Chapter 2
Dane was dressed in his uniform, sitting on the edge of his hospital bed in the naval hospital in Honolulu, and thinking of how very different he was from most navy officers. After four years of ROTC at Northwestern University, and several more years in the Naval Reserve, he’d never been on board anything larger than a fishing boat in Lake Michigan. Thus, the sheer size of the aircraft carrier Enterprise had been both daunting and humbling upon his last-minute arrival. Even though the Enterprise had been huge, he knew that many of the carriers and battleships now under construction were much larger. The soon to be completed aircraft carrier Essex was a third bigger than the sunken Enterprise, and the Essex was the first of a class of ships just like her. She had a number of sisters that would be just as large when they were completed.
The doomed Enterprise had been capable of going thirty-two knots, which was, he thought ruefully, close to forty miles an hour and was what his old Ford could do on a good day. Dane hadn’t seen the car in ten months and wondered if his young nephew hadn’t run it into the ground. Tim had been activated in October of 1941 and had been in San Francisco when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor.
The other officers on the Enterprise had teased him about his lack of seagoing experience and laughed hysterically when he got thoroughly seasick during the early part of the voyage. Some of them did as well, which pleased Tim.
Dane was still mildly puzzled as to why he had been assigned to the Enterprise in the first place. He’d had one very brief conversation with Spruance, who’d also wondered, and pointedly asked him just why he thought he’d been assigned to his staff. Dane had prudently decided not to say he had no idea either. Instead, he said he thought it was because he could read and speak Japanese, a skill that was in short supply.
Spruance had smiled slightly and asked if Dane thought there were many Japanese on the carrier who might need interrogating, and whether he thought he’d run into any out in the Pacific.
Before Dane could answer, the admiral had laughed and said the ways of the United States Navy were wondrous indeed and that Dane should simply try to make himself useful. Barring that, he should stay out of everyone’s way. That was weeks ago and now he was in a hospital in Honolulu, and the Enterprise was at the bottom of the Pacific along with the Hornet and a number of other American warships.
There had been time to find out that fewer than three hundred men had survived the sinking of the two carriers. He was astonished to find that one of them was Lieutenant Commander Mickey Greene, the man who’d said that Tim didn’t know how to handle a fire hose. Greene had been burned over much of his body and was wrapped up like a mummy. He told Tim that most of the burns were superficial and that he had no recollection of how he’d survived. He assumed that some of the crew had dragged him into a raft and he dimly recalled being hauled onto a destroyer that had managed to survive the slaughter. Greene said he was lucky and that he would survive. It humbled Dane, who was so much better off.
While horrified by the numbers of dead, Tim felt oddly disconnected. He’d only been on the carrier a short while and, with the possible exception of Mickey Greene, hadn’t really known many of men all that well. They were acquaintances, not friends. Even he and Greene hadn’t had time to become close.
After seeing Greene and trying to imagine the pain the man was enduring, Tim decided to quit feeling sorry for himself. His head had been shaved, he had six stitches in his scalp, a couple along his mouth, and his leg still hurt. His knee would heal and the dark brown hair on his scalp would grow back and, if it didn’t, who cared? Half the men in his family were bald and he thought his hairline was already beginning to recede. He wondered how Mickey Greene would look when his bandages came off. Greene once had thick and curly red hair. Was any of it left? Tim’s own burns were rapidly fading and wouldn’t likely leave any significant scars.
He realized with a start that a young nurse was standing in front of him, looking at him quizzically.
“Good morning, Lieutenant, I’m glad to see you obeyed the instructions to get properly dressed. My name is Amanda Mallard and I’m a nurse, and unless you want some particularly painful injections in very sensitive parts of your body, you will never ever refer to me as Ducky Mallard or Nurse Ducky or anything like that. Nurse Amanda, or simply Amanda, will do just fine. Understood?”
Dane smiled, “Totally, Amanda. However, you may call me the Great Dane if you wish and I won’t object at all.”
Nurse Mallard blinked and then smiled engagingly. “That, Lieutenant, remains to be seen. Also, and in case you haven’t noticed, I’m a civilian nurse which means I’m not all that impressed by anyone’s rank, especially a mere lieutenant’s,” she said as she checked him over, verifying that his heart was working and that he was still breathing. He noticed that both had picked up the pace as she touched him.
“I’m still a civilian at heart myself,” Tim said as she worked. He quickly explained that before being recalled to the navy, he’d been employed as an assistant principal at a junior high school where he also coached basketball and track. “Right now I’d very much like to be disciplining kids who talked in class or got caught necking in the park next to the school instead of worrying about Japanese trying to kill me.”
Nurse Mallard told him to stand up and he did, wobbling just a bit. “I understand your thoughts,” she said. “So how did you wind up in the navy in the first place? I’m from the Annapolis area and noticed that you do not have an academy ring.”
She steadied him and handed him his crutches. Dane was six feet tall and one hundred and eighty pounds and she moved him effortlessly. His leg wasn’t broken; his heavily taped knee had been severely sprained and was massively bruised. He grimaced. He hadn’t spent that much time on his feet and he felt stiff as a board.
“I had good grades, so I was admitted to Northwestern. They had a naval ROTC program. It looked interesting, and it helped pay the tuition. I wound up serving my active duty in Chicago of all places, but the navy had another series of budget cuts and I was cut loose until Roosevelt decided we needed a bigger navy. I got recalled and sent to Hawaii.”
“So you’re not a career type?” she asked as she guided him around the ward, ignoring the stares from the men in their beds along with their comments that they, too, would like Nurse Mallard to assist them.
“That may depend on the length of the war, but no. If the war lasts until 1980 like they say, then I’ll be a careerist by default and probably still be a junior officer. Like you said, I didn’t go to the Naval Academy, which might hold me back forever. Now, how did you become a nurse?”
Nurse Amanda Mallard wasn’t beautiful. She was, instead, perky and cute, and when she smiled she exposed two upper front teeth that overlapped slightly. Dane thought it was charming. She had light brown hair that was cut short. He’d seen her walking around before, and some of the other guys in the ward thought she was too skinny and flat-chested, even bookish looking when she put on her glasses. Dane disagreed. He thought she was pretty and seemed very pleasant even though she hadn’t spoken to him before now. He’d always thought that the old saying that men don’t make passes at girls who wear glasses was nonsense.
“I became a nurse because, even though this is the twentieth century, there aren’t all that many occupations where a woman is welcome. Nursing is one, and I do enjoy helping people, so I studied at the University of Maryland. I’m a Terrapin, and I’m okay with a nursing career.”
“Going to be a nurse forever?”
“Unless I marry some rich guy, and schoolteachers don’t qualify.”
He laughed. “If my father’s real estate schemes work out, maybe I’ll join him and get rich and look you up.” His leg stiffened and he winced.
“Don’t complain about the pain, Lieutenant,” she said as he bit back a groan, “it’ll go away if you work at it and, besides, you don’t want to be left behind, do you?”
“What are you talking about and why don’t you call me by my first name?”
“You’ll be Tim when you’re out of here; until then, we keep it formal and militarily correct, even though I am a mere civilian.”
“All right, but what do you mean about being left behind?”
“You’re still on Spruance’s staff, aren’t you?”
“What’s left of it,” he said grimly, recalling their two days in the sub and subsequently being picked up by a flying boat and taken to Pearl Harbor.
Spruance was recovering well and already out of the hospital. He was dealing with the terrible fact that, along with the two carriers under his command and most of their crews, almost all of his staff had been killed in the disastrous Battle of Midway, which was commonly being referred to as the Midway Massacre. After destroying Spruance’s force, the Japanese had found the remaining third carrier, the Yorktown, near Midway and sunk it as well, along with two cruisers and six destroyers. TF 17’s commander, Admiral Frank Jack Fletcher, had gone down with his ship.
Thus, all three invaluable and, for the moment at least, irreplaceable carriers had been lost. Japanese casualties had been one damaged carrier, one submarine sunk, and a handful of airplanes shot down.
Midway was the latest in a long litany of defeats in the Pacific that had begun with Pearl Harbor and ran on through Wake Island, Guam, the Philippines, Java Sea, Coral Sea, and now Midway. Some argued that the battle of the Coral Sea was at worst a draw, but Tim thought that it was a loss even though a likely attack on Australia had been blunted. He expected the Japs would be back attacking Australia soon enough since the defeat at Midway. Jimmy Doolittle’s bombing attack on Tokyo had momentarily buoyed spirits but had accomplished nothing in the way of a military objective.
Amanda took his arm and steered him down another hallway that led outdoors and he walked gingerly down a street. It felt good to be in the fresh, flower-scented warm air of Hawaii. He could almost forget about the war. Almost, since just about every male was in uniform. He felt his strength returning and could walk fairly steadily now, but he liked the feel of Amanda’s hand on his arm. She came a little above his shoulder.
“Lieutenant, assuming you’re correct that you are still on Spruance’s staff, you are all going back to California. Same with Nimitz’s people. Rumor has it the navy feels that Hawaii is a lost cause since there aren’t very many major American ships remaining in the Pacific to protect it.”
Tom thought it made a hard and painful kind of sense. He’d seen the admiral once since their rescue when he’d visited Tim. He’d thanked Tim for saving his life—and for not killing him. Spruance had smiled when he said it, but Dane saw the agony in his eyes. All those men, all those ships now resting on the bottom of the ocean, had been his.
Amanda continued. “As I understand it, the rules for evacuation are simple. If you can walk, you’ll be evacuated by submarine; otherwise, you’ll have to wait for a destroyer or a transport, or even a hospital ship.”
“I’ll take my chances on the sub,” he said grimly.
Tim had hated his first trip in the claustrophobic submarine, but quickly decided a second trip would be better than waiting in Hawaii for the world to end. There had been too many attacks on transports to make them viable alternatives. As for hospital ships, the Japanese record for atrocities included attacks on those unarmed and helpless vessels as well. He handed Amanda his crutches and walked unsteadily but unaided. He was determined to be ready to walk onto a sub.
Amanda was about to comment when air raid sirens went off. This was the first time it had happened since Dane had arrived in Hawaii and he was momentarily perplexed.
“Maybe the Japs are back,” she said and grabbed his arm, “There were a lot of false alarms after December seventh, with a lot of Nervous Nellies seeing Japanese bogeymen in their flower gardens, but who knows.” She grabbed his arm more tightly and pushed him. “Let’s see how fast you can limp to a shelter.”
Shelter was a cement block building that quickly filled with people and Tim moved a lot quicker than he thought he could. Fear was a great motivator, he decided.
In Dane’s opinion, the shelter was too fragile to stand up to much of a bombing. Antiaircraft guns began their crump-crump firing, and they were followed by the sounds of explosions. Amanda grabbed his hand and held on tightly. Her eyes were wide with fright in the dim light and he thought his mirrored hers. Clearly, this was not a false alarm.
“I thought nurses don’t get scared,” he said and put his arm around her. She didn’t resist; instead, she shuddered and pressed against him.
“This one does. Right now I wish I had stayed in California. I had a nice job as a nurse in San Diego.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“Are you trying to distract me?”
“Yes.”
Something exploded down the street, sending debris raining on the shelter. “Keep up the good work,” she said and quivered. “I came here because it was an opportunity to earn decent money and see the wonders of Hawaii. I love sailing and it seemed like a heaven-sent opportunity. I never thought going to paradise might actually send me to heaven, or hell for that matter. My contract is for a year, but now it might be forever.”
“What will you do if the navy goes?”
“No idea. If there’s a way to get back to the mainland, I’ll take it. I know of a large enough sailboat that could make it with enough supplies and a little luck, but that would be an act of desperation.”
“Are you that good a sailor?” he asked with a smile. She was slender, almost thin, but the way she had steered him toward the shelter indicated she was stronger than she looked.
“We may have to find out. And maybe things are getting desperate. The government has introduced food rationing already and that’s not a good sign.”
No, it isn’t, he thought. Rationing might mean that starvation was right around the corner. As a member of the military he was part of a privileged caste and had all the food he required, at least so far. He felt vaguely guilty for the hearty breakfast he’d had that morning—eggs, bacon, toast, and pineapple juice, of course. What were the civilians eating? He hoped Amanda was eating well enough, too. She didn’t look like she could stand to miss too many meals.
The all-clear sounded and they left the shelter. They walked in silence back to the hospital. A petty officer was waiting beside Tim’s bed. “Sir, are you Lieutenant Dane? If so, you’re wanted right away in Admiral Spruance’s meeting room. I’ve got a car so I’ll take you there.”
Dane nodded and squeezed Amanda’s arm. “I’ll call you,” he said. She smiled and nodded.
* * *
Spruance did not host the meeting. A navy captain in his late thirties glared at Dane for being late, but softened immediately when he noticed his bandages and stitches, and the cane which Tim had swapped for his crutches. The Purple Heart was pinned to his uniform.
“Okay, we’re all here, even the walking wounded,” he said, nodding at Tim. “Glad you could make it, Dane. For those who don’t know me, I’m Captain Bill Merchant and I’m a senior aide to the admiral. My job is to get everyone up to speed on what’s happening right now, and what’s going to happen real soon. In short, we’re evacuating this place. All senior military personnel and their staffs, and that means us, will depart by sub tomorrow night. You will be limited to one small suitcase, so pack light. Take only essential personal stuff as uniforms and such will be reissued in San Diego. Other military personnel and the more seriously wounded will be taken out by transport or hospital ship, and, yes, that does mean that the navy is abandoning Hawaii. Only the army garrison will remain.”
A hand was raised. “What about dependents?”
Merchant hesitated then shook his head sadly. “They’ll either stay or go by transport if there’s enough room. My personal opinion is that there won’t be enough room to take everyone.”
The man paled. Obviously he had family at what had once been a great duty station, and now was in the front lines of World War II against a particularly savage and barbaric enemy. Dane wondered what happen to people like them and also wondered what would become of Nurse Amanda Mallard. The future did not look pretty for those who would remain.
Captain Merchant went on to clarify what many already knew. There was only one American aircraft carrier remaining in the Pacific. The Lexington and the small old Langley had been sunk in the Coral Sea, while the Enterprise, Hornet, and Yorktown had been destroyed at Midway, leaving the Saratoga as the only U.S. carrier in the Pacific. The Ranger, Wasp, and the partially completed Essex were in the Atlantic and no decision had been made to send them to the Pacific where they would be up against nine Japanese carriers. There could be even more enemy ships since no one really knew what they were building back in the Japanese Home Islands.
Merchant added that the U.S. Navy had a number of battleships remaining even after the disaster at Pearl Harbor, including a couple that had been damaged during the raid and subsequently repaired. Merchant said that all of them were old and that less than a handful of other American battleships were in the Atlantic confronting the Nazi U-boat menace. In Admiral Nimitz’s opinion, those few old battleships would be destroyed if they attempted to take on the Japanese carriers and their attendant battleships.
“It’s rumored that the Japs have at least one monster battlewagon that could blow all our ships to hell,” added Merchant, “but we’re taking that with a grain of salt.”
New battleships and carriers were under construction and in varying degrees of completion, but they would not be ready for battle for some months at the very least.
“To be blunt, gents, we are on our own, which is why the Pacific Fleet, such at it is, will be departing for San Diego. We gave some thought to us being picked up by subs off a beach up north, but decided it would be too difficult and time consuming to ferry people out through the surf. Besides, a lot of our key people are too old for such shenanigans or, like Dane here, too banged up. Ergo, we will be boarding in the harbor and will exit the channel submerged. We will exit behind a tug which we will use as a beacon and a guide.”
Merchant looked at his watch. “You have a little more than twenty-four hours before we go, so settle what private matters you have. And Dane, I want to see you.”
When the group had scattered, Merchant took Dane into Spruance’s empty office. “First off, are you going to be able to get on the sub?”
“I’ll have no problem, sir.”
“That’s good enough for me even though I think you’re lying through your teeth. Second, the admiral wants to thank you again for saving his life. You will probably get a promotion and you will definitely get a letter of personal commendation from the admiral, if not a medal. Second, and I don’t know what the hell he means by this, but he said you and he had no conversations regarding mortality while in the life raft.”
Dane smiled. “Please tell the admiral I have no idea what he’s talking about.”
Merchant blinked and then grinned. “Damn good answer. See you tomorrow night.”
* * *
Dane had no bills or any other personal matters that needed settling. He thought about his situation for a moment and made a decision. It took only a few moments sweet-talking another nurse to get Amanda Mallard’s phone number and home address. He called her and invited her to dinner. She declined, but said she’d go for a walk with him if he cared to meet her. She reminded him that his leg needed work and he’d better go walking if he wanted to get on that sub.
An hour later, they were strolling in the clean warm sands of Waikiki. Both were barefoot and Tim’s pants were rolled up to his knees. Amanda wore a flowered skirt that she tied up and tucked into her waist, providing him with a mid thigh view of her slender white legs. They strolled along the edge of the water like kids, dodging the waves and getting their feet wet. An occasional larger wave splashed them and they laughed. It was an opportunity to forget the violent world around them and they took it with gusto.
Although she’d declined to go to dinner with him, he brought a couple of steak sandwiches from the officer’s club. The meat was tender, rare, and covered with onions and mayonnaise. She’d devoured hers in a couple of minutes after commenting that rationing was already making life difficult. Tim ate half of his and told her to take the rest back to her apartment, which she said she shared with two other civilian nurses.
“Are you feeling guilty?” she asked.
“A little. I’m well fed and mending from my injuries and, tomorrow night, getting out of what used to be this island paradise. I’ve got to tell you, I’m very unhappy at the thought of you remaining here. I was kind of hoping we’d have time to get to know each other a little better.”
She smiled gently. She wasn’t wearing her glasses and her eyes were large and bright. “That makes two of us, although the latest scuttlebutt has us going by transport in a couple of weeks. The same rumors have us being escorted by the battleships that either survived the attack or were in California when Pearl Harbor was struck.”
She shuddered and leaned against him. “If I live to be a hundred, I will never forget that morning. When some of the wounded got to me, they weren’t humans anymore, Tim, they were just pieces of meat that were somehow still alive. Many of them weren’t alive for long, and that may have been a mercy.”
Tim mentioned that he too would never forget the dead and dying on the Enterprise, or the bodies that floated by the raft he and Spruance had occupied.
In the distance, a handful of sailboats, silhouetted by the moonlight, moved gracefully across the swells. It was a scene from another world, another era. Tim wondered if Japanese warships were just over the horizon or if enemy periscopes were surveying the shore, and if they could see the two of them walking together and what they thought about it. Maybe some Jap captain was laughing and planning their destruction. The enemy planes that had attacked the day before had come from a carrier that had to be out there somewhere.
Amanda looked up at the stars. “If I can’t get on a transport, I’ll sail to California.”
“You’re joking.”
She bristled and stamped her bare foot, splashing both of them. “I am not joking, and please don’t tell me you’re one of those men who thinks women are fragile and innocent creatures who can’t do anything without a big strong dumb man helping them. You may be big and strong and probably not dumb, and have nice brown eyes, but I can manage well enough alone. I can sail a boat and I have friends who can do it as well, and oh yeah, I know an old guy who owns one. Give me a decent sailboat and enough food and water and I can sail it anyplace.”
He took her hand. She did not pull it back. “If it comes to that, Amanda, do it.”
The Japanese had committed terrible atrocities when they’d taken Hong Kong and the Philippines. They’d targeted nurses and hospitals for many of their most savage outrages, slaughtering the patients and raping the nurses before murdering them as well.
She managed a smile. “Want me to look you up when I make it to California?”
“I would like that a lot.” He pulled her to him and they embraced. He felt her body shake. She was crying. He kissed her and she held him tightly. “We’ll meet in California.”
Her response was to kiss him back.
* * *
The three submarines that were to take the forty men of Spruance’s staff were docked in slips located below the fleet headquarters. It was the same building where the now-disgraced and removed Admiral Kimmel had watched both his fleet and his career destroyed.
Along with Tim and Captain Merchant, another ten men would be squeezed into what they had been told were already extremely tight quarters. Tim was well aware what that meant, having spent a couple of days in a sub before the seaplane had picked up him and the admiral. Tim was larger than average, and the average submariner was even smaller than that. For that matter, so too were pilots and many others in the military. There was, he thought ironically, simply no room for larger people in many military professions.
Before boarding, they were gathered in a conference room by their skipper, a very young, short, and lean lieutenant commander named Torelli who gave them a stern lecture.
“I know I am junior in rank to most of you, but let there be no doubt—I am the captain of this sub and I will make all decisions while you are on board. To begin with, you will be assigned bunks and you will spend as much time as possible in them and I don’t care how cramped and uncomfortable they might be. This is in order to keep you out of the way of the crew, who have assignments that must be carried out if we are to arrive safely. If we are in danger, you will lie perfectly still in those bunks and not even talk. If you have to piss or crap, do it right there and don’t worry about it. We don’t believe that the Nips have any sound-detecting devices like sonar, but we’re not certain so nobody’s taking chances. When necessary, we will run as silent as a mouse. We don’t think their radar’s all that great either, but a lot of things were proven wrong on Pearl Harbor, weren’t they?”
That comment was greated with grunts and growls. The Japanese had been terribly underestimated.
Torelli continued. “The food on board will be shitty at best and the heads are inadequate for the needs of the crew, much less an additional dozen men. Cleanliness might be a virtue in another world, but such virtue will have to wait until we reach California. For those of you who’ve never been on a sub, it will stink like a sewer when you go on board, so a little more shit odor and body stench won’t make a hell of a lot of difference, and it will get worse the longer it takes for us to get to California.”
“Will you attack Jap ships if we spot any?” Merchant asked.
“My orders are to deliver you safely and not pick any fights. We will only defend ourselves and then only as a last resort. I have four torpedoes left from my last patrol. Since we’re heading to California, the powers here declared I couldn’t have any more of their precious supply.”
“Have you sunk any ships?” Tim asked.
“Nothing to write home about,” Torelli said. “Two small freighters.”
Torelli didn’t add that most of the torpedoes he’d fired had either malfunctioned or missed, and he didn’t think his aim had been off all that often. He’d had a Japanese light cruiser dead to rights and the four torpedoes he’d fired had failed to explode, even though he’d heard two of them clang against the enemy’s hull. This was an issue that was very common and a cause of great concern among American submariners. He’d reported it up the line to Admiral Lockwood, who now commanded the sub force and was waiting for the bureaucratic shit to hit the fan.
Like children in grade school, they were paraded single file out to the dock. Tim looked around. It was two in the morning, a time when all good Japanese spies should be asleep, and all but the most essential lights were off in the harbor. Naval intelligence and the FBI said there weren’t any spies around, but who could be certain? Tim was one of many who wondered just how the hell the Japs had known so much about Pearl Harbor. The only logical answer was that there had been spies, probably Japanese consular officials, maybe others.
The sky was clear and there was a half moon, so there was some visibility. There was no real reason to suspect any of the population of Hawaii of being spies, but one could never be too careful. What they couldn’t see, they couldn’t report.
Even though there was a war on, secrets were hard to keep, and several dozen onlookers were present. Both curious military personnel and a handful of civilians were kept behind a tall wire fence by armed sailors. Some of the civilians were dependants and looked distraught. Tim looked to see if Amanda was one of them and there she was. He waved and she waved back. She didn’t smile. He thought she looked a little lost, and he ached at leaving her behind to what might be a terrible fate.
Tim needed only a little help making it down the submarine’s deck hatch and into the hull. As promised and as he recalled, the odor of oil, grease and God only knew what overwhelmed them and a couple of officers gagged.
“Pussies,” muttered a sailor and other crewmen laughed.
“I guess we are pussies,” said Merchant. “Dane, I’ve talked to Torelli, and you and I are going to be bunking by each other. I’m taking the top, of course. I’ll be the senior officer in the group and rank does have some privileges.”
“Understood, sir.”
“If we’re going to spending a lot of time cheek by jowl, I’m going to pick your mind about anything you know about Japan and the Japanese. If nothing else, it might help pass the time. If you bore me, I’ll have Torelli fire you out a torpedo tube. If what you know is useful, you’ll be giving some briefings to the staff when we get to California. If we get to California, that is.”
The sub began to move and there was a disconcerting feeling when she slid bow down and submerged to periscope depth. The tug led her and the two others out of the harbor and through the narrow channel that led to the ocean. If the enemy was anywhere, they would be waiting for them to emerge from the harbor.
They lay in their bunks with hearts racing. They wouldn’t have far to go before they reached relative safety, as the island of Oahu was considered by some to be a mountain that jutted up from the ocean depths; the dropoff to truly deep water would be sudden and soon.
After a surprisingly short amount of time, Torelli gave orders and the sub dived to deeper waters. They had made it out of Pearl Harbor and were on their way to California. They hoped.
A few miles back, Amanda and a handful of others stood by the empty space that once held the three subs and watched and stared. That they could see nothing at all was both frightening and reassuring. For Amanda, it was a terribly lonely feeling and she tried hard not to cry. She felt a sudden and intense kinship with the man she’d so recently met and barely knew. Now, however, she had her own decisions to make, but one thing was tremendously important. She had to get to California.
* * *
The train from hell had taken an eternity, or so it seemed to Second Lieutenant Steve Farris, U.S. Army. Hell, the starting point, had actually been Chicago and the train had been overfilled with GIs and their duffle bags and some equipment, minus weapons and helmets. They had been en route to the West Coast to reinforce the troops waiting and watching for a Japanese invasion. Instead of the couple of days a train trip should have taken, the journey from hell had lasted for two long weeks. Two weeks without proper food, not enough water to drink and wash with, and, when they went through the mountains, plenty of scenery, but no heat. The toilets had backed up almost immediately and toilet paper ran out as well.
He’d even seen his first stabbing as two soldiers had gotten into an argument over something. One man wound up with a switchblade in his gut, while the other was placed under arrest and would be charged with attempted murder. Farris been shocked by both the sudden violence and the tremendous amounts of blood that had been spilled.
The men in his brand-new platoon had looked to him for leadership and Farris couldn’t provide it. The men, with the exception of Platoon Sergeant Stecher, who treated him with the polite contempt of a veteran for a novice, were all straight out of basic training and scarcely knew how to put on their uniforms. Farris wasn’t much better. He was a ninety-day wonder recently graduated from Officer Candidate School and didn’t know much more than his men, and he sure as hell didn’t know what to do when men settled arguments with knives.
Nor could he get much help from his company commander, Captain Lytle, as that man had spent most of the trip drunk. Lytle had commandeered the only compartment on the train and had filled it with crates he’d brought along. Stecher said that Lytle had owned a bar back in Pennsylvania and had brought most of his inventory.
Finally, somehow, they had made it to San Diego and the platoon stood in the train station with several hundred other men in wrinkled and filthy uniforms. Sergeant Stecher stepped up to Farris and made no effort to salute. Farris ignored Stecher’s quiet insolence. “What now, Lieutenant?”
“Food, water, and a shower, sergeant. At least that’s what I want, and then maybe some sleep.” He saw some Red Cross people giving out donuts and told Stecher to send the men over to get something to eat. To his mild surprise, Stecher didn’t put up a fuss. Maybe Farris had said the right thing. After all, didn’t an army travel on its stomach?
Captain Lytle walked unsteadily up to them. “We are now a recon battalion and part of the Thirty-Second Infantry Division currently stationed here in San Diego. When your men are through stuffing their faces, there are some trucks to take us to temporary quarters and after some training, out to our patrol areas.”
Farris saluted and went to gather his troops. They were part of an understrength and poorly trained National Guard detachment from Pennsylvania that had been fleshed out with a number of raw recruits, brand-new officers like Farris, and a handful of real soldiers like Stecher. They were all part of a civilian army girding for war and were a long way from being soldiers. Well, he thought, so was he. The really disconcerting fact was that he was the senior lieutenant in the company, a de facto second in command to Lytle. The other three lieutenants were even less experienced than he and had received their commissions a few weeks after he had.
For the thousandth time he wondered why he hadn’t pulled some strings and gotten into the navy, even if it had to be as an enlisted man. At least sailors had decent places to sleep and even better food, he was told, and they didn’t have to march through swamps or climb mountains. He’d envied his uncle and still did, even though Uncle Tim had gotten damn close to being killed in the Midway Massacre. Tim had managed to get a telegram to the family that all was well, which had both relieved and shocked them. Nobody’d had any idea he was out on any ship, much less the doomed Enterprise.
Stecher returned and glared at Lytle as the short, pudgy captain departed. “What the hell does he mean by patrol areas? I want to kill Japs, not patrol some fucking beach.”
Farris didn’t think that patrolling a beach in Southern California was all that bad an idea, especially in the summertime when California girls went out sunbathing. He’d heard delicious rumors that a lot of them swam and sunned in the nude. Yes, he’d like to patrol those beaches.
However, he understood Stecher’s concern. The sergeant’s brother had been killed at Pearl Harbor and he wanted revenge. Steve had heard the story a dozen times, and it always ended with a rightfully furious Stecher raging that, “The fucking Japs murdered him. He was running across a field and one of their planes strafed him. Who the hell would cut down a man who’s running away?”
Farris had no answer. He deeply sympathized with the sergeant and said so, but there was nothing he or anyone else could do. The army would send them where it wished.
Originally it appeared that they’d been slated to go elsewhere and rumors first said it would have been North Africa or some other place that was dry and dusty. This made sense when they were first given some desert gear. But then came the Midway debacle and fears rose that the Japanese would attack the West Coast; thus, they and large numbers of other American soldiers were sent on their way to San Diego.
Base was a tent city outside San Diego. Still exhausted from their trip, Farris and the others were issued additional equipment and uniforms and assigned places in the tents that would be their new home, at least for a short while.
Lytle gathered them around him. He was reasonably sober now. Perhaps it had something to do with the presence of other and more senior officers.
“Tomorrow we’ll be issued weapons and we’ll start in with physical training and shooting, although it looks like we’ll be getting shit for equipment.”
“It won’t matter much if all we’re gonna do is patrol the beaches,” Stecher muttered.
Lytle continued. If he’d heard the comment, he didn’t let on. “Additionally, there are a lot of Marines in the area, and we’re ordered to steer clear of them so there are no incidents.”
Stecher wanted to go to war, but even a rookie like Farris knew they were in no condition to fight. They were out of shape, poorly trained, and, he had to admit, poorly led and that included by himself. If they were sent into war now, they would be slaughtered. Hell, even a bar fight with a bunch of Marines would be a one-sided farce. Perhaps it would be best if all they did for a long while was patrol California’s beaches.