Voyage To Somewhere Part 6

CHAPTER TWELVE.

AFTER WE had crossed the equator, New Guinea seemed much closer. The Marianas had just been invaded, and the men stood around the radio shack listening to the progress of the battle.

"It won't be long before we're there ourselves," they said, and glanced at each other. The wags in the crew, princ.i.p.ally the c.o.xswain by the name of Wortly, made jokes about it. "Say, we're going in the wrong direction," he said. "I think this war is dangerous. If they don't watch out somebody is going to get hurt."

The long tropical days seemed endless. Slowly the mercury in the thermometer on the wing of the bridge climbed until it hovered around ninety-five each day at noon and fell only to eighty-five at night. All hands discarded uniforms for bathing trunks or trousers cut down to shorts. As the ship steamed steadily along there was very little for the men off watch to do. They lay sunning themselves on deck. I heard a group of them laughing on the forecastle deck one morning and glanced at them. Four seamen were there-White, and three of his friends. They were all between eighteen and twenty years old, and as they sat there laughing and sunning themselves, they reminded me of the boys one sees lying around on swimming floats in summer lakes. I listened to see what they were talking about.

"On the trumpet," one of them was saying, "you can't beat Harry James."

"I don't know," White replied. "Have you ever heard Hot Lips Page?"

"Yeah, but Hot Lips plays only one style. Harry James can play anything."

Many of the men followed the time immemorial custom of sailors and began to work on all different kinds of handicrafts. They took coins and by tapping them constantly on the edge with a teaspoon they burred and rounded the edge, so that when the center was bored out, the coin was transformed into a very professional-looking silver ring. This fad took possession of almost the entire crew, and sometimes the whole ship resounded to the tapping of coins. Guns figured out that to make a good ring it took forty-eight hours of constant tapping. Boats taught the men how to make square knot belts, and soon everyone was sporting one of them. As the weeks slipped by they became more and more expert at their belts, and were soon turning them out woven in different colors, like Indian baskets. They took the bra.s.s cases of sh.e.l.ls used in target practice and hammered them into ash trays, bedside lamps, and cigarette boxes. They took sail needles or nails and carefully p.r.i.c.ked their names or their wives' names into these articles, then wrapped them, set them aside, and waited to mail them home.

Some of the time was used in drills and study. Recognition books giving pictures of j.a.p airplanes and ships were studied by everyone with some seriousness. At one o'clock every day we had fire drills, abandon ship drills, or general quarters. Three times we fired the fifty-calibre machine guns at boxes thrown in the water. Everyone realized that our two single fifty-calibre guns would be useless against almost anything but infantry, a combat formation we were not liable to meet in the middle of the Pacific, but they practiced hard on the guns just the same.

"If we met a submarine," they said, "we might be able to give him a bad time for a few minutes. If he came close enough, and if there were lots of men on deck."

The lookouts began to be over-conscientious. One afternoon just before dark Mr. Warren called me on deck. Everyone was standing on one side of the bridge looking toward the horizon.

"Look!" said Mr. Warren, and his voice sounded worried.

I looked. The ocean was still, and it reflected the fragmentary clouds of twilight. Far away, outlined against the orange setting sun, was a low, dark blur.

"Looks like a sub," said Mr. Warren. "Can you make her out?"

Somehow rumor spread through the ship and men came up from below and stood by the rail staring toward the sun. The cook came out and stood by the galley door drying his hands on his ap.r.o.n. They all glanced from the dark blur on the horizon to the bridge, then back to the horizon. I picked up the binoculars and steadied them against the rail. The vibration of the ship disturbed my vision and I moved the binoculars. It was hard to focus on the dark blur. It seemed always just beyond the compa.s.s of the gla.s.ses, but it stayed there, distinct and onminous.

"Can you make her out, sir?" the quartermaster asked.

"I think it's a cloud," I said.

There was a murmur on the bridge that spread swiftly to the men standing by the rail below. The cook grinned.

"A cloud, only a cloud," I heard him say.

Focusing the binoculars as well as I could, I tried to follow the outline of the blur. It was growing larger, I thought, and as the sun rapidly sank below the horizon it was changing color from gray to black. Taking the binoculars from my eyes, I blinked hard and resumed my examination. Suddenly the ambiguousness of the cloud vanished, and it was clearly visible above the horizon, puffed and billowy, a cloud for all to see. An audible sigh was heard from the men on deck, and one by one they turned and went below.

Two days before we arrived at Milne Bay the furious letter-writing was resumed, and Mr. Warren was busy almost all day long censoring mail. The men looked forward with great satisfaction to arriving at New Guinea, for they were confident that mail would be awaiting them. They figured up the number of letters each of them would have coming.

"Betsy writes me every day," White said, "and so does my mother. I ought to have about a hundred and thirty letters waiting for me."

July 29th we threaded our way through the steep green islands of China Straits and entered Milne Bay. We anch.o.r.ed at the head of it and our motor boat, which long had been swinging fully manned in the davits, was lowered away and shoved off for the mail. There was less nervousness than there had been in Honolulu while the men waited for the mail orderly to return. We had, after all, been told that all our mail was going to New Guinea, and everyone was confident. They waited almost complacently. When the bridge watch spied the boat returning, all hands were on deck awaiting it. The first thing we saw was the mail orderly wildly waving in the bow.

"He's got some all right," Guns said. "Look at him wave!"

As the boat approached closer we could see, however, that the mail orderly was shaking his head, and at last we could hear him shout across the water, "No mail. No mail here!"

"No mail?" the men shouted.

"No, no mail," the orderly answered, and, apparently relieved at having imparted the information, sat down in the bow to await the boat's coming alongside. He sat there unmoving while the boat was hoisted in the davits and when he at last climbed out he came directly to me. I looked around, expecting the men to throng about us, but they had all gone below and there wasn't a sound on deck.

"What's the story?" I asked. "Had they ever heard of us?"

"They say the mail's in Finsch," the mail orderly said. "That's only a couple of hundred miles up the coast."

I breathed a sigh of relief and told the quartermaster to spread the word below.

A moment later the cook came on deck. "Sir," he said, "when are we going to Finsch?"

"I don't know," I said. "I'll go ash.o.r.e and see about it."

I went into the port director's office and asked him to send us to Finsch. He said he had orders already written up for us to unload, reload with gasoline drums, and sail to Guadalca.n.a.l.

"By the way," he said, "what have you got in your holds for us?"

"Pineapple," I said. "Crushed pineapple and a drum of steel cable. Can we have our mail sent here before we leave?"

"I don't think it will get here in time," he said. "We'll have your mail waiting for you when you come back."

The voyage to Guadalca.n.a.l was a short one, only five days. The men showed some interest in seeing Guadalca.n.a.l, but when we got there it proved to be only another island with Quonset huts and tents and mud. It was easy to understand why travel as such held little interest for the men; all the places we went to were only Army posts with Quonset huts and tents and mud that went by different names. There was no fighting on Guadalca.n.a.l when we were there in August of 1944. The place had a few hasty monuments erected and that was all. Its tragedy was no more immediate than that of Gettysburg. When the men first went ash.o.r.e they wandered around with an awed air for a little while, then they returned to the ship and settled down to their tapping of coins and their making of square knot belts.

"We can say we was at Guadalca.n.a.l," I heard White say, and Guns replied, "Yeah, that will be something to tell our grandchildren."

They were quite serious.

The docks at Guadalca.n.a.l were busy when we arrived, and we were given orders to lie out in the stream off Lunga Point and wait. As soon as one big Liberty ship unloaded at the docks she moved out and another one moved in. After we had waited for a week I went in to the port director and asked him for the second time when we could unload.

"What's your cargo?" he asked.

"Gasoline in drums. I showed you the manifests."

"Oh, gasoline. Well, we don't need any gasoline right now. We've got a lot of these Liberties to get unloaded. You just wait there and I'll have the tower signal out to you when we're ready."

"How long will it be?" I asked. "Should I have our mail sent here?"

"No, you better not do that," he said. "It's hard to tell how long you will be here."

I went back to the ship and told the men that I didn't know how long we would be in Guadalca.n.a.l.

"A month?" they asked.

"I don't know," I said. "Maybe a month. Maybe just a few days."

As it turned out we waited to unload in Guadalca.n.a.l for five weeks. While we waited we worked around the ship, chipping and painting, but we never could undertake any really important repairs, for we never knew how long we were going to be there. Every day I went in to see the port director and every day he told me that there were bigger ships and more important cargoes to be unloaded first. At last, five weeks after we had arrived, he told me that there was room at the dock for us. With renewed spirits we got up the anchor and moved into the wharf. When the last gasoline drum had been unloaded we all felt suddenly lighthearted. Boats walked around in the empty hatches sniffing.

"Can't smell any gasoline," he said. "I guess they didn't leak."

Climbing back on deck, he stood by the empty hatch and lit a cigarette. "Well," he said, "we didn't get a fire."

When we were unloaded we did not get orders to return immediately to Milne Bay. Instead we were told to go back off Lunga Point, anchor, and wait to be loaded with a cargo of ammunition to take back to New Guinea with us.

"How long will it be?" I asked. "How long will it be before we can start back?"

"You'll have to wait," they said. "You'll have to wait till the ammunition can be brought down to the dock and the docks are clear again for you. We have some more Liberty ships coming in."

I went back to the ship and called a conference in the wardroom.

"The h.e.l.l with it," I said. "Let's send a dispatch and have our mail sent here."

"If we do that we're liable to leave any time and pa.s.s the mail en route," Mr. Warren said.

"h.e.l.l, we're liable to be here two months yet," Mr. Crane replied. "Let's have the mail sent here."

"Better ask the crew what they want," Mr. Warren said. "Better explain it to them and ask what they want."

The men, fed up with the interminable delays at Guadalca.n.a.l, voted to have the mail sent there, and Mr. Crane had the dispatch sent. Forty-eight hours later we got orders to come into the dock and load ammunition. The smoking rules were put back into effect, and the ammunition came aboard. Before sailing we sent another dispatch: "Cancel my last dipatch. Hold mail at Milne Bay." Just to make sure, we left word at the post office in Guadalca.n.a.l to send our mail back to New Guinea if it arrived.

The voyage back to Milne Bay was a rough one, and some of the men were seasick who had not been seasick since we had left the States. When we finally arrived in Milne Bay, the clerk in the Fleet Post Office looked at us in amazement.

"Mail?" he said. "I sent your mail to Guadalca.n.a.l. Didn't you get it?"

"No," said the chief boatswain's mate who had walked up with me. "No, we didn't."

"Why, there was lots of it," the mail clerk said. "All kinds of mail."

We walked disconsolately back to the ship. I gave the bad news to the men.

"After this," I concluded, "I'm going to have all the mail sent here to Milne Bay. We'll be coming here every so often, and we'll be certain to get it."

Just to be sure, we sent a dispatch to Guadalca.n.a.l telling them to return our mail to Milne Bay. We told the mail clerk at Milne Bay to hold it there whether we were around or not. When all these arrangements had been made, we received orders to go to Hollandia, a port about a week's trip up the New Guinea coast, but we did not change our instructions. The port director led me to understand that we would be shuttling up and down the New Guinea coast for quite a while, probably between Hollandia, and Milne Bay.

"You'll be around until we go into the Philippines," he said, "and G.o.d knows when that will be. You'll know this Guinea coast like Grandma knew her kitchen. And your mail will be right here waiting for you. Don't worry. When you come back we'll have it."

CHAPTER THIRTEEN.

AFTER HAVING unloaded our ammunition in Milne Bay, we loaded a cargo of cigarettes and beer, and three days after our arrival shoved off for Hollandia. If we had been able to wait in Milne Bay another two days, our mail probably would have caught up with us there, but we got our orders and couldn't wait.

"Of course we might have necessary repairs to make," I said just before we sailed. "We might find that we couldn't sail for two days."

"Yes," said Mr. Rudd. "But we won't. We wouldn't feel right if we did."

"I don't feel so hot now," said Mr. Warren. "I want my mail."

"Oh, well," I said wearily, "it'll be here when we come back. I don't see how it could be anywhere else."

The voyage to Hollandia was a pleasant one. To our left all the way we could see the jungle mountains of New Guinea tangling back from the sea. When we approached Wewak we hauled away from the coast, for the j.a.ps were still there. The men examined the place with their binoculars.

"Do you see any j.a.ps?" Wrigly asked excitedly. "Do you see anything?"

"Nothing but trees-mountains and trees," was the answer.

"Gee, I'd like to see some j.a.ps!" replied Wrigly.

"Shut up, you d.a.m.n fool!" said Boats. "Two lousy fifty-calibre guns, and you want to see j.a.ps!"

Hollandia was like all the other places-Quonset huts, tents, and mud. While we were unloading, the mail orderly checked the Fleet Post Office just to make sure, but there was no mail for us. They already had Milne Bay listed as our permanent address.

After the cigarettes and beer were unloaded, we were given orders to go to Finsch where our mail first had been. Although we were disappointed not to return directly to Milne Bay, we were not too downhearted, for Finsch was on the way. We made the voyage to Finsch without cargo. When we arrived there we were given orders to anchor until dock s.p.a.ce was available, and we met with the same delays which we had known at Guadalca.n.a.l. It was the third of September when we arrived at Finsch, and it was not until September 25 that we got orders to come into the dock and load. This time our cargo consisted of ordnance parts. It was an easily loaded cargo, and it was consigned to Milne Bay. The crew laughed and joked for the first time in a long while when they heard that, and when we finally left Finsch, they were once more a hopeful group of men.

When we sailed into Milne Bay we had been five months without mail. As we steamed up to the anchorage I sat on the bridge reflecting on how serious a problem it would be if we did not get mail. There were thirty of us aboard, and inevitably the lapse of mail had caught a few of us in some crisis in our lives. The chief boatswain's mate was worrying about his wife, who was about to have a baby when he left. By now if everything had gone all right the baby must be almost five months old and, as the Chief once told me bitterly, must be either a boy or a girl. His att.i.tude had changed a lot during the five months. When he had come aboard he had talked almost continually about his forthcoming issue. As the days went by he mentioned the subject less and less, and during the fifth month he did not talk about it at all.

The quartermaster had been having trouble with his wife and was afraid that she would divorce him. I think he loved his wife and was very much worried. He told me once that he had had no business marrying above his station in life. All his wife's male relations were officers, he said, except her brother. who was a private in the army. In the last letter he had received from her she had said that she was considering leaving him.

The quartermaster and the chief boatswain's mate were the two whom the lack of mail hurt most. Then there were five or six newly married youngsters who were in the sort of continual emotional crisis that a barely consummated marriage brings and that only a steady stream of letters can soothe. The rest of us just wanted mail the way a man in a strange land wants to see a familiar face.

It was, therefore, quite an event when, after five months, the mail orderly came running down to the ship at Milne Bay and said that not only was there mail, but it would be necessary for a truck to bring it down to us. As commanding officer, I went myself to telephone Transportation, but I was told that no truck was available. Just as I was coming back to the ship to tell the crew that they would have to wait a little longer, the port director arrived in his jeep with some official messages. When I explained the situation to him, he agreed not only to let us use his jeep as a mail truck but to drive it himself. With the help of two seamen, we took the top down, and the director set off. Within an hour the jeep returned, so loaded down with sacks of mail that it looked like a hay wagon.

The whole crew turned out to hustle the mail aboard. I had expected to see a great deal of boisterousness and gaiety, and I was surprised to find that an almost worried silence prevailed. The men formed a line and pa.s.sed the mail sacks aboard with the care, hurry, and perturbed lack of comment that they might have displayed if they were pa.s.sing full buckets of water to a fire. It seemed to me that the wardroom was the best place to sort the mail, so I ordered it piled there. When all the sacks had been stacked around the wardroom table, there was barely room for Mr. Crane and me to sit down and do the sorting. The crew jammed the pa.s.sageways outside and a few even pushed into the wardroom. They kept their caps on, but it was not, I felt, a moment to insist upon the refinements of military discipline. A machinist's mate appeared with a pair of pliers to tear off the wire-and-lead seal at the neck of every bag. Mr. Crane and I waited while he opened the first one. The wire was tough, and he had to twist it many times before it broke. Then he pulled open the mouth of the bag, lifted the bag over the table, and spilled out in front of us a cascade of brightly colored air-mail envelopes. I looked up and saw that the door to the wardroom was jammed with men's heads. There were the heads of people kneeling, people crouching, and people standing, so many heads at so many levels that no bodies could be seen. Everyone's eyes were searching the letters, on the table. No one put his hand out toward the letters, but there was in the eyes of the men a look one sees in the eyes of a well-trained dog looking at a forbidden piece of meat.

Mr. Crane and I quickly sorted the mail, one pile for the deck force, one for the black gang, and one for the smaller departments. Each pile was given to a chief petty officer, who, followed by his men, retired to the deck to conduct a routine mail call. After that, as each sack was sorted, we handed the petty officers further piles of mail. It seemed more reasonable not to make the men wait until we had been through all the bags and sorted everything, including the official mail. The result was that many small mail calls were held, and there was a good deal of confusion and suspense as the men opened their letters out of the sequence in which they had been written. If a man didn't get a letter in one mail call, he had only to wait five minutes for another.

At last all the mail sacks were empty and I went to my cabin to read my own letters. When, half an hour later, I went on deck, I found the crew dispersed all over the ship. Each man was sitting alone, with a pile of letters beside him. The desire for privacy was so great that men were sitting in out-of-the-way places. I saw men in a lifeboat and on the gun platform, and one man had retired with his letters to the crow's nest. For the better part of an hour there was no conversation. Looking at the intent faces of the readers, I realized that, to promote a mutiny, all I would have to do would be to call the men to cleaning stations at that moment.

At the end of an hour the tenseness had lessened, and the men began to forsake their isolated spots. Friends drifted together. It surprised me to see the politeness with which each man examined any photograph handed to him. Almost everyone had received a photograph of some member of his family. White was walking around the deck, stopping everyone who came along to show him a picture of his wife. "Very nice," I heard Guns say to him. "She sure is pretty."

There was also a great deal of reading aloud from letters. From what I could hear, most of the quotations were not very startling or witty, but they were all accorded a respectful attention. This atmosphere of brotherhood and peace lasted the rest of the day, and it was a long while before I heard the customary language of the deck.

I went back to the office to have a look at some of the official mail. While I was tearing open the envelopes, the chief boatswain's mate came in and told me that he was the father of "a daughter who's going to grow up to be the prettiest girl in Pennsylvania-and the hardest to get!"

I didn't hear from the quartermaster till next day. Then he came to my cabin to ask about legal aid. There had been no letter from his wife for him, but the divorce papers, with a short note from her lawyer requesting him to sign them, had come in his mail. "Well," he said, "it's nice to be certain, anyway. Those five months not knowing what was happening were tough."

CHAPTER FOURTEEN.