The Story of Dr. Wassell (4 page)

Only once did the men see her gay and excited, and that was (oddly
perhaps) just after Bailey’s funeral. The atmosphere of the ward was pretty
low- spirited that day; and all at once Three Martini rushed through the
doorway carrying a newborn child that had just been delivered in the
Maternity Ward which happened to be next to the men’s. It was a brown child
of her own race, and chattering all the time in Javanese, she held it up for
the men to see. Then, as if afraid of being discovered in such a breach of
rules, she rushed out of the ward as suddenly as she had entered, and when
she returned a little later she was perfectly quiet again.

The doctor found other things to do for the men—little things,
mostly, and by no means the kind one had to be trained to be a Navy doctor
for. He bought quantities of oranges, for instance, and after much difficulty
found shops in the town that stocked certain kinds of canned goods that the
men liked. He also bought candy, because he worked it out in his mind that
youth requires sugar, therefore candy is a medicine. He did not tell the men
he was buying them these things, but gave them to the Dutch hospital
authorities and let the men think they were part of the regular rations. Nor
was it entirely his dislike of being thanked that made him do this, but
chiefly a desire to do his duty as liaison officer in promoting good feeling
between the Dutch and the Americans. The Dutch had a fine hospital and were
giving the men excellent treatment; their food was good, too, but naturally
different from the kind the men had been used to in the Navy, or in Wisconsin
or Nebraska, for that matter. The doctor, having lived so many years in China
and having acquired a definite taste for Eastern foods, knew how intolerant
people can be in these matters, and how many a man will lay down his life for
another country more willingly than he will cat that country’s delicacies
without grumbling. So he spent further sums of Navy Department money in
fostering international amity via the stomach.

And then there were other jobs, especially when a batch of long-delayed
mail came in, crumpled and soaked from sea-water immersion. Most of the men
had letters from home, and most of these had been penned before Pearl Harbor,
so that there were undertones of irony in sentences that the men read out to
one another. The doctor had already helped the men with bandaged hands to
write home (much as he detested the physical act of writing), so it was
natural that now, having been initiated, so to say, in their family affairs,
he was invited to hear further news of Pa. and Ma and brother Joe and Aunt
Nell. And then, also, there was Goode, who had lost one eye and had the over
covered over, so that he could not read the letters he had received. They lay
in a little heap next to his pillow, and the doctor thought it rather odd
that the boy had not asked his neighbor to read them for him. But then Goode
perhaps
was
odd, if it were odd to be far more depressed by his injury
than Edmunds was, who had also lost an eye. Or perhaps it was Edmunds who was
really odd, for not seeming depressed at all. The doctor could not quite make
his mind about the matter, but he went over to Goode’s bed and asked if the
boy would like to have his letters read, and when the answer was a quiet,
almost indifferent affirmative, the doctor sat on the edge of the bed and
began to read one letter after another in a low voice, so that no one else
could hear. They were all from a small town in Iowa, and the first two that
he read were just family gossip about the farm, and the new automobile, and
Jim’s baby. The third, however, was from someone who signed herself “Helen,”
and after the opening sentences the doctor had a queer feeling that made him
glance ahead and over the page, whilst pretending to clear his throat. He saw
then that it was a kind of letter hardly calculated to raise the spirits of
an injured sailor lying on a hospital cot ten thousand miles from home; for
briefly and leaving out the apologies, it was to tell him that Helen had
changed her mind and had already married somebody else.

The doctor had to make a quick decision, which was hard for him, and then
to say something glib, which was fairly easy for him when once he had
decided. He finished clearing his throat and continued: “Well, that’s about
all—except that she sends you her love and hopes you’ll soon be home on
leave because she’s simply counting the days…”

“Why don’t you go on reading what she says?”

The doctor braced himself for a stupendous feat of improvisation. “Gosh,
boy, that’s what I am doing, only the handwriting isn’t so very clear—I
was just summarizing for you in advance. Here’s her own words—‘Darling,
I’m simply counting the days, and that’s the truth too, because I love you to
death, and when you come back from the war—’”

“She wrote that on December first,” interrupted Goode. “Don’t tell me she
knew we were going to be at war a week before it happened.”

The doctor realized he had blundered, but there was nothing for it but to
hold fast. “Why shouldn’t she? I know plenty of people who had a hunch all
this was coming. And she’s a smart girl, from the way she writes—maybe
she did know, or had an intuition or something—”

“Or maybe she didn’t write any of that at all,” said Goode, “and you’re
just kidding me.”

The doctor didn’t quite know what to say.

“Yes, you are,” Goode continued, in a level voice, “because I know the
truth. Muller just told me—he’s from the same town, and he had a letter
with the news in it about Helen. I guess he thought he was breaking it to me
gently.”

“I’m very sorry,” said the doctor.

Goode smiled—a curious, forced smile.

“Nothing to be sorry about. I’m glad she ditched me before she knew. It
would have been awful if she’d stuck to me just because she learned I only
had one eye. She might have. She’s that kind of a girl. Ever know that kind
of a girl, Doc?”

The doctor started as if he had suddenly been reminded of something, and
when he answered it was in a changed voice. “Sure,” he answered, and then
added to change the subject quickly: “Now let me read the rest of the
letters.”

He did so, without comment, then patted the boy’s hand and went away. When
he reached the corridor outside the ward he saw a group of nurses chattering
together as if they too were facing tough luck. They told him, as he passed
by, that Singapore had fallen.

That was oil February fifteenth, and the same day the Japs crossed over to
Sumatra and also began the invasion of Bali. However impregnable Java was,
one could not forget that Sumatra and Bali were the two islands at either end
of it.

As the men improved in health they began to talk more about the general
situation, for though the radio news kept on dishing out encouragement, the
fact that events were growing daily more serious could not be concealed from
them. They could read it, if nowhere else, in the eyes of the Dutch doctors
and nurses, in the air of expectancy just before the times of the day when
news was broadcast, and in the preoccupied look that Dr. Voorhuys carried
around with him during his daily visits to the wards.

The doctor from Arkansas did not want to talk much about the war with the
men, because he thought it would not be cheering for them; but he would have
liked to discuss certain aspects of it with Commander Wilson,
because—quite frankly—he was beginning to foresee possibilities
in which the advice of a superior officer might be helpful. What, for
instance, should he do if an invasion of Java were actually attempted, or if
the tide of battle should collie inland? Should he stay at the hospital with
his men, or try to get them to some safer place?

Once, in this mood of seeking advice, he called up Surabaya on the
telephone, asking for a man at Navy headquarters whom he had got along with
pretty well during his last visit. He was surprised to learn then that all
Navy officials had left Surabaya and were now concentrated at Tjilatjap, on
the south side of the island.

When he asked the Dutch doctors what they thought Would happen, they just
shrugged their shoulders and declared for the fiftieth time that there would
be no surrender of Java.

And Wilson was still too ill to talk much.

Amidst this mounting tension McGuffey chose to absent himself one night,
returning in the morning after adventures which he did not specify, but which
included female companionship, and a grand discussion of wartime strategy
with some British soldiers stationed at the local airport.

The doctor was furious. “Nov I’m just mad at you, McGuffey—sneaking
out at a time like this! And you needn’t think I shan’t report you for it!
I’m here to see you get decent treatment, and by golly you’ve been given it,
and it’s up to you to give something in return…not go breaking rules all
over the place! I suppose you don’t care about all the extra worry you caused
us!”

“Sorry, Doc, but you didn’t
have
to worry. There’s more than me to
worry about, anyway, if you’d heard all that I heard. Some of those English
fellers told me things that make your hair stand on end! I mean about
Singapore, and the way the Japs carried on when they took the place.
Seriously, Doc—isn’t it time we got the hell out of here?”

“That’s nothing to do with you—or me. We have our orders—and
they stand till we get new ones—
if
we get new ones. Maybe we
will.” The doctor swerved into his usual line of cheerfulness. “I wouldn’t be
at all surprised if they send us back to America pretty soon. So don’t look
on the dark side.”

“I don’t.” (And that was certainly obvious.) “Matter of fact I’m not keen
to go home—not particularly. I didn’t have too good a time there, one
way and another. It’s the Navy I want to go back to. They’ve been good to me
in the Navy. Treated me well, and gave me a decent job. I was a cook, and a
good cook too—you ask the men. I’m all right now—except for this
bit of an ear missing—why can’t I go back to a ship and cook some more?
I
like
cooking.”

The doctor softened, because he liked cooking too—both the job and
the result. And he also liked the Navy, and after some of the trouble he had
had on shore he could say the same as McGuffey—that the Navy had
treated
him
well, had given
him
a chance, had offered him the
kind of work and also the kind of discipline he had craved for after a
lifetime of one thing and another. But of course McGuffey couldn’t mean all
that. He wondered exactly what the boy did mean. He said, on impulse: “Look
here, son—I’m not the Secretary of the Navy. You’ll just have to wait
for orders, sane as we all have—and if they don’t like the way you look
without an ear, you better make the best of it. I won’t report you this once,
but if there’s a second time…I’ll double what I was going to say. Get
that?”

McGuffey smiled. “Sure, I get it. And thanks, Doc.”

Every morning, though he was still very ill, Wilson insisted on hearing
news of the men’s progress. Apparently through one of the nurses he had heard
the gist of McGuffey’s exploit, for the next morning he said: “Having trouble
with the cook, Doctor?”

The doctor was noncommittal. “Oh no.” And putting on his richest Arkansas
dialect he quoted: “‘I ain’t one to have no trouble with nobody.’”

“You’ll have it with McGuffey, though, I’m telling you. And I’m also
telling you this—there’s good stuff in that boy.”

“There’s good stuff in most boys.”

“‘That’s what
I
think. But how did
you
find it out? You
haven’t had a ship to teach you.”

The doctor answered: “I was once medical officer of a CCC Camp. I guess
that could be a bit like the Navy…” He added after a pause: “Except that
the Navy can fight its enemies.” He did not explain what he meant by
that.

During the week that followed the fall of Singapore the Javanese situation
“somewhat rapidly deteriorated”—a newspaper phrase favored by people
when they didn’t want to mention unpleasant details. At the inland town the
routine of hospital life went on with only the faintest slackening, as when a
well-oiled machine continues almost effortlessly on its own impetus; the
Dutch doctors and nurses were just a shade more preoccupied as they went
about their daily business. One could not blame them for this, since most of
them had relatives and friends in the Dutch Army, and these men, of all ages
from schoolboys to elderly men, were mustering for the emergency throughout
all the local countryside. The nurses were so efficient in their hospital
tasks that it was hard to realize that outside their hours of duties they had
lives and problems of their own.

Suddenly, as if a change of wind had brought an epidemic, the town became
a prey to all kinds of rumors: that the Japs had landed on the northern
coast, that the Japs had not landed; that parachutists were dropping out of
the skies and hiding in the hills; that the Dutch officials were preparing to
evacuate, that whatever happened the Dutch would never evacuate; and so on.
The men from the
Marblehead
did not hear more than a fraction of these
rumors, but the smell of them was in the air from morning till night, a whiff
of something terrifying and intangible, as when a shadow motionless on a dark
wall reveals itself as the possible shape of some loathed insect.

The men were not exactly afraid, but they were undeniably uneasy. The
doctor was uneasy too. He tried several times to telephone to Navy
headquarters at Tjilatjap, but the line was busy, he could not get through.
Then, when once he did get through, somebody at the other end yelled back
that he ought to know better than bother people with questions nobody could
answer.

The doctor kept reiterating to the men: “Navy orders, boys. That’s all we
can do about it. You know how it is in the Navy.”

He would go round the ward at night and cheer them up (he hoped) by saying
things he didn’t particularly believe. “Things’ll work out all right, don’t
you worry.
I’m
not worrying. I’ve been in worse jams than this before
and I’ve come out all right. Once I had to leave my house by the front door
as bandits came in at the back. That was in China, during the civil wars.
Funny the way they call some kind of wars civil, isn’t it? I’ve never met any
kind of war vet that was really civil…or civilized…Say, though, don’t you
think it’s time we had that ice cream I promised all of you? Tomorrow I’ll go
into the town and get it. That’s a deal…”