The Captains (46 page)

 

OPERATIONAL IMMEDIATE

MULBERRY BUSH NUMBER 3

BALACLAVA SIX WOUNDED LEG AND HEAD BALACLAVA FIVE

WOUNDED LEG AND FACE
.

“Six is Felter, right?” General Black said.

“Yes, sir,” Colonel Newburgh said. “MacMillan is five.”

“Goddamn him!” General Black said.

 

OPERATIONAL IMMEDIATE

MULBERRY BUSH NUMBER 4

EXECUTING OPERATION BALACLAVA. USS DEWEY DD404 EN ROUTE

POINT CHARLES. ETA ONE HOUR FIVE MINS

“Get in touch with that destroyer,” General Black said softly. “See if they have a medic aboard. Send it in the clear. Encrypting takes too long.”

One of the commo sergeants sat down at a radioteletype keyboard and rapidly typed out:

 

FROM JADE

TO HAMMERHEAD

QUERY: DOES BALACLAVA HAVE MEDIC ABOARD? SIGNED BLACK LT GEN
.

“If they have a doctor aboard,” General Black said, “what about other facilities? Get the aviation officer up here, Carson.”

Colonel Newburgh picked up the telephone and dialed a number from memory. There was no answer. He broke the connection and dialed another number.

“This is Colonel Newburgh,” he said. “Where is Colonel Young?” There was a reply, and then Newburgh said, “Please wake him up and ask him to join me in the comm center immediately.” He hung up the telephone.

 

OPERATIONAL IMMEDIATE

MULBERRY BUSH NUMBER 5

BALACLAVA SIX SUFFERED SEVERE LOSS OF BLOOD TYPE AO
.

“Carson, take care of that,” General Black said.

Colonel Newburgh picked up a telephone and dialed 1. An operator came on the line.

“Get me Massachusetts Six,” he said.

 

HAMMERHEAD TO JADE SIX

USS DEWEY CARRIES MEDICAL OFFICER ABOARD. NO INFORMATION AVAILABLE RE STOCKS OF BLOOD. SUGGEST TRANSFUSION POSSIBLE
.

“This is Carson Newburgh, Doctor. I want you to put enough Type A and AO blood to treat two seriously wounded men in a jeep and get it to the Jade airstrip right now. You had better send a surgeon, too, if you have one available,” Colonel Newburgh said to the commanding officer of the MASH serving the nearest division to XIX Corps (Group). Colonel Daniel Young, the XIX Corps (Group) aviation officer, out of breath, ran into the comm center. He walked up to Colonel Newburgh.

“Yes, sir.”

“Young,” General Black called from across the room, “what time is daybreak?”

“It's 0442, sir,” Young said. General Black looked at his watch.

“Sir,” Colonel Young said, “I only need daylight to land. I can take off anytime.”

“Carson, show Young where he will have to go,” General Black said.

“Yes, sir.”

(Five)
Point Charles
0405 Hours
16 November 1951

“Skipper,” the officer of the deck said, and the skipper went and lowered his head into the black eyepiece of the radar.

“Bring us around to one twenty-five,” the skipper ordered.

“One twenty-five it is, sir.”

“I see a hell of a lot of smoke, Skipper,” the officer of the deck said.

“And we're five miles away,” the skipper said.

“Captain?” the loudspeaker said.

“Go ahead.”

“Operational Immediate from Jade, sir. Helicopter en route with blood and surgeon aboard. Estimated time of arrival thirty minutes.”

“Acknowledge the message, Sparks, and tell the doctor.”

“Aye, aye, sir.”

(Six)

The destroyer seemed to settle on her stern as her engines went to full reverse.

“I'll be a sonofabitch,” MacMillan said. “Here comes the goddamned cavalry.”

He was sitting on the deck, beside Felter. The stern of the junk was on fire. There weren't many visible flames, just a hell of a lot of dense greasy smoke from the burning diesel fuel. For some reason it just sat there and burned rather than exploding or even spreading, and MacMillan idly wondered why.

There were only six people left alive. He and Felter had been wounded, Felter pretty badly, himself lightly, and the others were unhurt, unless you counted a burned hand as a wound.

The junk was dead in the water, and seemed to be slowly sinking, although it was hard to tell.

MacMillan gently shoved Felter's shoulder. He wanted to tell him that a destroyer was now inching its way through the ocean toward them. Felter woke up, as if he had been asleep, and moved, and then screamed.

MacMillan, who had the hypo ready, jabbed it into his arm. It worked quickly. He threw the empty syringe over the side, and then, after a moment, the three full ones he had in his hand. It had been his intention, if the fire reached them, to give Felter several of the hypos. Enough so that he wouldn't feel the flames.

The destroyer loomed over them, so close that MacMillan was genuinely concerned they would be overturned, and drowned at the last goddamned moment.

And then people were coming down knotted ropes. They wore those silly-looking navy steel pots and life preservers. One of them was an officer, getting tar or whatever it was on the ropes all over his clean, starched khakis.

“Over here,” MacMillan said.

“I'm from the
Dewey
,” the navy officer said.

“You got a doctor aboard?”

“Yes, we do.”

“You better take care of him,” MacMillan said, indicating Felter in the body basket. “He's in pretty bad shape.”

“You don't look so hot yourself, sir,” the navy officer said.

“I'm all right,” MacMillan said and got to his feet and passed out.

He woke up in a bed. From the way the destroyer was rolling, he knew they weren't moving. His trousers had been cut off him, and there was a bandage on his leg, although he was still dirty.

Temporary dressing, he decided, while they work on Felter. He felt his forehead, and found another bandage.

He sat up in the bed, and saw that he could see out an open door. The junk, still burning, was three hundred yards away. He swung his feet out of the bed, and made it to the door just in time to meet a doctor, an army doctor, coming in.

“What the hell's the matter with you?” the doctor said. “Get your ass back in bed.”

“Why aren't we moving?”

“They just got orders to destroy the junk,” the doctor said.

MacMillan was pleased that it took five rounds from the destroyer's 5-inch cannon before the junk finally rolled over and sank beneath the surface of the Sea of Japan.

Only then did he permit the surgeon to have a look at his leg and face.

“You haven't mentioned Felter,” he said, as the surgeon cleaned the wound in his leg. “Does that mean he didn't make it?”

“He's got a pretty badly torn-up leg,” the doctor said. “But he'll make it.”

“Where are we going now?”

“Pusan,” the doctor said. “To the hospital ship
Consolation
.”

“Am I that bad hurt?”

“No. Not at all. You'll be sore. You lost a chunk of meat, but it was mostly fat. No muscles, I mean. You were lucky.”

“Then why do I have to go to a hospital ship?”

“Because General Black said that I was to permit nothing whatever to interfere in any way with your recovery to the point where he can put you on a plane to the United States at the earliest possible moment,” the doctor said.

MacMillan laughed, deep in his belly, loudly.

(Seven)
Pusan, South Korea
0900 Hours
17 November 1951

The U.S. Navy hospital ship
Consolation
, her sides and superstructure a brilliant white, a Red Cross thirty feet square painted on each of her sides, floated sedately in Pusan Harbor.

Captain Rudolph G. MacMillan, dressed in hospital pajamas and a bathrobe, watched as a powerboat, known as the Captain's Barge, glistening brass and spotless white paint and polished mahogany, put out from Pier One in Pusan and made its way to the
Consolation
's landing ladder. Two sailors in spotless white uniforms and a lieutenant junior grade stood on the landing platform. The sailors secured the boat to the landing platform, and the lieutenant held out his hand for the passenger of the barge. The passenger jumped onto the platform at the bottom of the landing stair without help. The lieutenant saluted.

“Welcome to the
Consolation
, General,” he said. “The captain's waiting for you.” He gestured up the stairs.

Lt. General E. Z. Black walked briskly up the stairs, trailed by an aide-de-camp.

When he reached the top of the stairs, six sailors blew on long, narrow brass whistles.

Lieutenant General E. Z. Black smiled and saluted.

A navy captain in a white dress uniform, complete with sword, and a navy captain in dress whites without a sword took two steps forward and saluted.

“Permission to come aboard, sir?” General Black asked.

“Permission granted,” the captain with the sword said. General Black threw a crisp salute to the national colors flying on the flagstaff aft. Then he saluted the two captains again. He spotted MacMillan, and smiled, which relieved MacMillan.

“Don't think I came to see you, you disobedient sonofabitch,” General Black said. All was right with MacMillan's world. If the general were really mad, he would have been icily formal.

“Welcome aboard, General,” the captain with the sword said, a little confused by the interchange between the general and the major. “It isn't often we're honored by the presence aboard of a senior army officer.”

“Thank you very much,” General Black said. “You know why I'm here?” he asked but didn't wait for a reply before going on. “I want to make sure that nothing gets in the way of Major MacMillan's prompt return to the ZI. And I want to check on Captain Felter.”

“Felter's got problems, General,” MacMillan said solemnly.

“What kind of problems?” General Black asked. He directed the question to the captain without a sword.

“There's not much left of his knee, sir. After consultation, we have concluded that amputation of the leg is indicated.”

“I'm sorry to hear that,” General Black said.

“Felter doesn't want it cut off, General,” Mac said.

“What do you mean, he doesn't want it cut off?” Black asked sharply.

“He says he'll take his chances, and he won't let them cut it off,” MacMillan explained. “He made me promise I'd tell you.”

“What the hell does he expect me to do about it?” Black asked, very uncomfortably.

“There's a psychiatric problem involved with the loss of a limb, sir,” the hospital ship commander said.

“I suppose there would be a problem,” General Black said. “But is ‘psychiatric' the right word?”

“I don't know what other word to use,” the navy physician said. “By definition, Captain Felter is, at the moment, deranged.”

“Because he doesn't want his leg cut off, he's crazy? Is that what you're saying?”

“Not that we believe him, of course, General,” the hospital ship commander replied. “Or that it would affect our decision if we did, but he has threatened me personally, and any other medical officer involved, with physical violence if we proceed with the procedure.”

“If Captain Felter threatened your life, Doctor,” General Black said, “I would take it very seriously.”

“I had hoped, sir, that you might have a word with him.”

“Is their no way his leg could be saved?”

“Not here, sir. Possibly at San Diego Naval Hospital. Just possibly. The damage is severe.”

“But there's a chance it could be saved at San Diego?”

“I don't think anyone could restore that knee, General. At best, his leg would be stiff for the rest of his life.”

“I think I would rather have a stiff leg than no leg at all,” Black said. “Why don't we send him to San Diego?”

“It's against policy, sir.”

“What do you mean, against policy?”