stop watch with which he had intended to time the torpedo runs to the targets… I could see the slender hand moving around the dial. It was almost straight up toward the winding stem, one minute since we had fired.
Time, indeed, stood still. Every second was a heartbeat.
I imagined, I could hear the ticking of the stop watch, an impossibility because of the earphones and the fact that I was listening to the hypnotizing rhythm of our own juggernaut come back to seek us out. The high whine came closer, louder, still closer-sweat standing out on the face. of O'Brien, told sweat. Salt taste in my mouth; I licked the edges- of my lips.
They were dry and salty, too.
WHRAAANNGGG! The explosion seemed to burst my eardrums!
The conning tower danced before my eyes. I felt myself flung bodily against the sonar receiver. Walrus lurched madly, her hull resounding, her deck plates drumming beneath our feet. Startled eyes looked widely at me, and at the familiar instruments about them., Jim's mouth moved. I couldn't hear him. I ripped off the earphones, still couldn't hear. There was a roaring in my ears. I cupped my hand behind them.
'What?' I said, or tried to say. My mouth made the motions, my vocal cords felt normal, though a bit dry, but I could hear nothing come out. I tried again. 'What?' Then I realized I was deaf. O'Brien was holding his hands to his ears, rolling his head from side to side in helpless pain. He had forgotten to tune down his sonar receiver, and he and I had gotten the full force of the amplified explosion. No wonder I was deaf!
Jim's lips moved again, but this time he was addressing Quin. The Yeoman spoke into his telephones. 'All compartments report,' his lips seemed to form.
Before he could receive answers, three more explosions came in. 'Wham!… Wham!'… a little wait, then 'WHAM!' for a third time. These I could hear clearly, though they seemed not nearly so loud as the explosion just preceding.
Three hits, they sounded like-ordinarily a cause for rejoicing, but hardly worth noticing for the moment. Quin was receiving his reports. My ears were recovering, for I heard his own: 'All compartments report no damage, sir!'
We were still going deep, which it seemed appropriate to keep on doing until we arrived at deep submergence. Then we quieted everything down and waited for the depth charges.
They came, too, but they couldn't compare in loudness with the near-hit of our own torpedo nor the workout from the Q-ship, and after several hours of evasion we slowly crept away.
We had no torpedoes left forward, and received orders the next night, as a consequence, to return to Midway again.
Our — time on station was nearly done anyway, but the orders to Midway were a big disappointment. It was unusual to send a ship there twice in succession. Many of the crew had had their hearts set on a trip south of the equator to Australia.
10
Our stay in Midway was no different from the previous one, but the island itself had undergone considerable change since the last time any of us had seen it. There was a big new pier constructed in the lagoon, and one of our great seagoing submarine tenders, the Sperry, was moored there to increase the refit capacity of the island base. Instead of one submarine, there were four in various stages of refit between patrols at the atoll, Walrus becoming the fifth.
There seemed, to be at least twice as many men on the island as before, twice as many planes, and four times as much work being done. Midway did its best for us, receiving us with a brass band when we warped alongside the Sperry, dumping a load of mail on our decks, plus ice cream and a crate of fruit and we were carted off almost immediately to the old Pan-American Hotel, now known as the Gooneyville Lodge, to begin our two weeks' rest and recuperation. During the ensuing time we did our best to avoid boredom. We threw a ship's party, complete with huge steaks and all the trimmings, and we organized fishing parties, baseball games, and other diversions.
Naturally it was not enough, and no one pretended it was.
More and more our crew spent their free time down in the ship, watching her get ready for our next run, and more and more we speculated where it would be. The only thing which could be counted to keep most of us away from the ship, for a time at least, was the receipt of mail, which arrived on the average of three times a week from Pearl. I never ceased to wonder at the efficiency of the San Francisco post office, which somehow always knew where to send mail so that it would be waiting for us when we arrived, and kept it coming until we had left. Then, apparently, the mail would be allowed to accumulate somewhere, probably in Pearl Harbor, until our next port of call.
Jim, as usual, received the lion's share of mail in our group, and somehow also seemed to be able to view it with greater detachment. For the rest of Walrus' crew, and for an of Midway, for that matter, arrival of the mail plane and the unavoidable, aggravating wait while the Midway mail clerks swiftly parceled out the. different bags, had assumed the, proportion of a ritual. The reception committee at the airfield, for instance, merely to see the mail plane arrive, grew so unwieldy that a notice over the signature of the Island Commander was issued, requesting the practice be terminated and promising utmost, dispatch in sorting and handling.
And, with little else to occupy their spare time, our crew. became prolific letter writers. This added a burden to Hugh Dave, and Jerry, who were required to censor every piece of outgoing mail. After giving them a hand once or twice, which all the officers did when the pile grew excessively large, I could readily understand their often- repeated reassurance, to the crew that they did not remember what they had read.
But I did carry away the impression that some of our letter writers were certainly unabashed, if not adept, at putting their thoughts and yearnings down on paper.
ComSubPac's endorsement to our patrol report, when at last it came in, was of course of consuming interest to Jim, Keith, and me. We were credited with two ships sunk and two probables, which was what we had expected, but the comment of most importance was the one which simply stated, 'The reports of torpedo failure during this patrol are important additions to the growing body of evidence in this regard, and to the remedy of which active steps are in hand.'
Two days later a bulky package labeled 'Secret' arrived in the mail, addressed to 'The Commanding Officer, USS Walrus.' It was from ComSubPac and contained our Operation Order. We were to return to AREA SEVEN, the scene of our first patrol.
And three days after that, a newly painted Walrus, now gray instead of black, refitted, repaired, and cleaned up, and her bridge even more cut down than before-pointed her lean prow once again to the western sky. She was no longer the brand-new submarine we had brought out from New London the previous year. The miles she had steamed and the battles she had fought had taken their toll on her appearance.
Over a hundred depth charges had left their marks, both internally and externally, as well as the chance Mt by a Japanese shell. The changes brought about by time and use, the modifications required by ComSubPac, and our own realization of our needs to do the job, more plotting equipment, more bunks, more food stowage, a bigger crew, were equally marked.
Walrus' bridge was now a low, streamlined structure, with a bare steel skeleton bracing the periscope supports. It looked a little strange compared with the sleek, rounded bridges and elongated conicalperiscope shears of the newer subs beginning to arrive from the States, but it was roomier, and did the job as efficiently. Around the bridge were welded several foundations for 50-caliber machine guns, and on its forward and after parts we now carried two double 20-millimeter gun mounts, with watertight stowage alongside for the four guns when not needed.
On our main deck the torpedo reload equipment had been removed entirely. The large steel mast and boom originally stepped in the main deck forward had been demounted and left in Pearl. Our old three-inch antiaircraft gun which had been mounted aft of the bridge was gone. In its place, but mounted forward in the area of the torpedo loading mast, was a broadside-firing four-incher, exactly like the gun the old S-16 had carried and very likely lifted from one of her sisters.
Down below, the interior of the ship looked somewhat different too. Much new equipment had been added,
