“Perhaps there is justification for criticism on both sides. Whatever there is, it is ended as of today. The Mark Six exploders will be modified in the shop before you get them. And I will relieve at once any Commanding Officer who does not command as he should, who is not sufficiently aggressive against the enemy.
“Now that we have passed that barrier, I want to commend you, Mike, Olsen, for the cleanliness of the Eelfish. “ He nodded his head toward Bob Lee. “And you, sir, for the excellence of the torpedoes you brought back and your conduct during that casualty in the After Room. That’s what we want to hear about next; will you tell us, in full detail, Mike, what went on back there?”
Brannon wet his lips and nodded. He carefully went through each step of the casualty, from the accidental firing of the torpedo in Number Seven tube to the disarming of the exploder and the removal of the fulminate of mercury cartridge.
“You must have had a helluva time keeping a decent trim with the After Room flooding and under depth-charge attack,” Captain Rivers said.
“Mr. Olsen and Lieutenant Jerry Gold, who is my Battle Stations Diving Officer, performed flawlessly. As did Lieutenant Lee, who stayed in the After Room when it was flooding.”
“I’ve looked over your recommendations for medals, Mike,” Admiral Christie said. “I’m awarding Silver Stars to Olsen, Lee, and Gold and to Chief Torpedoman Flanagan and First Class Torpedoman Nelson.” He looked up from the papers in front of him and grinned.
“Now tell me, Mike, what in the hell did you think you were accomplishing by getting under that warhead and catching the exploder?”
“I don’t really know, sir,” Brannon answered. “I guess I thought it was my duty, something I should do to share in the risk of the operation.”
“Oh, hell!” Captain Rivers snorted. “If the damned war head had blown, every warhead in the torpedo room would have exploded in a sympathetic explosion and the whole ship would have been blown to bits!”
“But it didn’t happen,” Christie said with a grin. “I’ve awarded you the Navy Cross, Mike. The medal ceremonies will be held after the R and R period. My yeoman will be in touch with you. Now let’s hear about this U-boat sighting. I looked over your contact and patrol reports, and you didn’t even have a preliminary plot. Hold it until we get a fresh pot of coffee.” He nodded at a junior staff officer, who rose from the table and went to the door. After a mess cook had delivered the coffee and left the room the Admiral nodded at Brannon.
Brannon went through the incident slowly and carefully. Admiral Christie shook his head when Brannon told him of being called to the Conning Tower because the surface of the ocean was covered with swimming snakes.
“Must have been a terrible sight,” Christie said.
“Yes, sir,” Brannon said. “Eerie is the word that came to mind at the time.” When he had finished describing the sinking of the U-boat, the Operations Officer spoke.
“The Germans have a few U-boats in the Indian Ocean. They never bother us. Once in a great while we get a report of one of them as far east as Bali. The one you sighted and sank was only the second one to ever go through Lombok and into the Java Sea that we know about.”
“The other one was sunk by a Dutch submarine skipper,” Christie said. “Captain Goosens got the U-168 coming out of Surabaya and sank it and took survivors aboard. Two for two is about as good a batting average as you can get. Hard on the U-boats though.” He stood up, and his staff stood up with him.
“Thank you for coming by, Captain Brannon, gentlemen. Enjoy your R and R.” He looked at Bob Lee, a small smile showing on his lips. “And you, sir, always defend your Captain when you’re right.” He stretched, the strain of the burdens he carried showing in his face.
Seated in the car that took them away from the Bend of the Road, Olsen reached over and shook Brannon’s hand. “Congratulations, Mike! A Navy Cross! By God, you deserve it. And thanks for putting me in for a Silver Star.”
“I put in for a Navy Cross for you, John, and for Bob and Flanagan and Nelson; you for your work as the Executive and Plotting Officer and Bob, Flanagan, and Fred for what they did in the After Room. They told me when I met with Captain Rivers before we all went in there that you would get a Silver Star, that your time was coming. Bob got knocked down to a Silver Star because he’s not Regular Navy, he’s a Reserve. Flanagan and Nelson got reduced to a Silver Star because they’re enlisted men and they didn’t die. Captain Rivers doesn’t believe in giving medals to enlisted men if he can avoid it. I’m sorry my recommendations didn’t carry much weight.”
“I’m grateful, Captain,” Lee said. “Silver Star or Navy Cross, neither one is going to count when I hang out my shingle as an attorney after the war.”
“That’s right, you’re a lawyer, aren’t you?” Olsen asked.
“Yes, sir,” Lee said. “I passed my bar exam for California, and then the Navy reached out and said the proper place for a young lawyer was on a submarine. I’m sort of glad they did. I like the Eelfish, I like you people.”
“It must have cost Admiral Christie an awful lot to admit his pet exploder isn’t working the way he thought it would work,” Brannon said slowly. “I admire that man. It took an awful lot of backbone to face up to that. I don’t think I could have done it.”
“He’s a pretty good dude, for an Admiral,” Olsen said. “He could have jumped all over rambunctious Bob when he spoke up in defense of our torpedoes.”
“I could have bitten my tongue off,” Lee said.
“You got away with it because Christie is a decent man,” Mike Brannon said. “You’ve used up all your luck in that department. One other thing, John, and you can tell the Chief Petty Officers when you see them: We’re going to have to do our own refit this time. The relief crews are overworked at this particular time, several boats are in or are coming in, and because we’re going to have to wait for that outer door they decided our people would do their own overhaul.”
“Going to be some unhappy sailors,” Olsen said. “Not that we’ve got much to do, other than painting the ship inside and out. That’s a big job.”
“It won’t hurt them,” Brannon said.
Flanagan found Chiefs Nuthall and Wilson in the CPO Quarters on the tender. Both men were dressing in front of their lockers.
“We just went over the side and looked at your tube,” Wilson said. “The water in this harbor is filthy, you know that?”
“Was the door gone?” Flanagan asked. “How did the tube look?”
“Door’s gone clean as a whistle,” Nuthall said. “We couldn’t have taken it off any cleaner if we had tools. We scraped the paint off all around the hinges and looked for hairline cracks with a light, but we couldn’t see anything wrong. We’ll do a better job of that once we get you in dry dock.”
“Supposing you find a few cracks?” Flanagan said with a grin. “That mean we have to go back to the States?”
“ ‘Fraid not,” Wilson said. “What we’d do then is to throw some welds on every crack we could find, hang the door, tack weld it shut, and you’d go to sea with one less torpedo tube. You ready for chow?”
“What are you going to do with the guy who fired that fish in the tube?” Nuthall said as the three men sat down at a table covered with snowy linen and laid with china that was decorated with the name of the submarine tender.
“You gonna transfer him and give him to us, in the relief crew?”
“I don’t think so,” Flanagan said. “He’s a good man. Young, but he’s good. Fred Nelson, the guy who has the After Room, wants to keep him. The Old Man is just letting him stew in his own juice for a while. I don’t think he’ll do anything unless the Staff gets stiff-necked about it.” He unfolded a white napkin and laid it in his lap.