Reluctant Warriors (6 page)

The captain was still turned away, oblivious to Harry's signaling. Harry had then
violated the oldest protocol in Navy regulations by taking over from a captain without
permission. He just couldn't help himself. Everyone on board wanted so much to sink
enemy ships, to get revenge for Pearl Harbor, to be in the war! Determinedly, he'd
shouted, “Fire one, fire two.”

If those things had missed, his career would have ended right there and then. Probably
Fostel would have had him put in irons. Fostel spun around, as amazed as outraged,
about to start shouting at Connors, when both torpedoes hit!

The crew had erupted in joy. They'd continued cheering as they heard the Japanese
freighter begin breaking up and sinking. Fostel had stared at Connors, no joy on
his face at all. It must have occurred to him that he could not very well reprimand
Harry.
Mojarra
had sunk a ship, something command had been breathing down their necks
to accomplish!

Fostel stalked off, without a word, and retired to his cabin. He never said an unkind
word about Harry after that, though he was not complimentary either.

That had been Harry's first run on
Mojarra
. This was his fifth, and things just didn't
seem to be getting any better.

He headed down to the Control Room to check on operations. This room, directly under
the conning tower, which in turn was below the bridge, earned its name by “controlling”
the ship. There were dozens of gauges visible on the four walls, punctuated by the
three large steering wheel–like controls: two on the port side of the room, one for
each of the diving planes, and the other one on the wall facing the bow, which controlled
the rudder.

Harry walked aft, intending to talk with the radar operator. He was in the narrow
passage between the Radar Room and the crews' mess when there was an ear-shattering
bang, and the port side of the crew's mess exploded.

Harry instinctively flung his arms up in front of his face to protect himself. The
explosion's force threw him against the lockers opposite the Radar Room. He looked
up, dazed, blood dripping into his eyes, and saw the greenish-blue water of the Central
Pacific rushing in through a jagged hole in
Mojarra
's side, rising around him and
starting to fill the compartment. In the flashes of the dying lights, he could see
the steep angle the sub had immediately taken.
We're going down! We're going down!
he thought.

He could never remember actually getting out of the ship. Later, he imagined he must
have gone through, or been pulled through, the hole the mine had blown in her side.

He could remember swimming through an interminable rush of dark water, as fast as
he could. As he felt the water's pull slacken, he rose to the surface.

There was a lot of debris floating in the water around him. He grabbed the nearest
piece big enough to keep him afloat and hung on, mind and body numb. In a short time,
he began to come to his senses. He noticed many men in the water, some crying out
in agony. Harry knew he needed to help, so he slipped into the water, which, luckily,
was not contaminated by fuel oil.

He was surrounded by chaos: men yelling, some in the water, and some on impromptu
rafts, mostly made of deck planking. Harry spotted Captain Fostel, clinging to some
debris, mostly unnoticed by those around him.

“Sir, are you all right?”

The captain did not react. His eyes were closed and his head barely above the water.
It was obvious that he was terribly hurt. Harry touched him on the shoulder, and
he let out a deep moan. Harry called to him again, but the man so familiar to him
was beyond responding. He tore Fostel's shirt, attempting to ease the pressure on
the shoulder. It exposed a large puncture wound in his side, streaming blood into
the water.

Harry saw Fostel's grip begin to slip. There was nothing he could do.

He tried to hold the captain up, knowing he would die, listening to the man's breathing
become slower, raspier, then stop. Harry had seen life and death growing up on a
farm, and he knew when there was nothing to be done.

He let go of Fostel's limp body, turning and paddling away. There was a small knot
of men floating nearby. He struck out toward them, and then collided with something
else afloat.

It was his best friend and bunkmate, Walter Wood.

Wood was floating next to some wood planking, his head barely above the water. Harry
saw immediately that he too was in bad shape. He was trying to say something, but
he couldn't speak.

Oh, Walter, I wish it were me
, Harry thought.

Wood seemed to recognize Harry and blinked a few times, but said nothing. Harry couldn't
tell where he was hurt. He grabbed his friend and, for some minutes, did his best
to hold him to the debris; then Walter became limp, just like Fostel.

Harry couldn't let go. He held Walter up longer, hoping he had just fainted and would
revive. But the burden became too great. He knew he would have to choose! If he held
on, the time would come soon when he could no longer save himself.

He looked into Walter's slack face.

“Walter, forgive me. I can't hold us up. I have to let you go.”

Walter was dead, Harry knew. His body was completely limp.

Harry felt himself reaching exhaustion, coughing, water coming into his mouth. He
had to rest or die. He let go. Walter slipped straight down, and in ten or so feet,
was out of sight in the greenish water.

Walter had been his roommate at Annapolis. They'd spent thousands of hours together.
He had laughed when Harry came aboard
Mojarra
at the chance that both wound up on
the same ship. Fostel seemed to have a particular dislike of Walter, though no one
had a clue as to why. Walter was as amiable a guy as you could find.

Harry grabbed onto the debris and hung on for a while. With the captain dead, he
fully realized that he was the senior officer and that he should take charge and
swim to try to help the others. But he couldn't move.

I always kidded Walter that he would become a movie star
, he thought, without a smile.
And he was such a great runner at Annapolis too. I was best man at his and Sally's
wedding. They didn't get a chance to have the kids they wanted. Now she'll have nothing
left of him.

His parents are such wonderful people too. His dad tempted both of us with the idea
of getting out of the Navy and becoming lawyers in his booming practice. Who's gonna
tell them what happened?

His thoughts were interrupted when one of the men called out: “There's a ship off
to the east!”

Harry couldn't see well enough from where he was. Carefully, painfully, he climbed
onto the largest piece of planking and slowly stood up, recalling something he had
overheard the radar man say just before
Mojarra
exploded. He peered, shielding his
eyes from the glare.

His face sank. “It's that patrol boat we had on the radar before we got hit!”

Quickly, he jumped back in the water. He perched himself on the planking with his
torso out of the water and yelled to the men. “There's a patrol boat out there about
three or four miles off. I think she's headed this way.”

The men who could perked up. A few asked what they were to do. Harry called out to
them again.

“Men, whatever you do, don't signal them. You know that they'll try to kill us or
bring us on board to torture us if they find us. Stay down!”

In the next hour, as the hurt and exhausted men continued to slip away, the patrol
boat got closer. Harry prayed for darkness, but the enemy finally
saw some of the
debris at about 1830. They sped up and closed on some wreckage about five hundred
yards from Harry.

First the enemy ran over some men in the water who couldn't get out of the way. Harry
could hear their screams above the craft's motors. Then they methodically began machine-gunning
men from the prow. With such a small ship, they couldn't take on many survivors,
and so took joy in killing the Americans. Harry tried to stay absolutely still, hoping
the enemy would mistake him for a corpse. The boat was close enough that he could
hear the Japanese laughing.

Suddenly, a tremendous whine came from overhead, and an explosion jarred everyone.
A great geyser shot up fifty feet in the air, yards off to the north and much closer
to the patrol boat.

“She blew up, sir. That damned patrol boat blew up,” a sailor nearby yelled.

No, I don't think so
, Harry thought. As the geyser dissipated, it once more revealed
the Japanese patrol boat. Men on the deck of the little ship began scurrying about.
In about fifteen seconds another of the heavy and menacing sounds came whistling
through the air, and another explosion rocked everyone.

“Someone's shooting at them!” a sailor shouted.

Harry watched as another shell came even closer to the enemy craft. He was simply
amazed.

Jeez
, he thought to himself,
THAT is a gun! Unbelievable power! If I ever get my
own sub, I want a gun like that! It must be one of our newer subs, a Balboa Class
with one of those five-inch guns instead of our three-inch. If I ever get a gun like
that, I am going to use it!

Shells continued to come close to the enemy ship. The Japanese got under way as fast
as they could. Having nothing to match the big cannon, they moved off in the opposite
direction and began to build up speed. One of the shells came very close. Harry could
barely see as men were blown from the deck by the explosion. Soon the Japanese disappeared
to the west.

In the next half hour, it became quite dark. With the overcast sky, Harry and the
other men could see very little. But soon a long black shape loomed
into view and
lights began to flash in their direction. The men yelled in the direction of the
lights, and the boat drew closer.

Away from the lights, no doubt, more men were lost. It was impossible to tell. Harry
thought,
Those lights can be seen for miles. These guys are risking their lives to
save us!

Harry swam from group to group, yelling out into the void to see if anyone was still
out there. When everyone he could find was taken on board, he came alongside himself.

“You Lieutenant Connors?” a voice called down.

“Yes,” he answered, looking up into some lights and not being able to see the face
that asked the question.

As he climbed up toward the bridge, Harry started to shake. A hand he could barely
see reached down and helped him up the last rungs of the ladder. He climbed onto
the deck. The helping hand belonged to a tall, red-haired man who looked vaguely
familiar.

“You Connors?”

“Yes, sir.”

“This is the submarine
Bluefin
. I'm ‘Red' Phelps.”

“Yes, sir,” Harry said, smiling. “I remember you from the Academy. I was in the '37
class, two behind you.”

“Let's go below. I'm sure you're beat. Get him a blanket,” he said to someone, “he's
shaking like a leaf.”

They went down into the conning tower, to the Control Room directly below it, and
then to the captain's cabin. Phelps took one look at Harry and started a little.

“Harry, you need to have someone look at that wound.”

“Wound, sir?”

“Harry, you have blood all over the right side of your face. It's matted in your
hair. You feel okay?”

“Yes, sir. How many did we get?”

Phelps frowned. “Looks like ten men, including you. Four were dead in the water.”

Harry slumped a bit.
Mojarra
had had an eighty-man crew.

Phelps jumped up to steady Harry.

“Harry, I want you to lie down right here in my bunk before you collapse.”

Harry
passed out the moment he hit the bunk.

He awoke to someone bandaging his head. He squinted up. The man tending him looked
very tired and very young.

“I'm Botel, sir. I amount to a medic around here. You can try sitting up, but go
slow. You've been out for a while.”

“My crew!” Harry said, sitting up. This time sitting up was not so painful. “What
about my crew?”

“Well, sir, I'm sorry to say we lost a man late in the afternoon yesterday, Seaman
Wolston.”

“Rudy Wolston. I never even saw him in the water,” Harry said. Wolston had been only
eighteen. He was from Dubuque, Iowa, only eighty miles from Dorance. The two Iowans
had spent much time talking.
He was an only child,
Harry thought
, and his dad died
years ago. Now his mom's got no one left.

He looked up again. “What about the others?”

“They're under control.” The young pharmacist's mate nodded. “A broken leg, several
broken arms, many contusions, a bad concussion, as bad as yours, but they should
all recover.”