The Winds of War

flamed and all three islands poured smoke. Pug could see little figures looking up at the departing Clipper. Some waved.

Even in the dead of night, nine hours later, Midway was not hard to find. The pilot called Victor Henry to the cockpit to show him the star of flame far ahead on the black sea. “Christ, these Japs had the thing all lined up, didn’t they?” he said. “They hit everywhere at once. I heard over the radio they’re already in Malaya, Thailand, Hong Kong, they’re bombing Singapore—”

“Can we land, Ed?”

“We’ve got to try. I can’t raise them. All the navigation lights are out. Midway has a lot of underground tanks, and if we can just get down, we can fuel. Soooo — here goes.”

The flying boat dropped low over dark waters, lit only by the glare from blazing hangars and buildings. On slapping into the sea, it hit something solid with a frightening clang, but slowed and floated undamaged. The airfields of Midway, they soon learned, had been shelled by a Japanese cruiser and a destroyer. An exhilarated mob of almost naked fire fighters was flooding the blazes with chemicals and water, generating giant billows of acrid red smoke. Victor Henry found his way to the commandant’s office and tried to get news of the Pearl Harbor attack. The lieutenant on duty was obsequious and vague. The commandant was out inspecting the island’s air defenses, he said, and he had no authority to show top secret dispatches, but he could tell the captain that the Navy had shot down a mess of Japanese planes.

“How about the California? I’m going there to take command of her.”

The lieutenant looked impressed. “Oh, really, sir? The California? I’m sure she’s all right, sir. I don’t recall any word about the California.”

This news enabled Victor Henry to sleep a little, though he tossed and muttered all night and got up well before dawn to pace the cool hotel veranda. The goony birds of Midway, big hook-beaked creatures which he had heard about but never seen, were out by the dozens, walking the gray dunes. He saw them clumsily fly, and land, and tumble on their heads. He watched a pair do a ridiculous mating dance on the beach as the sun came up, plopping their feet like a drunken old farm couple. Ordinarily Victor Henry would have seized the chance to inspect Midway, for it was a big installation, but today nothing could draw him out of sight of the flying boat, rising and falling on the swells and bumping the dock with dull booms.

The four hours to Hawaii seemed like forty. Instead of melting away at its usual rate, time froze. Pug asked the steward for cards and played solitaire, but forgot he was playing. He just sat, enduring the passage of time like the grind of a dentist’s drill, until at last the steward came and spoke to him, smiling. “Captain Connelly would like you to come up forward, sir.”

Ahead, through the plexiglass, the green sunny humps of the Hawaiian Islands were showing over the horizon.

“Nice?” said the pilot.

“Prettiest sight I’ve seen,” said Pug, “since my wife had a girl baby.”

“Stick around, and we’ll take a look at the fleet.”

Nobody aboard the Clipper knew what to expect. The rumors on Midway had varied from disaster to victory, with graphic details both ways. The Clipper came in from the north over the harbor and hooked around to descend. In these two passes, Victor Henry was struck sick by what his disbelieving eyes saw. All along the east side of Ford Island the battleships of the Pacific Fleet lay careened, broken, overturned, in the disorder of a child’s toys in a bath. Hickam Field and the Navy’s air base were broad dumps of blackened airplane fragments and collapsed burned hangar skeletons. Some dry docks held shattered tumbled-over ships. Pug desperately tried to pick out the California in the hideous smoky panorama. But at this altitude the ships with basket masts looked alike. Some of the inboard vessels appeared just slightly damaged. If only one was the California!

“My God,” Connelly said, looking around at Pug, his face drawn, “what a shambles!”

Speechless, Victor Henry nodded and sat on a folding seat, as the flying boat swooped low past a smashed gutted battleship with tripod masts, sunk to the level of its guns and resting on the bottom at a crazy angle. The Clipper threw up a curtain of spray that wiped out the heart-rending sight.

Journey’s end.

Passing several clanging, speeding Navy ambulances, Pug went from the customs sled at the Pan Am landing straight to the Cincpac building, where officers and sailors busily swarmed. They all wore unsure scared expressions, like people after a bad earthquake. A very handsome ensign in whites, at a desk that barred access to Cincpac’s inner offices, looked incredulously at Pug who wore wrinkled slacks and a seersucker jacket. “The admiral? You mean Cincpac, sir? Admiral Kimmel?”

“That’s right,” Pug said.

“Sir, you don’t really expect to see Admiral Kimmel today, do you? Shall I try his Assistant Chief of Staff?”

“Give the admiral a message, please. I’m Captain Victor Henry. I’ve just come in on the Clipper with a personal letter for him from the marine commandant on Wake Island.”

The very handsome ensign gestured wearily at a chair and picked up a telephone. “You may have to wait all day, or a week, sir. You know what the situation is.”

“I have the general picture.”

A minute or so later, a pretty woman in a tailored blue suit looked through the double doors. “Captain Henry? This way, sir.”

The ensign stared at Victor Henry walking past him, as though the captain had sprouted another head. Along the corridor, the offices of Cincpac’s senior staff stood open, and the sound of excited talk and typewriter clatter drifted out. A marine rigidly saluted before high doors decorated with four gold stars and a Navy seal, and labelled in gold COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF, PACIFIC FLEET. They passed into a wood-panelled anteroom. The woman opened a heavy polished mahogany door.

“Admiral, here’s Captain Henry.”

“Hey, Pug! Great day, how long has it been?” Kimmel waved cheerily from the window, where he stood gazing out at the anchorage. He was dressed in faultless gold-buttoned whites, and looked tanned, fit, and altogether splendid, though much older and quite bald. “Have I seen you since you worked for me on the Maryland?”

“I don’t think so, sir.”

“Well, the years are dealing kindly with you! Sit you down, sit you down. Been flying high, haven’t you? Observing in Roosia, and all that, eh? They shook hands. Kimmel’s voice was as hearty and winning as ever. This was an outstanding officer, Pug thought, who had been marked for success all the way and had gone all the way. Now, after twenty-years of war exercises and drills against Orange, the fleet he commanded lay in sight beyond the window, wrecked in port, by the Orange team in one quick real action. He appeared remarkably chipper, but for his eyes, which were reddened and somewhat unfocussed.

“I know how little time you have, sir.” Pug drew out of his breast pocket the letter from Wake Island.

“Not at all. It’s nice to see an old familiar face. You were a good gunnery officer, Pug. A good officer all around. Cigarette?” Kimmel offered him the pack, and lit one for himself. “Let’s see. Don’t you have a couple of boys in the service now?”

“Yes sir. One flies an SBD off the Enterprise, and -”

“Well fine! They didn’t get the Enterprise or any other carrier, Pug, because the carriers at least followed my orders and were on one hundred percent alert. And the other lad?”

“He’s aboard the Devilfish in Manila.”

“Manila, eh? They haven’t hit the fleet at Manila yet, though I understand they’ve bombed the airfields. Tommy Hart’s got some warning now, and he’ll have no excuse. I only hope the Army Air people in Manila aren’t as totally asleep as they were here! The Army was and is completely responsible for the safety of these islands and of this anchorage, Pug, including the definite responsibility of air patrol and radar search. Nothing on God’s earth could be clearer than the way that is spelled out in the islands’ defense instructions. The documents leave no doubt about that, fortunately. Well you have something from Wake, don’t you? Let’s have a look-see. Were you there when they hit?”

“Yes, sir.”

“How bad was it? As bad as this?”