The Galloping Ghost (7 page)

At sea in the tropics, Fluckey suffered badly from sunburn due to his light complexion. As officer of the deck, he complained that his face
was “one big blister . . . I'm so red I'm purple.” During the cruise, the
McCormick
passed below the equator, bringing on an ancient naval tradition whereby crewmen who have sailed the Southern Hemisphere “baptize” those who haven't. In this case it was Ensign Fluckey and a few other “pollywogs” brought before a mock King Neptune's court convened on the destroyer. “Last night Davy Jones [a designated crewman] crawled aboard in proper fashion with his subpoenas for the ‘pollywogs' to the court of Father Neptune,” as Fluckey described it in a letter to his fiancée. Fluckey's three “offenses” were “overexposing his face to the sun,” “flouting his blistered hide before his betters,” and “being lubberly enough to attempt to bring a trunk aboard a destroyer.” The next morning a sailor dressed up as Rex Neptune in a homemade crown and scepter presided with a school of “mermaid” sailors. The ensign was found guilty on all counts followed by an appropriate sentence, met with laughter all around: “First they stuffed me full of quinine, then, alas, clipped my golden locks (by far the worst of the ignominies). Off to a good start they proceeded to beat me to a frazzle, souse me from head to foot with fuel oil, and then dumped me into the tank. Naturally I'm a full-fledged shellback [satisfactory initiation into the Southern Hemisphere club], though slightly peculiar looking, being bald in spots with dark rimmed eyes where the fuel oil refused to come off. We passed the remainder of the day massaging ourselves with kerosene, hot water and rags alternately,” he said of himself and fellow pollywogs. “Hon, when, oh, when will I ever be presentable again.”

For the next year, as the destroyer tagged along with the Fleet up and down the Pacific Coast, Fluckey earned a reputation as being affable, well liked, capable of lightning-like calculations, and unflappable in emergencies. “I don't know anyone he doesn't like, nor do I know of anyone who doesn't like him,” Marjorie would tell a reporter a few years later. “He fits into all crowds and doesn't know what it is to have a temper. In fact, he flatly tells me, ‘There's no use trying to get into a fight with me—I just won't fight.'”

By May 1937—with just a month left until Fluckey was to get twenty-five days' leave to marry his fiancée—the ensign witnessed a tragedy involving a Navy pilot and radioman. “Our ship was port plane guard for the
Saratoga
and I was officer-of-the-deck when a plane whizzed past us attempting to take a short cut to make the landing on the
Saratoga
,” he wrote Marjorie.

As the
McCormick
headed back to San Diego, Fluckey scribbled “658 dragging hours” at the beginning of a new letter, noting the time remaining until the couple would be reunited and could wed. “Did you know I've grown a moustache? I was going to surprise you with it, but the captain thinks I'd better get rid of it before I see the high and mighty tomorrow. Truly I'm quite distinguished looking if one is not over five feet away. Still, as you can realize, at ten feet it fades out entirely just like my eyebrows. And I did so want to be married with a moustache.”

With “2,030,400 seconds” left before leave, Fluckey wrote again of preparing for marriage and how the division doctor summoned the three husbands-to-be aboard the
McCormick
to a private conference to “top off” their knowledge of marital relations.

Gene Fluckey and Marjorie Gould were married right on schedule, 6 June 1937, in Long Beach in a simple ceremony that fulfilled the Navy's marital waiting period. The couple was desperately poor on an ensign's salary. Given the cost of insulin and other medicines, they eked by, barely. When the commanding officer of the
McCormick
came to call, the couple drew the blinds and didn't answer the door as they didn't have a single soft drink or anything to offer.

With trepidation Marjorie's mother turned over the duty of monitoring her daughter's insulin treatments to her son-in-law. Not only did he do so very successfully, but he had studied up on every available source of information on diabetes. “He frankly knew more than the doctors did,” said a relative. Fluckey decided, based on his readings, that megadoses of vitamin B would help keep his wife healthy, contrary to medical advice of
the time. But the vitamins were expensive and the Navy was unwilling to pay for them. Fortunately, a new, longer-lasting insulin was on the market, which helped medically. But as Fluckey put it in a letter after the
McCormick
cast off, “I am scared stiff and heart broken at the thought of leaving you in anyone's hands but my own. I've never detested going away so much in my life as I did that last night. I tried to feel perky. Still the minute the car drove off gloom and despair settled all over me.”

The couple had no intention of having children; the risk to both child and mother from diabetes was just too great. Yet it wasn't long before Marjorie learned she was pregnant and due in March 1938—a scary situation. Mothers with diabetes at that time often died during childbirth.

In his desire to be home more during this time, Fluckey considered transferring to submarine duty; submariners seemed to have much more free time. “I have figured out that in destroyers, normally operating, I can be with you less than one-third of each year. Loving you as I do, there is no job at any salary worth that sacrifice. Submarines should do better,” Fluckey noted in a letter home. But even with submersibles, as he put it, “If they don't bring the average free time up to 50 percent, the Navy and I will part.”

Over the next nine months, the
McCormick
was in and out of San Diego and for a time was transferred to the Navy base in Vallejo on San Francisco Bay, where Marjorie relocated briefly. Most of the time, Ensign Fluckey was at sea, rekindling a romance of letters in which he regretted deeply the long absences.

Occasionally something out of the ordinary broke the monotony on the
McCormick
. On 20 March 1938, while at sea, a sailor fell overboard when a guard rail on the flying bridge gave way. He plunged onto the roof of the bridge, knocked off one of the radio antennas, then fell into the Pacific. He struggled to get his clothes off so they wouldn't drag him under. Though life preservers were thrown in his direction, he couldn't reach them. Fluckey ordered a boat lowered, jumped in, and raced toward the sailor. “We got to him in time to save him though he was cut up a bit and utterly exhausted,” he wrote Marjorie. “When we brought him aboard, I mixed a shot of coffee and alcohol to bring him around. As the coffee was hot and the alcohol strong, I had to keep sipping it to be sure it was OK for him. We both recovered.”

Three days later Marjorie Fluckey gave birth to a nine-pound, seven-and-three-quarters-ounce baby girl at Mercy Hospital in San Diego. Fortunately, there were no complications; both mother and daughter—Barbara Ann—were doing fine. The announcement was radioed to the
McCormick
. “When the news arrived I was just turning in after the evening 8–12 watch,
so I really feel like I stood watch over you,” he wrote back from the destroyer. “After a few joyous jumps I broke out a box of cigars and woke up everybody from the Commodore on down to tell them of the joyous event and to offer them a cigar. . . . Darling, I'm so very, very happy sitting here puffing a cigar and writing dribbles from the whirlpool of thoughts of you that encompass my being. The whole ship is congratulating me and my chest measurement has increased to a 52.”

March led into April, April into May, with the
McCormick
still out in the Pacific and Fluckey longing to be home. He decided to put in for submarine duty. The benefits seemed to far outweigh the negatives. If he got a transfer, he and his family would first go to New London, Connecticut, for intensive submarine training over several months—time that he could be with Marjorie and his daughter. Submarine duty also offered hazardous duty pay—an extra 50 percent at sea—and a quicker route to promotions. In addition, active duty and former submarine officers that Fluckey had met seemed a cut above in intellect. And there was another reason—Fluckey's complexion. He suffered greatly from sunburn; he figured under-sea duty would be more conducive to his physical well-being.

Of course, there was the risk of a sinking. During his lifetime, more than a few submarine disasters had grabbed the headlines. Between 1927 and 1935 ten submarines had been lost from the United States, Russia, France, Italy, and England, with the deaths of 408 officers and men. Despite the public perception of subs being “iron coffins,” the disasters were few compared to the large number of submersibles in the American fleet. Lately the safety record had improved. New, larger submarines capable of enough speed to accompany the Fleet also were being built for transpacific operations.

Fluckey's orders to sub school arrived while the
McCormick
was in Pearl Harbor. He shared the good news in an effusive letter written in the wee hours of dawn. He calculated it would be 28,831 minutes until the destroyer finally returned to San Diego.

In successive days the ensign composed poetry for his wife and wrote dreamily of his daughter. Marjorie wrote back, “You should see our blessed darling. She gets prettier every day and more adorable. Hon, you're just going to love her to death. . . . Darling, the poems you wrote were really very sweet, though I must admit that the second one rather made me blush, in fact Mrs. Germeinder said I had the rosiest look while reading one of your letters. If she but knew! However hon, I can quite believe and understand what you mean for they tell me that you realize how very much I love you.”

As June arrived the
McCormick
dropped anchor in San Diego to an emotional reunion between Fluckey and his bride. For the first time, he got to hold his six-week-old daughter. On 6 June, the third anniversary of Fluckey's graduation from the academy and the first anniversary of his wedding, the couple christened Barbara Ann. That same day, all three left California for Connecticut, where the young ensign would find a home in the Silent Service.

Along with his orders to sub school, Eugene Fluckey had been promoted to lieutenant (j.g.) with a much needed pay raise. As he moved up the chain of command, he also had been moving down—figuratively. In three years he had transferred from a 27,500-ton battleship with a crew of more than 1,000 to a 1,550-ton destroyer with a crew of 270 to imminent duty in a 903-ton submarine with a crew of 38. Rather than wait forever to become captain of the battleship, he now envisioned himself as lieutenant commander of an undersea warship in just a few years.

The incredibly complex and expensive vessels were, in their time, akin to today's orbiting spacecraft. Diving and surfacing—like liftoffs and landings—required precision teamwork that was unforgiving if not carried out in split-second unison. The service was perceived as so dangerous it was an all-volunteer arm of the Navy that operated in complete secrecy, giving rise to its reputation as the “Silent Service.” It was also an elite corps; not just anyone could join. Those who served had to meet exceedingly tough criteria for mechanical aptitude and psychological well-being. The wrong kind of man aboard a sub, on a long cruise and under attack, could be devastating for the
rest of the crew. Adm. Charles A. Lockwood, a World War I submarine pioneer who would go on to command the Pacific submarine fleet in World War II, summed up the type of individual the Navy was looking for: “In no other branch of military service are men required to remain away from normal human contacts as long as submariners at depths far below the least glimmer of sunlight and far away from the feel and smell of natural air. Moreover, these conditions must be endured with good cheer in overcrowded, sometimes ill-smelling, dew-dripping, steel compartments. Those whose tempers or temperaments cannot stand the strain are soon eliminated.”