War and Remembrance (124 page)

April 19, 1943; one more day of war; a day burned into Byron Henry’s memory. For others elsewhere it was also a fateful day.

On April 19 the International Bermuda Conference was opening, after much delay, to decide on ways and means of helping “war refugees,” and Leslie Slote was there in the American delegation. And on that selfsame April 19, Passover Eve, the Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto were rising in revolt, having been warned that the Germans were about to wipe the ghetto out — a few underground fighters taking on the Wehrmacht, seeking only the death of a Sammy Mutterperl in fighting and killing Germans.

On April 19 sorrowing Japanese were cremating Admiral Yamamoto. The Japanese still could not grasp that their codes were being broken, and so the plan for Yamamoto’s risky air tour of forward bases had been broadcast in code. American fighter planes ambushed him in the sky, shot their way past escorting Zeroes, and gunned down the bomber he rode in. The search party
groping in the Bougainville jungle came on Yamamoto’s scorched corpse in full-dress inspection uniform, still gripping his sword. So perished the best man Japan had.

On April 19 the American and British forces in North Africa were closing the ring around Rommel’s armies in Tunis, a German defeat as big as Stalingrad.

And on April 19 the Soviet government was reaching the point of breaking relations with the Polish government-in-exile. Nazi propagandists had been trumpeting the discovery of some ten thousand corpses in the uniforms of Polish army officers, buried in the Katyn woods in territory that the Russians had occupied from 1941 onward. Expressing righteous horror at this Soviet atrocity, the Germans were inviting neutral delegations to come and view the terrible mass graves. Since Stalin had openly shot multitudes of his own Red Army officers, the charge was at least plausible, and the Polish politicians in London had joined in suggesting an investigation. The fury of the Russian government at this idea was volcanic, and on April 19 the sensation was cresting.

So things were happening; yet in general, on the worldwide fronts the war simply went on, sluggishly here, actively there. No great turning point occurred on April 19. But nobody aboard the
Moray
was likely to forget that day.

It started with the down-the-throat shot.

“Open the doors forward,” Aster said.

Goose pimples rose all over Byron’s body. Submariners talked a lot about down-the-throat shots; usually in the calm safety of bars on dry land, or in wardrooms late at night. Aster had often said that in extremis he might try it; and in the training of his new vessel off Honolulu, he had taken many practice shots at a destroyer charging straight for him. Even those dummy runs had been hair-raising. Only a few skippers had ever tried it against the enemy and returned to tell the story.

Aster took the microphone. His voice was quiet, yet vibrant with controlled rage. “All hands hear this. He’s heading for us along our torpedo wakes. I’m going to shoot him down the throat. We’ve been tracking this convoy for three days, and I’m not about to lose it because of those torpedo failures. Our fish ran straight, but they were duds again. We’ve still got twelve torpedoes on board, and there are major targets up there, a troop transport and two big freighters. He’s the only escort, and if he drives us down and works us over they’ll escape. So I’m going to shoot him with contact exploders on a shallow setting. Look alive.”

The periscope stayed up. The executive officer reeled off ranges, bearings, target angles, his voice tightening and steadying; Pete Betmann, a man
of thirty, bald as an egg, taciturn and quick-witted. Hastily Byron cranked the data into the computer, giving the destroyer an estimated flank speed of forty knots. It was a weird problem, evolving with unbelievable rapidity. No down-the-throat exercise in the attack trainer, or at sea off Honolulu, had gone this fast.

“Range twelve hundred yards. Bearing zero one zero, drifting to port.”

“Fire one!”

Thump of the escaping torpedo; jolt of the deck underfoot. Byron had no confidence in his small gyro angle. Luck would decide this one.

“The wake is missing to starboard, Captain,” said Betmann.

“Hell!”

“Range nine hundred yards… Range eight hundred fifty yards…”

Aster’s choices were melting like a handful of snow in a fire. He could still order,
“Go deep
—
use negative,”
and plunge, or he could make a radical turn, probably take a terrific blast from a pinpointed depth-charging, and then hope to go deep and survive. Or he could fire again. Either way the
Moray
was already on the brink.

“Range eight hundred yards.”

Could a torpedo still work? It shot out of the tube locked on safety. At eight hundred yards and closing so fast, it might not arm before it struck…

“Fire two! Fire three! Fire four!”

Byron’s heart was beating so hard, and seemed to have swelled so huge in his chest, that he had to gasp for air. The closing speed of the destroyer and torpedo must be seventy knots! Propellers approaching,
ker-da-TRUMM, ker-da-TRUMM, ker-da-TRUMM
—

BLAMMM!

The exec in a scream: “HIT! My God, Captain,
you blew his bow off!
He’s in two pieces!”

Thunderous rumbling shakes the hull.

“HIT!
Oh, Captain, he’s a shambles! His magazines must be going up! There’s a gun mount flying through the air! And wreckage, and bodies, and his motor whaleboat, end over end —”

“Let me have a look,” Aster snapped. The exec stepped away from the periscope, his face red and distorted, his naked scalp glistening. Aster swung the periscope about, droning, “Kay, the two freighters are hightailing it away, but the transport is turning
toward
us. That captain must be demented or in panic. Very good. Down scope!”

Folding up the handles, stepping away from the smoothly plunging shaft of the periscope, Aster bit out clear level words over the microphone. “Now all hands. The U.S.S.
Moray
has scored its first victory. That Jap destroyer is sinking in two sections. Well done. And our prime target, the transport, is heading this way. He’s a ten-thousand-tonner, full of soldiers. So here’s a big
chance. We’ll shoot him, then pursue the freighters on the surface. Let’s get them all this time, and make up for the convoy we lost and for all those dud fish. Clean sweep!”

Eager yells echoed through the ship. Aster, curt and loud: “Knock it off! Celebrate when we’ve got ‘em. Make ready the bow tubes.”

The attack developed like a blackboard drill. Betmann exposed the periscope time after time, crisply rattling off data. The Jap came plodding into position. Perhaps because he was heading away from the sinking pieces of the destroyer he thought he was on an escape course.

“Open the outer doors.”

The attack diagram was clear and perfect in Byron’s mind, the eternal moving triangle of submarining: the transport steaming along in the sunshine at twenty knots, the
Moray
half a mile on its beam and some sixty feet under water, slinking toward it at four knots, and the torpedoes in the open flooded stern tubes, ready to race from the one to the other at forty-five knots. Only malfunction, massive malfunction of American machinery, could save the Jap now.

“Final bearing and shoot.”

“Up periscope! Mark. Bearing zero zero three. Down scope!”

Aster fired a spread of three torpedoes. Within seconds explosions rocked the conning tower, and heavy shocking detonations rang along the hull. Whoops, cheers, rebel yells, laughter, whistles, shouts broke out all over the submarine. In the crowded tower sailors punched each other and capered.

The exec shouted, “Captain, two sure
hits.
On the quarter, and amidships. I see
flames.
She’s afire, smoking, listing to starboard, down by the bow.”

“Surface and man all guns.”

The rush of fresh air at the cracking of the hatch, the shaft of sunlight, the drip of sparkling seawater, the healthy growl of the diesels starting up, touched off in Byron a surge of exhilaration. He seemed to float up the ladder to the bridge.

“God in heaven, what a sight!” said Betmann, coming beside him.

It was a beautiful day: clear blue sky with a few high puffy clouds, gently swelling blue sea, blinding white sun. The equatorial air was humid and very hot. Close by, the transport steeply listed under a cloud of smoke, its red bottom showing. A strident alarm siren was wailing, and yelling men in life jackets were climbing over the side and down cargo nets. A couple of miles away the forecastle of the destroyer still floated, with forlorn figures clinging to it and crowded boats tossing close by.

“Let’s circle this fellow,” said Captain Aster, chewing on his cigar, “and see where the freighters have got off to.”

His tone was debonair, but as he took the cigar from his mouth Byron
could see his hand shake. The patrol was a success right now, but by the look of Carter Aster he was ravening for more; tightened grinning mouth, coldly shining eyes. For thirty-seven days, sharpened by the torpedo failure, this greed for action had been building up in him. Until a quarter of an hour ago, a goose-egg first patrol threatened him. No more.

As they rounded the stern, passing the huge brass propeller lifted clear out of the water, a wild sight burst on them. The transport was disgorging its troops on this side. In covered launches, in open landing craft and motor-boats, on wide gray rafts, Jap soldiers crowded in the thousands. Hundreds more were swarming on the deck and fleeing down the dangling cargo nets and rope ladders. “Like ants off a hot plate,” Aster gaily observed. The blue sea was half-gray with troops bobbing in kapok life vests.

“Good Lord,” Betmann said, “how many of them does it hold?”

Aster said absently, peering through binoculars at the two distant freighters, “Oh, these Japs are cattle. They just pack ‘em in. What’s the range to those freighters, Pete?”

Betmann looked through a dripping alidade. A burst of machine gun fire drowned out his reply, as smoke and flame spurted from a covered launch jammed with soldiers.

“I’ll be damned,” said Aster, smiling, “he’s trying to put a hole in us! He just might, too.” Cupping his hands, he shouted, “Number two gun, sink him.”

The forty-millimeters opened up, and the Japanese began leaping off the launch. Pieces flew from its hull, but it went on firing for a few seconds, and then the silent smoking little wreck sank. Many inert bodies in green uniforms and gray life vests floated off it.

Aster turned to Betmann. “What’s that range, now?”

“Seven thousand, Captain.”

“Okay. We’ll circle, charge our batteries, and get our pictures of this transport.” Aster glanced at his watch and at the sun. “We can overtake those other two monkeys before dusk, easy. Meantime let’s sink these boats and rafts, and send all the floaters to join their honorable ancestors.”

Byron was more sickened than surprised, but what the exec did surprised him. Betmann firmly put his hand on Aster’s forearm as the captain was lifting the bridge microphone to his mouth. “Captain, don’t do it.” It was said
sotto voce.
Byron, at Aster’s elbow, barely heard it.

“Why not?” Aster was just as quiet.

“It’s butchery.”

“What are we out here for? Those are combat troops. If they’re picked up, they’ll be in action against our guys on New Guinea in a week.”

“It’s like shooting prisoners.”

“Come on, Pete. What about the guys on Bataan? What about the guys still inside the hull of the
Arizona?”
Aster shook off Betmann’s hand. His
voice rang out over the deck. “Now gun crews, hear this. All these boats, barges, and rafts are legitimate targets of war, and so are the men in the water. If we don’t kill them, they’ll live to kill Americans.
Fire at will.”

On the instant every gun barrel on the
Moray
was spitting yellow fire and white smoke.

“All ahead slow,” Aster called down the tube. “Maximum charge on the batteries.” He turned to Byron. “Call away the quartermaster. Let’s get pictures of that tin can while he’s still afloat, and of this fat boy.”

“Aye aye, sir.” Byron passed the order on his telephone.

The Japanese were leaping frantically off the boats and rafts. The four-inch gun was methodically picking off boats, and at this point-blank range they were flying apart one by one. Soon the rafts and launches were empty, the troops were all in the water, and some were shucking their life jackets to dive deep. Machine gun bullets were drilling rows of white spurts in the water. Byron saw heads bursting redly open like dropped melons.