to the line made up of Little Cull Island, the buoys, and the nets. 'I knew they'd have to come around this way, so we just waited for them.'
Blunt stomped over to the chart to get a closer look, and as he moved his cap fell off. Clumsily, I nearly stepped on it.
'Rich, you're a bastard,' he said.
5
The operational readiness inspection by Captain Blunt was the last item prior to our departure for the Pacific Ocean and Pearl Harbor. Ahead of us lay the necessary chores of fueling ship, cramming her with provisions, taking a full load of torpedoes and spares aboard-and saying good-by to families and friends.
We had a week to get ready. Five days before our scheduled departure Jim came to me with a rather unusual request. He wanted three days leave.
I couldn't help showing a little surprise. 'What's up, Jim?'
I asked. 'This is a pretty busy time.'
Jim looked uncomfortable. 'I know it, sir, but this is one of those things….' His voice trailed off and an intuitive flash told me that it concerned Laura.
It was true that Walrus had been under a steady grind for the past several weeks. Jim had home the brunt of it and had done an excellent job.
'Jim,' I said slowly, 'I don't see how we can spare you just now-there is all the work you have been supervising…'
Jim was ready for that one. 'I've got everything all set, sir.
Everybody has his instructions and all the officers know their own jobs better than I do anyway. Things can get along pretty well without me for the next few days.'
This wasn't quite true because an Executive Officer's work is never done so long as his skipper has things on his mind. But since we were leaving to go to war and would be gone a long time, perhaps we could make a special arrangement for him.
'OK, old man,' I agreed, 'figure to be back a couple of days before our scheduled departure.'
Jim's countenance brightened. 'Thanks, skipper.' He bounded away almost with his old lightheartedness.
I mentally made a note to take over the supervisory functions of Jim's job during his absence, but found this unnecessary.
They were indeed, as he had said, well organized. My own duties I found to be rather more complicated, however, mainly because of a series of briefing and study sessions which apparently all departing skippers had to undergo. The most impressive of these to me was the one given two days before we were to leave, in which the full extent of the damage at Pearl Harbor on December seventh was made known. The briefing was specified as 'Secret' and Captain Blunt warned me about it before taking me in to see the Admiral command- ing the Atlantic submarine force.
'ComSubLant' was standing in a room fitted with a long table and several chairs, obviously used mainly for conferences.
On the table was a stack of papers and charts. His name was Smathers and he had been a submariner of repute years before.
'Richardson,' said Admiral Smathers, greeting me, 'I sup- pose you've heard most of the details of the Jap attack at Pearl Harbor?'
'I've heard a lot of stories about it.'
'Well, that's the reason we've called you up here. We want you to know exactly the situation, not only in Pearl Harbor but also in the Philippines and in Malaya. This first pamphlet,' he picked up a-loose-leaf bound portfolio of photographs-is a set of pictures taken immediately after the Pearl Harbor attack. And here,' he picked up another pamphlet, 'is a list of our forces in the Pacific and their general location. The rest of this will also be of interest. When you get through you will see why we've had to accelerate submarine construction so drastically-and why every boat we can fit out is going to the Pacific right away. Also you will appreciate why it has been imperative to keep word of the true conditions out there from getting back home or to the enemy. Come to my office if you have any questions.' With that the Admiral shook hands again, strode to the door, and departed. Captain Blunt went with him.
I spent three hours alone going through the papers with growing consternation. We all knew things were tough in the Pacific, but I had not known they were this bad. Fighting a naval war in both oceans at the same time automatically reduced our available forces to shoestring size when it came to operations, and the losses we had suffered right at the outset made the situation look downright desperate.
The Admiral was wrong in one thing. There was another mimeographed pamphlet which was to me of even greater interest than the ones he had singled out. It listed our sub- marine forces to date and the losses we had sustained. I found the Octopus listed there, the Sea Lion at Cavite, the Shark, overdue in the Philippines, and the S-26, rammed and sunk by her own escorts off Panama. There were also two other losses I had not known about as yet, S-36, which had run aground in the Malay Archipelago, and Perch, overdue from patrol since March. In the section devoted to Dutch submarines the casualties were even higher.
When I had finished reading every word and looking at every chart and every photograph, I silently reassembled all the papers, said good-by to the Admiral's aide, and thought- fully made my way back to the Walrus.
She was lying at the berth in which all boats about to leave for the war zone were placed-the pier directly in front of the Submarine Base Commander's office, and she had it all to her- self. On either side of her, nested two to a pier, were other fleet boats, looking as much alike as so many peas in a pod, the only difference between them being that those built in the Navy Yard at Portsmouth, New Hampshire, had a slightly more angular silhouette than the Electric Boat Company version.
Electric Boat's schedule, I understood, called for twenty- eight to be delivered by the end of the year. Portsmouth was building almost as many, and, out in California, Mare Island Navy Yard also had a greatly increased quota. Alongside these sleek, streamlined monsters the older boats occupying the other docks looked like antiquated toys. Somehow, there was a studied deadliness about the smooth black shapes of these new ocean cruisers. They were built for war and they looked it. All other considerations had been subordinated to the requirements of war under the sea.
The bridge, set well forward of amidships because of the space taken by the two engine rooms and the four great engines in the after part, was slightly swept back and smoothly rounded, with glassed portholes in its forward covered section.
In its center rose the towerlike periscope support structure built of heavy steel framing and plated over for a sleek appearance. In its after part was the 'cigarette deck,' deriving its name from the now-outmoded requirement that men come topside if they wanted a smoke.
Directly beneath the bridge was the horizontal cylinder, eight feet in diameter and about fifteen feet long, which constituted the conning tower. When the ship was under way, access below decks could only be obtained by going from the bridge through the heavy bronze hatch and dawn a ladder in- to the conning tower, then climbing through another hatch and down another ladder into the control room.
On the main deck abaft the bridge Walrus and all her sisters carried a three-inch antiaircraft gun with waterproofed mechanisms, designed for rapid fire. Gun action, which required an ammunition supply from below, constituted one of the few occasions when a main deck hatch would be opened while under way. Otherwise, the only hatch ever opened, the only one needing to be closed for a quick dive, was the bridge hatch.
The boats on either side of Walrus bore numbers on their conning towers, and salt-streaked sides showed signs of their rugged training regimes. Our numbers had already been painted out along with the new paint job we had received, and the somber black exterior of the ship was now unrelieved by markings of any kind.
A provisions truck was leaving the dock as I walked up. The pile of crated and canned foodstuffs it had left was already melting away under the attentions of the working party Kohler had detailed to help Russo get the food stored below.
