Sentinels of Fire (14 page)

As I told people they were going to be all right, my mind was fixated. Where was the captain? In his cabin, maybe? I went back inside the deckhouse. Groups of men were still hurrying through the passageways and moving along the main deck, bound on repairs and cleanup. The after repair party was restowing their damage control locker. The ship was down to 10 knots, barely moving over the slate gray sea, heeling from time to time as the helmsman spun the wheel this way and that, executing that random broad weave to keep from being a sitting duck.

“XO,” a voice called as I passed the scullery. It was the supply officer, Peter Fontana. The supply officer was known universally as the Chop because of the porkchop-shaped insignia on his left collar.

“Chop, can you feed us?” I asked.

“Absolutely, XO,” he said. “Got the cooks and messcooks turning to. Beef stew and rice. Say the word and we'll open the line. We're done for the day, I hope?”

“I hope to God we are,” I said. “But we'll hold chow until after sunset GQ. I'll call you.”

“XO?”

“What, Chop?”

The supply officer looked both ways to make sure none of the troops were listening. “The captain? He's down on the forward reefer flats. He's just sitting down there. One of the mess-cranks saw him and came to tell me. XO, what the—”

“I don't know, Chop,” I said. “Something's happened.”

“He's such a great guy,” Peter said. “Gives a shit, you know? Gives a shit for his people, not his career. Please, tell me he hasn't—”

I raised my hand. “Keep this to yourself, Peter. Give me the reefer deck keys and I'll go get him. Meanwhile, I've changed my mind. Be ready to open the mess line in about thirty minutes. It's been a long, sad day, and we're going to be burying people tonight.”

I went forward to the main ladder hatchway leading down to the second deck, where the ship's refrigerated storerooms, known as the reefer decks, were. I didn't know what to think. Here we were, alone on the Okinawa radar picket line, shot up enough to scare the shit out of the crew and down to 10 knots. The main steam plant was still cross-connected until the snipes could figure out how to restore the boilers in the forward fire room with only half a stack. And the captain? Had the captain gone Section Eight?

I unlocked the hatch leading into the reefer deck compartment. I swore mentally when I realized that the mess cook had locked the captain inside the compartment, but he was just obeying standing orders. Need to find out who that is, have a word with him, I thought.

The lights were still on, and the captain was sitting on a lone folding chair parked in front of one of the freezers. He smiled vacantly when he saw me.

“Captain,” I began, but then I stopped, not knowing what to say.

“I'm okay, XO,” the captain said. “It's nice down here. Quiet. Cool. I told that young man to lock the door behind me. Told him I was conducting an experiment. You know, rumor control.”

There were two refrigerant compressors at the forward end of the reefer compartment. One was on the line, the other in standby. I sat down on the standby's motor. “Sir,” I said. “You've gotta tell me. What's going on?”

“Oh, it's pretty simple, XO,” the captain said. “I've lost my nerve. When that GQ alarm sounds, I want to run. That's kinda hard when we're at sea, so I go find somewhere else, somewhere besides the bridge, and I hide. This last attack, I sat down here in the dark and shook like a leaf. Almost pissed myself. Closed my eyes, gritted my teeth, and I think I actually whimpered. How'd it go, by the way? Thought I heard some incoming…?”

How did it go?
I tried to control my expression. I gave him a rundown of the afternoon's action. The captain winced when he heard the casualty numbers. Then he nodded, went silent, and stared off into space.

I didn't know what to say next.

“I'm not crazy, you know,” the captain said. “I know what's happening. I'm just paralyzed. I think you'll have to relieve me, and notify CTF 58.”

“I do
not
want to relieve you, sir,” I said. “You're the captain. You know more than the rest of the wardroom put together. I think maybe you just need a rest. I'll get Doc to give you something. We'll cover for you, a day, maybe two, and then you'll be okay. We need you.”

“Have you asked to come off station to get down to the hospital ship?”

“No, sir. They don't have any more destroyers who can come up here. We're going to bury our dead and treat the wounded. That's all we can do right now.”

“Ask them to send an LCS, or something like that, up with a medical officer and some supplies. They can do that.”

I almost groaned. Of course, that was the thing to do. It hadn't even crossed my mind. There was so much I didn't know.

“I'll officiate tonight,” the captain said. “Darkness is our friend. I can do that. I know I can do that. But when the sun comes up, XO, you're gonna own it. Understood?”

I had no answer for that except “Yes, sir.” The captain got up, dusted off his trousers, and then saw my bloody pant leg. He blinked. “You didn't tell me—”

“A gouge, that's all,” I said. “I was lucky. Hurts more than I expected, but it's no big deal, not compared…”

The captain nodded. “I was at Savo Island in
Quincy,
” he said, almost whispering. “A complete slaughter. I still have nightmares. Then
Juneau.
Did you know I was one of
ten
survivors, out of a crew of seven hundred? We took a Long Lance during that night fight, crawled out with the
San Francisco
the next morning. We were making twelve knots with a broken keel.”

He stopped for breath. I held my silence. He wasn't here. He was back at Guadalcanal.

“A Jap sub found us. Two cripples. We were down by the bow, but we were making it. Took one torpedo hit, and goddamn me if it wasn't right where the first one got us, only this time the forward magazines let go. I woke up in the water, with maybe a hundred other guys. They finally found us, too many days later. We were down to ten.”

“Ten?”

“Yup. They haven't published that number, have they? No, they haven't. November 1942. I should have gone home after that. Gone back to the Eastern Shore and farmed some chickens. Dug myself a Victory Garden, but no, I asked to stay. Now look at me. I should have turned myself in six months ago, but I remember thinking, this shit isn't over, and I'm not any worse for wear. Went on to XO in a tin can, chasing bird farms with Halsey and Spruance, then got command of
Malloy.
Going from island to island, doing shore-bomb, rescue-plane guard, odd jobs. One more island, one more landing: How tough could it be? Then these kamis … It's just too much, XO. Too much. You're gonna have to take it. I'm done. Just didn't realize it until now.”

“We'll figure something out, Captain,” I said. “In the meantime, I need you to take a turn about deck, with me. People need to see you. Then we'll get the doc in.”

“Sure, I can do that,” he said, “but how long until sunset?”

The two of us walked the topside decks of the ship for the next forty minutes, seeing and being seen by all the people who were picking up the pieces on the weather decks. The captain did well. Once out in the sunlight, he straightened up and became himself again, greeting many of the crewmen by name while I trailed along. Chief Lamont caught up with us after about five minutes as word got around that the CO was topside. How he heard remained a mystery, but it was one of his skills.

Doc Walker found us on the 0
1
level amidships and told the captain they were ready on the fantail. Ready for what, I wondered. We walked aft, and went down to the main deck, through the K-gun depth-charge racks, past the quarterdeck, and out onto the fantail. There, laid out in two rows, were our dead. Their remains were in black rubber body bags, and there were six lying out there in the sunlight. Two sailors in dungarees, white duty belts, white leggings, and white hats were standing watch over them, each with an M-
1
rifle resting incongruously on his shoulder. As I stood there, Doc took the captain to each one of them, unzipped the bag so the man's face was visible, and then told the captain who the man was, where he was from, and what he was “famous” for within his division. Then they'd move on to the next one.

I later found out that this was where the captain gathered personal details that he would later connect to when he wrote the letters of condolence to their families.

“We'll do it together this time,” he said to me quietly as we walked away. “It's your job to draft the letters, and then mine to personalize them. Not fun.”

I couldn't think of anything to say to that. That night, right after sundown but while there was still some daylight, we buried our shipmates who'd been killed in the strafing attack. We hadn't assembled the whole crew for the burial ceremony because there were still contacts being reported around Okinawa, but everyone from the after gun batteries stood in respectful attendance, just beside their guns. The captain and I had changed into choker whites; he read the prescribed words and the psalm. The honor guard, three sailors, also in their dress whites, fired a three-gun rifle salute, and then the bodies were consigned, one by one, to the deep. Our honor guard folded the flags, which would be boxed up later and sent home to families, along with the letter of condolence and personal effects. Throughout, Captain Tallmadge had conducted himself with grace, dignity, authority, and absolutely no sign of the mental state he'd revealed earlier.

If he can manage that, I thought, with all the emotion entailed in sliding someone you knew into the deeps of the Pacific Ocean, then we can overcome this problem. I just have to figure out how.

 

FIVE

The following morning broke hazy, with seas so calm the water resembled one infinite mirrored surface all the way to the horizon. The only movement of air was a faint stirring created by the ship's own movement. We'd gone to GQ just before sunrise, as usual, and were now steaming at modified GQ as long as Combat held no incoming air contacts. The captain had decided to stay up on the bridge, so I had quietly called a department heads' meeting in my stateroom. I got to sit on my bunk while the four of them crowded into the tiny cabin.

I blew out a long breath. “Okay, guys,” I said. “As I suspect you all know, there's something going on with the skipper.” I looked at each of them in turn. Jimmy Enright, Mario Campofino, Marty Randolph, and Peter Fontana all nodded. Then the sound-powered phone squeaked. I sighed.

“XO.”

“XO, Combat. There's an LSMR”—Landing Ship, Medium, Rocket—“coming up from Okinawa, ETA around noon, with a med team embarked. We also now have two sections of CAP assigned. If you hear aircraft engines, it's them headed out for their barrier stations. They'll come overhead for positive ID as friendlies.”

“Thank you,” I said and hung up the phone. I relayed the word to the department heads. “Now,” I continued. “As to the CO. I believe he's mostly exhausted.”

“As opposed to Section Eight?” Mario asked.

“He's not nuts,” I said. “He's not babbling or doing bizarre things other than hiding when the shit starts.”

Jimmy Enright raised a hand. “Begging your pardon, XO, but that
is
bizarre behavior for the skipper of a warship, especially out here. I don't want to sound like a sea lawyer, but I think this situation needs to be reported to the commodore and that you should assume temporary command until we get further instructions.”

I sighed again. “You're technically right, of course, but if we do that, they'll simply haul him off the ship and send him home in what, for him, would be total disgrace. I think we owe him more than that and better than that. You all have served with him longer than I have, but my impression is that he's been a singularly good CO.”

“XO,” Marty said, “what do Navy Regs say? If the CO becomes incapacitated, you already have the authority to relieve him, as long as you report it to the squadron commodore, right? I mean, if you don't, and something happens and he gets killed in his cabin, they're gonna look pretty hard at you.”

“What's the word going around the ship?” I asked, dodging his question.

Mario said that there were some rumors, but so far, nothing vicious or alarming. Then he weighed in. “So why don't we simply get the doc to give him something, put him asleep for a coupla days. See how he comes back from that.”

“I'd vote for that,” Peter said. “We'd all feel like shitheels starting a major flap when it could be simple exhaustion. Remember who we're talking about here—this isn't Captain Bligh. This is our skipper.”

“You know what?” Mario asked. “There'll be at least one medical officer on that LSMR. Make sure he sees the captain, talks to him—you know, tell him he has to make a report to the CO on the condition of our wounded? Then if the skipper starts acting strangely, you'll know what you have to do.”

“That's part of the problem,” I said. “He acts perfectly normal, except when that GQ alarm goes and the kamikazes show up. You all saw him last night at the burial service. Dignified, sad, but reading that scripture like a bishop. He was the only officer that the crew wanted to see doing that.”

“But…” Marty said.

“Yeah, but. He told me yesterday that he's lost his nerve. I think the scariest part of that was that he knows it and admits it. It's like he doesn't know what to do now.”

“Oh, I think he does, XO,” Marty said. “If he knows he's lost his nerve, that he panics when the Japs arrive, he should be
ordering
you to assume command, turning himself in to the commodore, and requesting his own immediate relief. You've been in carriers. Isn't that what the aviators do when they can't face carrier landings anymore?”