Winter of the World (82 page)

Chuck saw the first bomb.

Many Japanese bombs had a delayed fuse. Instead of exploding on impact, they went off a second or so later; the idea being that they would crash through the deck and explode deep in the
interior, causing maximum devastation.

But this bomb rolled along the
Yorktown
’s deck.

Chuck watched in mesmerized horror. For a moment it looked as if it might do no harm. Then it went off with a boom and a flash of flame. The two Chicago pianos aft were destroyed in an instant.
Small fires appeared on deck and in the towers.

To Chuck’s amazement the men around him remained as cool as if they were attending a war game in a conference room. Admiral Fletcher issued orders even as he staggered across the
shuddering deck of the flag bridge. Moments later, damage control teams were dashing across the flight deck with fire hoses, and stretcher parties were picking up the wounded and carrying them down
steep companionways to dressing stations below.

There were no major fires: the carbon dioxide in the fuel lines had prevented that. And there were no bomb-loaded planes on deck to blow up.

A moment later another Val screamed down at the
Yorktown
and a bomb hit the smokestack. The explosion rocked the mighty ship. A huge pall of oily black smoke gouted from the funnels. The
bomb must have damaged the engines, Chuck realized, because the ship lost speed immediately.

More bombs missed their targets, landing in the sea, sending up geysers that splashed on to the deck, where sea water mingled with the blood of the wounded.

The
Yorktown
slowed to a halt. When the crippled ship was dead in the water, the Japanese scored a third hit, and a bomb crashed through the forward elevator and exploded somewhere
below.

Then, suddenly, it was over, and the surviving Vals climbed into the clear blue Pacific sky.

I’m still alive, Chuck thought.

The ship was not lost. Fire-control parties were at work before the Japanese were out of sight. Down below, the engineers said they could get the boilers going within an hour. Repair crews
patched the hole in the flight deck with six-by-four planks of Douglas fir.

But the radio gear had been destroyed, so Admiral Fletcher was deaf and blind. With his personal staff he transferred to the cruiser
Astoria
, and he handed over tactical command to
Spruance on the
Enterprise
.

Under his breath, Chuck said: ‘Fuck you, Vandermeier – I survived.’

He spoke too soon.

The engines throbbed back to life. Now under the command of Captain Buckmaster, the
Yorktown
began once again to cut through the Pacific waves. Some of her planes had already taken refuge
on the
Enterprise
, but others were still in the air, so she turned into the wind, and they began to touch down and refuel. As she had no working radio, Chuck and his colleagues became a
semaphore team to communicate with other ships using old-fashioned flags.

At half past two, the radar of a cruiser escorting the
Yorktown
revealed planes coming in low from the west – an attack flight from the
Hiryu
, presumably. The cruiser
signalled the news to the carrier. Buckmaster sent up twelve Wildcats to intercept.

The Wildcats must have been unable to stop the attack, for ten torpedo bombers appeared, skimming the waves, heading straight for the
Yorktown
.

Chuck could see the planes clearly. They were Nakajima B5Ns, called Kates by the Americans. Each carried a torpedo slung under its fuselage, the weapon almost half the length of the entire
plane.

The four heavy cruisers escorting the carrier shelled the sea around her, throwing up a screen of foamy water, but the Japanese pilots were not so easily deterred, and they flew straight through
the spray.

Chuck saw the first plane drop its torpedo. The long bomb splashed into the water, pointed at the
Yorktown
.

The plane flashed past the ship so close that Chuck saw the pilot’s face. He was wearing a white-and-red headband as well as his flight helmet. He shook a triumphant fist at the crew on
deck. Then he was gone.

More planes roared by. Torpedoes were slow, and ships could sometimes dodge them, but the crippled
Yorktown
was too cumbersome to zigzag. There was a tremendous bang, shaking the ship:
torpedoes were several times more powerful than regular bombs. It felt to Chuck as if she had been struck on the port stern. Another explosion followed close behind, and this one actually lifted
the ship, throwing half the crew to the deck. Immediately afterwards, the mighty engines faltered.

Once again the damage parties were at work before the attacking planes were out of sight. But this time the men could not cope. Chuck joined the teams manning the pumps, and saw that the steel
hull of the great ship was ripped like a tin can. A Niagara of sea water poured through the gash. Within minutes Chuck could feel that the deck had tilted. The
Yorktown
was listing to
port.

The pumps could not cope with the inward rush of water, especially as the ship’s watertight compartments had been damaged at the Battle of the Coral Sea and not fixed during her rush
repairs.

How long could it be before she capsized?

At three o’clock Chuck heard the order: ‘Abandon Ship!’

Sailors dropped ropes over the high edge of the sloping deck. On the hangar deck, by jerking a few strings crewmen released thousands of life jackets from overhead stowage to fall like rain. The
escort vessels moved closer and launched their boats. The crew of the
Yorktown
took off their shoes and swarmed over the side. For some reason, they put their shoes on the deck in neat
lines, hundreds of pairs, like some ritual sacrifice. Wounded men were lowered on stretchers to waiting whaleboats. Chuck found himself in the water, swimming as fast as he could to get away from
the
Yorktown
before she turned over. A wave took him by surprise and washed away his cap. He was glad he was in the warm Pacific: the Atlantic might have killed him with cold while he was
waiting to be rescued.

He was picked up by a lifeboat, which continued to retrieve men from the sea. Dozens of other boats were doing the same. Many crew climbed down from the main deck, which was lower than the
flight deck. The
Yorktown
somehow managed to stay afloat.

When all the crew were safe they were taken aboard the escorting vessels.

Chuck stood on deck, looking across the water as the sun went down behind the slowly sinking
Yorktown
. It occurred to him that during the whole day he had not seen a Japanese ship. The
entire battle had been fought by aircraft. He wondered if this was the first of a new kind of naval battle. If so, aircraft carriers would be the key vessels in future. Nothing else would count for
much.

Trixie Paxman appeared beside him. Chuck was so pleased to see him alive that he hugged him.

Trixie told Chuck that the last flight of Dauntless dive bombers, from the
Enterprise
and the
Yorktown
, had set alight the
Hiryu
, the surviving Japanese carrier, and
destroyed her.

‘So all four Japanese carriers are out of action,’ Chuck said.

‘That’s right. We got them all, and lost only one of our own.’

‘So,’ said Chuck, ‘does that mean we won?’

‘Yes,’ said Trixie. ‘I guess it does.’

(v)

After the Battle of Midway it was clear that the Pacific war would be won by planes launched from ships. Both Japan and the United States began crash programmes to build
aircraft carriers as fast as possible.

During 1943 and 1944, Japan produced seven of these huge, costly vessels.

In the same period, the United States produced ninety.

1942 (II)

Nursing Sister Carla von Ulrich wheeled a cart into the supply room and closed the door behind her.

She had to work quickly. What she was about to do would get her sent to a concentration camp if she were caught.

She took a selection of wound dressings from a cupboard, plus a roll of bandage and a jar of antiseptic cream. Then she unlocked the drugs cabinet. She took morphine for pain relief,
sulphonamide for infections, and aspirin for fever. She added a new hypodermic syringe, still in its box.

She had already falsified the register, over a period of weeks, to look as if what she was stealing had been used legitimately. She had rigged the register before taking the stuff, rather than
afterwards, so that any spot check would reveal a surplus, suggesting mere carelessness, instead of a deficit, which indicated theft.

She had done all this twice before, but she felt no less frightened.

As she wheeled the cart out of the store, she hoped she looked innocent: a nurse bringing medical necessities to a patient’s bedside.

She walked into the ward. To her dismay she saw Dr Ernst there, sitting beside a bed, taking a patient’s pulse.

All the doctors should have been at lunch.

It was now too late to change her mind. Trying to assume an air of confidence that was the opposite of what she felt, she held her head high and walked through the ward, pushing her cart.

Dr Ernst glanced up at her and smiled.

Berthold Ernst was the nurses’ dreamboat. A talented surgeon with a warm bedside manner, he was tall, handsome and single. He had romanced most of the attractive nurses, and had slept with
many of them, if hospital gossip could be credited.

She nodded to him and went briskly past.

She pushed the trolley out of the ward then suddenly turned into the nurses’ cloakroom.

Her outdoor coat was on a hook. Beneath it was a basketwork shopping bag containing an old silk scarf, a cabbage and a box of sanitary towels in a brown paper bag. Carla removed the contents,
then swiftly transferred the medical supplies from the trolley to the bag. She covered the supplies with the scarf, a blue and gold geometric design that her mother must have bought in the
twenties. Then she put the cabbage and the sanitary towels on top, hung the bag on a hook, and arranged her coat to cover it.

I got away with it, she thought. She realized she was trembling a little. She took a deep breath, got herself under control, opened the door – and saw Dr Ernst standing just outside.

Had he been following her? Was he about to accuse her of stealing? His manner was not hostile; in fact, he looked friendly. Perhaps she had got away with it.

She said: ‘Good afternoon, Doctor. Can I help you with something?’

He smiled. ‘How are you, Sister? Is everything going well?’

‘Perfectly, I think.’ Guilt made her add ingratiatingly: ‘But it is you, Doctor, who must say whether things are going well.’

‘Oh, I have no complaints,’ he said dismissively.

Carla thought: So what is this about? Is he toying with me, sadistically delaying the moment when he makes his accusation?

She said nothing, but stood waiting, trying not to shake with anxiety.

He looked down at the cart. ‘Why did you take that into the cloakroom?’

‘I wanted something,’ she said, improvising desperately. ‘Something from my raincoat.’ She tried to suppress the frightened tremor in her voice. ‘A handkerchief,
from my pocket.’ Stop gabbling, she told herself. He’s a doctor, not a Gestapo agent. But he scared her all the same.

He looked amused, as if he enjoyed her nervousness. ‘And the trolley?’

‘I’m returning it to its place.’

‘Tidiness is essential. You’re a very good nurse . . . Fräulein von Ulrich . . . or is it Frau?’

‘Fräulein.’

‘We should talk some more.’

The way he smiled told her this was not about stealing medical supplies. He was about to ask her to go out with him. She would be the envy of dozens of nurses if she said yes.

But she had no interest in him. Perhaps it was because she had loved one dashing Lothario, Werner Franck, and he had turned out to be a self-centred coward. She guessed that Berthold Ernst was
similar.

However, she did not want to risk annoying him, so she just smiled and said nothing.

‘Do you like Wagner?’ he said.

She could see where this was going. ‘I have no time for music,’ she said firmly. ‘I take care of my elderly mother.’ In fact Maud was fifty-one and enjoyed robust good
health.

‘I have two tickets for a recital tomorrow evening. They’re playing the Siegfried Idyll.’

‘A chamber piece!’ she said. ‘Unusual.’ Most of Wagner’s work was on a grand scale.

He looked pleased. ‘You know about music, I see.’

She wished she had not said it. She had just encouraged him. ‘My family is musical – my mother gives piano lessons.’

‘Then you must come. I’m sure someone else could take care of your mother for an evening.’

‘It’s really not possible,’ Carla said. ‘But thank you very much for the invitation.’ She saw anger in his eyes: he was not used to rejection. She turned and
started to push the cart away.

‘Another time, perhaps?’ he called after her.

‘You’re very kind,’ she replied, without slowing her pace.

She was afraid he would come after her, but her ambiguous reply to his last question seemed to have mollified him. When she looked back over her shoulder he had gone.

She stowed the trolley and breathed more easily.

She returned to her duties. She checked on all the patients in her ward and wrote her reports. Then it was time to hand over to the evening shift.

She put on her raincoat and slung her bag over her arm. Now she had to walk out of the building with stolen property, and her fear mounted again.

Frieda Franck was going at the same time, and they left together. Frieda had no idea Carla was carrying contraband. They walked in June sunshine to the tram stop. Carla wore a coat mainly to
keep her uniform clean.

She thought she was giving a convincing impression of normality until Frieda said: ‘Are you worried about something?’

‘No, why?’