The Commodore (21 page)

The group sortied from Purvis Bay at sunset, headed not up the Slot but over to Guadalcanal, where General Vandergrift was anticipating a major push by the Japanese army against Henderson Field. He had asked for shore-bombardment support and Admiral Tyree was more than willing to oblige. He had set up two bombardment units, each with one light cruiser and two destroyers.
Wichita
would cover the mouth of the Tenaru River, where ground patrols reported the enemy was massing troops under the cover of the jungle.
Providence
was to go four miles northwest up the coast, where coast watchers had reported a second staging area for artillery two miles inland, cleverly hidden from the Cactus air force in an abandoned copra plantation. The Japs had strung netting laced with palm fronds across the tops of the coconut groves and then set up a large artillery park to support the big push against the Marines at Henderson Field. Both units had been ordered to stand off the coast until full dark and then move in to two miles offshore, there to await the call for fire from Marine spotters on the ground.

Sluff's ships were operating as individual destroyers this time, mobile gun platforms, rather than as a tactical unit. Each ship was assigned to a specific radio frequency, on the other end of which was a Marine second lieutenant sweating it out in a foxhole much too close to the murmuring jungle across the river, where thousands of banzai-minded Japanese soldiers were gathering to make the emperor proud.

Sluff called the exec and the gunnery officer to the bridge once they'd made their creep into the beach and turned to parallel the shoreline.

“The jungle bunnies want us to wait until the Japs actually attack,” he told them. “They say it will be obvious when they do—they fire flares, blow trumpets, and yell a lot. They've sent us preplanned area fire targets—where they
think
the Japs are gathering. When it starts, our spotter will call for area fire. The idea is to saturate the Japs' jump-off lines with naval gunfire. The group north of here will simultaneously open on the artillery park that's supposed to support the infantry attack.”

“Why not start it now?” LTJG Chandler asked.

“The Japs are probably still moving up to their jump-off line along the river. The Marines want them all present for duty when
we
join the game. That's why we have a spotter. For right now, we're going to set up in our fire-support area and get the navigation track stabilized. We don't have mount one, and, of course, our cruiser will be the main punch. We're joining in because the Japs are supposedly bringing up four
thousand
troops, and they'll take up a lot of real estate.”

“This sounds like a slaughter in the making,” the exec said.

“Which is what the Japs are intending to do to the Marines,” Sluff pointed out. “Bob, I want you in charge in Combat. The biggest thing is not to fire into friendly front lines. Use spots-away any time you're unsure of where the good guys are and then let the spotter bring you back into the target.”

“Won't our spotter know where the Marines are from the git-go?” LTJG Chandler asked.

“Let me tell you about spotters, Billy. An artillery or naval gunfire spotter's life expectancy on the front line is about one hour. That's why they send second lieutenants, because the first lieutenants simply won't go. The Japs know who and what they are. They have special teams who go in with the sole mission of hunting down the spotters—the scared-looking kid with the ‘different' field radio and a set of tripod-mounted binocs. So the first thirty minutes will be the most effective. We lose our spotter, we stop shooting until we get another one, okay?”

“Who's guarding Ironbottom Sound?” the exec asked.

“Right now, nobody,” Sluff said. “The coast watchers have reported no ship movements up or down the Slot or even around Rabaul. So, once this little affair is over, the group will probably head north up above Savo, just to make sure.”

“Hope they're right,” Chandler said. “Those coast-watcher guys.”

The Japanese attacked just before midnight and there was no mistaking when the Jap army jumped off. The air over the river lit up with several flares, and then came the racket of Jap rifles and Marine fifty-caliber machine guns trading arcs of tracers across the shallow flats of the river.
King
's area-fire initial aim point was right into the river itself, and then extending north, back into the jungle on the Japs' side of the river. The river's wide mouth erupted into a continuous flashing roar of incoming shells, punctuated by the even larger rounds coming from
Wichita,
which was stationed behind the two destroyers and offset ten degrees so as not to be firing right over the tin cans. Then all three ships began to move the barrage to the right, degree by degree, hopefully covering the area where several thousand soldiers were formed up to run forward when the command came.
King
's spotter wasn't much help. All they heard from him was: Goddamn! God
damn!
Yeah. Keep it coming. For the moment, it sounded like their spotter had become their cheerleader.

After three minutes, the preplanned fire mission was over. Now it was time for the spotters to bring the individual ships' guns onto urgent targets—infantry coming in from an unexpected direction or tanks emerging from the muddy jungle, grinding right over the hundreds of bodies that lay before them and then lurching into the shallow water of the Tenaru River. The entire mission was being conducted from Combat, so Sluff occupied himself as senior spectator, watching the annihilation of an entire Jap army from the port bridge wing. Mount fifty-one remained silent, as if in honor of the ghosts of its gun crew who were now laid out in a row of rubber bags on the ship's reefer decks, the compartment where the refrigerated and frozen food was stored. Mount fifty-two blasted away in ten-round increments, pausing to let the spotter refine his calls for fire. Sluff could smell the paint burning off its barrel.

A few miles to seaward a rainsquall was marching across the sea. The muzzle flashes from
Wichita
made it look like a slow-moving thunderstorm. She was running a three-knot track beyond the destroyers but not by much, blasting away with her fifteen six-inch guns in majestic salvos, each rippling blast coming almost as fast as the destroyer guns. Fifteen balls of fire, followed by a simultaneous shock-wave thump to the ears and then the roar of the guns themselves.

He looked up to the north and saw similar lightning flashes as
Providence
and her two destroyers worked over the massed artillery park. As he watched he saw what had to be an ammo dump go up in a pulsing ball of fire, accompanied by a fountain of hot shells falling into the jungle in every direction. Ten seconds later he heard the thump of the primary explosion, followed by a series of smaller thumps as the shells fell back to earth and into the Japanese lines.

Five minutes later, Combat reported that the spotter had called a cease-fire order. He reported that it looked like everyone and everything anywhere near the banks of the river had been obliterated. The jungle on the Japanese side, reaching back for five hundred yards, had been reduced to flaming tree trunks, mangled piles of shattered mangrove, and mounds of wet, black mud covered in body parts.

“Captain, Combat.”

Sluff smiled in the darkness, glad for the cessation of mount fifty-two's ear-crushing noise. Captain now, he thought. We're just a destroyer again.

“Go ahead.”

“Marines are saying the attack is over. Our spotter is actually hysterical right now, but he's happy. Looks like we're done here for tonight. Waiting for orders from CTG Sixty-Four Point Two.”

“Okay, we'll stay at GQ for now. Have the gun crews police the brass. Ask the galley if they can get some chow moving out to the GQ stations.”

He went out to the port bridge wing again and surveyed the scene ashore. Everything within about a twenty-degree arc was burning. He looked north. The ammo dump was still pumping out red-hot projectiles, although at a lesser rate.

An hour later the ships were steaming in column formation at a stately fifteen knots five miles north of Savo Island, scene of the Navy's worst defeat at sea. Somewhere below them, two thousand or more feet down, lay the shattered remains of heavy cruisers
Quincy, Vincennes, Astoria,
and the Australian cruiser
Canberra,
all sunk during their very first encounter with the Imperial Japanese Navy, whose sleek heavy cruisers, loaded to the gills with Long Lance torpedoes and trained for years in night surface-action tactics, had slashed through the weary and inexperienced American formation like a samurai sword through butter. No American sailor could look at Savo Island and not remember that night.

The admiral's night orders said they would patrol north of Savo on an east-west line until daylight. Sluff told the OOD on the bridge to secure from GQ and set condition II so that half the crew at a time could get some rest for a few hours before relieving the other half on station. But then he remembered: First they needed to bury their dead.

They'd lost six men killed outright in the forward gun mount. All hands not actually on watch were called to the fantail, where Sluff read the committal prayers as six weighted bags, one after another, were slipped down a plank into the sea to join the thousands of dead already asleep on the bottom of Ironbottom Sound. It was cold comfort to know that there were also a few thousand Japanese sailors down there now, too. Sluff was pretty sure that every man standing at attention in ragged ranks on the fantail and the 01 level just above it was wondering if he, too, would one day make that deepest of all dives.

After the service, he found the exec down in the wardroom, where some of the officers were having a quick cup of soup and a sandwich before they went on watch. Everyone stood when he came into the wardroom. He told them to carry on and then went to the sideboard for a sandwich. He sat down at the head of the wardroom table for a few minutes and chatted with the officers. LTJG Chandler was there and Sluff asked him to prepare letters of condolences for his signature. LTJG Bob Warren, the supply officer, asked him if they were expecting more shooting tonight.

“I don't think so, Bob, but we're at condition two for a reason. The Japs have a lot more ships than we do right now, so they
could
come at any time, and from any direction, for that matter. The coast watchers usually give us warning, though.”

“Who
are
the coast watchers, Cap'n—er—Commodore?”

Yeah, Sluff thought with a mental smile—which is it?

“The system was started by Australian naval intelligence a few years before the war broke out last December,” he replied. “They used the colonial administrators already in place. Then they sent out naval officers to set up camps all through these islands to keep watch on what the Japs were doing in the Solomons. Gave 'em a radio and let them hire some of the natives to act as bearers for the equipment. They sit up on mountain ridges and call in warship sightings to the Marines on Guadalcanal.”

“The Japs know about them?”

“I think they do. They reportedly captured one of them in the Shortland Islands, right below Rabaul.”

“What happened to him?”

“They cut his head off, actually.”

That brought a moment of silence to the table. Sluff reached for his plate as it began to slide across the green felt tablecloth to one side of the table. The ship was turning, and then the sound-powered phone mounted under the table squeaked.

“Captain,” Sluff said.

“Formation is coming about to two seven zero,” the OOD reported. “Still speed fifteen.”

“Very well,” Sluff said. He gave the exec a signal and then got up, passed his plate to the steward in the wardroom pantry, and went into his cabin. The exec came in after him.

“I'm hoping we'll get the night off,” Sluff said, easing into his desk chair. The exec leaned against the doorframe. His face was drawn and there were dark circles under his eyes. “In that regard, I want
you
to hit the rack. Now would be a good time.”

“But I've got—”

“No, not tonight,” Sluff said. “Hit the rack, get a solid four, five hours of sleep. We'll go to GQ just before dawn for the morning air raids. You've been doing a hell of job, running just about everything from Combat, both for the ship and the division. You've made it possible for me to be both CO and unit commander. I hope that will soon be over, but some things the admiral said make me wonder. Anyway, get some sleep. That's an order, Bub.”

The exec grinned. “Thanks for the kind words, and, aye, aye, sir.”

Once the exec left he called Radio Central and asked for the message boards. Both of them. Then he sent for Mose and asked for a small carafe of coffee and a fat pill if there was one to be found. Their cruiser-destroyer column was settling into a watchful night-steaming formation. He planned to get through as much of the fleet broadcast message backlog as he could and then get some sleep himself. Sleep was becoming a rare commodity out here in the Solomon Islands. For everyone.

 

EIGHTEEN

Savo Island

Two hours later his phone squeaked. He heard it, ignored it. It squeaked again, harder.

“Captain.”

“Captain, this is Lieutenant McCarthy in Combat.
Wichita
and
Providence
both are reporting air contacts inbound from the north.
Wichita
says they look like multiple heavy bombers. Right now they're forty-eight miles out and closing at a hundred sixty knots.”

“What time is it?” Sluff asked.

“Zero two thirty, sir.”

“GQ,” Sluff said, and rolled out of bed.

In the passageway outside he heard the bosun piping all-hands over the ship's announcing system, followed by the words “General quarters, general quarters, all hands man your battle stations.” Then came the familiar gonging noise. He dressed quickly and scrambled up to the bridge, accompanied by everyone else headed for a topside GQ station.