and the determined stags, conspicuously Keith and Hugh, gave him no peace. Half an hour before the party had been scheduled to break up, I realized Jim and Joan were no longer there.
Walrus was not quite the same when we moved back aboard—more of the bridge superstructure had been removed and a 20-millimeter gun had been installed at either end of it. The Admiral was of the opinion that we should be able to take care of ourselves in case we ran into one of the wooden armed sampans which had been appearing in ever-increasing numbers around the home-island waters of Japan. Some of the boats had been replacing their three-inch antiaircraft deck gun with a broadside four-inch or five-inch also.
Our Operation Order this time directed Walrus to proceed to Dutch Harbor for briefing, and thence to Kiska, which was to be our patrol area. The Japs had landed at Kiska and Attu and attacked Dutch Harbor at the same time as they had made their attempt on Midway. There were those who even claimed that the Midway attack was a feint, and that the real objective of the enemy the whole while had been to gain a foothold in the Aleutians. This was a bit hard to believe, considering the size of the fleet he had sent to take Midway, but the theory sounded plausible to some.
The evening before Walrus got under way, I had dinner again with Captain Blunt and the Admiral in the latter’s quarters in Makalapa, as the Navy housing area was termed. Several other officers were also present, two of them skippers of boats just in from Australia. The talk was desultory, mainly anecdotal, but through it all ran a grim undercurrent. The United States, recognizing Germany as the principal menace, was indeed devoting its strength and resources to the ETO, just as President Roosevelt had said we would. We in the Pacific would have to wait our turn as patiently as we might. It was a hard outlook to be in sympathy with.
Things were rough indeed in Australia, according to the skippers just back from there. There was hardly a family but had one or more male members already in the war against the Axis before the Japanese struck. Now they felt defenseless, exposed, ripe for the plucking should the enemy make a determined effort. Our own Guadalcanal invasion, and the campaign in the Solomons, were their only hopes of staving off an invasion. From their point of view the Japanese had so far shown themselves invincible and were only a few miles away in Malaya, Sumatra, Java, and New Guinea.
It was with thoughtful concentration that I attacked the Operation Order next day, as Diamond Head faded over the horizon. The Japanese had landed on Kiska, and were presumably preparing for further conquests in the Aleutian area. Their supplies were undoubtedly being brought in by submarine and transport, though so far little was known about the size of this traffic. Our job would be to reconnoiter, report any suspicious or unusual movements—any movements of the enemy at all, in fact—and, of course, try to intercept as much of the supply traffic into and out of Kiska as we could.
The Operation Order went on to caution us that United States fleet units also were operating in those waters, and that Japanese fleet units might well be expected. We were to attack immediately any unidentified war vessels encountered, having due care to the possibility of their being friendly and the necessity for adequate recognition signals. We would be informed, so the order said, of the proximity of any friendly vessels or planes.
It didn’t seem to be a very satisfactory system to me, and still didn’t after we had arrived at Dutch Harbor with the Walrus, and had our briefing as promised in the Operation Order. The idea of operating in the close proximity of our own forces, worrying—in addition to the normal quota of worry about the intentions and movements of the enemy—over what our own ships were doing, where they were going, and above all, whether they would be able to recognize us as friendly, was not too pleasing. We had all read entirely too many treatises about the manner of treating suspected submarine contacts: Full-scale all-out attack instantly, no waiting around. Said the doctrine, “The only good submarine is a dead one.” Fine and dandy—but what if it had been on your side?
I need not have worried. The thirty days we spent patrolling off Kiska amounted to the most wasted month any submarine spent during the whole war. The weather was lousy; no other adjective could describe it. It was cold, freezing or nearly so, always rough except when very close into land, overcast, foggy or misty almost all of the time—and not once during the whole period did we sight an enemy ship.
Once our surface forces planned an assault, and a bombardment was carried out for several hours. We had hoped that some Japanese action might have been forthcoming as a result, that perhaps some ship might have attempted to escape or enter the harbor. And for a time, as we read the operation dispatches received, it appeared that we might be stationed in a position where such vessels would be forced to pass near enough to give us a chance for an attack. We had grown rusty in our attack procedure—tempers had flared over trifles, our daily drills had been performed perfunctorily; try as Jim and Keith might, they could not evoke interest in them, and my efforts along the same line produced little better result. Now, with the prospect of action to relieve the deadly boredom, we all took on a new incentive. For a week we drilled with a will, spent longer than usual at some of the operations which required polishing, overhauled the torpedoes once more, specially, so that there would be no hitches on their account, and then the whole thing, so far as we were concerned, fell apart into little useless pieces.
It must have been one of the last preparatory dispatches of the operation, and Dave and Hugh’s initial eagerness to decode it gave way, less than halfway through, to disgust. When finally typed in the smooth the message said:
WALRUS PROCEED TO POINT ONE HUNDRED MILES DUE SOUTH OF SOUTHWEST CORNER KISKA RPT ONE HUNDRED MILES DUE SOUTH OF SOUTHWEST CORNER KISKA X REMAIN ON SURFACE X FRIENDLY FORCES REQUIRE YOUR SERVICES NAVIGATION MARKER X DURING AND AFTER ASSAULT BE PREPARED TO VECTOR IN AND ASSIST SURVIVORS DAMAGED AIRCRAFT.
We didn’t even have the satisfaction of seeing any of our surface units, the cruisers and old battleships, sweep by en route to the bombardment. It was nice weather, for Kiska, with visibility about five miles, and we knew when the task force went by because they told us by radio. But as far as seeing anything was concerned, the day was exactly like all the others we had spent in the area.
Jim’s suggestion was probably about right: Our task-force commander, worried over the possibility of enemy submarines, must have insisted that the only U.S. submarine in the vicinity be withdrawn. If any submarines were to be detected, he didn’t want to have to worry over recognition procedures before permitting his destroyers to do their stuff.
We went through the motions of the remainder of our time on station without further incident. Tempers grew short again, harsh words were exchanged and apologized for, and Russo wore himself out trying to inject a little variety in our monotonous existence. After a full month cruising aimlessly around Kiska, our radio brought not the release we had anticipated but a directive to remain for three days longer pending the arrival of the submarine sent from Pearl Harbor to relieve us.
Our relief was to be the Cuttlefish, one of the first fleet boats, antedating even the Shark and Tarpon, and notable primarily for her slow speed. The three extra days of waiting seemed particularly long to live through, and I remember strongly resenting the fact that we had to wait while she touched at Dutch Harbor for a briefing, just as we had. During the third day we edged over to the limit of our area, the closest point toward Pearl, and waited impatiently. When the notification arrived that Cuttlefish had at last arrived off Kiska, we were, within minutes, going south at full speed.
But the patrol had one good thing to be said for it: Almost from our departure from Pearl, I realized that Jim had changed at last. He seemed entirely his old relaxed self, and his support during the trying thirty days of inactivity off Kiska was heartening. I could sense it—almost touch the difference—and that contemplative awareness was gone.
This time there was no avoiding Midway. All of us could testify, after three weeks among the sand dunes, that even the gooney birds looked human.
As we completed the refit and prepared for our third patrol, new faces for the first time began to appear among our crew. A rotation policy had been set up whereby certain numbers of every crew were to be left ashore after each war patrol, with the looked-for result that the entire crew of men and officers would have been rotated after a reasonable number of patrol runs. Lobo Smith was gone, and so was Wilson, our Chief in Charge of the engine rooms. Tom had protested at losing his right bower, as he put it, but the needs of new construction back in the States took priority. A first-class Motor Machinist’s Mate named Kiser was promoted into Wilson’s shoes and Jim, after some inquiry, found the means to make him a Chief Petty Officer so that he could have the added rank and prestige to go with his new responsibilities.
Our officer complement remained the same, however, except that a new Ensign was ordered to us—and everybody except Jim and me received a promotion. Tom became a full Lieutenant; so did Keith. Hugh and Dave found their names in a promotion AlNav to the rank of Lieutenant, Junior Grade. Our new wardroom occupant was Jerry Cohen, fresh out of the submarine school and as green as grass. Though he had been sent to us for training—so said the ComSubPac Personnel Officer—it was obvious that he had to have a job and a battle station, and that some revision in our setup was therefore necessary.
Jim, Keith, and Tom, of course, stayed in their departments as before. Jerry Cohen, a short, slightly built lad, became assistant to Keith in the gunnery and torpedo department and took over Dave Freeman’s chores with the commissary department. He also relieved Hugh on the navigational plot in the conning tower at battle stations, freeing that young man for direct help to Tom Schultz during such times.
We had two days of training, “refresher training” it was called—and then for two days more we loaded, fueled, and provisioned the ship. On the eighteenth day after arriving at Midway from our second war patrol, Walrus got under way for her third, bound this time for Palau and the area between it and New Guinea. As a matter of curiosity I had looked into the situation off the Bungo Suido, partly to see what Stocker had run into while there, and had found ample evidence of Bungo Pete’s continuing effectiveness. The Nerka, somehow, had not met with him at all. Perhaps he had been otherwise occupied or under overhaul. But the next submarine in AREA SEVEN had been horribly knocked about and had to return to Midway for emergency repairs. And Turbot, the next one after that, had not been heard from for a long time and became one day overdue from patrol at the time of our own departure from Midway.
After the Aleutians, Palau was a pleasure cruise, warm and balmy, most of the nights star-lighted, the sea smooth. Except for one thing: where our Aleutian patrol had been notable for lack of activity, Palau gave us all we could handle, and then some, nor did it wait for our arrival.
We ran all the way to Palau on the surface, except for one day spent submerged in the vicinity of Guam so as not to be detected by planes flying patrol from there. We crossed our area boundary at midnight, were speeding southwest in hopes of getting in sight of the main island, Babelthuap, before submerging for the day, when Jim called me to the bridge. I was up there within seconds. He had slowed down and we were swinging to the northward.
“There’s a ship, Captain!” he pointed to the southern horizon. I had taken the precaution of keeping red goggles on whenever I went below at night, even when lying down for a few minutes’ doze on my bunk. Hence I could see the object he was pointing out almost right away. It was a small vessel, short and stubby, with a lot of top hamper and a single tall, thin stack. A small freighter, alone and unprotected.
“Call the crew to battle stations torpedo, Jim,” I ordered. He dashed below eagerly. A second later the musical chimes of the general alarm rang forth, and the scurrying of feet told me that Walrus was girding her loins for action. Tom came to the bridge, relieved Keith of the deck; the latter ran below to his TDC. On night surface action Tom had nothing to do unless we dived, hence we had decided that he would relieve whoever happened to have deck at the time, and back me up on the bridge as OOD.
This indeed seemed a good opportunity to try the night surface attack technique. Our SJ radar had been worked over and much improved during our last refit, and a talk-back circuit had been rigged up between the conning tower and the bridge so that I no longer had the nuisance of trying to shout down through the open hatch or of relaying orders and information by messenger or through the bridge speaker. Word would come up from Jim via the general announcing speaker, as before. In a moment it blared:
“Bridge, conn testing!” I picked up my mike: “Loud and clear, conn; how me?”
Jim’s steady voice came back in reply: “I hear you the same!”
A few seconds later Jim again: “Bridge, the ship is at battle stations. No range yet to the target.”
We were still too far for radar to get a return echo from the target. “Give him eight thousand yards,” I called back. “Angle on the bow looks like starboard—about broadside—give him starboard ninety! Stand by for a TBT bearing.” So saying, I jammed my binoculars into their socket on top of the instrument, twisted it around until the other ship loomed in the center of their field, and pressed the button. In the conning tower the relative bearing would appear on a dial repeater near the TDC, could be set into it exactly as a periscope bearing might. Similarly, Jerry Cohen would set it up on his plotting sheet.
Without radar ranges, a few bearings alone would give us an idea of the enemy’s course and speed. If two of them could be paralleled by accurate ranges, we would have a definite solution, the essential information necessary for accurately angling our torpedoes.
The objective, of course, was to get the enemy’s course and speed quickly, run in close and finish him off before he spotted the submarine or had other opportunity for escape. We were still making slow progress on our new course, to the north. To get a radar range it would be necessary to approach a little closer. “Jim, I’m going to change course toward the target to get within radar range,” I called down, and directed Oregon to put the rudder full left, calling for more speed as I did so.
Snorting from her four aroused diesels, Walrus wheeled in the smooth water toward the enemy ship and began to close the range at an oblique angle.
“Radar contact!” The speaker blared beside me. Then Jim’s steady voice. “We have him on the radar, Captain. Range six thousand. Give us a bearing!”
I went through the business of transmitting a TBT bearing below. Approximately a minute later I did the same thing again. In the conning tower they would get a range at the same instant, and the resulting plot would give us enemy course and speed, which was all we needed to know.
It was time to sheer out again, run on up ahead, attain our firing position, and get ready to let go our salvo; but this was where the roof caved in on us. I was looking at the target through my binoculars, had him clearly in my field of view, when suddenly his whole side erupted into light. At least four simultaneous flashes—two amidships, one on the bow and one on the stern. Seconds later there came a tearing whistle close overhead. As if by magic, four white blossoms appeared in the water, two alongside to starboard, one just astern, one a few feet ahead and to port. Foaming water deluged our forecastle. We had been trapped, as neatly as you please, and by the oldest trick in the book.
I fumbled frantically for the bridge diving alarm, pressed it hard, twice. “Clear the bridge!” I yelled. “Take her down!” Our vents popped, almost simultaneously. Air whistled out of them, casting thin geysers of vapor up through our deck slats. Our four lookouts tumbled down from their perches up on the shears and scuttled for the hatch, Tom right behind them. Our bow planes up forward, normally housed against the side of the ship while on the surface, began to turn out and down into the “rigged out” position for submerged operation.
I swung back to the enemy, just in time to catch the second salvo—a bit more ragged than the first. Four more white blossoms in the black ocean, no closer than before, thank God! He had some kind of salvo-fire system, and was no doubt firing as fast as he could reload his guns—in a way a fortunate circumstance for us. Also, I noticed, his length had decreased and he was stubbier than ever. Obviously he had turned toward, was racing for us as fast as his engines would drive him.
Our deck dipped, went under. I was the last man left on the bridge. Time for one last look—a third salvo coming—not at all together this time. The night was ripped again—once—twice—three times . . . “BLWHRURANGGG!” I saw nothing but stars and bright flashes. A hit! We had been hit! There was no other conscious thought. I was knocked against the side of the bridge, felt, rather than saw the open hatch to the conning tower yawning at my feet, Rubinoffski standing in the middle of the hole with the bronze lanyard gripped in his hand, the sea rushing up the side of the conning tower, gurgling and splashing. I lurched to it, sort of half-stumbled into the Quartermaster’s arms, felt myself unceremoniously pushed aside and down as, intent upon only one thing, Rubinoffski jerked the hatch lid down with one hand, spun the dogging hand wheel with the other. Not a drop of water came in, but it could not have been far behind.
I would have landed head first on the deck at the foot of the ladder had not a couple of pairs of hands gathered me in on the way down. “Skipper, are you all right? What happened?” asked a faraway familiar voice—Jim’s.
I felt shaken, though otherwise all right. “We’re hit!” I gasped. “Check———” That was as far as I got. Jim whirled, dropping me none too gently, shouted down the hatch to Tom.
“Surface the boat! Blow everything!” He snatched the telephone hand set from its stowage, slammed it to his face. “Silence all along the line,” he rasped. “We’ve been hit by gunfire! All compartments report!”
There was silence, too. All you could hear was the sound of the vents going closed again—at least they apparently still worked—and the high-pressure air whistling into the ballast tanks. In a moment I could feel the down angle begin to stabilize. It had been increasing rapidly, now it remained steady, but in a second or two it would start decreasing and we would shoot to the surface.
But what would we do then? We’d stand no chance against the gun power of our adversary. Even if our pressure hull had been pierced, we’d be better off trying to control the flooding and stay submerged—of course, it all depended on how big the hole was. I could feel my wits returning, pulled myself together, stood up. Jim spoke rapidly, covering the mouthpiece of the phone as he did. “Don’t worry, skipper. Blowing is just precautionary. If the hole is too big to stay down, at least we’ll have started the boat on the way back up. If it’s just a small one———”
He broke off, listening. “Make your reports in order, from forward aft, unless you’re flooding!” he snarled into the phone. He listened another second or two. It could not have been more than thirty seconds all told since the hatch was shut behind me. With our emergency dive, however, Walrus had built up a terrific downward momentum. She was already well past periscope depth, with the down angle barely starting to come off.
“Tom! Open your vents and resume the dive!” Jim bellowed the order down the hatch. “Take her on down—there’s no water coming in!”
Tom was quick to countermand his instructions of less than half a minute before. The vents banged open once more, and the high-pressure blowing stopped. Now I could hear the roar of the erstwhile trapped air streaming out of the suddenly vented ballast tanks, and the bow and stern plane motors groaned as they reversed the planes once more.
“Conn!” It was Tom’s voice, up the hatch. “Conn, aye, aye!” Jim answered him.
“Conn, I blew both safety and negative! Permission to vent them!”
“Granted!” shouted Jim. You couldn’t tell that safety tank vent had been added to the others releasing air, but you certainly could tell negative, because it could only be vented into the ship, not overboard like the others. Having been blown dry at a deeper than usual depth, it had much higher air pressure than usual in it, and the resulting instantaneous increase in internal atmospheric pressure within the ship was distinctly unpleasant. Not that we minded it.
Our momentum problem was now in the other direction. We had actually started Walrus on the way back up, even though the down angle of the dive had never come to the horizontal. All of our initial downward momentum, upon which the ship depended to get into the depths rapidly, had been lost. Now we would have to drive her forcibly down again, and in the meantime our friend with the surprise broadside battery would be coming with a bone in his teeth. He would have a beautiful marker as to where we were and the direction we were going—in the huge froth of air bubbles he would find.
One way to fix that. “Left full rudder!” I said to Oregon. At least we could turn toward him, perhaps surprise him by getting under him and away before he looked for us, certainly make his job a little harder.
O’Brien pursed his lips and shook his head. No chance for him with the uproar going on. I slung the extra pair of sonar earphones around my neck, leaned over for a look at the depth gauge. Eighty feet, just beginning to increase slowly! The inclinometer mounted below it showed twelve degrees down angle. Maybe that would be enough.
I felt a hand reaching for me. O’Brien. He pointed to his sound receiver. Red flashes. I put the phones over my ears, heard the pinging. No doubt this chap carried depth charges and knew how to use them.
One hundred feet. We were going down faster but I could hear screws now, fairly high-speed ones, not slow, chunking merchant propellers. Jim was silent, looking at me. I nodded gravely. “We’re in for a depth-charge session. Better get set for it!”
As Jim gave the necessary orders I concentrated on listening. We slowed down to creeping speed as we approached our depth, got there in plenty of time after all, and sat there cursing the very name of this Jap who had so messed up our entry into his area. Of all things to fall for—a “Q-ship!” I winced at the thought.
He was pretty good, too, with his depth charges. WHAM! . . . WHAM! . . . WHAM! . . . WHAM! Four good ones, shaking up our guts, making the insides of the ship ring. I felt a little weak in the knees. WHAM, WHAM, WHAM, WHAM, WHAMWHAMWHAMWHAMWHAM. He was good. Wiping the moist palms of my hands frequently on my trouser thighs, I tried to figure out his maneuvers, outguess him as he crisscrossed overhead. He was nearly as good as Bungo Pete—might well qualify as his little brother. He had not been able to catch us quite so near to the surface as Bungo had, but he was doing well nevertheless. And, of course, it takes only one depth charge to finish you, if it’s close enough.
For hours Walrus crept along at deep submergence, while our enemy battered at her tough hide with depth charges. Hours during which we twisted and turned, listened to his propellers—a destroyer’s high-pitched “Thum, thum, thum, thum, thum,” twin screws, rather than the slower and more sedate chugging of the single merchant propeller this type of ship should have had. Try as we would we could not shake him. His horrible resounding pings came steadily through our earphones, kept the dial of the sonar receiver flickering with red flashes. First he would come along one side, pinging coldly and steadily, evaluating; then he would cross over, either ahead or astern, do the same thing from the other side. When finally satisfied he would pass overhead—or nearly so—and drop.
Just a few at a time, not many, aimed as accurately as he could. We would listen to the Q-ship’s propellers, try to determine when he was starting a run for real, when only to change position. Then, at the proper psychological moment, we would put our rudder over, speed up, or slow down a little, try to make him miss. WHAM! WHAM! WHAM! WHAM! WHAM! Successively louder, then diminishing again as he straddled us with his patterns. We got so we instinctively knew when the closest charge in any given pattern was due, and would cringe inwardly until we had felt it and survived. We were up against a professional and everyone in the ship knew it. We went about our duties with parted lips and staring eyes, and the peculiar parched-skin condition, contrasting strangely with the continual sweating of my palms and the general high humidity inside the ship, was not entirely due to loss of body fluid.
Give him credit for putting us hors de combat, for it was long after daybreak before we got clear of him and were able to come back to periscope depth, there to wait until night before surfacing. There might be a plane waiting to pounce on us, we reasoned, or some damage which, having once surfaced, might prevent our diving again upon necessity.
Before we finally got Walrus to the surface, a match would not stay lighted, nor would a cigarette burn. The slightest exertion brought the sensation of being badly out of breath, and a dull lassitude settled over all of us which took a determined effort to fight off. The first few breaths of cool, fragrant night air fixed that, however, and we turned to with interest to see what our topsides looked like.
The shell, probably about four inches in size, had struck the after part of the bridge and exploded, tearing off a chunk of the cigarette deck and wrecking the 20-millimeter gun. Several pieces of light plating hung loosely, but the structure beneath, our main induction valve and the associated piping, was unscathed.
It was good that we had not surfaced prematurely, however, or been forced to dive before making a thorough inspection and removing the damaged plating. Once we had opened the main induction valve, a jagged section of steel framing hanging loosely nearby in all probability would have jammed it open. It was over an hour before Tom pronounced us ready to submerge again. And we had to prohibit use of the cigarette deck for the remainder of our time on patrol.
Two nights later it was our turn. We sighted a cloud of black smoke against the eastern horizon, shortly before moonrise, and took off after it. A couple of hours later the smoke had turned into two ships proceeding in company, about a mile apart. This time the radar produced a range of four miles as its initial offering, showing that it was working better, or that the ships were bigger, or both. We tracked them for a short time, got their course and speed—twelve knots, due north, zigzagging. There was no escort.
We chose a position ahead of the two ships and slightly on their starboard bow, waited for the next zig. As soon as it came, our own rudder went over too, and the increased power song of the diesels back aft sounded choked off as the heel-to-starboard drove two of their mufflers underwater. It was, as usual, clear, calm, and warm. Stars twinkled overhead, millions of them. The moon was now well up, its glow reflecting off the somber black sides of our targets. The horizon to the north was blackest, which was where we were coming from. But visibility all around was entirely too good to take any chances. We had to come in fast and get it over with.
We kept our bow turned exactly on the leading ship, changing course to keep it so as he came into torpedo range, and we increased our speed to “full”—not everything wide open, but close to it. We would shoot three torpedoes at the first ship, three at the second, and save the four in our stern tubes for whatever might develop during the ensuing confusion while we retired.
Swiftly the three ships approached each other. We, the hunter, already carrying a scar where their protectors had drawn first blood; they, the hunted, trapped in their turn. Swiftly we drew closer, rapidly they grew larger in my binoculars. I could feel my pulse racing, my nerves tightening up. We were fully committed now—they were as big and broad as a barn, bigger than a barn. I could see them clearly: standard merchant types, not very different from the Q-ship of two nights ago; every detail etched itself in my mind. Just a little closer—get in close, so close you can’t miss—here’s the leading ship, old-style tall-stack freighter making lots of smoke . . . he’s nearly broadside to, now—surely they can see us . . .
“Range!”
“One-five-double-oh!” Fifteen hundred yards. I had my binoculars in the TBT bracket, was holding a dead bead on the vertical stack, had been for several long seconds.
“Shoot!”
“Fire!” I could hear Jim’s bellow from the conning tower, and the sea was calm enough to let me feel the slight jolt as the fish went out. Three jolts. Three fish. Their white streaks stretched relentlessly, reaching for the first target.
“Shift targets!” I swung the TBT to the rear-most vessel.
“Shifting targets, aye, aye!” I could picture Keith setting in the new bearing, turning the crank as fast as the cramped space would permit his arm and hand to move. Since course and speed were the same as for the first target, he needed to change only bearing and range. “Set!” came from Jim.
But we were not set at all. The second ship was too far away, too far astern of the leading one. “Left full rudder!” I shouted the command down the hatch to the helmsman and into the mike at the same time. We swung rapidly to the left, leaving our torpedo tracks running on to their destiny in a long, thin fan. There were about thirty seconds more to wait.
“Rudder amidships!” as our swing approached the best attack course for the new target. “Steady as you go!”
“Steady as she goes!” echoed Oregon up the hatch. He put the rudder a little right to stop the swing, caught it, centered the wheel. “Steady on two-two-eight!”
“Let her go two-three-oh!”
“Two-three-oh, aye, aye!”
At a sharp angle we raced toward the second ship. It was so far behind that our attainment of a perfect firing position for the first had brought us much too fine on the bow of the second. But there was nothing to do but ride it on through.
I was suddenly conscious of the breeze whistling in my ears and the swish of the water as we tore through it. Walrus pitched gently. Far up ahead she drove her snout down toward a small roller, stopped before she got under it, lifted her bow again with a gentle, tantalizing withdrawal, lowered it softly once more. The slats of her wooden deck were clearly outlined by the white water washing over our pressure hull, several feet below, alternately black, solid-looking, the next moment ephemeral, etched black-on-white in delicate detail, every fore-and-aft plank precisely lined out, each thin steel crossbeam an interlocked solidity which had neither depth nor length. The pulsing roar of the diesel exhaust was the pounding beat of my heart as, rolling just a little from side to side, we careened onward.
This was infinitely more dangerous than the attack on the first ship. All this one had to do was turn only a little toward us, only thirty or forty degrees, and we would be in a bad way. It would be bow to bow, then, and we would have to expose our own broadside to sheer off.
“A light!” Tom Schultz and the starboard lookout were both shouting, pointing to the first ship. We were broadside to broadside, just past each other on opposite courses. There was a light on his deck, about the size of a flashlight, pointed over the side. I looked hard—our torpedoes should have reached there—sure enough, there were their wakes. Three up to it, one only going on beyond. As I looked I could see some kind of disturbance in the water, as if something were thrashing alongside. Another flashlight joined the first, and then a clearly visible cloud of steam issued from the forward edge of his stack. A moment later we heard the whistle.
I cursed aloud. Damn the torpedoes! Damn them and their designers to bloody hell forever! Why couldn’t they build an efficient torpedo? Why did we have to carry the thing all the way into enemy waters to prove it wouldn’t work! A consuming fury possessed me.
“Jim,” I said bitterly into the mike, “we got two hits; good shooting. None of them exploded.”
An answering whistle from the other ship, our present target, and now the situation was critical indeed. I watched him narrowly, suddenly tense. With our ineffective torpedoes, if he should see us, turn toward to ram us . . .
But he didn’t. He turned away, presented a perfect target, and we fired everything left in the forward tubes at him. It looked as if all three hit, and at least one exploded—right under his stack. His steel hull folded up like paper, bow and stern rising high, center going under water, stack still vertical in the middle, rising now out of roiled-up water.
We put our rudder left again, then right and circled by him. I called Jim and Keith up to see and together the four of us stared at what we had done. He was gone beyond help, no doubt of that, even if help could have reached him. As we looked, the broad V became sharper. The sides rose, became more vertical, then folded up completely together, forecastle to poop deck with the stack crushed between, and sank from sight. The bow half was several feet shorter than the stern half, and the last thing we could see as the wreck took its final dive was the big bronze propeller, framed in the rudder bearings, still spinning slowly.
Seconds later a heavy explosion came resounding through the water.
“What’s that?” cried Tom.
“Dunno,” muttered Jim. “Maybe it’s his boilers letting go when the cold water reached them.”
“The boilers should already have been flooded, from where we hit him,” I ventured. “Maybe it’s some compartment collapsing from the increased pressure.”
“Not with all that noise!” Jim looked incredulous. “That was an explosion!”
“Maybe an explosion inward. Ever blow up a paper bag and pop it?” But we were arguing from ignorance, and more important matters needed our attention. A muffled reverberation from somewhere ahead called them to mind. Gunfire.
“That’s the other ship!” Jim spoke before anyone else. “He went off to the northeast!”
It made sense that he should carry a gun, but under the circumstances it might have been smarter of him not to have fired it. Jim and Keith raced below again, the former to plot our interception course, the latter to superintend reloading and checking of torpedoes forward.
We made a long run of it, keeping well out of sight of the fleeing ship, closing in only occasionally for a radar check of his latest position, guiding ourselves by the sporadic booming of the gun on his forecastle or stern. The moon having risen higher, it was now even brighter than before, shedding an all-pervading radiance which, to our night-adapted eyes, seemed as bright as day. Since the target had been alerted and would doubtless observe maximum precautions, these two factors combined appeared to rule out any chance of our getting close enough on the surface to make an attack. It would have to be done submerged.
After three hours of chase, having attained a satisfactory position on the fleeing freighter’s bow, Walrus quietly slipped beneath the waves. We had obtained a fair solution of the zigzag plan, now much more radical than the previous one, and needed only the last-minute refinements. One thing we had decided, however, based on the five hits we had obtained on the two ships previously and the single explosion resulting: We would make sure of him this time. We would shoot four torpedoes, all aimed to hit, and we would hold the two left forward as well as the four aft in reserve for a quick second salvo if the first also proved a dud.
The night was dark enough to make one thing unnecessary—raising and lowering the periscope for frenetic moments of observation. I kept it up, its tip only a few feet above the waves, and waited for the zigzagging freighter to cross our bow. It was just as Captain Blunt had said, a long time ago: “After you get in front of him, anyone ought to be able to hit the target. The problem is getting in front.”
We had gotten in front, and we bided our time until his zig-zag threw him right across our bow. We had opened the outer doors on only four torpedo tubes—at the last possible moment—“Shoot!” I said, watching the huge bulk of the ship glide past.
“Fire!” Jim. “One’s fired, sir!” Quin. I could feel the torpedo going out. Someone was counting out the seconds. Up to ten. I shifted the periscope cross hair from the target’s stack to his forecastle.
“Shoot!” I said again.
“Fire!”
“Two’s away, sir!” Periscope wire now on the stern, bisecting the deckhouse there. “Shoot!” The jolt of the third fish—cross hair on the stack for the last one. “Shoot!” Four white streaks in the water, only a thousand yards, half a mile, to go. The first one looked like a sure bull’s eye, right under the stack. The white streak of bubbles, clearly visible against the gray-black of the uneasy sea, drew unerringly to the point, got there. I could see the white froth where the side of the ship intersected it, held my breath for a frozen second, let it out with a sigh. This was exactly the way it had looked during all these many years of training in Long Island Sound or off Pearl Harbor. This would have been scored a bull’s eye all right; the torpedo would have been recorded as passing exactly where aimed, under the target. There was no difference, and I could feel the unreal “time reversed upon itself” sensation, which I had experienced upon entering Pearl Harbor, lying dormant, just under the surface.
“Time for Number Two fish, skipper.” Jim spoke quietly, into my ear. I swung the ’scope slightly.
White froth at the bow also. Plus something else. A splash—a small geyser of water and spray rose halfway to the target’s deck. Something had exploded, not the warhead, however, or at least only a small fraction of the TNT supposed to be inside it. Seconds later we heard the sound of it, clearly audible in the conning tower. “Pwhuuung”—the same sound we had heard some months before in AREA SEVEN.
“Jim,” I said furiously, “Make a note in the log. Low-order explosion. Possibly air flask!”
“Aye, aye, sir! Time for the third torpedo, skipper.”
This one would be aft. I swung the ’scope to the right, caught the torpedo wake going into the rudder and propeller declivity in the counter stern. This time it exploded; there was a flash of light from right out of the water, accompanied by a cloud of white spray, so fine that it resembled steam. The freighter shuddered under the impact. The stern was partially obscured by the cloud of mist, though there was no high-rising column of water such as some of the patrol reports had described. I had an instantaneous impression of great force being contained within the sides of the ship, almost as though the stern itself had been beaten in.
“WHRANNGG!” There was no mistaking this noise. It was a combination explosion, unlike a depth charge, for it included the smashed sheet-metal sound of crushed and crumpled steel.
“It’s a hit! We’ve hit him!” Jim’s excitement was plain to hear. I braced myself for the blow over my shoulders. It did not come, however; instead there was Jim’s voice again: “Can I have a look, sir?”
“Wait a minute,” I growled. “How about the fourth fish?”
“Time right now—mark!”
It should go right into the area under the stack, like the first one. I looked for the wake, found it. It terminated just forward of the stack, between the stack and the bridge structure. It, too, looked exactly like a drill torpedo, set to run under.
But it made no difference, for as I watched in astonishment the bow of the ship suddenly swooped into the air. The stern had already disappeared under water, and the weight of the submerged portion had lifted the bow of the freighter right out of the water. It could not have taken ten more seconds before the ship was vertical, straight up and down. She had gone so fast that I was certain I could still see some forward momentum to the up-and-down hulk. Things—gear, debris of all kinds—fell from the bridge into the sea in a cascade of junk. At least two items were human, and they moved as they fell.
“Let me see, please!” Jim was beside himself with eagerness, almost pushing against me.
“Here!” I relinquished the periscope.
“Stand by to surface—Surface!” I shouted. The whistle of air, the upward heave of Walrus’ hull, and she started up.
A shout from Jim. “She’s sinking! God—look at her go!” Keith had slipped away from his TDC, was standing alongside Jim. With the conning tower darkened for better periscope visibility I could not see his expression, but his very stance communicated eagerness to see, too.
I gave Jim a gentle shove. “Here, let Keith look too.”
“She’s going fast!” Keith spoke rapidly, echoing Jim. Suddenly he jerked back, grabbed Quin by the arm, propelled him to the periscope. “Take a look, quick!” The Yeoman jammed his face to the eye-piece. Keith gave him a few seconds, pushed him away, turned the instrument over to Rubinoffski who was hovering eagerly nearby. Jerry Cohen was next, and even O’Brien, the sonarman, received a split-second glimpse.
In the meantime the familiar sounds of coming to the surface could be heard, and finally the voice of the Diving Officer started shouting out the depths from his control-room depth gauges. “Twenty-six and holding!” He called at last.
“Open the hatch!” I rasped at Rubinoffski. Instantly he whirled the hatch hand wheel, snapped the latch back with almost the same motion. The heavy bronze hatch slammed out of his hands, crashed against the side of the bridge. Released air inside the boat howled out—firing four torpedoes builds up a not-inconsiderable air pressure—and the Quartermaster was lifted bodily off his feet and began to sail up the open hatch. Years ago the old Salmon had lost a man overboard in just this manner. It was at night, too, and they had never found him. I barely managed to grasp Rubinoffski around one ankle as he went by, hung on for dear life with my other hand and my own toes hooked under the ladder rungs. Bits of debris, dirt, cork chunks from behind some of our instruments, pieces of paper, and even someone’s carelessly stowed white hat went shooting by past us, and then the storm of wind subsided. We leaped up the remaining ladder rungs, got our binoculars to our eyes within seconds.
There was nothing to be seen. Fearful that I had somehow gotten disoriented, I swung the glasses all around through a full circle, but there was still nothing.
“Nothing in sight, Captain! I can’t see him, sir!” It was less than two minutes of the time that our torpedo had struck.
Our lookouts boiled up to the bridge, followed by Tom and Jim. “Where is he? Where is that son-of-a-bitch?” The excitement of battle was in Jim’s voice. I tried to make my own calm and dispassionate:
“Gone, Jim. He’s already sunk!”
Jim was bubbling over. “How about that!” he shouted, pacing around the confines of the undamaged part of our bridge, staring over our port bow, which was the last observed bearing of the vanished ship.
A cry from the port forward lookout. “Something in the water, sir!” He pointed.
In the intermittent hollows of the shallow sea could be seen several dark masses clustered together. Wreckage, perhaps a boat or raft or two. “Where are they?” Jim rushed forward, aimed his own glasses briefly in the indicated direction, dashed below. In a moment he had reappeared with a bandolier of ammunition slung around his shoulder and one of the ship’s two Browning automatic rifles clutched in his hands. “Just in case we need it,” he explained carefully. He drew one of the previously prepared twenty-cartridge clips from the bandolier, fitted it to the magazine of the gun.
Walrus wallowed in the ocean, making barely steerageway, the turbo-blowers just beginning their whining lift to seaworthiness. A few hundred yards away the group of wreckage could now be more clearly seen, still black and essentially formless. One boat, maybe another, were distinguishable. I thought I could make out movement in the Stygian mass and Jim, Tom, and I leveled our glasses at it.
Afterward I found it hard to explain why we did not leave forthwith, for there was no advantage to be gained from looking over the unhappy victims of our success, only possibly trouble if one of them happened to have a gun and in defiance chose to use it. Nor was it chivalry, for we could not help them, and they were certainly close enough to Palau to make their way there without excessive difficulty. It must have been a subconscious force within us, some insatiable need or curiosity or motive of vengenace.
“Left full rudder,” I ordered. With our slow speed this would put us a little closer. Two boats now could be made out clearly, plus some dark objects which were most probably life rafts, and miscellaneous pieces of floating debris.
“Rudder amidships!” I could hear the groan of the hydraulic mechanism. From the pump room beneath the control room came the thump as the hydraulic accumulator replenished itself and cut off, and the screaming of the blowers welled out of the hatch in a never-ceasing wail. We coasted gently closer. Now people could be distinguished in the life rafts, sitting motionless, crouched over, faces turned toward us. There were many bobbing heads still in the water, hanging on to a barrel or hatch cover, or to the ropes lining the sides of the rafts. In the lifeboats no one could be seen, though the dark interior seemed to be solid with a crawling, jostling life-movement.
A wave of passion shook me. This filthy, spineless, crawling thing was the enemy! This, the perpetrator of the Pearl Harbor crime! This the killer of innocent women and children in the Chinese war, and now again in the Philippines! I could feel the savage lust for revenge. I had never hated the Japanese so much as now—now that I could kill them, crush them, smash them to small bits, ram their fragile boats with my ship, grind them beneath her ribs of steel . . .
“Yaaaah! You Jap bastards! How do you like it now! Go back and tell your —ing emperor and his buddy Tojo about this!” Jim cupped his hands, was screaming at the top of his lungs in the general direction of the enemy survivor group as they slowly came alongside.
There was no movement, no answering hail, no indication of having heard, much less understood. Suddenly Jim reached for the automatic rifle, really a portable machine gun, raised it to his shoulder before anyone could stop him. He pulled back the bolt, aimed into the middle of the nearest lifeboat. I reached him just in time, grabbed the gun. His face was livid. “Stop it, Jim!” I hissed savagely into his face. “Stop it, or so help me I’ll———” I never did know what I’d have said, for Jim, breathing hard, released his grip on the gun.
“Thanks, skipper,” he whispered after several deeply drawn breaths, “I must have flipped my lid—I’m sorry! I-I-I don’t know what came over me—” his voice trailed off.
I could sense the revulsion of feeling taking possession of him, and felt the same within myself, as the boatloads and raftloads drifted past. Stricken faces stared at us or turned away to hide from us. The pathetic figures huddled together—not for warmth, for it was warm enough, but for fear of us. To them, probably only simple merchant seamen, we must have seemed malevolent, inscrutable, the perpetrators of all that was evil. It was a wonder, in fact, that there were so many of them. Their ship had sunk so rapidly that there could hardly have been time even to get topside after the explosion of the torpedo.
Tom put it into words: “They must have been sitting in the boats and rafts waiting for us to attack that ship!”
There could be no other answer. Furthermore, the lifeboats must have simply floated off as the decks went under—certainly they could not have used davits and lowering gear. The sinking of their consort, and the previous unsuccessful attack in which two dud torpedoes had already hit their ship, had no doubt provided ample incentive for all hands to get into the boats. Even so, those on the forecastle of the ship must have had a bad time of it, for any boats or rafts located there must have been hurled over a hundred feet into the water!
It was, Jim estimated, about one hundred and fifty miles to the nearest island of the Palau group, Babelthuap. The kindest thing we could do for the survivors was to leave them alone and to depart the scene before some hothead in their group unlimbered a gun he might happen to have carried with him. We headed northward, doubled around to the southwest after losing sight of them.
Palau is a most frustrating area to try to patrol with a single submarine. In the first place, there are two entrances to the main ship harbor of the archipelago, one on either side of the island chain, and keeping a watch on either one is a full-time job for one boat. If a ship is attacked near either entrance, or if presence of a submarine is known or suspected, it is a simple matter merely to use the other one until the scare dies away. Under the circumstances we felt as if the enemy retained the initiative.
Certainly, our first two days in the area were not characteristic of the remainder. We went for a week without sighting another ship. Then it was a huge, new tanker making high speed. We pulled out all the stops, ran our battery almost flat, never got within shooting distance. We tried patrolling on the surface, out of sight of land, changing our locale radically whenever there appeared the possibility of our having been detected by a plane. Days went by in which we slowly wandered about in an oily, flat sea. The oppressive heat of the sun beat down upon us until our bridge watchers, at least, gave the lie to the theory that all submariners looked pale and wan when they got back from patrol. But we saw no enemy ships.
We had already decided to head back to close-in submerged patrolling around the entrances to Palau harbor, when finally a convoy showed up. Four ships, this time, and we sighted them shortly after daybreak on a calm, clear, hot day without a vestige of cloud, hint of rain, or shadow of a breeze.
Two Chidori-class small destroyers or large submarine-chasers, depending on how you wanted to look at them, furnished the escort group. We ran up a periscope, maintained a watch on the enemy ships through it, and ran on the surface at full power to get in front of them, so that we could submerge and lie in wait. They were zigzagging, which made it more difficult, and because of their high speed it took us all day. After we did dive, which was only an hour or so before sunset, the absolutely flat sea caused any kind of periscope exposure to take on the aspect of a severe risk of detection. And the two little Chidoris didn’t make it easier, for in preparation for the inevitable depth-charging, turning off our ventilation shot the temperature within the sub to fantastic heights. One hundred thirty-seven degrees in the hot engine rooms and maneuvering room, someone reported.
The approach was routine, without incident. We got inside the escorts, fired three torpedoes at each of the two leading ships, were swinging to bring our stern tubes to bear, when all hell broke loose. The harbinger was O’Brien. He turned a pale face to me right after the sixth torpedo was sent on its way: “High-speed screws, running down our port side!”
I spun the periscope. Nothing. Putting it down, I grabbed for the extra earphones and heard it. No doubt about it; O’Brien was right. It sounded very much the same as one of our own torpedoes—the same high-pitched whine I had heard hundreds of times. It crossed our stern, came back up the starboard side, veered to the left as if to cross our bow. That was enough. My hair tingled as I thought of the secret magnetic exploder in the warheads of our torpedoes. No doubt that this was one of our fish, running awry, in circles. If it passed too close, or overhead . . .
“Take her down, Tom! All ahead emergency!” No time to wait to see the results of our other torpedoes. We’d be lucky to get out of this ourselves! Walrus clawed for the depths, the depth gauge slowly, ever so slowly, indicating safety gained.
The screws approached again, from the port side again. Didn’t seem to be running down toward the stern this time, might curve away before getting to us, though—O’Brien’s face looked positively pasty as he manipulated his control handle. “Coming right at us!” he whispered to me.
I nodded. It all depended if we could get deep enough in time. The screws became louder, still louder—and still on the same relative bearing. Probably the arc of the circle the misguided torpedo was making just happened to be such that it kept up with our increased speed.
“Right full rudder!” I said. I had refrained from giving the order until now for fear that the slowing effect of the rudder might also slow our dive to the shelter of deeper depths. Maybe now it would be all right. The depth gauge showed eighty feet. Still wearing the sonar phones, with the horrible little propellers beating into my ears, I looked about me. For several seconds I had forgotten the remainder of the conning tower party. They stood in hypnotic attention, riveted upon me. In his hand Jim held the stop watch with which he had intended to time the torpedo runs to the targets . . . I could see the slender hand moving around the dial, it was almost straight up toward the winding stem—one minute since we had fired.
Time, indeed, stood still. Every second was a heartbeat. I imagined I could hear the ticking of the stop watch—an impossibility because of the earphones and the fact that I was listening to the hypnotizing rhythm of our own juggernaut come back to seek us out. The high whine came closer, louder, still closer—sweat standing out on the face of O’Brien, cold sweat. Salt taste in my mouth; I licked the edges of my lips. They were dry and salty, too.
WHRAAANNGGG! The explosion seemed to burst my eardrums! The conning tower danced before my eyes. I felt myself flung bodily against the sonar receiver. Walrus lurched madly, her hull resounding, her deck plates drumming beneath our feet. Startled eyes looked widely at me, and at the familiar instruments about them. Jim’s mouth moved. I couldn’t hear him. I ripped off the earphones, still couldn’t hear. There was a roaring in my ears. I cupped my hand behind them.
“What?” I said—or tried to say. My mouth made the motions, my vocal chords felt normal, though a bit dry, but I could hear nothing come out. I tried again. “What?” Then I realized I was deaf. O’Brien was holding his hands to his ears, rolling his head from side to side in helpless pain. He had forgotten to tune down his sonar receiver, and he and I had gotten the full force of the amplified explosion. No wonder I was deaf!
Jim’s lips moved again, but this time he was addressing Quin. The Yeoman spoke into his telephones. “All compartments report,” his lips seemed to form.
Before he could receive answers, three more explosions came in. “WHAM! . . . WHAM!” . . . a little wait, then “WHAM!” for a third time. These I could hear clearly, though they seemed not nearly so loud as the explosion just preceding. Three hits, they sounded like—ordinarily a cause for rejoicing, but hardly worth noticing for the moment. Quin was receiving his reports. My ears were recovering, for I heard his own: “All compartments report no damage, sir!”
We were still going deep, which it seemed appropriate to keep on doing until we arrived at deep submergence. Then we quieted everything down and waited for the depth charges. They came, too, but they couldn’t compare in loudness with the near-hit of our own torpedo nor the workout from the Q-ship, and after several hours of evasion we slowly crept away.
We had no torpedoes left forward, and received orders the next night, as a consequence, to return to Midway again. Our time on station was nearly done anyway, but the orders to Midway were a big disappointment. It was unusual to send a ship there twice in succession. Many of the crew had had their hearts set on a trip south of the equator to Australia.