War and Remembrance (92 page)

The new gleaming white Cincpac building, high on Makalapa Hill above the submarine base, showed the way the war was going. It had been built fast, it was a work of power and wealth, and the lanais encircling the upper stories were sophisticated adaptations to the tropics. Inside, the building still smelled of fresh plaster, paint, and linoleum. The thronging staff— officers sporting aiguillettes, enlisted men in whites, and many pretty Waves — had a sprightly look and walk. Midway and Guadalcanal, and the bristling array of new warships in the Yard, all showed in that bouncy new pace. It was not a change to triumph or even to optimism yet. Rather, the open confident look of Americans at work had come back. Gone were the stricken expressions of the days following Pearl Harbor, and the driven tension of the months before Midway.

Ensconced in the glass-partitioned cubicle of the duty officer, inside a bastion of junior officers and Waves, sat the youngest three-striper Victor Henry had ever laid eyes on, with lanky blond hair and a creamy face that appeared never to have been shaved. “A full commander,” thought Pug, “and the Cincpac duty officer? I’m really out of step.”

“My name is Victor Henry.”

“Oh, Captain
Victor Henry!
Yes, sir.” In the inquisitive eyes, at the utterance of that name, Pug could see the burning
Northampton
going down. “Please have a seat.” The fellow gestured at a wooden chair and pressed an intercom button. “Stanton? Find out if the chief of staff is available. It’s Captain Victor Henry.”

So Spruance would be the interrogator. A tough man to face; old acquaintance would count for exactly zero. Soon the intercom gabbled, and the duty officer said, “Sir, Vice Admiral Spruance
is
in conference. Please wait.”

While sailors and Waves scurried to and fro, and the duty officer answered the telephone, made calls, and scrawled in a log book, Victor Henry sat reviewing possible lines of questioning. If Spruance was taking time to see him, the battle had to be the topic. The duty officer’s commiserating peeps at him were like wasp stings. So a very long half hour went by before Spruance summoned him. Pug remembered into old age the narrow girl-smooth face of the duty officer, the furtive pitying glances, and the tension of that wait.

Spruance was signing letters at a stand-up desk by a window. “Hello, Pug. Just a minute,” he said. He had never used Henry’s first name before; he addressed almost nobody that way. Spruance looked trim in starched khakis: face gaunt, color high, waist board-flat. Again Pug thought, as he had so many times, how ordinary this victor of Midway looked and acted, compared to Halsey with his battering-ram jaw, glaring eye, bushy brows, and imperious or rollicking humors.

“Well, now.” Carefully inserting the pen in a holder, Spruance faced him, hands on hips. “What the Sam Hill happened out there off Tassafaronga?”

“I know what happened to me, Admiral. The rest is sort of a blur.” The truthful words were scarcely out of his mouth when he regretted them. Wrong tone of levity.

“You’re to be commended on the
Northampton’s
small loss of life.”

“It’s nothing I ever hoped to be commended for.”

“We’re going to be able to repair those other three CAs.”

“Good. I wish I could have made port, too, Admiral. I tried.”

“What went wrong in the battle, exactly?”

“Sir, we found ourselves in torpedo water after we’d opened fire at twelve thousand yards. That was supposed to be beyond torpedo range. Now, either we were ambushed by submarines — which seems unlikely in view of our sizable destroyer screen — or else the Japs have a destroyer torpedo that far outranges ours. We’ve had intelligence about such a weapon.”

“I recall your memo to BuShips about that, and your recommendation on the battleship blisters.”

Victor Henry allowed himself a short thankful smile. “Well, Admiral, now I’ve been on the business end of a couple of those things. They exist.”

“Then combat doctrine should be modified accordingly.” The large eyes scrutinized Pug. The stand-up desk served the purpose of keeping conversations short, Pug thought. He was making an effort not to shift from foot to foot, and he decided, if ever his time became valuable again, to have a standup desk, too. “A word with Admiral Nimitz might be in order,” Spruance said. “Let’s go.”

Hurrying to keep up, Victor Henry followed Spruance down the corridor
to tall royal-blue double doors with four affixed gold stars. Admiral Kimmel had received him in such an office in the old building, he remembered, all brave smiles and good humor, as his blasted fleet smoked in the sunshine beyond the windows. Pug had walked in to see Kimmel with calm confidence. He felt very shaky now. Why? He was now more or less in Kimmel’s shoes, that was why. Another loser.

They went straight in. Nimitz stood alone, arms folded, at a window. To all appearances he was sunning himself. His handshake was cordial, his square tanned face pleasant; but the direct blue eyes under the thatch of sunlit white hair had a slaty look. That kindly, almost gentle face with those hard eyes, half in sunshine and half in shadow, made Victor Henry yet more nervous.

“Captain Henry says the Japs have a destroyer torpedo of very long range,” Spruance said. “That’s how he explains Tassafaronga.”

“How long is very long?” Nimitz asked Pug.

“Possibly as much as twenty thousand yards, Admiral.”

“What do we do about it?”

Forcing words through a tight throat, Pug replied, “In future engagements, Admiral, once our destroyers have made their torpedo attack, the battle line should open fire at much longer range, and make radical evasive turns during the action.”

“Did you make radical evasive turns after you saw the other CAs get hit?” Nimitz spoke in an easy Texas-tinged drawl, but there was nothing easy in his look or manner.

“No, sir.”

“Why didn’t you?”

Victor Henry now had to answer, face to face with Cincpac, the question on which his career hung. He had already tried to handle this question in a fifteen-page action report.

“Admiral, it was a mistake made in the heat of battle. All my guns were bearing. I was straddling the enemy. I wanted vengeance for the three cruisers he had set afire.”

“Did you get your vengeance?”

“I don’t know. My gunnery officer claimed two hits on two cruisers.”

“Confirmed?”

“No, sir. We’ll have to await the task force report. Even then I’ll have my doubts. Gunnery officers are troubled with creative eyesight.”

Nimitz’s eyes glinted at Spruance. “Any other observations?”

“I’ve listed a few in my report, sir.”

“For example?”

“Admiral, flashless powder was a BuOrd project way back in ‘37 when I was there. We still don’t have it. The enemy does. We discourage use of
searchlights in night action, so as not to show where we are. Then we fire a few salvos and disclose our bearing, target angle, and speed of advance. Our battle line that night looked like four erupting volcanoes. It was a glorious sight, sir, very soul-satisfying. It also gave the Japs their torpedo solution.”

Nimitz turned to Spruance. “Get off a dispatch to BuOrd today, and a personal follow-up letter to Spike Blandy on the flashless powder.”

“Yes, sir.”

Rubbing a stringy hand, which was missing a finger, across his square chin, Nimitz said, “Why the devil was our own destroyer attack a total failure? They achieved surprise with radar, didn’t they? They had the drop on the other fellow.”

Pug felt himself— so to say — back in torpedo water. This question might well become the crux of a court of inquiry on Tassafaronga. “Admiral, it was a reverse action, forces moving on opposed courses. Relative closing speed fifty knots or better. The torpedo problem developed very fast. When the destroyer commander requested permission to attack with torpedoes, Admiral Wright preferred to close first. The enemy was abaft the beam before he let him go. So it became an up-the-kilt shot at extreme range. That’s how it looked in the
Northampton
plot.”

“Yet the enemy had the identical problem, and he got an excellent solution.”

“They won the torpedo duel hands down, Admiral.”

After an excruciating pause Nimitz said, “Very well.” He moved away from the window and offered Pug his hand. “I understand you lost an aviator son at Midway, who distinguished himself in combat. And that you’ve got another son serving in submarines.” He bent his head toward the dolphins on his own khaki blouse.

“Yes, Admiral.”

Holding Pug’s hand in a lingering clasp, looking deep in his eyes, Chester Nimitz said, “Good luck, Henry,” in a sad personal tone.

“Thank you, sir.”

Spruance took him to the crowded smoky operations room. “There’s your battle,” he said, pointing to a heavily marked chart of Guadalcanal on the wall, “as we’ve reconstructed it.” They passed into a small anteroom, where they sat down together on a sofa. “The
Northampton
was a beautiful ship,” Spruance said. “But there were stability problems.”

“I can’t fault my damage control people, Admiral. We were unlucky. We took two torpedoes aft of the armor belt. I should have turned away. Gotten the hell out of there, the way the
Honolulu
did. Maybe I’d still have my ship.”

“Well, the rage of battle is a factor. Your blood was up. You tried to reverse a rout.”

Victor Henry made no comment, but it was as though Spruance had cut ropes holding a heavy burden on his back. He took a deep breath and audibly sighed.

Spruance went on, “Where to next?”

“I have orders back to BuPers for reassignment, Admiral.”

“Last time around you were fighting shy of staff duty. I need a deputy chief of staff for planning and operations.”

Unable to help it, Victor Henry blurted like a boy, “Me?”

“If you’re interested.”

“Good God.” Pug involuntarily put a hand to his eyes. In the light of the huge growth of the Pacific Fleet, Spruance was offering him a golden prize; a long leap toward flag rank, toward responsibility on the scale of great men; precisely the second chance he had told Janice he could not expect. Victor Henry was not three weeks away from splashing naked through black oil toward a crowded raft, with his ship afire and sinking behind him. After a moment he said hoarsely, “You’ve achieved surprise, Admiral. I’m interested.”

“Well, let’s hope BuPers will go along. We’ve got some fine battle problems ahead, Pug. You should start thinking about them. Come.”

Dazed, Victor Henry followed Spruance back into the operations room, to a large yellow and blue table chart of the Pacific. Spruance began to talk with a curious enthusiasm, half-pedantic and half-martial. “At the College, did you get in on the old problem, the recapture of the Philippines after Orange invades and occupies? That’s more or less the war we’ve got.”

“No, sir, in my tour we did the Wake Island problem.”

“Oh, yes. Well, the thing boils down to two lines of attack. The geography dictates that. A drive across the Central Pacific, reducing the Jap island strong points, and consolidating in the Marianas for the jump to Luzon.” Spruance’s right hand moved over the chart as he talked, traversing thousands of ocean miles to pantomime a sweep through the Marshalls, the Marianas, and the Carolines to the Philippines.

“And a campaign northward from Australia — New Guinea, Morotai, Mindanao, Luzon.” His left hand passed from Australia across New Guinea, with the fingers doing a slow crawl as though to suggest — as they vividly did to Pug — armies slogging over tropical mountains. “General MacArthur naturally is hot for that second strategy. Land fighter. But in the water route you’ve got a mobile flank attack on the enemy supply lines that keeps him guessing. He can’t be sure where you’ll hop next. Makes him scatter his strength. The other is a frontal assault overland through mountainous jungle. Jap fleet on
your
flank, alert Jap armies opposing you.” Spruance shot Pug a puckish look. “To be sure, the general would strongly desire to lick some Jap armies.”

Spruance’s right index finger now stabbed at an island off New Guinea. “Still, even he concedes that the way is barred by Rabaul. That’s what he saw in the Guadalcanal operation, a stepping-stone toward Rabaul. In any case, we’re tooling up here for the Central Pacific. It’ll be a big effort. Meantime MacArthur will pursue his drive, of course.”

For Victor Henry, still shaken by this turn in his life, the unfolding horizons were magnificent. From command of a cruiser, a cramping task, he foresaw passing to the planning of gigantic sea campaigns. Ideas boiled up in his mind from War College problems and studies of Pacific war. Thin abstractions they had then seemed, algebraic toying with forces and situations that would never exist. Now they were materializing in thick and flaming realities. There surged in him a reviving sense of global combat as his own job to do, in an anonymous slot; all he could ask for.

Spruance tapped the chart at Guadalcanal. “You know, Tassafaronga was a pretty sour note for Admiral Halsey, after the magnificent way he turned that campaign around. Did you see him at all?”

“Yes, sir, when I passed through Nouméa he sent for me.”

“How is he?”

“On top of the world. He’s got everybody in SoPac on their toes, I’ll say that. When I got to his office he was roaring mad about something or other. Everybody in sight was quailing. Next minute with me he was gentle as a parson. Very sympathetic about the
Northampton.”
Pug hesitated and added, “Said at least I went after the bastards.”