66
I shoulda seen they was shit the day they showed. Green snotnose shit, enlisted men and officers both. We were in the buildingways up at Mare Island near San Francisco. They was fixin everything that was ripped up by the kamikazes at Okinawa, the hull and the water supply and the bridge, every damned thing on the ship. This was the summer of ’45, just before the war ended, and I was a third-class gunner’s mate on the U.S.S. Indianapolis. Bet you never heard of her, right, Devlin? Well you ain’t alone. Most nobody ever heard of her, then or now. The Navy don’t want it out, what happened to her. The goddamn politicians don’t, either.
But she was a death ship, Devlin: a great big heavy cruiser, that was what we call tender. That means she was about as heavy above the waterline as below, loaded down with all sorts of shit that wasn’t there when they built her. Just walkin the deck, you knew it wouldn’t take much ocean to tip her over. The Navy brass didn’t give much of a fiddler’s fuck. All those Annapolis boys loved cruisers cause the next stop was usually a battle wagon and that was the top in them days, before the carriers became the big deal. So they gave you a big So What? if you told them the ship didn’t right itself too quick after a sharp turn. They didn’t care she was tender. They even made her the flagship of the Fifth Fleet, and did all kinds of ceremonial shit whenever Admiral Spruance came aboard. And they gave her a captain, McVay was his name, a gray-haired guy with coal-black eyes, always smilin like a goddamned politician.
Yeah.
The Indianapolis.
They thought it looked good in pictures, I guess, though it wasn’t worth a fuck at sea. So in July, we were gettin her ready, the war over in Europe, thinkin we was all gonna be part of the invasion of Japan. I wunt too big on that. I seen the way the Japs fought at Okinawa and figured theyd take a lot of us with them in Japan. Say what you will about the Jap, but he’s a fightin man, sailor. Still although they was beat, and must’ve known it, the Japs wouldn’t quit, so there was nothin to be done except invade. It was a war and we had to finish it and in the Navy, on the Indianapolis, we’d play our part like everybody else, tender ship or no tender ship.
The trouble was most of the old crew was dead now or scattered around, and one bright morning along comes this new crew. Talk about haulin green shit. Two hundred and fifty wiseass kids fresh out of boot camp and thirty officers out of the Academy and I knew right off we gonna have us some trouble. They made up almost a third of the crew and they showed up like they was goin to a Fourth of July picnic, instead of a war against a real tough son of a bitch. I knew we’d have to break their asses real good. But almost as soon’s they were piped on board, we got orders to get ready to ship out. In twenty-four hours. The ship wunt ready. They wunt enough chow. The livin quarters wunt finished. Didn’t matter. We had to go. And it was all because of the goddamn bucket and the goddamn box.
They swung them on board in the morning, usin a giant goddamn gantry. The bucket weighed maybe three hundred pounds, cast iron, sealed, and we welded it right to the deck, holdin it down with straps. It couldn’t move or slide. If the ship went down, so did the bucket. The box was a crate really, eight feet high, and they took it below decks and wedged it in real tight. But then they called me and Big Nose Bernardi below decks and we met these two army guys, lookin like perfessers with guns, and they opened the box and took out a steel cylinder maybe three feet long and had us carry it into Captains Country, where Captain McVay gave us part of the mess, sealed off, and watched as we strapped this cylinder to the deck and welded the straps tight. The army guys never said a word. They stayed with the cylinder and never came above decks again.
Well, we pulled anchor at three ayem on July 16 and sailed out of San Francisco and started haulin ass. There was all sorts of scuttlebutt about the box and the bucket. Most of the crew thought they had to contain germs. That we was gonna use germs on the Japs. Or some kind of gas that would paralyze every last Jap in the country, something we captured from the Germans. It wunt till well after the war that I learnt that the bucket and the box was full of parts of the atom bomb.
Now out at sea, we were supposed to break in the new crew. Not for any atom bomb. For war. Suppose to do it right off. Dont give em tahm to think. That was the general plan. Real simple. Well, we didn’t get to break em in. There wunt tahm and the ship was a complete fuckin mess. Somehow we picked up a bunch of hitchhikers, officers mostly, all tryin to git to Pearl, which was our first stop. Their luggage was all over the damned deck. Worse, some of em was Army and didn’t know shit from shinola about livin on a ship. And the green kids was the real problem. Some of em was moonin over women. Some even cried for their mommas. They got lost and dint know port from starboard. Real green shit.
Things got so bad, there was a fire on deck cause these green shitbirds left suitcases next to one of the stacks. Suitcases! On a Navy ship. And they was no room in the chow hall, so people ate all over and left food and plates layin around and I seen roaches too. I swear. Cockroaches. On a flagship of the United States Navy.
Nobody paid much attention though. That was just housekeepin. And Captain McVay was haulin ass for Pearl. The Indianapolis was thirteen years old and beat up. But he got her doin twenty-nine knots. We tested the systems. Radio. Radar. There wunt any sonar, though, and that hurt us later. There just wunt time to install it. We was haulin ass with the atom bomb. When we hit Pearl that Monday morning, we discovered that we broke the damned record. Two thousand and ninety one miles in seventy-four-and-a-half hours. I’m still amazed.
But there wunt tahm for celebration in Pearl, for taking pictures, and bragging to reporters. We let the passengers off, and then we were told to get ready to git under way. And seen again that we could have bad trouble. I actually seen some of that green-shit crew start to cry. They wanted to get off. They wanted to call their girlfriends or their mommas. They wanted liberty when they haddin even done nothin yet. They dint want to hear we had no tahm. They dint want to hear we were going to fuckin war.
So we lifted anchor and started out for some little goddamn island called Tinian.
I yelled and hollared, I said we gotta do basic drills, we gotta do abandon ship and fire and rescue and anti-aircraft and man overboard. Nobody listened. I think maybe the captain thought he was gonna be part of history and all he had to worry about was posing for the pictures. And besides, we were in safe water. There wasn’t a Jap for a thousand miles, everybody said. We’d do the trainin later. After Tinian. When we got to Leyte in the Philippines … Well, I did whut I could.
We made Tinian on Friday. It was one of those islands I used to see in the fillums at the Mosque Theater in Montgomery during the Depression. You know, fine ladies in grass skirts and some rummy doctor layin in a hammock with a bottle under the palm trees. There was a landing strip for airplanes but no dock for ships the size of the Indianapolis. So we had to unload the box and the bucket onto an LCT out in the open sea. We cut the straps on the cylinder and put it in the box and started the job. But the wire was too short and I remember that goddam box swingin around in the breeze, six feet above the LCT. And then all them snotnose kids started jeerin. But we got it done. The mission was finished. At least that’s what we thought. We delivered the goddam box and bucket, and now all we had to do was beat Japan.
We sailed west, with a stop at Guam before going on to Leyte. And at last I started bustin balls on the housekeepin. Some shitbird of an officer had ordered 2500 life jackets for a crew of twelve hundred and they was layin all over the deck so I had them tied and stacked against the bulkheads. I had them clean up all the dirty food. I had them paintin and chippin. But most of the time it was like shovelin shit against the tide.
Wait till Leyte.
That’s what they all said.
We’ll get shipshape after Leyte.
Yeah.
After Guam we passed a spot called The Crossroads and went into the Forward Zone. That meant we were no longer under the command of Pearl Harbor. Now we reported to Leyte. And I dint like the conditions out there. I felt it from the minute we went through The Crossroads.
To begin with, we was alone.
Usually, a heavy cruiser sails with four or five other ships, and that was specially important with the Indianapolis cause she was tender. But we was alone. In the Pacific. That’s a big fuckin ocean, Devlin. Another thing I didn’t like, there was a rule that when you wuh in the Forward Area, you could only do sixteen knots. To save fuel. The third thing was the basic thing.
The crew.
That damned green crew.
Well, we left Guam at nine in the morning on Saturday and even at sixteen knots we should’ve reached Layte about eleven in the morning on Tuesday.
A weekend cruise.
Yeah.
Saturday was peaceful. I pulled a twelve to four and on Sunday morning I slept in. I remember lunch wunt half bad. Hamburgers and mashed potatoes. I couldn’t finish the potatoes, and in the next few days I thought about them uneaten potatoes a lot. A lot, sailor. In the afternoon I sat in the shade on deck while the green kids got cholera shots for the Philippines. In the afternoon, the weather changed. There was a haze on the sea now and a heavy chop. We were followin the normal zigzag pattern—normal that is in the Forward Zone, where you want to fuck up the other guy’s listening devices, just in case he’s around somewhere.
I wished we had sonar.
I wished we wunt alone.
That night I had an eight to twelve. It was fuckin hot. I remember walking through the quarters when I went on duty and noticin a lot of watertight doors open. I wondered who in the fuck was in charge of them and I went up on deck, pissed off, needin a smoke, followin the smell of the coffee pot. The deck was disgustin. Sailors had pulled mattresses and cots on deck and were lyin around bullshittin and sleepin. Hundreds of them. There was only one air conditioner on board, down in sick bay, and the Captain didn’t give a rat’s ass where they slept, I guess. I saw some guys shootin craps in a compartment and told them to make sure the light dint show and kept thinkin: There’s too many doors open.
I went up on the bridge and looked out for a while, standin on the side. For some reason, we had stopped the zigzag. We were going due west. The sea was pretty calm. There was a quarter moon. I smoked half a pack of Camels, goin up and down and around the ship, fore and aft, port and starboard. The guys on deck stopped their bullshittin and grabassin and went to sleep.
And maybe cause it was quiet, maybe cause we wuz alone, I don’t know why: for the first tahm in years, I started thinkin about home.
I had a wife back home once, married when we were both sixteen, and we used to talk all the tahm about gettin us a little house somewhere beside a lake so we’d always see a piece of water. I wondered what happened to that woman that was once mah wife, whether she married someone half decent, whether she had kids (we didn’t), whether some new fella gave her what I never could give her.
You see, she was a good lovin woman. It wunt her fault we split. The truth was, I just couldn’t take her lovin. Somethin in me. Dont’ know what. Couldn’t take her huggin and kissin and lovin. And besides, I couldn’t stay put. I couldn’t stand the idea of plowin them Alabama fields every spring and every fall for the rest of mah fuckin life. I always felt that way. Saw them fields kill my daddy and my uncles and make my momma old. When I married that lovin woman, I thought I wouldn’t feel that way no more. But I did. The feelin just never went away. I’d see the dirt fields and feel already dead. Even now, close as we are to Alabama from Pensacola, I never go home. Never. Never want to see it again.
So one night while my lovin woman slept, I packed a bag and took a bus to Mobile and joined the Navy and never seen that lovin woman again.
But sometimes she’d come to me in the night. And out there on the Indianapolis, doing the eight to twelve, I wondered about her and whether she ever thought about me and I was tryin to remember all the details of her face and the way she smelled on them hot Alabama nights, rich as dirt, and what her hair felt like, and all the things about her body, I was thinkin all them things when the first Jap torpedo hit.
The goddamn thing just tore the bow off the fuckin ship. Forty feet ripped right off, anchors, capstans and all. The niggers all lived up there, stewards and messmen, and not one of them lived. Thirty-two of em. And the fleet Marines. Thirty of them just died. The ship rose up in the air and fell hard with a bright red flash and a column of water as high as the bridge and I was holding on to a rail and then someone was screamin and then, maybe three seconds later, the second one hit.
Midships.
Right about where the bridge was on the starboard side, and that knocked me to the deck and then everyone started goin apeshit.
I pulled myself up and grabbed a phone off the bulkhead, but it wasn’t working. Nothin electric was workin. No lights, no sound, and I thought: Please God make sure the radio aint hit, make sure Sparks is gettin out the location, make sure someone knows we been hit, cause we’re out in a great big fuckin ocean. I saw a kid run by bawlin and then knew we were still plowing ahead, eatin the fuckin ocean through that hole where the bow used to be and I immediately saw all them open doors in my head and knew that belowdecks sailors were dyin.
There was gray smoke everywhere now, smellin like burnt paint. Then I saw Captain McVay comin at me through the smoke. He was ballsass naked, carryin parts of his uniform and tryin to get to the bridge. He didn’t say a word to me, but he looked at the sea and the green kids runnin all over and up ahead where the bow was already underwater and fire was runnin across the deck and I knew what he was thinkin: We’re gonna have to give her up.
I felt us list a few degrees and heard some godawful noises from belowdecks and then the Captain was gone into the smoke and I could hear him yellin, shut the engines down, shut down the goddamned engines.
I pulled on a kapok life jacket and tied it tight and started moving aft. There were scared kids everywhere, not knowin what to do, where their battle stations were, but knowin, like sailors do, even green-shit recruits, that they were goin into the sea.
I turned some of them around, told them to get to the fan tail, tie on life jackets, get ready to go. I tried to help some guys get the whaleboats out of the chocks, but then we listed another six or seven degrees, and one of the guys lost his grip and went into the sea and the boats were hanging beyond our reach. And I could see others jumpin in, some without life jackets, some just in skivvies, cause they’d been sleeping when the Japs whacked us. A guy sat on the deck, his whole body black and burnt. A corpsman was giving him morphine, but then we listed again, and the burned guy started slidin away.
There were maybe five hundred sailors on the fantail, now, all half dressed. None of them had flashlights or guns or knives. And the ship was still driving forward. There were a lot of officers runnin around now, all the green shitbirds from the Academy, and they were all yellin about stoppin the ship, like it was a truck on a road someplace. They were useless. Most of em didn’t even know how to find the fuckin engine room never mind go down there and shut off the engines. A few kids started going off the fantail. I yelled to the others to get the floater nets ready, these great big nets with floats attached. Then there was a big jolt. The whole fuckin ship just twisted, and we went over another twenty-five degrees, the port side high up in the air, and kids were fallin all over the ocean. Along with equipment and bunks and all that loose gear that had littered the deck. The number 3 screw was still turnin and I saw two kids hold hands and jump off the fantail and get chopped to pieces by one of the propellers. The company bugler went into the sea, holding the goddamned bugle.
It was a mess.
A real fuckin mess.
Then I started climbin up the deck. It was like the whole world turned on its side. What I used to walk on was now a wall and I had to get up the wall. I pulled myself over the top and found I was standin on the side of the ship. There was maybe a hundred other sailors doing the same thing. Later I learned we got hit at 12:02 and the ship went down at 12:18.
Sixteen minutes.
It seemed a hell of a lot longer than that.
I stood on the port side, and then just walked straight ahead and stepped into the sea.
I started swimmin hard, trying to get away from her, afraid of suction. I’m a good goddamned swimmer, but I could barely move in the water. And then I knew why. It was full of thick black fuel oil. I tried goin under the oil and made some time and came up and looked back. The Indianapolis was layin real low in the water. I could hear shouts. A few screams. And I thought I was still too close. That the suction would pull me down. I didn’t know. I’d never had to abandon a ship before. But I looked back and all I could hear from her was the lappin of waves against the steel hull and then she just slipped away under the sea.
No suction.
No whirlpool.
She was just gone.
Then … hell, I aint afraid to admit I was scared. I was alone in the sea, covered with oil. I was afraid the SOS never got off the ship. I was afraid the Japs would come to the surface and shoot the shit out of us. I was afraid of being alone in the biggest goddamned ocean in the fuckin universe. I didn’t know if any rafts had been cut loose and I didn’t know how many others were in the sea with me and whether I’d find them.
Then somethin hard bumped into me. I grabbed for it. A crate of potatoes. I held on to that and then a part of a desk floated by and I held that too, an arm on each one, just floatin, savin my strength. I could hear voices everywhere but I couldn’t see anyone. I heard a kid screamin for his momma. Someone was prayin too, the good old Baptist shit. Then a kid come along, swimmin, no life jacket. I told him to grab the piece of desk.
It ain’t enough, he said. I ain’t strong enough.
Grab the motherfucker, I said.
And he did and drifted off. Later I found the desk but not the kid.
I held on to that potato crate as long as I could. But the potatoes must’ve started takin on water and it started ridin lower. I tore a slat off and started dumpin the spuds, shoving a few inside my shirt. I didn’t think after that. I just floated for the rest of the night.
In the mornin, I could see other sailors. Maybe a hundred and fifty of us, scattered all over the ocean. And not a raft among us. I learned later that about eight hundred went in the water and some of them had rafts, including the captain. But we were scattered over miles of ocean because the ship kept goin after she was hit. We were so low in the water we couldn’t see where the rafts were and nobody had flares. Nobody had food either. I saw an orange float by and grabbed it and shoved it in my shirt along with the two potatoes. I was looking for the rest of the potatoes when a guy bobbed right up to me. His face was black from the oil. And worse. He was fuckin charred, boy. His eyelids were burned off his eyes and he couldn’t see anything. He said to me, What is this?
And slipped under the sea.
In the daylight, it looked like a sea full of niggers. Everybody was covered with oil. Some guys were in uniform but others didn’t have shirts or even pants. We started movin toward each other. And I saw that some guys didn’t have life jackets either. The sun started risin, the biggest hottest most orange sun I ever saw.
Then I heard a guy scream, looked over, saw him tear off his life jacket and go under. That was the beginning.
I started yellin at them all: Don’t drink the sea water. Whatever you do, don’t drink it. I knew that drinkin sea water was death. First you go crazy and then you get sick and then you die. I told the ones closest to me to pass it on: Don’t drink the fuckin sea water. And then I started trying to calm the ones near me. Sure, I said, the wireless must’ve gone off. And if it didn’t, as soon as we don’t show on Leyte, they’ll come lookin for us. Don’t worry, I said. Stay calm, I said. Don’t use up your energy. Most of all, don’t drink from the sea.
I gave two of them a potato.
Then the strange shit started.
First of all, guys started goin blind. Later on I heard this was called photophobia. Comes from the sun, the oil, the reflection on the ocean, all combined. I saw three guys screamin they couldn’t see anything. Then I thought about myself. With my skin, I wouldn’t last the day. I was covered with oil. But if I didn’t do something the sun would still get me. I saw a guy float by face down in the water. The back of his head was shredded. I unleashed his jacket and then tied it over my head like a bonnet. It didn’t work perfect. You see my skin here? You see these scars? You see where the nerve ends was just burnt off? Well, I didn’t get that jacket for a bonnet, it mighta been worse.
Late in the afternoon that first day, Monday, the sharks came.
We saw the fins, just like in a movie. Three of em. Circlin around us. The first thing they hit was one of the dead guys out on the edge of the group. Just smashed into him and pulled him under. But they wasn’t finished. One of the kids suddenly screamed, the goddamnedest bloodcurdlin scream I ever heard, and then he was gone. Blood mixed with the oil. The others started thrashin around, splashin and kickin, but I remembered somethin from some magazine saying the best thing was to just lie on your back very still. The shark sees you kickin and he thinks you’re already done for and you’re an easy kill. I told this to the ones near me and flopped over on my back. I felt somethin bump me and then go away and then another godawful scream and I just lay there for a long time.
I was layin there when I saw the plane. Not too high. Maybe three, four thousand feet. Everybody else seen it too. And we start shoutin and yellin and beating on the oily ocean. But the plane just kept on goin. It never came back. And I thought: The SOS never left the ship. And I was scared. Never said a word to the others, never said that if the message got off, there’d be a dozen planes here, circlin in the sky. Never mentioned any of that. But knew it.
The day was scaldin. I sealed my mouth, afraid of the sea water. Held it so tight my muscles hurt. The sharks must of been full. They didn’t come back either. We all lolled there in the water, just taking it. That night, we heard another plane. Then I saw star flares fired from somewhere on the ocean. That was the first time I knew for sure that there were others out there. And if they had flares they had Very pistols and if they had Very pistols then somebody had found a raft. The pistols were part of the gear on every raft. And I thought, the planes had to see that. Durin the day, maybe the ocean was like some big mirror if you looked at it from the sky. But at night, the flares meant that people were down here. They couldn’t miss us. Now they’d come for us. I bobbed in the sea and heard someone start to sing.
Pardon me boy
Is this the Chattanooga choo-choo …
And someone else said, Track Twenty nine, and another, Well, can you give me a shine. They were happy. They’d seen the flare and heard the plane and they were sure now we’d be found. In the morning. As soon as it got light.
But the plane didn’t come back in the mornin, or the mornin after that. And then people started going crazy. They must have been drinkin the sea water. Or if they wunt, the sea water was gettin into their mouths anyway and down their throats.
The craziness came in waves. Some ensign said that there was an island only a mile away, with palm trees and freshwater streams and beautiful girls like Dorothy Lamour. He got a dozen guys to follow him and they all started swimmin away and we never saw them again. Another guy said that he could see the Indianapolis right below us, about thirty feet down, and there was fresh water down there, hundreds of gallons of it, and Betty Grable was on the deck and everything was beautiful. I told him that the bottom was 10,000 feet down. He said You’re crazy, man, said, Look, said, There it is, the ship! He stripped off the life jacket and started swimmin down and three other guys did the same and that was the end of them too.
A lot of guys started fightin each other, they’d be punchin and thrashin around and beatin at the ocean and each other and then this brown shit would start burblin up from their mouths, and they’d be dead. Some guys had knives. They used them to keep the food for themselves. They used them to get fresh life jackets. They threatened officers with them. There was no discipline, no rules, no Navy regs, no feeling of being in this thing together. It was every man for himself, for four fucking days and nights. You think human beings are decent? You think human beings love their neighbors? Go out in the ocean with them sometime. Eight hundred guys went in the water when the Indianapolis went down. At the end, only three hundred were left.
It went on and on. I ate the orange but was afraid of the salt water on the potato and threw it away. By the second night, the kapok lifejackets were gettin waterlogged. We were ridin lower and lower in the sea. I started playin mind games, trying not to go crazy, tryin to stay alive. What time was it? Yesterday today was tomorrow. Right this minute was yesterday’s future. Night will become dawn. But when does dawn become morning and what makes afternoon different from morning and when does it happen and why are we all here in this fuckin ocean which has no beginning and no end except when the fuckin sharks come to get us? I thought like that.
Finally I thought if I didn’t want anything then it wouldn’t matter if I died. So I said to myself over and over, I don’t want anything, I don’t care for anything, I don’t love anything or anyone or anyplace. I’m nothin. I’m just here on the ocean. A speck. Bein alive, that was nothin. Dead, I’m nothin.
And that way I was able to live.
We saw more planes high in the sky and they never came back and that was nothin. We saw a squall in the distance comin across the ocean and we thought we’d have fresh water in our mouths and then the squall turned and the rain went away to the west without coming near us and that was nothin. I saw guys keel over and die and that was nothin. I saw a guy with a knife cut another guy’s throat for his life jacket and that was nothin. Prayin was nothin and day was nothin and singin was nothin and night was nothin.
And then on Thursday, a PV-I flew over and circled and circled and finally landed on the water, bouncin, skiddin, hittin the tops of waves and settlin.
We were saved.
I couldn’t cheer. Only my nose was above water. I couldn’t get excited.
I was saved.
I was alive.
Nothin.
Only later, after we were picked up and taken to a can named the Doyle, only then did I want to live. They took us to Peleliu and the hospital. I drank too much water and puked and ate too much food and puked. I slept for eighteen hours. And when I woke up I knew that if I stayed in this man’s Navy, I wouldn’t ever again be in a place where green snotnosed kids panicked and died and got other people dead.
You think I’m a shit, don’t you, Devlin?
Maybe I am.
Maybe I’ll always be a shit.
But I wunt born a shit. Maybe I left somethin out there in that fuckin ocean. Maybe I’ll never find it again. I know I sure ain’t gonna find it on land. Hey, git your ass up off the sand, sailor. We gotta git back to the base.