And he got through the rest of his training at New London in much the same way, one week at a time, telling himself that this Saturday he was going to bite the bullet and see Lieutenant Commander Elliott and tell him that he'd tried, he just didn't have the balls to be a submariner.
And every Saturday morning he decided to wait just one more week. He came closest to seeing Commander Elliott after the Momsen Lung training. The training itself-you're inserted at the base of the famous water-filled tower, you put the lung in place, and then you make your way up a knotted rope to the surface-didn't bother him as much as what it implied:
Submarines, and thus the submariners aboard them, would inevitably get in some kind of trouble, and an attempt to escape from a disabled, and doomed, submarine would be necessary. In Lewis's opinion, there was little chance that the Momsen Escape Procedure would work as well in combat as it did in New London-if it worked at all. If an enemy depth charge caused sufficient dam-age to a submarine to leave her without power, her crew might as well kiss their asses good-bye.
The various possibilities of dying aboard a submarine ran vividly through his imagination at New London, and later at Pearl, and on patrol, and now in Australia.
He graduated fifth in his class, and after an initial evaluation cruise aboard the Cachalot, a 298-foot, 1,500-ton submersible of the Porpoise class operat-ing out of Norfolk, Virginia (SUBFORATL), he was transferred to SUBFOR-PAC at Pearl Harbor, and assigned to the Remora, another Porpoise-class submarine.
By then he had, he thought, his terror under control. At the same time, he came up with a solution to his no-balls dilemma. If he applied for Naval Avia-tion while aboard the Remora, no action would be taken until he completed his assignment. His records would show that he was relieved to transfer to Naval Aviation, not because he quit. And completing his tour, holding his terror under control while he did so, would solve the moral question of whether he had enough balls to remain a Naval officer.
He was on patrol, a long way from Pearl Harbor, when the Japanese struck on December 7. Remora immediately went on the hunt for Japanese vessels. She found six, and fired a total of fourteen torpedoes at them. Of the fourteen, nine missed the target-they ran too deep, something was wrong with the depth-setting mechanisms. Of the five which struck their targets, only one detonated-something was wrong with the detonators.
When the Remora returned to Pearl Harbor, the crew were sent to Waikiki Beach Hotel for five days' rest and recuperation leave. He spent the five days drunk in his room, not just tiddly, plastered, happy, but fall-down drunk.
He made four more patrols. After each of them he drank himself into ob-livion. And then there was a fifth patrol, the last-of three-that the Remora made to Corregidor to evacuate from the doomed fortress gold and nurses, and, on one of them, a dozen men blinded in the war. He woke up after that drunk in the hospital at Pearl Harbor with his head swathed in bandages. He had been found, they told him, in his hotel bathroom, where he had apparently slipped in the tub and cracked his head open. He had been unconscious for four days and had lost a good deal of blood. And it had been decided that his medical condi-tion precluded his return to sea until there was time to determine the extent of the concussion's damage to his brain. The Remora, he was told, had sailed without him.
The memory of his enormous relief that he didn't have to go out on her again, the shame that he was not sailing with his shipmates because he'd gotten fall-down drunk, made him literally nauseous. He was sorry they found him before he'd bled to death.
Rear Admiral Daniel J. Wagam appeared in his hospital room three days later. There was good news and bad news, Admiral Wagam said. The good news was that he had been declared fit for duty; there was no permanent dam-age from the concussion. The bad news was that his aide had been promoted, and therefore he needed another aide. And unfortunately, Lieutenant (j.g.) Chambers D. Lewis, USN, not only met the criteria the Admiral had set for an aide, but was available.
"Sir, with respect, I would prefer to go back to sea."
"So would I, Mr. Lewis," Admiral Wagam said. "But unfortunately the Navy feels I am of more use behind a desk, and I have decided you will be of more use working for me. They're going to discharge you tomorrow. Move into quarters, take seventy-two hours, and then report to me at CINCPAC."
"Admiral, I don't know if you know why I'm in here."
"Officially, you slipped in the shower. Leave it at that, Mr. Lewis. You are not the first officer who had far too much to drink than was wise."
Despite the terrible temptation, Lewis did not so much as sniff a cork on his seventy-hour liberty. Afterward, he reported to Admiral Wagam at CINC-PAC as ordered.
Six weeks later, it was officially determined that the Remora, two weeks overdue for refueling at Midway, was missing and presumed lost with all hands at sea.
The next day, Chambers D. Lewis was promoted lieutenant.
It therefore followed, in Lewis's mind, that if he were not a coward, he would not have gotten stinking, fall-down drunk in the Waikiki Beach Hotel, he would not have cracked his head, he would have gone on another patrol aboard Remora, and he would now be dead.
He went to Admiral Wagam and asked to be returned to submarine service. The Admiral made it rather clear he thought the request was expected, and rather childish, and denied it.
"And please, Chambers, do not make a habit of making such requests again and again in the belief you can eventually wear me down. If I get tired of hearing them, you'll wind up at Great Lakes training boots, not going back to the submarines. I need you here; you're good at what you do. You are, whether you think so or not, doing something useful to the Navy."
But it was different, of course, when Operation Windmill came up. Op-eration Windmill was important to the Navy, because it was important to CINCPAC. Because of his experience, he would be more useful to the Navy aboard the Sunfish representing Admiral Wagam (and thus CINCPAC) than he would be carrying Wagam's briefcase and answering his telephone.
If he had not volunteered to go aboard the Sunfish, he could not have looked at himself in the mirror.
[THREE]
After giving the matter a good deal of thought, Captain Robert B. Macklin, USMC, finally decided that going to the OSS Brisbane Station chief was the wise thing to do, even if the Station Chief was not happy to learn of the prob-lem.
That was to be expected, Macklin concluded. The Station Chief-he did not know his name, and it was not offered-was certainly going to be upset to learn of the death of Major Brownlee, both as a human matter and because Brownlee's loss would adversely affect the mission.
It was also understandable that the Station Chief was upset to learn that Macklin himself was not qualified by training or experience to step into Brownlee's shoes-not to mention his physical condition. And on top of that, it was necessary to inform him of the situation vis-a-vis himself and Stecker, Sessions, and McCoy.
If he were the Station Chief, Macklin decided, he would have been as upset as the Station Chief was; and in the circumstances, he would have done what the Station Chief almost certainly did, seek guidance from superior head-quarters. In this case, that of course meant going directly to OSS Headquarters in Washington for direction.