The frogmen (4 page)

"It's my duty."

Amos stood looking down at him. "All I've been doing since the war started, Beach, is trying to get sent to sea. Is that a bad thing to do?"

"And all I've been doing is my job, mister."

"Can't you let this thing drop?" Amos asked. "After all, it's just one missing piece of paper."

"It's out of my hands," Beach said. "As of three hours ago you were detached from this command."

"Isn't Iowa bad enough?" Amos asked.

Before Beach could answer, the phone rang. He answered it and put his feet back on the table. "Transportation's waiting for you," he said to Amos.

"You won't drop this thing?"

"My report on you has been sent to your new commanding officer."

"So long, Beach," Amos said, picking up the Val-Pak. "Keep your feet on the ground, ol' buddy."

The island was the most beat-up place Amos had ever seen. It was long and narrow, with coral reefs on the seaward side and what had once been pretty, white sand beaches on the lagoon side. What solid ground there was had been pockmarked by bombs and shells so that there were huge craters everywhere, filled with stinking water. There had been palm trees growing there once, but now the trunks lay in tangles all over the ground, the stumps standing up forlorn and frayed. There had been buildings on the island, but they, too, had been bombed and burned into rubble.

There was a sickening, sweetish smell of dead

people in the air. Bodies, mottled and bloated, were floating in the bomb craters.

The flies were unbelievable. As Amos trudged along, keeping to the beach, where the stench was not quite as bad and the walking was easier, the flies followed him like a black cloud. Wherever his body protected them from the wind, they piled up so that on his back and on the backs of his arms and legs they formed a black carpet an inch thick.

The flies were without fear, and if he stopped to scrape them off his back, they would swarm on his face. They were making him a little hysterical, because there was no way to fight them off.

No one he had talked to since getting out of the seaplane knew anything about COPRA. The troops on the island, Marines and Navy men, looked almost as beat up as the island itself. He had never seen such a strung-out, worn-out bunch of people. They worked like ragged zombies, hauling the mountains of supplies piled on the beach up onto higher ground.

Amos didn't look so good himself. He had left the States in his blue uniform: coat and trousers, cap with white cap cover, white shirt, black tie. That had been almost a week ago. No one seemed to know where he was supposed to go, but, instead of trying to find out, they just loaded him into any airplane going anywhere and dumped him off wherever it landed. After a few days with something to eat whenever he could snaffle a little, very little sleep, and (since they had lost his luggage on the first

flight) no bath or change of clothes and a shave only once in a while, Amos began to think the Navy had decided that if they just kept moving him around, somehow he would disappear and stop being a problem.

His shirt was filthy, he didn't smell good, he hadn't shaved for three days. He was hungry and tired and lonely.

When he had first come ashore, nobody seemed to want to talk to him, but at last one of the Marine zombies said, "Take your TS card to the beach-master—him." He pointed to a red-faced man wearing nothing but ragged khaki shorts, cowboy boots, and a pith helmet.

The beachmaster stopped yelling orders at people for a moment and looked Amos slowly up and down. "Now I've seen it all," he said.

"So have I," Amos told him. "I've got orders to report to COPRA. I think it's somewhere in Iowa."

"You're a little off course."

"Where am I?" Amos asked.

"Well, that's top-secret information, Ensign, but I can give you a hint. You're about six thousand miles west of Iowa."

"How do I get back?"

"There'll be planes in here as soon as we get an airstrip built. Or you could hitch a ride on one of these LSTs after I get them unloaded."

"What do I do in the meantime?" Amos asked. "Like eating and some place to sleep?"

"Sonny, I got enough problems without yours.

I . . ." Suddenly the man lifted his amplified megaphone and yelled, "Hey! Tell that knuckle-headed captain to open his doors before he hits the beach. OPEN THE DOORS!"

Amos turned and saw the huge, ungainly bulk of a landing ship, tank, nose straight into the sandy beach, the huge metal doors that formed the bow still closed.

"Oh, no!" the beachmaster said. "Now I'll have to tear them open with a bulldozer." He looked over at Amos. "I wish I was in Iowa."

"I don't," Amos said. "Thanks a lot."

As Amos turned and wandered away, the beach-master called out to him. "Hey, you in the blue suit!"

Amos turned back.

"Where'd you say you were going?"

Amos spelled it out for him. "C-O-P-R-A."

"Oh. Well, look, go on up to the north end of the island and look around up there."

"Okay," Amos said, not caring.

"Hey," the beachmaster said. "Where're your side arms?"

"My what?"

"Gun."

"I haven't got a gun," Amos told him, "I had a sword, but it got lost with everything else I had."

The beachmaster shook his head slowly and said, "This is going to be a long war." He went over to an opened crate on the beach. "Here," he said, lifting out a rifle wrapped in greasy brown paper. He tossed it over to Amos and reached into a second

crate. "Here's some ammo for it." He tossed over another greasy, but smaller, package.

As Amos unwrapped the gun, getting brown grease all over his hands, he said, "What am I supposed to shoot?"

"When you get past those flags up there, you'd better shoot anything that moves."

Amos walked away, not wanting him to see that he didn't even know how to load the gun. Then, partly hidden by a blasted palm tree, he stopped and wiped enough grease off the gun to find the slot where the clip would fit. Unwrapping the clips of bullets, he got one into the gun and put the rest in his pockets.

He was about to work the bolt when he thought of the grease. The barrel was packed with it. Using a sliver from a palm frond he pushed most of it out, but as he chambered the cartridge he hoped he'd never have to shoot this thing. There was still enough grease left in the barrel so that it would probably ram the bolt back into his face.

He started wiping the grease off the leather sling but then stopped and just put the sling over his shoulder, grease and all.

Walking along with the gun bumping against his thigh, the flies crowding on him made his flesh crawl, and the stench of death in his mouth and nose and lungs was making him sick.

What had happened to the Navy he had heard so much about? The Navy of clean, swift ships and smart sailors; the blue-gray Navy aircraft in the

clear, blue sky; the ominous, black submarines in the depths of the sea?

All the enthusiasm, the pride, and, he remembered now, the real patriotism he had felt, were gone. The Navy he had served for two years in NROTC at college seemed to have been some other Navy; perhaps, he thought, a Navy that had never really existed.

When he had been ordered to active duty, an old man in his home town had come to his house to present him with his naval officers' sword, a sword the old man had worn in World War One. The scabbard was a little moldy and the blade was rusty, but since it was a part of a naval officer's uniform Amos had gratefully accepted the gift and had taken it with him when his orders had come directing him to report to the Navy Department at Washington, D.C., in the last months of 1941.

The first shock was the look of those shabby little wooden buildings near the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, all the pipes and electric wires hanging exposed on the walls—buildings that had been "temporary" in 1918.

He had reported in uniform and thought at the time that he looked very military, but no one else was in uniform and he was told by a man who seemed to be sore about everything that he was not to wear the uniform any more. "We're not at war, mister," the man had said, "so we don't want to look warlike."

The man had then picked up the phone and said to someone, "Who needs another ensign?"

Current Deaths needed another ensign.

Amos, in civilian clothes, reported for duty in the Current Deaths Section of the Bureau of Navigation.

Current Deaths was in a small office whose windows looked out over Arlington National Cemetery. Officially, the boss was an ancient lieutenant commander who had been graduated from Annapolis in 1918, but the section was actually run by an old lady named Miss Belchess, who had been the boss there for eighteen years.

The old man sat all day at his desk reading The Saturday Evening Post or swiveling around to watch the funerals that took place almost continuously in the cemetery. Miss Belchess spent her days arguing with somebody on the phone.

Amos was put to work filling out all the forms for enlisted men who had died for one reason or another.

At exactly three o'clock every afternoon the commander opened his top desk drawer, took out a mortar and pestle, a small bottle of some sort of fluid, and a brand-new indelible pencil. With a small penknife he split the pencil open. He broke the lead into the mortar, added a little juice, and using the pestle, ground the lead into a thick ink. He then filled a huge, orange fountain pen with the purplish juice. This process took one hour.

At four o'clock Miss Belchess laid the forms Amos had prepared during the day on the commander's

desk, lining them up like playing cards so that the space for his signature was the only part exposed.

The commander then signed the forms with a signature so exact that each was a copy of the other.

It seemed to Amos that, no matter how many forms there were, it took the commander exactly half an hour each day to sign them.

At precisely four-thirty, he put away the pen, stood up, said, "Good night, mates," and went out.

On the seventh day of December, 1941—a cold, gray Sunday in Washington—Pearl Harbor, in the Hawaiian Islands, was, without any warning, attacked by Japanese carrier aircraft. Many ships were damaged, many were sunk. Planes and other materiel were destroyed. Thousands of men were killed.

All hands in Washington were ordered to report for duty at once—in uniform.

All Amos had wanted that day was to get out of Current Deaths and into the real Navy.

The commander appeared in Current Deaths wearing his World War One uniform with the but-toned-up jacket and high, choking collar, the straight-up cap and high-laced shoes. He had grown so fat that he could not button the coat, which was perhaps just as well, for the buttons had almost rusted away, long streaks of rust running down the cloth. The once-gold braid on his sleeves had turned greenish, and the bill of his cap was cracked and peeling.

And then the lists of deaths came, as the ships that

had been attacked at Pearl Harbor began to report in.

Dozens of dead men. Then hundreds, and then thousands.

During the first weeks after the attack, Amos worked almost around the clock trying to track down through the records the location of every man on duty at Pearl Harbor, to sift out from the confused reports streaming in the actual fate of each man: dead, wounded, or missing.

It was hard, tedious, frustrating work made worse by Miss Belchess, who seemed to see in the deaths of these men only the fact that, by building up her position, she could advance her rating in Civil Service.

The incoming lists of dead and wounded gave every day a pall of sadness. At first there was confusion and disorganization and anger, but as the months went by and Current Deaths got itself straightened out and Miss Belchess built her little kingdom of people and the old commander sat watching the funerals, it was time for Amos to go.

Amos had simply asked the commander to let him go—just take the fat orange pen and sign something that would allow him to go to sea. But each time he asked, the commander would discuss it with Miss Belchess, who would point out that the organization chart for Current Deaths called for two ensigns.

In compliance with Navy Regulations, Amos had then submitted written official requests properly addressed to the Chief of Naval Personnel:

subject: Sea duty, request for.

l. I request that I be transferred to sea duty in any ship in any ocean.

(Signed)

Amos Wainwright.

Such requests required an endorsement by his immediate superior, and so the commander took the fat pen and always wrote:

FIRST ENDORSEMENT

1. Not approved.

2. This officer performs his duties in his present assignment with such outstanding ability, devotion and intelligence that his work is considered essential to the war effort.

And that was as far as his requests got; they never even left the room. Miss Belchess took sadistic pleasure in dropping them back on his desk, saying with a smile, "We can't all be heroes, can we, Ensign?"

By the time the Navy had recovered from its defeat at Pearl Harbor and had begun to move in the Pacific, Amos was growing desperate. All his classmates in NROTC were either already at sea or were in flight training at Pensacola.

When the long lists of dead men began coming in

from the Battle of the Coral Sea, two of Amos' classmates among them, he had confronted the commander with another, and stronger, request.

"Please listen to me, sir," he had said as the commander sat with his feet on the window sill watching a funeral. "Things are all organized in here now, sir. It's just routine. Anybody—a 4-F or some handicapped person who wants to help—anybody can do my work as well as I do."

"Well, now," the commander said without missing a detail of the funeral, "we couldn't do that. You're a vital part of my organization; you're very essential."

Amos took a deep breath to calm himself and then said, "Commander, Navy Regulations say that a request for transfer has to go to the Chief of Naval Personnel. It can't be stopped along the line, no matter what the endorsement on it is. The trouble is, sir, that my requests never get past you. Don't you think that's a violation of Navy Regs?"