Sentinels of Fire (17 page)

“He's as likely to come out of that in a catatonic state as normal,” the chief said. “Once the fear demon takes over, his subconscious mind will prefer the somnambulant state to full consciousness.”

“You
know
this?”

“No, sir, I'm a hospital corpsman, remember? But I've seen my share of shell-shock victims. I was on Guadalcanal, and before I came to
Malloy
I did temporary duty at Saipan. I know what it looks like, and I'm pretty sure that's what I'm seeing.”

“I do
not
want to do this, Chief,” I said.

“It'd be no different if he'd received a head wound and was incapacitated, XO,” the chief pointed out. “For that matter, he's incapacitated right now, and, like I said, I have no idea of how or
if
he'll come out of that. Tell you what, you make the log entry, and I'll cosign it. If there's a problem later, you can say that you took the best medical advice you could get at the time. Come sunrise, though, we need a captain. These fucking Japs ain't never gonna quit.”

I nodded. The chief was right: I'd been making too much of a production over this. The Old Man was out of it, however you looked at it. We absolutely did need a functioning CO. I decided I would make the log entry, inform the commodore, and then get back to the present danger, which was, as the doc had pointed out, only hours away. If the powers that be didn't like it they could shanghai some unsuspecting three-striper and get him up here as soon as possible. I'd welcome him with open arms.

“Okay,” I said. “Let's go take care of business. You want to check on the skipper one last time?”

“Sure, XO,” he said. “Be right back.”

I stood next to the chart table and opened the deck log. I sat there, trying to figure out what to write down. Then I remembered Navy Regs. I had the bridge messenger go find the duty yeoman and get him to bring me the Book. It was no help. Chapter eight enumerated a lot of things about the commanding officer, but not what to do if he became incapacitated. Pacific Fleet Regulations probably did, but by now I was weary of all this vacillation. The chief corpsman came back to the bridge.

“Sound asleep,” he reported.

“If we get attacked at dawn, will he be able to wake up?” I asked.

“I should think so,” Doc said. “What I gave him doesn't induce a coma; it just sedates. But when the guns get going, he'll get going, too.”

I thought of the skipper's earlier comment in that regard and then made a simple entry in the deck log that said I was temporarily relieving Commander C. R. R. Tallmadge, USN, of command of USS
Malloy
due to his medical incapacitation. I signed, the doc signed, and then I had each of the line department heads come to the bridge and sign as well. Then I went back to my cabin and drafted a personal-for message to Commodore Van Arnhem, our destroyer squadron commander, informing him of the situation, changing the term “medical incapacitation” to “mental incapacitation,” and then had the chief radioman send it by encrypted, operational-immediate message.

That ought to get us an oiler up here, I thought, and probably the commodore, too.

 

SIX

The following morning dawned clear and surprisingly cool, which, unfortunately, made for really good flying weather. I did stars, and then we went to dawn GQ as usual. The doc checked on the skipper, who was still asleep. Doc suggested that we station a trusted petty officer outside his inport cabin in case we had to rouse him for his safety. I told him to get Chief Lamont to take care of that.

We held morning quarters for the first time in two weeks, at which I had the division officers read an announcement to all hands paraded in their divisional spaces that I had assumed temporary command of the ship until the captain could receive medical treatment. Marty asked me what they should call me now. I told them XO. This was a temporary situation until either the skipper came back to us or a new one came onboard. Either way, I'd remain the exec, assuming someone didn't court-martial me. So XO it was to be.

We picked up one lone bogey late in the morning, way out there at seventy miles, which meant it had to be a fairly large plane, probably a multiengine bomber of some kind. He came within fifty miles of the picket line and then loitered out there. Two other picket destroyers picked him up, too. He did not come any closer, however, and when the nearest picket sent some CAP after him, he withdrew to the northwest in the direction of Formosa and went off our screens. Once he left, I summoned the chief corpsman, and he reported that the captain was still asleep, looking unusually peaceful. I was glad we hadn't gone to GQ over the lone snooper, but I was a little worried about what might be coming next.

At noon Radio called me down to Radio Central to receive a personal-for from our squadron commander. He acknowledged my message and then indicated he would be coming north on a destroyer to embark temporarily in
Malloy
sometime today, as a function of the tactical situation.

I felt a spark of professional alarm. The commodore was the captain's boss. All of the radar picket destroyers reported to him. He had spent some time up here when the picket line was established, but a destroyer simply didn't give him and his staff enough command and control facilities to run the show. As the captain had pointed out the night before, there hadn't been much running to do: in each case where a suicider attacked a picket destroyer, the fight turned into a mano-a-mano deal. The targeted ship either got the kami or the kami got them. The commodore would have been a spectator, and since we'd lost four picket destroyers sunk outright over the past three weeks, probably a dead one. So he'd set up shop on the destroyer tender at Kerama Retto, where he could be helpful—tending to logistics, such as fuel, food, and ammo, repairs, replacement ships when needed, search and rescue assets, and medical assistance, like our recently departed LSMR. The fleet anchorage itself was subject to frequent kamikaze attacks, so he wasn't living safely behind the lines but simply staging himself and his staff where he could do the most good for the guys up in Injun Country. My personal-for message had been the exception: He simply had to come up to the line and deal with this problem personally.

We steamed around our picket station for the remainder of the afternoon. Replacement CAP showed up at 1400 from a new carrier. Our usual carrier had been hit and was headed east for repairs. I had Doc check on the CO every two hours, but he was still down and out. We got a second lurker out at fifty miles late that afternoon, followed by a third. Each time somebody sicced CAP on them, and each time they retired out of radar range. Jimmy Enright wondered how they knew CAP was coming for them. The sly bastards were planning something new, and we were all speculating on what was coming next.

What came next was a high-speed surface contact, which turned out to be a Fletcher-class destroyer called the
Cogswell.
The Fletchers had been the mainstay of the Navy's destroyer force from the beginning of the war. They were fast and agile, armed with five single-barrel five-inch mounts and ten above-deck antiship torpedo tubes. The Gearing class, of which
Malloy
was one, were longer and heavier, a bit slower but more heavily armed, trading forty-millimeter AA mounts for those ten torpedo tubes, and had much more modern command and control facilities. If you wanted to get somewhere in a hurry, though, a Fletcher class with a clean hull and four boilers on the line could do 36 knots all day.

We checked the radar screens to make damned sure there was nothing else coming, then set up an alongside transfer by personnel highline. Four bells rang out over the topside speakers, followed by “DesRon Five-Oh, arriving.”

The commodore, Captain Van Arnhem, came over first, followed by his medical officer, Dr. Atkinson. I stood amidships to greet him. The commodore was built like a fullback, with piercing blue eyes, a Moses nose, and John L. Louis–sized bushy eyebrows. He'd begun the war as a lieutenant commander stuck supervising ship repairs in the Boston Navy Yard, then escaped to sea in early 1942 in one of the new antiaircraft light cruisers as chief engineer. From there he had commissioned a new Fletcher-class destroyer in 1943 and had been in the thick of it ever since. I met him on the main deck, saluted, and told him who I was.

“Wardroom,” he answered as he shucked his life jacket. “Summon your chief corpsman.”

As soon as the squadron medical officer was hauled aboard, the highline rig was broken down and the other destroyer cleared away to set up station two miles distant. It felt good to have five more guns in the neighborhood. This all-day quiet was beginning to spook people.

I gathered up the commodore and his doctor, and we headed for the wardroom. When we arrived, we got a surprise: The captain greeted us at the wardroom door, looking fit as a fiddle after his extended nap.

*   *   *

“Commodore,” he said. “Welcome aboard, sir. To what do we owe the pleasure?”

The commodore grunted and gave him a phony fish-eye. No destroyer captain ever wanted to have the commodore embarked and constantly looking over his shoulder. “Pudge,” he said. “You're looking suspiciously well.”

The captain sat down in his seat at the head of the table. The commodore, not known for being a protocol stickler, took a seat halfway down the table. The squadron doctor and our chief corpsman, Doc Walker, went to the junior end of the table.

“Well, sir,” the captain said. “Are you embarking? Tired of all the peace and quiet down off Okinawa?”

“I think it might actually be better up here on the picket line, Pudge. The AOA and the fleet are catching hell. We're losing a ship and a half a day, statistically, and I mean losing. It's not going so well ashore, either. This island is a whole different kettle of fish, as we're all finding out.”

He turned to me. “So,” he said. “XO?”

I looked right at the captain. “Sir, I made a log entry last night relieving you of command due to … medical problems. Do you remember our discussing this matter?”

“Nope,” the captain said. There was a longish moment of silence. “What specific medical problems?”

I was more than a little surprised. I also would have thought he'd have reacted with at least some signs of shock: You did
what?
But he was as normal as normal could be, and obviously much refreshed after his long sleep. I felt both relieved and alarmed. Relieved that he was “back,” if that was the right term. Alarmed because it was going to look like a major misstep on my part, if not outright mutiny. I plunged ahead. “The fact that you could no longer—”

“Wait one,” the commodore interrupted. “Chief Walker, you may be excused now.”

“But, sir—”

“Now, if you please, Chief. Thank you.”

Doc got up, looked to me for guidance, then left the wardroom, smashing his chief's hat down on his head angrily.

“Go ahead, Commander,” the commodore said to me. Commander, I thought. The formal title used to address the executive officer, even if he was still a lieutenant commander. The temperature in the wardroom was cooling by the second. I did notice that the squadron doctor was watching Captain Tallmadge closely, though.

I set forth the circumstances leading to my actions, and the captain started shaking his head about halfway through my tale. “No,” he muttered. “Never.”

When I'd finished, the commodore turned to the captain. “Pudge,” he said. “This is all, what—made up?”

“Never happened, sir. Never. I would
never
—”

At that moment, the GQ alarm sounded. No announcement of inbound bogeys, no unexpected gunfire, just that
bong-bong-bong
that produced a rush of sea boots outside in the wardroom passageway and a clanging of hatches going down. No announcement meant we'd been surprised, and I expected to hear the roar of the guns at any second. My immediate instinct was to get to the bridge, or even Combat. This fiasco in the wardroom would have to wait. I pushed back my chair but then stopped. A familiar look was coming over the captain's face.

“Commodore,” he was saying, “I must get to the bridge. You'll understand, of course. I must. I can't, um, stay here.”

“Yes, of course, Captain,” the commodore said, remaining in his seat. “Go right ahead. This can wait.”

“Yes, right, this can wait. I can't imagine, XO, what provoked you to, um, ah, I have to get to the bridge.”

“Yes, sir,” I said. “Right behind you, sir.”

“Yes, right behind me. Of course. Yes. I, ah…”

He opened his mouth and then stopped talking. He started looking around, his hands gripping the edge of the table with visibly white knuckles. The ship began to accelerate, the forced-draft blowers from the forward fire room clearly audible as they spooled up. The forty-millimeter mount that was right on top of the wardroom area began to train out. Still the captain didn't move. He looked like a man tied to the railroad tracks who's just seen the approaching headlight. His face was beginning to dissolve. I felt terrible and turned my head away. I didn't want to see this.

“XO,” the commodore said gently. “Take charge up on the bridge, if you please.”

The doctor was getting up and coming around the table to get to the captain, who was beginning to keen in an unearthly voice, so obviously terrified that he was frozen to his chair. I practically bolted out of the wardroom and hurried topside. I went into Combat and asked them what was coming.

“Nothing that we know about, XO,” Jimmy said. “Do
you
know?”

I didn't answer him. Instead I hurried out to the bridge. Everyone was scanning the skies for little black dots. Everyone except Doc Walker.

Then I figured out what had happened. Doc had come up to the bridge and, while no one was looking, had fired off the GQ alarm. Once it sounded, everyone in the whole ship went into automatic, including our terrorized skipper.