Someone was lifting me into an upright position and then patting my face, none too gently.
“Sir? Sir? You wounded?”
I opened my aching eyes. Two grimy sailors in wet, oil-soaked dungarees had ahold of me. I blinked several times and then looked over their shoulders at the spectacle of the entire Pacific Battle Fleet either aflame, upside down, or barely afloat.
“What the hell happened?” I croaked.
One of the sailors, a petty officer third class, stared at me with frightened eyes. “The goddamned Japs, that’s what happened,” he said. “Now: we gotta go. Are you injured?”
“No, I don’t think so. Except for my hands,” I said. I looked around at the mountain of steel on which I was sitting. “I was inside. Jesus!”
“Okay, sir?” the petty officer said. “C’mon, we gotta get you down into the P-boat. Then we gotta get over to mainside. We got lotsa casualties in the boat. You ready?”
I blinked a couple of times. Ready? Ready for what? Then the pair of sailors took me by the shoulders and we all three slid down the hull of the overturned battleship to the personnel boat that was waiting for us. Barnacles ripped my khaki trousers and the backs of my legs. The personnel boat was grossly overloaded, its gunwales only inches from the oily water. Inside lay about thirty casualties in various states of crisis. A chief petty officer was standing at the conning console. He pulled a lanyard once, sounding one bell, and the boat surged up against the steel hull long enough for the two sailors to pull me into the back of the boat. Somewhere behind us, out of sight because of the steel mountain which had been Oklahoma, something blew up with a hard, ear-compressing blast. Moments later large things began to pepper the water around us. The chief pulled the boat away from the hulk of the Oklahoma and turned it towards the other side of the harbor. He looked over his shoulder at me.
“You injured, Ensign?” he asked, his voice betraying carefully restrained fear as he struggled to maintain some form of command composure.
“No,” I replied. “I was—”
He cut me off. “You’re an officer. You know first aid. How’s about going forward and helping with the wounded?”
“Certainly,” I replied and then crawled into the passenger compartment just forward of the coxswain’s console as the chief carefully turned the boat and headed for the Ten-Ten dock across from Ford Island. Two white-hats were trying to tend to the wounded with the P-boat’s tiny first-aid kit. I was shocked by the carnage: men whose every inch of visible skin was roasted black and weeping serum as they tried to breathe into seared lungs. One man right in front of me was holding up his right arm which ended just above his wrist in a bloody tourniquet composed of a broken mop handle and the sleeve from someone’s shirt. The man’s eyes were closed as he cursed the Japanese through clenched teeth. The man next to him had a gaping chest wound and was obviously dead. Another blast from the direction of Ford Island made everyone cringe, but we kept at our clearly hopeless task, trying to stop bleeding and help burn victims breathe. I joined in their frantic efforts even as I realized we weren’t going to be able to do much more than try. For a few seconds I had to close my eyes and take a deep breath. Then I shook it off and jumped back in to help.
Ford Island across the harbor had disappeared behind towering clouds of black smoke by the time we reached the shipyard. Two destroyers that had been in dry dock just forward of one of the battleships were blackened wrecks. There were dozens of ambulances, utility trucks, and even private vehicles swarming around the base of the pier. Another P-boat was unloading wounded ahead of us, so the chief throttled back and waited. Soon there were two more boats behind us, and more coming out from under the smoke cloud covering the harbor. When we finally nudged our way to the landing, a gray-faced nurse met us and did a quick, visual triage. She noticed me as I was holding up a sailor whose back was probably broken.
“You injured, Ensign?” she called down to the boat, staring at the blood all over my khaki uniform.
I shook my head. I’d tried to answer her but my mouth was too dry.
“Okay,” she said. “You can help me. Everybody’s going to the triage station, right over there. The docs decide who’s going to the hospital, and who isn’t. Any more able-bodied in this boat?”
Four sets of bloody hands rose.
“Organize it, Ensign,” she told me and strode back to the main triage station.
I did. As soon as all the passengers had been lifted by hospitalmen to the pier and onto stretchers, the chief backed the P-boat away from the landing and headed back out into the harbor. I saw to it that the stretcher cases were attended to, and that the dead were moved away from the survivors. I could hear sirens going all over the shipyard. There were many fires blazing on this side of the harbor as well. The first thing every wounded man wanted was water, which was in short supply in the noisy chaos around me. I, myself, was desperately thirsty. Then one of the base fire trucks showed up, covered in soot and with bullet holes in the cab doors. Three firemen got out and rigged a 2.5-inch hose down to the triage station. One of the firemen cracked open the nozzle, allowing all the triage medical personnel to wash their hands and faces for the first time. The cries for water from the dozens of stretcher cases became louder.
I noticed a trash skip nearby that had a case of empty Coke bottles in it. I gathered up six of them, got in line for the nozzle, rinsed them out, and then filled all six. I went back to the ever-growing triage line and began offering sips of water to as many of the wounded as possible. I’d gone through five of the six bottles when a nurse yelled at me to knock it off, pointing out that the water could kill patients with abdominal wounds. There was an audible groan from the crowd of wounded, but I did as I was told. Ensigns did not argue with Navy nurses.
I drank the last bottle myself and then sat down on one of the bollards lining the big Ten-Ten dry dock. Across the shattered harbor there were huge oil fires and even bigger clouds of intensely black smoke flickering with boiling red flames. The tops of some of the stricken battleships would be visible for a few moments before being enveloped again, swallowed up by their own funeral pyres. I looked for the Oklahoma but was unable to make her out, only then remembering she’d capsized. There was now an even longer line of boats waiting at the landing. The air along the waterfront stank of burnt oil and blood.
I decided to get out of there. I’d survived. I’d helped, as best I could, and I’d been yelled at anyway. Now it was time to find my seabag and the Big E.