discovery of an unusually large group of messages all in the same code- which Walrus had not been issued-he could furnish no enlightenment.
It took us most of the day to travel the forty miles of canal from Atlantic to Pacific. When we got there we were met on the dock by the Commanding Officer of the Naval Station, another old-time submariner, now a Captain, U. S. Navy, but still known as Sammy Sams. His car was waiting, and he whisked me off in it to his office.
Once there, he closed the door carefully. 'Rich,' he said, 'have you heard the news from the Pacific?'
'No, sir.'
'It's a battle. Biggest one yet.'
'Where?' I asked.
'Midway. The Japs are trying to capture it.'
'Capture it? Not just attack it?'
'Nope, they're going to move in this time. They muffed their chance at Pearl Harbor. They could have taken Hawaii with a battalion, then, or Midway with a couple of boatloads of seamen. This time they are coming for keeps.'
'What are the latest reports? How's it coming out?'
'The whole Jap Navy,' said Captain Sams, waving at a map of Japan on the wall behind him, 'has been steaming across the Pacific loaded for bear. They attacked Midway yesterday, and it has been a hell of a fight. Our forces are badly outnumbered. I wonder how Nimitz scraped together enough carriers and airplanes to stand up to them.'
'I guess it was not so much a question of 'how' and 'have to,'' I ventured.
'Have to, is right,' Captain Sams exploded 'If those monkeys ever get a base in Midway we might as well kiss Pearl Harbor good-by.'
We talked on for some time, and it was with an enlarged appreciation of the supremely critical nature of the Pacific operation that I journeyed back to my ship. As I approached the dock where I had left Walrus I had a moment of panic.
She was not in sight! I had visions of some catastrophe for a split second before I realized that in the interval I had been gone the tide had fallen several feet, concealing her hull from me.
It was a welcome relief to stretch our legs ashore after a week at sea, but Captain Sams didn't give us much time, only what remained of the day of our arrival in fact, and then solely for the purpose of using it to unload our cargo of 'warshots' and take aboard exercise torpedoes. Next morning we were under way again, bound for what he called his 'refresher training area,' Las Perlas Islands, not far offshore.
Not many submarines had yet come through his station, the Captain said, but be intended to help us make the most of the few days allotted before we were to start for Pearl Harbor. From somewhere he had collected a motley fleet of boats they could hardly be classed as 'ships,' to be used in 'convoys' as targets, and for three days he kept us at it day and night, making us get under way as dawn flooded the anchorage and keeping us at approach work until long after dark.'
For three days we fired torpedo after torpedo-the same ones over and over again because Captain Sams had only a dozen exercise torpedoes in his entire base and we had ten of them. We would fire a torpedo; then we would surface, pursue it, lift it aboard with our torpedo loading equipment, slide it down the torpedo loading hatch into one of the torpedo rooms, overhaul it, clean it up, refuel it, refill the exercise head with water, test all mechanisms; then we would load it in a torpedo tube and fire again. With six torpedoes 'm the forward torpedo room and four in the after torpedo room, there were always a couple under overhaul while the others were being fired. At the end of our first day our torpedomen simply curled up on the deck or on their zippered, water- proof mattress covers and went to sleep, oily, greasy, filthy, and exhausted. The rest of us were not far behind.
Sammy Sams drove all of us relentlessly, cajoling, wheedling, threatening, and promising. It was soon apparent that his target fleet either idolized him or was petrified with fear of him, for every morning they got under way before us in order to be ready for the first approach in plenty of time, and they always gave us the favored position, winding up at quitting time much farther away from the anchorage than Walrus.
At the end of the third day Sammy Sams declared our refresher training over, and invited everyone in the ship except the duty section to what he announced was a Hawaiian luau.
There was no roast pig, no poi, nor any octopus, but we had fish and shrimp and other sea food delicacies, and the piece de resistance was roast beef. Toward midnight the old sub- mariner rapped for quiet and made us a speech.
'You men are men, not kids, even though some of you are still pretty. young. This is the biggest opportunity you will ever have to repay to the United States some of the debt you owe for having been born there. The enemy is vicious and treacher- ous, but the important thing is that he is also very able-don't ever forget that. That's why, so far, he has had us back on our heels. There aren't enough of us and what we've been able to accomplish hasn't been nearly enough. He is equal to us in equipment and in the bravery of his soldiers and sailors, but the One thing he doesn't have, and never will have, is the tremendous staying power of America.' He went on for some minutes, sometimes eloquent, sometimes bone dry. It didn't take me long to sense that he was trying to tell us why we were in a war and pass along to us something of his own philosophy about it.
His ending was simple. 'I know you know this will be a tough war. I know you realize that Walrus may never come back and that maybe some of you men won't come back either, and if that's what it comes to for you, if I can leave you with one thought, one bit of comfort, it's this: it's worth it. It's what America expects of all of us.' He sat down. There was silence for a second, then our men were, on their feet with a roar, led by Kohler who was clapping like a man inspired.
I saw a suspicion of moisture in the old man's eyes, and here again, as in the case of Captain Blunt, the thought sprang into my mind-here was an old submariner who had given his all to the cause of submarines, who, at the moment of their greatest trial, when all the teachings of his younger days were being brought to bear, found himself passed by, too old to participate. A little wistfully, these older men-men like Captain Blunt, Admiral Smathers, and Sammy Sams- were doing their best to support us younger ones who would have the duty, or privilege, of carrying on for them.
Next morning we got under way for Pearl Harbor with Captain Sams on the dock bidding us good-by. As we made our way into the broad expanse of the Bay of Panama and pointed Walrus' prow south to clear Punta Mala, the right- hand promontory, I could not help thinking that, though angry German submarines prowled the seas within fifty miles of us, except for the remote possibility of a Japanese submarine at this great distance we here in the Pacific might as well be a million miles away from danger. Here our danger was ahead in the home waters of the land of the Rising Sun, our next destination but one.
As night came I wrote in the Captain's Night Order Book: 'Course 200. Transiting Gulf of Panama en route Pearl Harbor. Cruising on three engines 80–90; making about 14- knots, zigzagging. The ship is rigged for dive and darkened.
Call me if other ships or land are sighted. Punta Mala is ahead and to starboard. Maintain a steady watch on air search-radar and carry out all instructions in the front of this book.'
Then I signed my name, went below, and had the first good night's sleep under way I had had since leaving the Octopus, fifteen months before.
Our trip across the Pacific was actually a little boring.
We devoted a part of each day to fire-control and emergency drills and we permitted members of the crew in small groups to come on the bridge to sunbathe. The ocean was beautiful, the water sparkling, and the weather balmy as we forged steadily westward-west by north, actually, once we had doubled Punta Mala. Our progress was measured only by the steady change in our clocks as we kept up with the various time zones through which we passed. It was a peaceful pleasant trip, marred only by the thought that at the other end lay war.
And then one morning, as Jim had, predicted from his star sights of the previous evening, the headlands of Oahu hove in sight. We had been given a rendezvous position with explicit instructions regarding it, and we were there at the point of daybreak. Barely visible over the southwest horizon was the familiar volcanic outline of Diamond Head and, sure enough, here came a patrol plane to see if we were on schedule.
The approach to Pearl Harbor was in some respects a repetition of our approach to the Panama Canal with one exception-there was no levity. A PC boat, a steel-hulled sub- marine chaser expressly built for the purpose, came boiling up from the south to meet us, flashed us the recognition signal, and a curt 'FOLLOW me.' We swung. in astern and, still zigzagging, the two of us raced for Pearl Harbor.
