“It isn’t so bad, Paul,” Lee said. “If we went back to Fremantle we’d be there for what, three weeks? Then we’d be gone again. So we miss that one three-week leave. If the Captain is right we probably will have our wives with us before Christmas.” Blake nodded and went to the door of the Wardroom. He turned.
“Thank you, sir,” he said to Brannon. Bob Lee turned to Brannon.
“He’s so damned young — what, twenty-two?”
“And you’re what, how old?” Brannon grinned.
“Well, twenty-six, sir. We older types can take a little disappointment.”
“Good thing we can,” Brannon said. “I haven’t seen my wife and daughter for two years.”
CHAPTER 25
Captain Mealey and Captain Bob Rudd were standing on the pier when the Eelfish berthed in Pearl Harbor. The two Captains came down the gangway and shook hands with Mike Brannon. Captain Mealey looked around.
“Where’s John Olsen? Captain Rudd has some very good news for him.” Brannon sent John LaMark in search of the Executive Officer.
“John,” Captain Rudd boomed, “never had the pleasure of knowing you before, but Captain Mealey’s told me so much about you that we’ve decided not to send you to PCO School.” He grinned, his beefy face glowing as Olsen’s jaw fell.
“Any Exec who’s made six successful patrol runs and can satisfy this S.O.B. here who’s called Mealey doesn’t need to go to PCO School anyway. Damned place is crowded with people who don’t rate command half as much as you do, so we’re detaching you today and sending you to take over the Sablefish. She’s on the building ways now, and she won’t go into commission until about next April. She’s going to be a beautiful ship. Got everything in her that all of you people on war patrol have been screaming for.” He reached out a massive hand and began to pump Olsen’s hand. Mike Brannon stood by, his face beaming.
“When do I leave, sir?” Olsen asked. “I mean, I’m not anxious — yes, I am — but I’d like to take everyone to dinner if I have the time.”
“Courier plane out of here at ten hundred tomorrow. You’ll be on it. Captain Mealey has your orders.”
The two Captains and the relief-crew officers and chiefs left, and John Olsen went down below to begin his packing. Brannon was called to the gangway by a seaman and found a serious-looking Lieutenant Commander waiting there for him. “Lieutenant Commander Ralph Ulrich, sir,” the officer said. “Captain Rudd’s yeoman gave me my orders to report aboard as a replacement for Mr. Olsen, sir.” He handed Mike Brannon a set of orders and waited as Brannon read through them.
“Welcome aboard, sir,” Brannon said. “We’re about to go to the hotel. If you wish you can report here each day and sort of oversee the refit. You’re welcome, of course, to go to the hotel and meet the crew, the other officers. See me at any time you wish. I’m not being inhospitable. The crew is tired, the Wardroom is tired. It’s been a very long and boring patrol.”
“But a successful one,” Lieutenant Commander Ulrich said. “You rescued the entire crew of a B-twenty-nine. That’s ten lives saved, sir.”
“The Staff calls it successful, I don’t,” Brannon said. “We didn’t add a single flag to the Conning Tower.” Ulrich looked at the side of the Conning Tower where the Rising Sun and merchant flags of the ships sunk by the Eelfish showed as a brilliant patch of color against the blotched gray war paint.
“I understand, sir,” Ulrich said. “I’ll report to you every other day if that’s all right with you?” Brannon nodded and went below to pack for the two weeks of rest and relaxation that he felt he and his crew had earned.
When he returned from the rest period Brannon summoned his new Executive Officer to the Wardroom. He had the new officer’s jacket opened in front of him.
“I see that you made one war patrol in the Flying Fish, early in the war,” Brannon said. “Captain Donaho gave you good marks as an Assistant Engineering Officer. A good word from Mr. Donaho is a volume of praise from any other officer.”
“I hope I earned his good word,” Ulrich said solemnly.
“I’m sure you did. Now let me explain a few things to you sir. When we leave for sea this will be our seventh war patrol. With very few exceptions every man aboard this ship put her in commission and has made every war patrol. We’re a very close-knit bunch of people. It won’t be easy for you, coming aboard. I will do everything I can to make you welcome, because you are welcome, but submariners, as you should know, can be clannish. John Olsen was not only respected by the entire crew, he was liked.” He looked at the younger officer.
“You’re Academy, sir. I expect nothing but the best from you.”
“I expect to give my best, sir.”
“I’m sure you do,” Brannon said. “I should warn you in advance that I think Eelfish has the best Wardroom in the whole submarine navy.” He grinned wryly. “I should also warn you that the two of us are the only Academy officers in the entire Wardroom. All the rest are Reservists.”
“All of them, sir?”
“All. And I couldn’t ask for better men, not if I could have the pick of the top five of any year you can mention at the Academy. Half of the crew are Reservists, as well. I couldn’t ask for better men. On this ship we are submariners. Nothing more, nothing less. As a crew we’ve gone through some pretty hellish times, one of them with Captain Mealey.”
Ulrich stared at his lean hands and then looked at Mike Brannon. “I know, sir, Captain Mealey gave me a copy of all your patrol reports and action reports. I can see what you mean, the Mako, all that.”
“The Mako. All that.” Brannon said. He stood up. “I depend on my Executive Officer to be my right arm, Ralph. Your right arm will be the Chief of the Boat. A Chief Torpedoman named Flanagan. Called Monk by his friends because his shoulders slope downward. Depend on him. He won’t let you down. No one in this crew will let you down. Now I want your estimate of the work done by the relief crew.”
“It’s all done except the hull check, sir. The Yard people are worried about that time you went to the bottom off Borneo.”
“We went through all that in Fremantle,” Brannon said sharply. “Why is it necessary to do it now?”
“Well, ah, the people in Pearl don’t really trust the people in Fremantle, sir.”
“Hell and damnation,” Brannon growled. “The damned war will be over before we ever get back out to sea, and if it isn’t there won’t be any targets left to shoot at.”
In the next two weeks, while Eelfish was waiting to get dry-dock space and during the week the ship was in dry dock, Ralph Ulrich proved his worth. No matter what Brannon wanted Ulrich seemed to know it ahead of time. Materiel needed by the Eelfish Chiefs for work that wasn’t obtainable unless one went through endless red tape was somehow available at once if Ulrich took charge, using all the contacts he had made in almost three years as Captain Rudd’s Staff Engineering Officer. Chief Morris gave his assessment of Ralph Ulrich to Mike Brannon, saying, “Good man to have around. Knows every son of a bitch in the Yard who has anything we might need. Gets it with no fuss or bother.”
The day before Eelfish was to sail on her seventh war patrol a tall, broad-shouldered Lieutenant climbed out of a Staff car on the dock and asked for permission to come aboard.
“Captain aboard?” he asked the gangway watch.
“He’s below in the Wardroom, holding a meeting with the officers,” the gangway watch said. The Lieutenant dropped down the Forward Torpedo Room hatch and went to the Wardroom. Mike Brannon looked up with an expression of irritation on his face as the Lieutenant stepped through the green curtain, and then he got to his feet, his hand out, a broad smile on his face.