War and Remembrance (174 page)

Her picture on his father’s desk, in that frame, conjured up ugly visions of crude sex, mismatched sex, shacked-up sex, wartime London sex. There it stared, the proclamation of Pug Henry’s weakness, the explanation of the divorce. To think that his idolized father — while he himself and Natalie were separated by the war — had groaned and thumped around on a bed in London with a girl Natalie’s age! Byron resolved to keep utter silence, and at the first possible moment to get the hell off this battleship.

“Chow down,” said his father.

They sat at the table, and the beaming Filipino steward served bowls of fragrant fish soup. Because this was such a rare moment for Pug — himself
a flag officer, Byron a submarine captain, meeting for the first time in their new dignities — he put his head down and said a long heartfelt grace. Byron said,
“Amen,”
and not another word while he gulped soup.

There was nothing unusual about that. Pug had always had trouble conversing with Byron. His mere presence was satisfying enough. Pug did not realize that Pamela’s picture had caused an earthquake in his son. He knew it was a surprise, a disconcerting one, and he intended to explain. To get talk going again he remarked, “Say, incidentally, aren’t you the first reserve skipper in the whole submarine fleet?”

“No, three of the guys have S-boats by now, and Moose Holloway just got
Flounder.
He’s the first one to get a fleet boat. Of course he’s Yale NROTC from way back, and from an old Navy family. I guess being your son did me no harm.”

“You had to have the record.”

“Well, Carter Aster qualified me long ago, but I’ve not yet had a PCO cruise, and — what happened was, my skipper took sick out on station off Sibutu.” Byron was glad to fill the time with talk that stayed off his father’s personal life. “Woke up one morning in a fever and couldn’t walk, not without terrible pain. Dragged himself around for a week, taking aspirin, but then he tried an attack on a freighter and botched it. By then he obviously was so damned sick we headed straight in here instead of returning to Saipan. They’re still giving him blood tests on the
Solace.
He’s half-paralyzed. I thought SubPac would fly out a CO, but they sent an exec instead, and I got the orders. Floored me.”

“Talking of surprises,” said Pug, by way of leading up to Pamela, “that fellow Leslie Slote is probably a goner. You remember him?”

“Slote? Of course. He’s dead?”

“Well, that’s Pam’s information.” Pug recounted his sketchy knowledge of the parachute mission on which Slote had been lost. “How about that? Would you have figured him as a volunteer for extra-hazardous duty?”

“Do you still have Mom’s picture?” Byron said, looking at his wristwatch and pushing away his half-eaten food. “If you have, I’ll take it.”

“I have it, but not here. Let me tell you about Pamela.”

“Not if it’s a long story, Dad. I’ve got to go. What happened to you and Mom?”

“Well, son, the war.”

“Did Mom ask for the divorce so as to marry Peters? Or did you want it because of
her?”
Byron jerked a thumb toward the picture.

“Byron, don’t look for someone to blame.”

Pug could not tell his son the truth. On the bald facts Byron would probably absolve him and despise his mother; this hard-faced young submariner was a black-or-white moralist such as he had himself been before the war. But Pug no longer condemned Rhoda for the Kirby business, he only
felt sorry for her. These nuances went with being older, sadder, and more self-knowing than Byron could yet be. His son’s silence and the rigid face made Pug very uneasy, and he added, “I know Pamela’s young. That troubles me, and the whole thing may not come off.”

“Dad, I don’t know if I’m fit for command.”

The sudden words hit Pug a hammer blow.

“ComSubPac thinks you are.”

“ComSubPac can’t look into my mind.”

“What’s your problem?”

“Possible instability under combat stress.”

“You’re cool by nature under the severest stress. That, I know.”

“By nature, maybe. I’m in an unnatural state. Natalie and Louis haunt me. Warren’s dead and I’m the one you’ve got left. Also, I’m a reserve skipper, one of the first, and that’s a hot spot. I’ve been emulating you, Dad, or trying to. I came here today hoping for a shot in the arm. Instead —” again, the thumb pointing to Pamela’s picture.

“I’m sorry that you’re taking it that way, because —”

“There’s always a shortage of aggressive COs,” Byron rode over his father, something he never did. “I rate high for aggressiveness, I know that. The trouble is, my stomach for the whole thing is dropping out. This picture” — he touched his breast pocket —"is driving me crazy. If Natalie had listened to me and risked a few hours on a French train, she’d be back home now. It doesn’t help to remember that. Nor does your divorce. I’m not in the best of shape, Dad. I can take the
Barracuda
back to Saipan and ask for a relief. Or I can go out on lifeguard station off Formosa as ordered, for the air strikes. What would you recommend?”

“Only you can make that decision.”

“Why? You were willing to decide my whole life for me, weren’t you? If you hadn’t pushed me into submarine school — if you hadn’t flown down to Miami the very day I proposed to Natalie, and forced the issue, with her sitting there and listening — she wouldn’t have gone back to Europe. She and my kid wouldn’t be over there now, if in fact they’re even alive.”

“I regret what I did. At the time it seemed right.”

This answer caused Byron’s eyes to redden. “Okay, okay. I’ll tell you something, it’s a bad symptom of my instability that I throw that up to you.”

“Byron, when I was in bad shape myself, I requested the
Northampton.
I found that command at sea made life more bearable, because it was so all-absorbing.”

“But I’m not a professional like you, and a submarine is a mortal responsibility.”

“If you return to Saipan, some aviators may drown off Formosa that you might save.”

After a silence Byron said, “Well, I’d better get back to my boat.”

They did not speak again until they were out on the warm breezy quarterdeck in a magnificent sunset, leaning side by side on the rail. Byron said as though talking to himself, “There’s something else. My exec’s an Academy man. Taking orders from me grates on him.”

“Judge him on performance at sea. Never mind how he feels.”

Below from astern came the clanging of the barge. Byron straightened up and saluted. It hurt Pug to look into his son’s remote eyes. “Good luck and good hunting, Byron.” He returned the salute, they shook hands, and Byron went down the accommodation ladder.

The barge thrummed away. Pug returned to his quarters, and found the operation order for the Formosa strike on his desk, just delivered. Concentrating on the thick pile of inky-smelling mimeographed sheets was almost impossible. Pug kept thinking that he could not survive as a functioning man the loss of Byron.

And with this strained parting, father and son headed out into the biggest fleet battle in the history of the world.

Leyte Gulf

T
HE
great sea fight turned on four elements: two strategic, one geographical, one human. The fate of Victor Henry and his son now rode on these four elements, so they should be borne in mind.

The geographical element was simply the conformation of the Philippines. Seven thousand islands straggle roughly north and south over a thousand miles of ocean between Japan and the East Indies. Capture of the Philippines meant cutting off Japan from oil, metal, and food. Luzon, the northernmost and largest island, was the key to the archipelago; and Lingayen Gulf, the classic landing area on Luzon for a drive to Manila, opens northwestward into the South China Sea.

Choosing as his stepping-stone to Luzon the smaller island of Leyte far to the southeast, MacArthur planned a landing in force on the shores of Leyte Gulf; a body of water hemmed in by island masses and small islets, opening eastward into the Philippine Sea. From the east, the American attackers could steam straight into the gulf, but from the west, the land masses and islets of the archipelago barred the way. Nearly all the water passages that threaded through the island maze were too shallow for fleet use.

Getting to Leyte from Japan itself, counterattacking Japanese units could steam down the eastern side of the archipelago and head straight in. Coming from the west or southwest, however — say from Singapore, or Borneo — there were but two usable ways through the archipelago to Leyte Gulf for warships: San Bernardino Strait, which would bring a task force past the big island of Samar for a turn down into the gulf from the north, or Surigao Strait, which enters the gulf from the south.

To be near fuel sources, the Main Striking Force of the Imperial Fleet was based off Singapore. It was scheduled to refuel in Borneo, if it had to do battle for the Philippines.

The human element was Admiral Halsey’s frame of mind. This was dominated by an event five months in the past.

Back in June, the Pacific Fleet under Spruance had taken Saipan, an island in the Marianas chain, as a long hop toward Japan. The landing had
provoked a major carrier duel, at once dubbed by American naval aviators as the “Marianas Turkey Shoot”; an aerial disaster for Japan, in which most of her surviving first-line pilots were shot down with small loss to Spruance. The Japanese carriers fled. The Americans in a short brutal land fight for Saipan gained an air base within bomber range of Tokyo. Spruance’s opponent of Midway, Admiral Nagumo, the man who had bombed Pearl Harbor, committed suicide on Saipan; for with this breach of the Empire’s inner defenses he deemed the war lost. So did many of Japan’s leaders. The fall of Tojo, the militarist prime minister, was a world sensation, but the cause was not. The battle for Saipan was fought while Eisenhower’s troops were grinding toward Cherbourg; so, like Imphal and Bagration, it was eclipsed in the newspapers.

Despite this historic if obscure victory, Spruance came in for savage insiders’ criticism. His carrier commanders had yearned to steam out from Saipan to meet the oncoming Japanese for a head-on battle; they felt they could have annihilated the Imperial Fleet once for all. Spruance had reluctantly vetoed the idea. He would not be pulled away from the landing force he was there to shield, not knowing what other enemy forces might cut in behind him and wipe out the beachhead. So the Japanese aircraft had attacked in a cloud the Spruance forces hugging Saipan, and had fallen in the “Turkey Shoot,” but their flattops and support forces had for the most part gotten away. King and Nimitz afterward praised Spruance’s decision, but it remains in controversy. There were no other enemy forces at sea, critics still argue, and Spruance in his caution had passed up a chance for a big killing that might have shortened the war.

That was certainly Admiral Halsey’s view. His character was eagerly aggressive, and at Leyte, he did not intend to repeat what he regarded as Spruance’s great mistake.

As to strategy: on the American side two conflicting concepts for the Pacific war at last collided head-on — MacArthur’s push northwest from Australia in land campaigns, the “South Pacific strategy”; and the Navy’s island-to-island thrust across the broad watery wastes between Pearl Harbor and Tokyo, the “Central Pacific strategy.”

The Navy planners wanted to bypass the Philippines altogether, land on Formosa or the China coast, and so “cork the bottle” of East Indies supplies. The bombing of shipping lanes, ports, and cities, they contended, with the submarine stranglehold, would in time force a surrender. MacArthur held the classic Army view that the enemy armed forces had to be defeated on land. New Guinea, the Philippines, then the home islands: that was his path to victory. King and Spruance, the chief Navy strategists, thought this would
waste blood and time. Spruance even argued for a waterborne thrust straight to Iwo Jima and Okinawa. From these two small manageable objectives, he believed, air and submarine warfare could finish off Japan.

After Saipan, the Joint Chiefs of Staff got interested in the Navy strategy. MacArthur was outraged. In 1942 he had fled the Philippines by air on Roosevelt’s orders. On arriving in Australia, he had publicly vowed,
I shall return.
He did not mean to return in a civilian airliner, after the Japanese had been beaten the Navy way. He demanded a personal meeting with the President, and he got it at Pearl Harbor in July.

Roosevelt had just been nominated for a fourth term. With the war going brilliantly in Europe, he undoubtedly wanted no trouble with MacArthur, whom the political opposition was portraying as a neglected and mistreated military genius. Arriving at Pearl Harbor an ailing man, Roosevelt heard out MacArthur’s impassioned appeal for recapturing the Philippines as a “requirement of the national honor”; also Nimitz’s quiet professional argument for the Navy plan.

MacArthur won. The invasion of the Philippines was on. Yet the radical Army-Navy split persisted. Nimitz assigned to MacArthur for his amphibious operation the entire Seventh Fleet under Vice Admiral Thomas Kinkaid; a grand armada of old battleships, with cruisers, escort carriers, and a train of destroyers, minesweepers, and oilers. But Nimitz kept tight control of the new fleet carriers and fast battleships, his striking arm; called Fifth Fleet when Spruance was leading it, and Third Fleet during Halsey operations.