Voyage to Somewhere (16 page)

“What's that flag hoist the commodore's flying?” I asked.

“Enemy planes are in the vicinity,” Mr. Crane answered. “We've acknowledged it.”

I looked forward and aft and saw that the men had the guns loaded and were training them slowly back and forth across the sky. The clock on the bridge struck six.

“The men haven't had breakfast yet,” said Mr. Crane. “Couldn't we let them go below to eat?”

“Hell, no!” I replied angrily. “We're being attacked, Mr. Crane! Can't you get that through your head?”

“Yes, sir,” Mr. Crane replied. He lit another cigarette.

I sat on the port wing of the bridge and smoked silently. Up on the bow the men stood by the twenty-millimeters and joked. I saw them glance in my direction and laugh. I picked up the binoculars and slowly swept the horizon with them. Nothing was in evidence but the vacant blue of the sky. We waited. Minute by minute an hour went by. Then, suddenly and without warning, all the ships on the starboard side of the convoy opened fire. The pounding of their guns was sporadic at first, then increased into a sort of heavy rhythm. Above, in the clear blue of the sky, puffs of black smoke appeared. Ahead of the puffs of smoke was a large airplane. The plane was much too high for our small guns. I told Mr. Crane to hold his fire. Suddenly a flag hoist fluttered up from the commodore and I examined it through my binoculars. I read the letters to Mr. Crane, who looked them up in the signal book.

“Hell,” he said, “the signal reads, ‘You are firing at friendly aircraft. Cease fire.'” As he read the firing stopped. Silence reigned over the convoy once more. The plane came overhead. I examined it with the binoculars and saw that it was a C-47, one of our own passenger planes. High in the sky the puffs of black smoke disintegrated and became wisps of cloud.

“It's lucky the boys on those Liberties missed,” Mr. Crane said. “What a war!”

The C-47 droned away. Once more the sky was empty. Up forward the men at the guns became irritable. I could hear two of them arguing loudly about something.

“Tell those men on the twenties to keep quiet,” I told Mr. Crane.

“Hey, you on the bow!” he called. “Pipe down!”

The arguing fell to a murmur, and the men looked reproachfully toward the bridge.

“Mr. Crane,” I said finally, “release one cook and tell him to bring coffee and sandwiches to the men at the guns.”

“Yes, sir,” said Mr. Crane, and gave the order to the messenger.

The sun was climbing in the sky and the day became hotter. The men at the guns began removing their steel helmets. Boats told the men on the bow to put them back on. In half an hour the cook appeared on deck in his white apron. He was carrying a tray full of sandwiches in one hand and a huge coffee pot in the other. The coffee pot was heavy. In the middle of the deck he stopped and set it down.

“Hey,” he called to the men on the bow, “how about some of you guys coming down to lend me a hand?”

White started down the ladder, but Boats called him back. “Carry your coffee yourself,” Boats yelled. “Make two trips of it.”

The cook muttered, but he carried the coffee pot up to the forecastle and handed it up the ladder. He returned to the galley. A moment later he reappeared with a tray full of cups. These and the sandwiches he handed up carefully, then returned grumbling to the galley to get food for the men aft. The men on the bow stood around the guns drinking coffee and talking.

“How long do we have to stay at general quarters?” Mr. Crane asked.

“I don't know,” I said shortly. “Wait and see.”

The morning crept by slowly. The cook cleaned away the coffee cups and replaced them with a bucket of cold water and a dipper. The men smoked. They flipped the butts into a can Boats had placed for them. The bell on the engine-room voice tube rang. It was Mr. Rudd.

“Anything going on?” he asked.

“Nope,” I said, “nothing since the boys opened fire on a C-47.”

“Well, hang on,” said Mr. Rudd. “That first plane this morning was no C-47. They know where we are now. They've got us all plotted on their charts.”

“Sure,” I said. “Well stay at general quarters till dark, anyhow.”

I turned and said to Mr. Crane, “You better tell the men they'll have to stand by the guns till after dark. Then they'll know what they're in for.”

“Anything you say, sir,” Mr. Crane replied. He relayed the order.

Still we sat and the day grew hotter and nothing happened. At eleven-thirty I called to Mr. Crane and told him he'd better take his noon latitude sight. He went into the chart room to get the sextant. I sat smoking and staring out over our port side into the limitless sky. Suddenly, so distinct that I had to believe it, I saw a plane only about twenty feet above the water flying directly at us.

“Open fire!” I shouted. “Open fire, open fire!”

The sudden clatter of our guns drowned out my voice. The plane grew nearer and nearer. The orange tracer bullets from our guns reached toward it. Behind us I could hear the opening thud of the five-inch guns on the Liberties. “They're firing too,” I thought. “I guess there's no doubt about its being a Jap this time.” Everything appeared to happen very slowly. The plane grew closer and closer. It was a short, stubby plane, with a radial engine. It was painted a light blue. The sun glinted from the plastic covering of the pilot's seat. Behind us the thud of the guns on the Liberties grew louder.

“The bastards are firing right across us,” I thought. “I hope they don't hit us.” I never thought of the plane hitting us, or dropping a bomb or a torpedo or anything else. While I thought I watched the tracers arch from our own guns. Now they were flicking directly into the plane. Our whole ship was shaking and chattering from our guns. The orange tracers were gliding directly into the plane like elongated tongues of fire flicking a log.

Still the plane kept coming.

“The bastard can't stand it much longer,” I thought. “He's got to crash.”

Still he did not crash. When he appeared to be right on top of us a long object dropped from his belly and splashed into the water.

“Torpedo,” my mind registered, but I did not think of it. My eyes were riveted on the plane, wondering when he was going to crash. He was so close now that I could see the twenty millimeter shells splashing against his sides.

“He's coming into us,” I thought. “Suicide plane!” But before I had time really to feel that thought the plane banked around our bow, and still twenty feet above the water, he zigzagged right through the convoy. All around him guns kicked up the water like a rain squall, and tracers arched into him. Then, as suddenly as he had come, he was gone, scuttling toward the opposite horizon. I stood watching after him. It seemed that I had stood there a long time when a geyser rose and obscured the old Hog Islander beside us. There was no sound that I could hear at all—only a white curtain of water that rose from the side of the old ship.

“The torpedo,” I thought. “It's got her.”

Slowly the geyser subsided. For a moment the Hog Islander appeared exactly as she had been before; then she started to list slowly. I saw that she was falling behind the other ships. The signal light on her bridge started to blink furiously. The commodore answered. Their lights were turned a little from us, so it was immpossible to read them. Gradually the old ship fell astern of the others. The destroyer on our starboard side edged in toward her, then they started blinking to each other. As they fell astern we watched them. The Hog Islander appeared to be listing more and more to port, but before we could see what happened she had faded into the distance astern.

The Liberty ship which had been astern of her moved up to take her place.

Aboard our ship the men stood eagerly by their guns and discussed the attack. Two questions were uppermost in our minds: would the Hog Islander sink, would the Jap plane get back to its base? No one could understand how the plane had received so many hits and still kept in the air. The men somehow lost a little respect for our guns; they seemed nowhere near as deadly as they had.

As the afternoon wore on the ocean was as peaceful as ever. The convoy steamed on with no change except for the fact that the Hog Islander and the destroyer were gone. Once or twice we saw planes far away on the horizon, but they didn't come near us. At one o'clock the cook brought up sandwiches and orangeade to the men. They ate fast. There was no more grumbling about standing by the guns. The cook worked quickly, always carried two trays at a time.

Immediately after night fell the commodore signaled a change of course. The ships wheeled clumsily in the night; they appeared to nudge each other over. On the flying bridge I had to strain my eyes to see the ship ahead of us. The wind was increasing. The SV-126 started to pitch heavily. As soon as the convoy was straightened out on the new course the commodore signaled us to commence zigzagging. I knew he was afraid the Jap planes had radioed submarines ahead of us our position, but I received his order with dread. What little visibility there was was fast decreasing. A thin rain started and fast developed into a deluge. The blurred shadow of the ship ahead of us disappeared completely, and we changed course every one and two minutes by watch alone.

On our starbord side I knew the ten-thousand-ton Liberty ship was lurching from side to side as she zigzagged, and I kept my eyes glued to the wet binoculars trying to catch sight of her. Suddenly she appeared so close to us that I had to twist my head up to look at her. We threw our rudder over and waited to see if we would turn fast enough to avoid a collision. The Liberty ship was so big in comparison to us that for a moment I thought I knew exactly how a dog must feel when it is run over by an automobile. The SV-126 turned and for a moment the Liberty ship and ourselves were on parallel courses, so near that I thought I could reach over the side and touch her. Between us the water was white from our wakes, and the steel sides of the Liberty glistened wetly and dimly, as though she were a huge wave that had reared up beside us. Slowly we drew away from her, and I could see her no more. I peered out into the rain, but she was gone, and I could only hear the threshing of her screw somewhere out in the darkness.

All night I stood on the flying bridge keeping the ship zigzagging every one and two minutes. The convoy moved across the ocean like a troop of drunks making their way across a dark field. Intermittently from the obscurity ahead I heard a deep, directionless whistle blast as one ship warned away another. Twice in the night we changed course. Our compass differed from those of the other ships, and as we zigzagged along the basic line set for us, I had constantly to vary the figure given to the helmsman. All thought of our geographical position slipped from my mind, and I cared only about keeping with the other ships without running into them. As the dark hours slipped by I lost all track of time. The world became to me one infinite void of darkness and rain through which I moved as one shadow among others.

At five in the morning the darkness thinned a little, as though water were being poured into ink. Gradually around us the ships of the convoy separated themselves from the gloom and contracted into their old shapes again. The convoy had lost its original order. When full daylight came we found ourselves spread all over the sea. Ships had exchanged positions, columns were uneven, and far astern two ships straggled almost out of sight. The commodore signaled us to resume out position. The ships ahead slowed down and the ships astern gave a burst of speed. Gradually the convoy regained its old shape and proceeded across the sea once more in a military formation.

We sighted land a few minutes after ten in the morning. San Pedro Bay appeared before us as an extension of the horizon between two dark mounds of rock. As we neared the opening of the bay, the ships of our convoy fell into single file. Other ships appeared anchored ahead of us. When we steamed up the narrowing gulf, more and more ships appeared until we seemed to be threading our way up the streets of a floating city. All the Liberty ships, hospital ships, battleships and carriers I had originally seen in Hollandia were there, as though the fleet had been suddenly transplanted as a whole. One by one the vessels of our convoy dropped anchor. We continued up the narrow channel to Tacloban and nosed our way close to shore. Our anchor chain roared through the hawse pipe, we rung up “finished with engines” on the engine-room telegraph, and the SV-126 lay quietly waiting with her bow to the wind.

CHAPTER TWENTY

A
S SOON
as we could get our boat in the water, I went ashore to report to the port director with the manifest of our cargo. With elaborate nonchalance Mr. Warren offered to go in with me and see if there was any mail. As we approached the shore we examined it with interest. Tacloban, we had heard, was a city, and we had not seen a city for a long while. When we stepped from the boat to the pontoon dock, however, we saw only small, tumbledown shacks which looked as though they had been scattered at random over a pattern of muddy streets.

“What the hell.” Mr. Warren was disgusted. “It's just New Guinea all over again.”

In the port director's office I had to wait in line with the skippers of some of the ships which had been in our convoy. They were all talking about the attack we had sustained.

“Did you get any of the planes?” a huge Scandinavian with a gold-encrusted cap asked me.

“No,” I said, “I don't think so. We hit that first one plenty of times, but I didn't see him fall.”

“We got two of them,” the Scandinavian replied. “We've just painted two flags on our bridge.”

“
You
got two of them?” a short man in khaki shirt ahead of him in line exclaimed. “What the hell do you mean? We were right astern of you, and you didn't hit a thing! We got those planes!”

The men waiting in line turned around and each gave his opinion of who shot down the planes.