“My God, Skipper,” Olsen’s voice was low, intense. “You just can’t think about what happened in that way. We left because we had to leave. Our patrol orders told us where we had to go and when. For God’s sake don’t live with the idea that we did anything wrong, because we didn’t!”
“I don’t think we did anything wrong,” Brannon said slowly, his voice soft. “I just keep wondering about how it would have been if we had decided to stay with Mako just an hour or two longer. I know it’s sort of foolish, but I do.” He stopped and looked down at the table top.
“I thought about Art Hinman when we were coming up on that convoy tonight.” Brannon looked up, and Olsen saw that his eyes were fixed on something far distant.
“The first night surface attack we made in the Mako Art Hinman told me to take the TBT on the cigaret deck, to protect his stern and to keep him informed. Just as I told you to do tonight. Like you did tonight I fired two fish out of the After Room. Like you I got one hit. Like you those were the first torpedoes I ever fired at an enemy.” He turned his head and focused his eyes on Olsen.
“I had a funny feeling tonight, John. A very odd feeling. I felt as if Art Hinman was on the bridge with me and that he was joking with me and telling me to go right up the convoy’s rear end. I thought I heard him say that when we started shooting torpedoes the convoy would scatter and then I could use the deck guns. I don’t know, John, it seemed natural to me that Art Hinman seemed to be there.”
“I don’t think it was unnatural, sir,” Olsen said. His lean face was somber. “My mother believed that when a person died his or her soul went back to God. But if that soul knew that someone the soul had loved on Earth was in trouble or needed help, the soul could go back and give that help.” In the small Wardroom galley Pete Mahaffey cocked his head as he listened, and then he began to shake his head in disapproval.
“I thought it was only the Irish who are fey,” Brannon said
“No,” Olsen replied, “the Swedes have a long history of that sort of thing.” He slid his long, lean frame from behind the Wardroom table.
“I think I’ll take a walk through the boat,” he said. “I’ll have the contact report all typed up for you when you get up.”
“Tell everyone who’s awake that they did a hell of a good job,” Brannon said. “Especially the people in the torpedo rooms. The fish ran good and the exploders on the ones we got hits with worked.” He rose and followed Olsen out of the Wardroom and went to his stateroom.
He turned on the small light over the mirror and washbowl and blinked in surprise. His face was grimy with the smoke and soot of the gunfire. He ran hot water into the bowl, washed, kicked off his sandals, put his socks and shirt in a small laundry bag, and stretched out on his bunk. He heard Pete Mahaffey’s loud whisper through the watertight door opening to the Control Room that the Captain was in his bunk and the low order from the Chief of the Watch to get-a-one-degree-up-bubble-and-hold-it-there-damn-it.
He closed his eyes. If only Art Hinman had had the new SJ radar on Mako. If only Eelfish had stayed with the Mako a little longer. If. If. If.
He waited for sleep to come.
CHAPTER 3
The Control Room Auxiliaryman, who also served as the watch messenger, knocked softly on the bulkhead of the Captain’s stateroom three times during the eight to twelve morning watch to report that a periscope observation had picked up enemy aircraft. Each sighting was of planes far out on the horizon. Brannon acknowledged each report and drifted back to sleep. He had expected the Japanese would send out aircraft from their field at Tacloban to search for the submarine that smashed up their small convoy. He had expected, too, that the airmen would overshoot the search area; most fliers tended to think about distance in terms of scores of miles per hour, not in terms of a submarine’s slow progress of two or three knots under water.
He awoke when he heard the torpedomen from the Forward Torpedo Room scuffling past his stateroom on their way aft to the Crew’s Mess for the noon meal. He rose and went to the Officers’ Shower in the Forward Room and put on clean clothes. Pete Mahaffey came in to collect his dirty laundry.
“Cook’s got roast beef and mashed potatoes today, sir. I finally taught that man that a little garlic is better than a lot. Gravy is mighty tasty. I can serve when you’re ready, Captain.”
“I’ll eat when the other officers are ready, Pete,” Brannon said. “I don’t like eating alone.”
After Mahaffey had cleared the table Brannon began reading the contact report that Olsen had written. After he had read it and approved it the report would be encoded and sent to the Submarine Commands at Fremantle and Pearl Harbor. He read slowly, weighing each word, each phrase. More than one submarine commander, as he well knew, had come to grief because of a carelessly worded contact report and had been undone by a caustic footnote appended to the report by the Admirals in Fremantle and Brisbane.
Brannon wrote his approval on the side of the contact report and then carefully worded a last paragraph. He noted that targets were extremely scarce in Surigao Strait, and Eelfish, with all due respect, requested a more productive patrol area. Olsen came into the Wardroom, and Brannon showed him the paragraph he had added.
“I know that the squeaky wheel gets the grease,” he said. “But the mosquito that buzzes also gets slapped.”
The answer to the contact report came from Fremantle two nights later. There was a short sentence of congratulation on the sinking of three freighters and two small escort vessels. In response to the request made by the Commanding Officer of the Eelfish for a more productive area, Eelfish was needed in her assigned patrol area and would stay there until all torpedoes were expended or until early September, whichever came first. Future discussions of patrol areas could be done after Eelfish had returned to Fremantle.
“I told you they’d find fault down there in Fremantle,” Brannon said after he had read the decoded message that Olsen brought to the cigaret deck. “Those fellows sit around in that fancy headquarters of theirs down there. They sit around drinking coffee and trying to figure out ways to make the people at sea feel like a thin dime.”
“You mean that place they call ‘The Bend in the Road’?” Olsen asked with a grin. “I had to take a message over there when we were in Fremantle. You can’t have a messenger boy going to that place unless he wears at least two gold stripes. That place is really something, Captain. I mean that is some sort of luxury!”
“I know,” Brannon growled. “That place is full of people who are making a career out of kissing the asses of Admirals. Doesn’t make any difference which Admiral, just so the ass is gold-plated. They’re a bunch of yes men.
“Admiral Christie is a hell of a good man. At least I think so. But he’s surrounded with ass kissers. Every one of those people knows there’s something wrong with Christie’s pet project, that Mark Six exploder, but not one of those people have got the guts to say anything to Christie. They keep agreeing with him that we’re missing the targets when that damned exploder doesn’t work. Listen to this sentence.” He tilted the message flimsy so he could catch the light of the moon.
“Quote and unquote: It is the opinion of this command that shooting more than one torpedo at a target is an unnecessary waste of torpedoes, which are in very short supply.