Tales of the South Pacific (48 page)

"Those caps are not permitted in the Depot," Captain Kelley said sharply.

"I have wings, sir," Bus replied.

"Mr. Adams! I determine the uniform here!" Bus did not acknowledge the rebuff. Nor did he stop wearing the baseball cap. Slouched over his left ear, it became a badge of freedom around the Depot. For some hidden reason, perhaps like the reasons which protected my special privileges, Captain Kelley refrained from forcing the issue with Adams.

He used subtler methods. At meals, which I remember as a horrible experience, the captain would relate one story after another of naval aviators who had been disciplined, broken, returned to civilian life. He spoke of courts-martial, inefficiencies, thefts, and other discrepancies until one would have judged all aviation personnel to be subnormal and a menace. Day after day we heard these sallies directed at Bus.

Adams refused to let the captain get under his skin. Instead, he would make ultra-polite conversation in which some aviator always won the war single-handed. He was especially fond of an offhand reference to Billy Mitchell or the Prince of Wales and the Repulse. His choicest barbs were usually unpremeditated. Once he said, "I suppose Seversky will replace Mahan in the next generation at Annapolis!" Captain Kelley actually slobbered his coffee at that remark. A much more telling blow was also offhand. Adams observed one day that disposition of one's forces was of paramount importance. "For example: A squadron of twenty good fighters aloft at Pearl Harbor would probably have kept ten American warships from being sunk."

A few other officers were also strong enough to ignore Captain Kelley. Most of them were reserve line officers. They were as far in the Navy as they would ever get. They loved the service, but had no allusions as to their worth. They were classified A-(V)S, which meant "Aviation Volunteer Specialist," but which everyone knew meant "After Victory Scram!" One very wealthy ensign in Communications merely waited for peace and a return to Long Island. He viewed Captain Kelley as one might have viewed any other temporary plague.

The other officers had to bear the captain's cold furies. They would sit at their desks and pray for 0900 to pass. Generally speaking, if Captain Kelley did not upset the Depot and publicly excoriate his assistants by 0900 in the morning, they were safe for the day. Usually they were not so lucky. Some minor defect in their work would be discovered by the captain, and before everyone in earshot, the culprit would be humiliated. Day after day Captain Kelley raged and stormed at his officers. Frequently, the cause, if ignored, would have been forgotten by noon. As it was, however, there grew up in the Depot a clique of eight or ten officers who daily sought to divert the captain's wrath from themselves by pointing out someone else's mistakes. In this way officer was set against officer, and there developed an atmosphere of hatred deeper than any in which I had previously lived. No defection, however small, escaped attention. Like boys before a whipping post, the officers would breathe easily because it was someone else that morning, not they.

Bus Adams refused to play any part in that dirty game. Several times he took the blame for petty discrepancies which it would have been beneath the dignity of a naval aviator to dispute. "Hell," he used to say to me. "Why should I dirty my hands in that foul stew? What can that bunch of sisters do to me? Next month I'll be tangling with Zeros. I can't waste my energy on the Supply Corps!"

But next month never came. Instead, one dismal incident after another occurred, until I wondered whether I was working with men or children. One especially petty affair will explain what I mean. Captain Kelley's incipient deafness made it necessary for him to ask that certain conversation be repeated. "What's that, Mr. Adams?" he would say, leaning forward slightly. Bus, accordingly, made it a point to drop his voice at the last sentence of any interesting comment he was making. "What's that, Mr. Adams?" the captain would ask in his birdlike manner. Then Bus would shout something proving that aviators alone were saving the Navy. I remember once when his bellowed reply was, "He flunked out of flight training, so they found him a job in the Supply Corps!" Another time he echoed, "We would have sunk two more Jap ships, but we ran out of supplies!"

Bus could speak like Charles Laughton, the actor who portrayed Captain Bligh in Mutiny on the Bounty. Frequently when he had two or three whiskeys safely stowed he would thrust his lower jaw out, walk like a martinet on the bridge, and stick his face into mine. "What's that, Mr. Christian?" he would sneer in the manner of the great slave-driver. Bus repeated this performance often enough so that enlisted men finally got wind of it. Then, for several weeks, two hundred warehouses rang with the battle cry: "What's that, Mr. Christian?" Then for Christian, the luckless mutineer, was substituted the name of any officer who might at that moment be under Captain Kelley's heel. "What's that, Mr. Adams?" would come bursting forth from some dark building. In mock terror a clown on the outside would chatter in reply, "Yes, Captain Bligh!"

It became my unpleasant task to visit each of the two-hundred-odd buildings and tell the men in charge that no further catcalls would be tolerated. I pride myself on the fact that not once did I wink or show by any outward manifestation what I thought; although at times I must admit that I found it difficult to keep a straight face when some able mimic would sham mock horror at the thought of my suspecting him. I remember one gaunt lad in particular called Polikopf, whose strange name later became famous at the Depot. He was a gifted mimic, and one of the first to adopt the cry, "What's that, Mr. Christian?" He feigned ignorance of what I was talking about.

"Very well, Polikopf," I said, "but in the future save your gibes for the enlisted men. It's dangerous to go about mocking naval captains."

"Aye, aye, sir!" he replied in military fashion. I could detect no mimicry in his voice, although there must have been much in his mind. "I'll follow your advice, sir! Save my efforts for the enlisted men."

The result of my extensive tour was that any bitterness the enlisted men felt for Captain Kelley was thereafter hidden. I took no sides in the arguments that were rife among the officers and men alike concerning the captain's ability. As a matter of fact, I now think he was one of the ablest men I knew in the Navy. The incident of the hurricane doors will show what I mean.

One day the Depot received orders from Noumea to take proper precautions against hurricanes. Our entire island received the order. Other activities made up a routine hurricane bill whereby personnel would be evacuated to safe land and gear lashed down as well as possible.

Such cavalier precautions would not do for Captain Kelley. He appointed a committee to study what should be done in event of sustained and gusty winds up to 150 miles an hour. He established one building as a testing ground, and ran small handcars loaded with concrete down inclines to determine at what point quonset huts buckled. He studied all he could find on hurricanes, and then asked me to converse with planters and natives in the region to discover what they knew of hurricanes.

I visited each available plantation and learned from the owners that hurricanes occurred about once in nine years. The season lasted from January through March. They started with heavy rains which lasted two days. On the beginning of the second day winds began to rise, and on the night of the second day they came in short bursts, followed by calm spells in which the rain was intensified. If that stage was reached, a proper hurricane was in progress, and it must blow itself out.

From natives I learned much about the big winds. In their horrible Beche-le-Mer they told me much that was fanciful and more that was instructive. One old man who had lived near the channel for half a century told me, "Wind he come, he come, he come. Takem, takem, takem! Trees he go, ocean allay, allay! Bimeby wind he go Vanicoro, he go Banks, he go, he go. Bimeby stop." The old man told me this with much waving of arms and with many words I did not understand. It was enough, however, to lead my inquiries in the right direction. I determined that whereas floods and lightning might come when the wind was east and north, trees were usually blown down only in the first stages of the hurricane when wind blew from the southeast. By the time it had worked around to the west, danger was gone.

I relayed this information to Captain Kelley. Characteristically he decided instantly that any quonsets whose ends opened to the southeast must be completely repacked so that gear inside would strengthen the relatively frail tin walls. This was a prodigious job, and when the captain informed his officers that work on the project would start immediately, they showed astonishment.

"We must take no risks that can be avoided," he insisted.

"Can we do this before the task force arrives?" an officer asked.

"If not, we must do it while the force is here," said Captain Kelley. "We shall stow gear at one end of the building and issue it at the other end. By tomorrow noon see that all issue desks are placed at the north or northwest ends of buildings."

Two nights later the Depot was in the swing of a full nine-hour day followed by special four-hour emergency duty at night, ending with another nine-hour day till dawn. Each man worked thirteen hours a day, seven days in a row. On the seventh night they worked an additional six hours and were then given a day to sleep. Lights blazed all night. Men shoved and sweated. Even middle-aged men who normally worked as guards were called to duty. A company of Marines was brought in to take over their guard duty.

Navy chow ashore is rarely as good as it is afloat, and for enlisted men it is usually much worse. As work increased, quality of chow decreased, and lamentations were loud. Nevertheless, men worked on. With no beer, no movies, poor food, frightened officers, and relentless Captain Kelley in charge, the men worked on, ninety hours a week. Tension, at such times, mounts.

Half the buildings were secured against hurricane when two unfortunate things happened. The rain started and the fleet came in. The rain alone could have been tolerated. The skies opened torrentially every morning, afternoon, evening and night. "Like a cow on a flat rock," old Navy hands said. In between the sun shone and generated steam wherever water lay. Men's shirts were never dry save for one fleeting instant when the sun had finished evaporating rain water and sweat had not yet started to pour. Mold grew everywhere, and men afflicted with fungus found it spreading rapidly. The rains were started.

But to have rain and the fleet at one time was too much. For most ships' crews the Depot was a place to loaf and a place from which the most wonderful things could be procured, if... If you knew somebody, you might get a radio! If you could wangle a chit, you might get two new knives! If you pestered a hot, ill-tempered storekeeper long enough, he might give you a wrist-watch band in desperation. And if you could manage to finagle a boiled ham, or a tinned turkey, or a coconut cake... well, you could probably get an entire quonset hut! And the storekeeper thrown in!

All day men of the Depot would work and quarrel with men of the fleet. Then at night they would wrestle with boxes to protect their buildings against a hurricane which might never come. And invariably the fleet wanted what had two days before been packed at the bottom of the pile against the doors. It was my job to keep the enlisted men happy, and I think I succeeded. At any rate, the Depot never before had handled so much gear in so short a time. But I could not have succeeded in keeping spirits up had I not received help from a most unusual quarter: a man in a long black coat! Said he was from Naval Intelligence!

He appeared one night at about 0200. It was a dark, rainy night, and work had been knocked off. The floodlights were dark, and in the channel rode a hundred ships. Mysteriously, at the east end of the Depot a man in a long black trench coat appeared. "Naval Intelligence," he whispered to the guard. "What's up?" the guard whispered in return. "Horrible," Longcoat replied. "Jap saboteurs have landed at the other end of the island!"

"Oh, my God!" the guard whispered. "Stand your post! We're getting reinforcements. They're going to try to blow this place up. Stop the strike! We've got to outwit them. I'll be in charge. When I flash my light once, you will fire twice. Up in the air. That'll keep us together. Then the troops can take over!"

"Yes, sir!" the guard replied grimly.

Up and down the buildings the man in the long coat went. Few of the men standing guard had ever expected to be addressed by a man from Naval Intelligence! They were stunned at the audacity of the Japs. But they were ready!

At about 0235, the man in the long coat suddenly appeared where three guards could see him. Flash... The guards fired twice each into the dark night. Longcoat hastened to another vantage point. Flash... Four more guards fired. Down the long row of buildings hurried Longcoat, flashing his light and drawing a fusilade. When he reached the last guards he flashed his light four times. A true volley of shots responded. Then Longcoat disappeared.

By the time the second batch of guards had fired, half the officers were out of bed. By the time the last watchman had followed instructions, many officers aboard ships were awake. Lights flashed in earnest now. Bells jangled, and before long Captain Kelley himself appeared, quiet, incisive, and determined.

"It's a hoax, sir!" a lieutenant reported.

"What's that, sir?" Kelley asked.

"A hoax, sir. Somebody fooled the guards!"

Captain Kelley said nothing. He grew pale with anger and personally interrogated each guard. He did not raise his voice nor display his rage in any way. Relentlessly, he pursued his questioning, and by the time he had reached the last guard descriptions and hints had mounted so rapidly that we knew for certain who the culprit was.

We went directly to his bunk, and there we found him, shoes wet, and a long coat at the foot of his bunk. It was Polikopf! He had followed my instructions to the letter!

Captain Kelley did the speaking. "Polikopf?" he asked.