“You people live pretty good,” he said as he eyed the menu the messcook brought.
“They have to treat us good,” Wilson said, a grin splitting his cherubic features. “We’re the folk who are winning the war, didn’t you know that?”
“I’m glad someone’s winning the damned thing,” Flanagan said. He looked up at the messcook, who was standing, order pad in hand.
“I’ll have a steak, rare, and two fried eggs with the yolks runny, if that isn’t too much trouble.”
Wilson and Nuthall placed the same order. The messcook left and came back with three salads and a tray of dressings.
“You don’t live too bad on the boats,” Nuthall said. “From the stores I see going aboard before a patrol run you don’t lack for much.”
“Food’s good,” Flanagan said as he spooned dressing over his salad. “But about after ten days the milk is all gone and the eggs are used up and the spuds get soggy and go rotten. Powdered eggs for breakfast aren’t my idea of the real thing, let me tell you.”
“I always get a kick out of watching you people go for the oranges and apples when you get in,” Wilson said.
“I never ate salads before the war,” Flanagan replied. “Now I do. The Pharmacist’s Mate aboard Eelfish told me that I got plenty of sunshine in peacetime. At sea we never see daylight except the first few days out and the last few days coming in. Now I find myself wanting to eat salad, lettuce, tomatoes, stuff like that.” He pushed his empty salad plate to one side as the messcook came back pushing a cart on wheels and put a steak with two fried eggs on top of it in front of each man.
“I didn’t think you’d make it here for chow,” Wilson said slyly. “This Aussie beer is mighty powerful, and the ladies are more so. The combination of the two could make a man forget all about a torpedo tube.”
“I took it easy,” Flanagan said. He speared a piece of steak, put it in his mouth, and chewed it slowly. “Ate dinner at the hotel, had a couple of beers in the bar, and then I watched the Shore Patrol bring my crew back. Most of them had to be carried in by the Shore Patrol, but there weren’t any charges. Kind of unusual.”
“They’ve got orders to treat you war heroes with velvet gloves,” Nuthall said. “If the drunk is off a boat in from a war patrol they’ll treat him nice and gentle and take him back to his hotel. If he’s a tender man, doing duty on this ship or the base, they’ll bend a nightstick over his head and throw him in the brig. War is hell, they tell me.”
Flanagan looked with approval at a piece of apple pie with a mound of ice cream melting beside it.
“Mighty fine meal, and I thank you. If you come ashore I’d like to repay you and throw in some beer as well. Now, you got any idea when that outer door will be here? I got to give the word to the Old Man.”
“Nothing definite,” Wilson said, lighting a cigaret. “We got an acknowledgment this morning that they had the order in New London, and for once the yeoman must not have fucked up because they didn’t ask for the requisition to be resubmitted, which is something they do almost all the time when we ask for something.”
“What that means,” Nuthall said, “is that they will now begin trying to find a door that belongs to some boat that’s on the building ways. Once that’s done they got to cut orders to get it shipped. Then they got to cut a set of orders to ship it to the West Coast. Once it gets there someone there has got to cut orders to get it flown out to Pearl Harbor.
“When it reaches there they got to cut orders to send it here by air — if some Supply Officer who’s queer for having an outer door doesn’t grab it and hide it — and when it gets here they got to write up a letter to tell us it’s here. Then we have to requisition the door.
“Once they acknowledge the requisition we have to requisition a small lifting crane and a truck and some men and go and get the thing. Then we can hang it for you.”
“Good God!” Flanagan said.
“You asked me, I told you,” the submarine tender Chief said. “You can figure about a month to get it, nothing under three weeks. Then, if we’re lucky, we’ll get you into dry dock, hang the door, and out again in two, three weeks. We can’t ask for dry-dock space until we get the door, and if we’re unlucky the dry dock will be tied up. But we might be lucky. You never know.”
“It ain’t anything to bitch about,” Wilson said. “The beer is good and the women, well, there just isn’t any Aussie men around who aren’t all shot to hell or old. They’re all fighting somewhere. If you aren’t married or even if you are, I’ve got a broad ashore who’s got a cousin who’s better lookin’ than my broad and willing.”
“I’m not married,” Flanagan said. “I tried it once. All she ever did was bitch, bitch, bitch. Got rid of her years ago. Never again.”
“I’ll drop by your hotel about sixteen thirty, maybe a little before,” Wilson said. “I’ll take you home and tell the broad I live with to call her cousin.”
CHAPTER 11
For most submarine men the two weeks of rest and relaxation the Navy provided in a hotel ashore, the “R & R” period, was a time to unwind, settle minor differences that had grown to major irritations during the long weeks on war patrol, get gloriously drunk, and find a woman to engage in the act of procreation. That act was, of itself, a gesture of defiance to the death all submariners faced when they returned to sea.
Submarine officers were quartered separately from their crews. The Navy’s High Command recognized that some of its officers — after all, so many were non-career Reservists — might forget themselves and act in a manner unbecoming an officer and a gentleman. The Navy felt that it was better if enlisted men did not see an officer in his cups or in pursuit of female companionship.
The port Shore Patrol teams that roamed the city day and night were instructed to treat submariners gently, to keep them from making a disturbance, and if need be, take them back to their hotels, where they were turned over to the hotel security guard.
Not all submariners spent their R & R time drinking or searching for women. Some explored the city, walked in the parks, sampled the Australian specialty of a steak topped with two or more fried eggs. Others, who chose to be quartered with hospitable families, fell happily into the family’s routine and more often than not smuggled a case of Nestlé Instant Coffee out of the submarine base as a reward for their generous hosts.
Chief Monk Flanagan came down to breakfast a week after the R & R period had started. He had a dull ache in the back of his head, the result of some solitary beer drinking in his room the night before. Paul Blake saw him and waved. Flanagan walked over to his table and sat down.
“Morning, Chief,” Blake said. “I don’t know what this cold yellow fruit is, but it sure is good. I’ve had some for breakfast every morning.”
“It’s sliced mango,” Flanagan said. “Tropical fruit. We used to buy mangoes from kids in Manila, before the war. Cost five centavos each, that’s two for a nickel, our money.”
The waitress, a tall, bosomy woman in her fifties, came to the table with a pot of steaming coffee and a tall glass of creamy yellow liquid. Flanagan smiled his thanks and drank the glass of liquid down in three long swallows.
“What’s that stuff in the glass?” Blake asked. “Every morning when I eat breakfast I notice the waitresses give it to most of the guys but they never give me any. I don’t know what it is so I don’t know what to ask for.”
“It’s a Dutch drink, I think its name is Advocat or something like that. It’s made of brandy, egg yolks, and heavy cream. Best thing in the world for a hangover. These waitresses have had sub crews in here before. They know who needs a glass of that stuff and who doesn’t. You don’t drink, do you?”