Voyage to Somewhere (9 page)

Some of the time was used in drills and study. Recognition books giving pictures of Jap airplanes and ships were studied by everyone with some seriousness. At one o'clock every day we had fire drills, abandon ship drills, or general quarters. Three times we fired the fifty-calibre machine guns at boxes thrown in the water. Everyone realized that our two single fifty-calibre guns would be useless against almost anything but infantry, a combat formation we were not liable to meet in the middle of the Pacific, but they practiced hard on the guns just the same.

“If we met a submarine,” they said, “we might be able to give him a bad time for a few minutes. If he came close enough, and if there were lots of men on deck.”

The lookouts began to be over-conscientious. One afternoon just before dark Mr. Warren called me on deck. Everyone was standing on one side of the bridge looking toward the horizon.

“Look!” said Mr. Warren, and his voice sounded worried.

I looked. The ocean was still, and it reflected the fragmentary clouds of twilight. Far away, outlined against the orange setting sun, was a low, dark blur.

“Looks like a sub,” said Mr. Warren. “Can you make her out?”

Somehow rumor spread through the ship and men came up from below and stood by the rail staring toward the sun. The cook came out and stood by the galley door drying his hands on his apron. They all glanced from the dark blur on the horizon to the bridge, then back to the horizon. I picked up the binoculars and steadied them against the rail. The vibration of the ship disturbed my vision and I moved the binoculars. It was hard to focus on the dark blur. It seemed always just beyond the compass of the glasses, but it stayed there, distinct and onminous.

“Can you make her out, sir?” the quartermaster asked.

“I think it's a cloud,” I said.

There was a murmur on the bridge that spread swiftly to the men standing by the rail below. The cook grinned.

“A cloud, only a cloud,” I heard him say.

Focusing the binoculars as well as I could, I tried to follow the outline of the blur. It was growing larger, I thought, and as the sun rapidly sank below the horizon it was changing color from gray to black. Taking the binoculars from my eyes, I blinked hard and resumed my examination. Suddenly the ambiguousness of the cloud vanished, and it was clearly visible above the horizon, puffed and billowy, a cloud for all to see. An audible sigh was heard from the men on deck, and one by one they turned and went below.

Two days before we arrived at Milne Bay the furious letter-writing was resumed, and Mr. Warren was busy almost all day long censoring mail. The men looked forward with great satisfaction to arriving at New Guinea, for they were confident that mail would be awaiting them. They figured up the number of letters each of them would have coming.

“Betsy writes me every day,” White said, “and so does my mother. I ought to have about a hundred and thirty letters waiting for me.”

July 29th we threaded our way through the steep green islands of China Straits and entered Milne Bay. We anchored at the head of it and our motor boat, which long had been swinging fully manned in the davits, was lowered away and shoved off for the mail. There was less nervousness than there had been in Honolulu while the men waited for the mail orderly to return. We had, after all, been told that all our mail was going to New Guinea, and everyone was confident. They waited almost complacently. When the bridge watch spied the boat returning, all hands were on deck awaiting it. The first thing we saw was the mail orderly wildly waving in the bow.

“He's got some all right,” Guns said. “Look at him wave!”

As the boat approached closer we could see, however, that the mail orderly was shaking his head, and at last we could hear him shout across the water, “No mail. No mail here!”

“No mail?” the men shouted.

“No, no mail,” the orderly answered, and, apparently relieved at having imparted the information, sat down in the bow to await the boat's coming alongside. He sat there unmoving while the boat was hoisted in the davits and when he at last climbed out he came directly to me. I looked around, expecting the men to throng about us, but they had all gone below and there wasn't a sound on deck.

“What's the story?” I asked. “Had they ever heard of us?”

“They say the mail's in Finsch,” the mail orderly said. “That's only a couple of hundred miles up the coast.”

I breathed a sigh of relief and told the quartermaster to spread the word below.

A moment later the cook came on deck. “Sir,” he said, “when are we going to Finsch?”

“I don't know,” I said. “I'll go ashore and see about it.”

I went into the port director's office and asked him to send us to Finsch. He said he had orders already written up for us to unload, reload with gasoline drums, and sail to Guadalcanal.

“By the way,” he said, “what have you got in your holds for us?”

“Pineapple,” I said. “Crushed pineapple and a drum of steel cable. Can we have our mail sent here before we leave?”

“I don't think it will get here in time,” he said. “We'll have your mail waiting for you when you come back.”

The voyage to Guadalcanal was a short one, only five days. The men showed some interest in seeing Guadalcanal, but when we got there it proved to be only another island with Quonset huts and tents and mud. It was easy to understand why travel as such held little interest for the men; all the places we went to were only Army posts with Quonset huts and tents and mud that went by different names. There was no fighting on Guadalcanal when we were there in August of 1944. The place had a few hasty monuments erected and that was all. Its tragedy was no more immediate than that of Gettysburg. When the men first went ashore they wandered around with an awed air for a little while, then they returned to the ship and settled down to their tapping of coins and their making of square knot belts.

“We can say we was at Guadalcanal,” I heard White say, and Guns replied, “Yeah, that will be something to tell our grandchildren.”

They were quite serious.

The docks at Guadalcanal were busy when we arrived, and we were given orders to lie out in the stream off Lunga Point and wait. As soon as one big Liberty ship unloaded at the docks she moved out and another one moved in. After we had waited for a week I went in to the port director and asked him for the second time when we could unload.

“What's your cargo?” he asked.

“Gasoline in drums. I showed you the manifests.”

“Oh, gasoline. Well, we don't need any gasoline right now. We've got a lot of these Liberties to get unloaded. You just wait there and I'll have the tower signal out to you when we're ready.”

“How long will it be?” I asked. “Should I have our mail sent here?”

“No, you better not do that,” he said. “It's hard to tell how long you will be here.”

I went back to the ship and told the men that I didn't know how long we would be in Guadalcanal.

“A month?” they asked.

“I don't know,” I said. “Maybe a month. Maybe just a few days.”

As it turned out we waited to unload in Guadalcanal for five weeks. While we waited we worked around the ship, chipping and painting, but we never could undertake any really important repairs, for we never knew how long we were going to be there. Every day I went in to see the port director and every day he told me that there were bigger ships and more important cargoes to be unloaded first. At last, five weeks after we had arrived, he told me that there was room at the dock for us. With renewed spirits we got up the anchor and moved into the wharf. When the last gasoline drum had been unloaded we all felt suddenly lighthearted. Boats walked around in the empty hatches sniffing.

“Can't smell any gasoline,” he said. “I guess they didn't leak.”

Climbing back on deck, he stood by the empty hatch and lit a cigarette. “Well,” he said, “we didn't get a fire.”

When we were unloaded we did not get orders to return immediately to Milne Bay. Instead we were told to go back off Lunga Point, anchor, and wait to be loaded with a cargo of ammunition to take back to New Guinea with us.

“How long will it be?” I asked. “How long will it be before we can start back?”

“You'll have to wait,” they said. “You'll have to wait till the ammunition can be brought down to the dock and the docks are clear again for you. We have some more Liberty ships coming in.”

I went back to the ship and called a conference in the wardroom.

“The hell with it,” I said. “Let's send a dispatch and have our mail sent here.”

“If we do that we're liable to leave any time and pass the mail en route,” Mr. Warren said.

“Hell, we're liable to be here two months yet,” Mr. Crane replied. “Let's have the mail sent here.”

“Better ask the crew what they want,” Mr. Warren said. “Better explain it to them and ask what they want.”

The men, fed up with the interminable delays at Guadalcanal, voted to have the mail sent there, and Mr. Crane had the dispatch sent. Forty-eight hours later we got orders to come into the dock and load ammunition. The smoking rules were put back into effect, and the ammunition came aboard. Before sailing we sent another dispatch: “Cancel my last dipatch. Hold mail at Milne Bay.” Just to make sure, we left word at the post office in Guadalcanal to send our mail back to New Guinea if it arrived.

The voyage back to Milne Bay was a rough one, and some of the men were seasick who had not been seasick since we had left the States. When we finally arrived in Milne Bay, the clerk in the Fleet Post Office looked at us in amazement.

“Mail?” he said. “I sent your mail to Guadalcanal. Didn't you get it?”

“No,” said the chief boatswain's mate who had walked up with me. “No, we didn't.”

“Why, there was lots of it,” the mail clerk said. “All kinds of mail.”

We walked disconsolately back to the ship. I gave the bad news to the men.

“After this,” I concluded, “I'm going to have all the mail sent here to Milne Bay. We'll be coming here every so often, and we'll be certain to get it.”

Just to be sure, we sent a dispatch to Guadalcanal telling them to return our mail to Milne Bay. We told the mail clerk at Milne Bay to hold it there whether we were around or not. When all these arrangements had been made, we received orders to go to Hollandia, a port about a week's trip up the New Guinea coast, but we did not change our instructions. The port director led me to understand that we would be shuttling up and down the New Guinea coast for quite a while, probably between Hollandia, and Milne Bay.

“You'll be around until we go into the Philippines,” he said, “and God knows when that will be. You'll know this Guinea coast like Grandma knew her kitchen. And your mail will be right here waiting for you. Don't worry. When you come back we'll have it.”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

A
FTER HAVING
unloaded our ammunition in Milne Bay, we loaded a cargo of cigarettes and beer, and three days after our arrival shoved off for Hollandia. If we had been able to wait in Milne Bay another two days, our mail probably would have caught up with us there, but we got our orders and couldn't wait.

“Of course we might have necessary repairs to make,” I said just before we sailed. “We might find that we couldn't sail for two days.”

“Yes,” said Mr. Rudd. “But we won't. We wouldn't feel right if we did.”

“I don't feel so hot now,” said Mr. Warren. “I want my mail.”

“Oh, well,” I said wearily, “it'll be here when we come back. I don't see how it could be anywhere else.”

The voyage to Hollandia was a pleasant one. To our left all the way we could see the jungle mountains of New Guinea tangling back from the sea. When we approached Wewak we hauled away from the coast, for the Japs were still there. The men examined the place with their binoculars.

“Do you see any Japs?” Wrigly asked excitedly. “Do you see anything?”

“Nothing but trees—mountains and trees,” was the answer.

“Gee, I'd like to see some Japs!” replied Wrigly.

“Shut up, you damn fool!” said Boats. “Two lousy fifty-calibre guns, and you want to see Japs!”

Hollandia was like all the other places—Quonset huts, tents, and mud. While we were unloading, the mail orderly checked the Fleet Post Office just to make sure, but there was no mail for us. They already had Milne Bay listed as our permanent address.

After the cigarettes and beer were unloaded, we were given orders to go to Finsch where our mail first had been. Although we were disappointed not to return directly to Milne Bay, we were not too downhearted, for Finsch was on the way. We made the voyage to Finsch without cargo. When we arrived there we were given orders to anchor until dock space was available, and we met with the same delays which we had known at Guadalcanal. It was the third of September when we arrived at Finsch, and it was not until September 25 that we got orders to come into the dock and load. This time our cargo consisted of ordnance parts. It was an easily loaded cargo, and it was consigned to Milne Bay. The crew laughed and joked for the first time in a long while when they heard that, and when we finally left Finsch, they were once more a hopeful group of men.

When we sailed into Milne Bay we had been five months without mail. As we steamed up to the anchorage I sat on the bridge reflecting on how serious a problem it would be if we did not get mail. There were thirty of us aboard, and inevitably the lapse of mail had caught a few of us in some crisis in our lives. The chief boatswain's mate was worrying about his wife, who was about to have a baby when he left. By now if everything had gone all right the baby must be almost five months old and, as the Chief once told me bitterly, must be either a boy or a girl. His attitude had changed a lot during the five months. When he had come aboard he had talked almost continually about his forthcoming issue. As the days went by he mentioned the subject less and less, and during the fifth month he did not talk about it at all.