"Ess, ma'am? Many pranes! Big, big drir!" The storekeeper stood beside her, offering her the package with a toothy smile that almost shut his eyes. His children stood behind him on the porch, pointing at the sky and chattering in shrill Japanese. Janice stared at him. Nearly everybody in the Navy disliked the Hawaiian Japanese and assumed they were spies. She had caught the feeling. Now here was this jap grinning at her, and overhead jap planes were actually flying! Flying over Hawaii! what could it mean? The nerve of these japs! She took the package and abruptly, rudely offered him the binoculars. The man bobbed his head and peered upward at the planes, now beginning to peel off and dive, one by one, glinting silver amid the thickening black puffs. With a queer noise in his throat, he pulled himself erect and held out the binoculars to her, regarding her with a blank face, his slant eyes like black glass. More than the unreal, startling sight of the orange-marked planes, the look on his face told Janice Henry what was happening in Pearl Harbor. She snatched the binoculars, jumped into her car, slammed the door, and whirred the ignition. He hammered on the door, holding out his hand, palm up, and shouting. She had not paid him. but now with a pulse of pleasure Janice was an honest lady, you able childish excitement she shouted harshly-using the sailor epithet for the first time in her life-'Fuck you!" and shot off up the road. That was how the war came to Janice Henry, and that was the story she told down the years after a few drinks in suitable company, usually to laughter and applause. Accelerator to the floor, she careered and screeched uphin and around curves to the top of the ridge, jammed on the brakes, and leaped out into roadside grass. She was all alone here. Below, silver planes were flitting and diving about the peaceful Navy base, where the morning mist still lay pearly pink around the ships. Columns of water were shooting up, a couple of ships were on fire, and here and there guns were flashing pale yellow. But it still looked much more like a drill than Bke war. Then she saw a very strange and shocking sight. A battleship vanished ! One instant the vessel stood in the outer row and the next second nothing was there but a big red ball surrounded by black and yellow smoke. A cracking explosion hit and hurt her ears; the pressure wave struck her face like an errant warm breeze; and the ball of smoke and red fire climbed high into the air on a pillar of lighter smoke, and exploded again, in a beautiful giant burst of orange and purple, with another delayed BOOM The vanished battleship dimly appeared again in the binoculars, a vast broken twisted wreck all on fire, sinking at a slant. Men were running around and jumping overboard, and some with their white suits on fire were moving in and out of the smoke, silently screaming. It looked like a movie, exciting and unreal, but now Janice Henry began to grow horrified. Here was one battleship actually sinking before her eyes, and the whole thing had scarcely bee, going on ten minutes! She saw more planes coming in overhead. Bombs began to explode in the hills. Remembering her baby, she ran to the car, backed it squealing onto the road, and raced home. The Chinese maid sat in an armchair, dressed for church, hat on her knee, glumly leafingthrough the mist. "The baby's asleep," she said in clear English; she was island-born and convent-raised. "The Gillettes never even came. They forgot me. So I'll have to go to ten o'clock mass. Please telephone Mrs. Fenney." "Anna May, don't you know that the Japanese are attacking us?" "What?" "Yes! Can't you hear the guns, the explosions?" Janice gestured nervously toward the window. 'Turn on the radio. You'll hear plenty! jap Planes are all over the harbor. They've already hit a battleship!" Victor lay on his back, still doped by the cough syrup, breathing loud and fast. Janice stripped the hot, flushed little body. From the ra o me ttl ro dica the sliding twangs of Hawaiian guitars and a woman's voice singing 'Lovely Hula Hands.-As Janice , sponged the infant an announcer gibbered cheerfully about Cashmere Bouquet Soap, and another Hawaiian melody began. The maid came to the doorway. ',you sure about the war, Mis' Henry? There's nothin on the radio. I think maybe you just saw a drill." 'Oh, for heaven's sake! A drill! How stupid do you think I am? I saw a battleship blow up, I tell you, I saw a hundred jap planes, maybe more! They're all asleep or out of their minds at that radio station. Here-please give him the aspirin. He feels a lot cooler. I'D try to call the Fenneys." But the line was dead. She jiggled and jiggled the hook to no avail. "Sp dip-the tar that causes tobacco harshness. Lucky strike is the only cigarette from which every trace of sheep dip has been removed," said a rich, happy male voice. "Smoke Luckies, they're kind to your throat-' Janice spun the dial to another station and got organ music. "Good God! What's the mamr with them?" The maid leaned with arms crossed in the doorway, regarding Janice with quizzical slanted eyes as she twisted the dial, looking in vain for news. "Why, they're all insane! Sailors are burning up and drowning out there! What's that? Who's there? Is that the Gillettes?" She heard tires rattling the driveway gravel. A fist banged at the door and the ben chimed. The maid stared at her mistress, unmoving. Janice ran to the door and opened it. Bloody-faced, Warren Henry stumbled inside, in heavy flying boots, a zipper suit, and a bloodied yellow life-jacket. "Hi, have you got twenty bucks?""My God, Warren!" "Go ahead, pay off the cab, Jan." His voice was hoarse and, tight "Anna May, get out some bandages, will you?" The taxi driver, a hatchet-faced old white man, said, "Lady, I'm entitled to fifty. I heard the japs have already landed at Kahuku Point. I got my own family to worry about-"-She gave him two bills. "Twenty is what my husband said." 'I'm getting on the first boat out of here," said the driver, pocketing the bills, "if I have to shoot my way aboard. Every white person in Hawaii will be butchered. That's Roosevelt for you." In the kitchen, Warren sat bare-chested. The maid was dabbing antiseptic on his blood-dripping upper left arm. 'I'll do that," Janice said, taking the sponge and bottle. "Make sure Victor's all right." Warren gritted his teeth as Janice worked on a raw wound two inches long. "Jan, what's wrong with Vic?" 'Oh, a fever. A cough. Darling, what in God's name happened to you?" y 'I got shot down. Those bastards killed my radioman. Light me a cigarette, will you? Our squadron flew patrol ahead of the Enterprise and ran into them-hey, easy with the iodine, that's plentyHow about these goddamned Japs? ) "Honey, you've got to go to the hospital. This has to be stitched up." 'No, no. The hospital will be jammed. That's one reason I came here. And I wanted to be sure you and Vic were okay. I'm going to Ford Island, find out what's happening, and maybe get a plane. Those jap carriers haven't gone far. We'll be counterattacking, that's for sure, and I'm not missing that. just bandage it up, Jan, and then dress this nick, in my ear. That's what's dripped most of this gore all over me." Janice was dizzied to have Warren suddenly back, literally fallen out of the sky, half-naked, bloody, returned from battle. She felt deep happy stirrings as she rubbed his skin, smelled his sweat and blood, and bound up his wounds. He talked on at a great rate, all charged up. "God, it was weird-I thought those A.A. bursts were target practice, of course. We could see them forty miles away. There was a hell of a lot of smoke coming off the island, too. I talked to my wing mate about it. We both figured they were burning sugarcane. We never did spot the japs until six of them jumped us out of the sun. That was the last I saw of Bill Plantz.
I still don't know what happened to him, all I was doing from then on was trying to stay alive. The way those fellows came diving-zoe-" "Hold still, honey." "Sorry. I tell you, it was rough, Jan. The SBD's a good dive bomber, but these jap Zeroes! The speed they've got, the maneuverability! They can Turn inside you-whoosh! It's no contest. They do acrobatics like birds. You can't shake them and you can't hold them in your sights. the pilots are hot, let me tell you. I don't know if the F4F's a match for them, but one thing's sure, an SBD against Zeroes is simply a dead pigeon. All I could do was keep turning and turning to evade. They got De Lashmutt right away. He almost broke my eardrums with a horrible scream on the intercom. And then he yelled, 'Mr. Henry, I'm pouring blood, I'm dying," and he moaned and that was all. There was nothing I could do. They kept coming at me. They were so eager, one of them finally overshot and hung for a second or two, in my sights, turning. I let go with my fifties and I could swear he started smoking, but I can't claim anything. I lost sight of him. Tracers started from three sides, right past my vindows, these big pink streaks, zing, zing, zing-and then, goddamn it, our own A.A. opened up! Why the hell they shot at me I'll never know, the silly sons of bitches-maybe they were gunning for the japs and missing-but the flak was bursting all around me. I still don't know whether they got me, or one of the japs did. All I know is my gas tank caught fire. Poor De lashmutt, I yelled and yelled at him, till the flames were coming up around the cockpit, but he didn't answer, he certainly was dead. So I popped the canopy and jumped. I didn't even see where I was until the parachute opened, I just saw water. I was out over Honolulu Harbor, but the wind took me inshore. I almost got hung up in a palm tree in a little park off Dillingham Boulevard; then I cleared it and got down. I grabbed that cab, but I had a time with that fellow. He saw the chute draped all over the tree, he saw me unbuckling-he stopped to watch-and he still wanted fifty dollars to take me home. A patriot, that one!" "I've got the bleeding sort of under control, sweetie. just sit quiet, will you?" "Good girl. One thing I want to do before this day's out is get at a typewriter. I may file the first combat report of this war on Zeroes. Hey? How about that?... You should see the sights downtown!" Warren crookedly grinned at his wife. "People out in pajamas, nightgowns, or less, yelling, running around gawking at the sky. Old people, kids, mothers shrapnel was rainin with babies. Damn loo s, when A-A. shr g all over the place! The only safe place was inside. I saw this beautiful Chinese girlacross Dillingham Boulevard Anna May reminds me of her-go galloping in nothing but a bra and pink panties, and I mean small transparent panties-really a sight-""You would notice something like that," said Janice. "No doubt you'd notice it if your arm had been shot clean off." With his good arm, Warren gave her a rough intimate caress, and she slapped his hand. 'All right! I've got this wound plastered down. Maybe it'll hold for a while. Your ear is all right too. I still think you should see a doctor at the Naval Air Station." 'If there's time, if there's time." Grimacing as he moved the arm, Warren put on his shirt and sweater and zipped up the suit. "I'll have a look at Vic. Get out the car." He emerged from the house a few moments later and opened the car door. 'y, the son of a gun's sleeping peacefully. He feels cool and he looks like he's grown twice as big." 'Maybe the fever broke." Janice paused, hand on the gearshift. The car radio was broadcasting an appeal from the governor to keep calm, with assurances that fleet damage was slight and that the attackers had all been driven off. 'Warren, that cab driver said the japs were landing at Kahuku. Do you suppose there's any danger of that, and-" "No, no, get started. Landing? How the hell could they keep a beachhead supplied from four thousand miles away? You'll hear all kinds of crazy scuttlebutt. This was a hit-and-run raid. Christ, the high brass on this rock must be cutting their collective throats about now. Of all the sucker plays, a Sunday morning sneak attack! Why, it's been a routine battle problem for years." On the ridge sightseers stood in the grass beside parked cars, chattering and pointing. Heavy black smoke boiled up out of the anchorage and mushroomed over the sky, darkening the sun to a pale ball. Janice stopped the car. Through the windshield, Warren swept the harbor with the binoculars. "Good God, Jan, Ford Island's a junkyard! I don't see one undamaged plane. But there must be many left in the hangars. Lord, and there's a battlewagon CaPsized. "I'll bet a thousand guys are caught inside that-Hey!! Jesus Christ! Are they coming back?" All over the harbor guns began rattling and flaming, and black A.A. balls blossomed again in the blue. Warren peered skyward. "I'll be goddamned. There they are. How about that? Those sons of bitching jap"; are sure betting everything on this one, Janice! Well, that means the carriers are still in range anyway, waiting to recover them. Great! Move over. I'm driving." Speeding made Janice nervous when she wasnpt at the wheel, and Warren knew it, but he whistled down to Pearl City like an escaping bank bandit. After a few moments of fright his wife began to enjoy the breakneck ride. Everything was different on this side of time, the side after the japs attacked; more adventurous, almost more fun. How handsome Warren looked, how competent, how desirable, handling the wheel with a relaxed turn of his unhurt arm, puffing a cigarette in his taut mouth, watching the road through narrow eyes! Her boredom and irritability were gone and forgotten The black puffballs were far thicker than before, andthrough the windshield they saw one Japanese plane after another burst into flames and fall. Each time Warren cheered. The fleet landing was a mess and a horror. Sailors with blistered faces and hands, with skin hanging in yellow or black scorched pieces from bloody flesh, were being helped out of whaleboats or lifted off in stretchers and loaded onto hospital trucks by men in red-smeared whites. Wounded and unwounded alike were bawling obscenities, unmindful of the women crowding the landing and gnawing their fingers as then scanned the faces of the hurt men; unmindful too of the children who played and joked around the women's skirts-those not old enough to stare with round eyes at the burned sailors. The coxswain of a whaleboat full of sheeted bodies was trying to come alongside, and a fat old chief in khaki kept cursing at him and waving him off. Over all this noise rolled the massive thumping and cracking of guns, the wail of sirens, the blasts of ships' horns, and the roar of airplanes, for the second attack was now in full swing. There was a heavy smell of firecrackers in the air, mingled with a sour stink from the black oil burning on the water all around Ford Island and sending up clouds of thick smoke. Hands on hips, cigarette dangling from his mouth, Warren Henry calmly surveyed the terrible and spectacular scene. Janice said, in shaken tones, "I don't know how you'll ever get across." absently, then strode to the end of the landing to a long He nodded after him. "Coxswain, whose barge is this?" canopied boat. Janice hurried a The immaculate sailor at the tiller flipped a hand to a white hat perfectly squared on his close-cropped head. Big-jawed, bronzed, and tall, he eyed Warren's gory life-jacket curiously, and drawled, "Suh, this is Admiral Radburn's barge." "Is the admiral on the beach?" "Yes, suh." "Do you know how long he'll be?" "Negative, suh, he just told me to wait." Glancing back at the milling boats along the landing, Warren said "Well, look, here's how it is. I'm Lieutenant Henry, off the Enterprise. I'm a dive bomber pilot." "Yes, suh?" g, just when the attack started. The japs shot "I flew in this mornin me down. I have to find another plane and get into this fight, so how's for taking me over to Ford Island?" The coxswain hesitated, then straightened up and saluted. "Come t those sons of bitches. Excuse aboard, suh. The important thing is to ge am.))me, ma "Oh, quite all right," Janice laughed. "I want him to get those sons of bitches too." Hair stirring in the wind, bloody lifeiacket dangling open, Warren stood in the stern sheets, hands on hips, smiling at her as the barge pulled away. "Get them," she called. "And come back to me." "Roger. Don't drive back till these bastards quit, or you may get strafed. Be seeing you." He ducked as a red and yellow Japanese plane passed right over his head, not twenty feet in the air, its motor noisily coughing and missing; then it turned sharply and flew away across the channel, over the capsized crimson hull of a battleship. Warren straightened, still grinning. Janice watched the admiral's beautiful barge, all new gray paint, shiny brass, snowy curtains and cordwork, carry her bloodstained husband away to the flaming smoky mid-harbor island that was the Navy's airfield. He waved and she wildly waved back. She was horror-stricken by what she had seen at the Beet landing; yet never had she felt so aroused, so fuu of life, so plain damn good, and so much in love. An Army spokesman came on the automobile radio as she drove home, urging calm, warning against sabotage, and assuring the people that the second attack had been turned back with little further damage to the fleeting over the and at fearful cost to the Japanese. All-clear sirtenisngwetroe twheailradio, which island. She found the maid in an armchair us was playing Hawaiian music again. "Victor's been very quiet, Missus Henry," she said. "Not a sound. Isn't it terrible about the war? But we'll beat them." ace of sheep "SheeP dip-the tar that causes tobacco harshness))) said the -olin, voice. "Lucky Strike is the dip-' ri , O,l y cigarette from which every tr In his bedroom Victor coughed, a deep harsh cough like a man. "Why, there he goes now," Janice said. "The very first time, ma'am, since he got his medicine. I've been listening." Janice's watch read eight minutes to ten. "Well, it's been about two hours. I guess that's all the medicine's good for. I'll give him more." The, baby still felt cool. He took the spoonful of brown syrup without opening his eyes, sighed, and turned over. Janice sank in a chair, perspiring and spent, thinking that a war had begun and the Pacific fleet had been smashed between her baby's two doses of cough medicine. The sun poked up over the horizon, painting a red Hush on the TClipper's wing. Wide awake, Victor Henry watched the brightening disk rise free of the ocean. The flying boat's engines changed pitch, rasping at his nerves. Since he had said good-bye to Pamela Tudsbury in Red Square in the snow, he had been shaken up in trains, planes, boats, trucks, jeeps, sleighs, and even oxcarts. He thought his bones would vibrate aboard the California for a month. Fortyeight hours, two more fifteenhundred-mile hops, and if nothing went wrong the trek halfway round the earth would be over. The sun moved sidewise. The turn was so shallow that he felt no tilt in his seat. A pink ray shot across his lap from the opposite side of the plane. Pug left his seat and walked forward into the galley, where the steward was scrambling eggs. "I'd like to talk to Ed Connelly, if he's free." The steward smiled, gesturing at the door marked FLiGffrDEcx. The naval officer and the Clipper captain had been eating meals together and sharing rooms at the island hotels. In the dial-filled cockpit the engines sounded much louder, and beyond the plexiglass the void purple sea and clear blue sky stretched all around. The captain, a beefy ckled man in shirt-sleeves and headphones, looked oddly at Pug Henry. 'Morning, Ed. Why are we heading back?" Connelly passed him a radio message, hand-printed in red ink on a yellow form. CINCPAC OR CMCUIT GENERAL PLMN LANGUAGE MESSAGE QUOTE AIR RAM ON PEARL HARBOR X THIS IS NO DRILL UNQUOTE X HEAVY GUNFIRE IN ANCHORAGE X RECOMMEND YOU RETURN WAKIR TILL srruAInoN CLARLFMS "How about that?" The captain removed the sponge-rubber headphones and rubbed his curly red hair. "Do you suppose it's for real?" "I wouldn't doubt it," said Victor Henry. "I'm damned. I honestly never thought they'd go. Attacking Pearl! They'll get creamed." "Let's hope so. But what's the point of turning back, Ed?" "I guess they might be hitting Midway, too." "Well, they might be hitting Wake, for that matter." "I've talked to Wake. All quiet." Victor Henry returned to his seat, agitated though far from astonished. Here it was at last, he thought: an attempted sneak attack on Pearl, in the midst of a war scare. The uninventive Asiatics had elected to try the Port Arthur trick again, after all. But surely this time they were running their heads into a noose! The United States in 1941 wasn't Czarist Russia in 1904One phrase in Cincpac's message nagged at him: This is no drill. That was silly, to a fleet onw2r alert! Some low-level communicator must have tacked that one on.
A calm sunburned man'the in a jeep, naked except for shorts, socks, and boots, waited for him at the landing. The marine commander had put his forces on combat alert and wanted to see Captain Henry. They drove along the beach road in blazing sunlight and choking coral dust, then turned off into the brush. Combat alert had not changed the look of Wake in the past hours: three Hat sandy peaceful islands in a horseshoe shape around emerald shallows, ringed by the wide sea, alive with myriads of birds-for it had been a sanctuary-and bustling with the bulldozers and trucks of civilian construction gangs. The queer humpbacked island rats hopped like tiny kangaroos out of the jeep's path, and brilliantly colored bircls rose from the brush in chirping cloud.-,. Perfectly camouflaged by scrub, the command post was sunk far down in coral sand. When Victor Henry faced the marine colonel in this deep timbered hole, saw the radio gear and crude turn:,ture and smelled perking coffee and freshly dug soil, the war with japan became a fact for him. The dugout did not have the graveyard-muck odor of the Russian trenches; it was roasting hot and dry, not freezing cold and wet; the men frantically working on the telephone lines and the overhead beams were not frostbitten, pale, bundled-up Slavs, but sunburned, heavily sweating Americans in shorts. Yet here, where the roar of the Pacific dimly sounded, these Americans-like the Russians outside Moscow-were going into the ground to await attack. The United States was in. The colonel, a mild-faced scrawny man with whom Pug had dined the night before, gave him an envelope to take to Cincpac. "Put it in the adrriral's hand yourself, Captain. Please! It's a list of my worst shortages. We can make a fight of it here, Maybe we can hold out till we're relieved, if he'll send us that stuff. Radar gear for Wake is sitting right now on the dock in Hawaii. It's been there for a month. For God's sake, ask him to put it on a destroyer or better yet a bomber, and rush it here. I'm blind without radar. I can't send fighters on patrols, I have too few. I'm twenty feet above the ocean at my highest point, and I only gain a few more feet with my water tower. We'll probably end up eating fish and rice behind barbed wire anyway, but at least we can make the bastards work to take the place." Pug got back to the hotel just ahead of a rain squall. The Clipper passengers were sitting down to lunch when blasts shook the floor, rattled the dishes, and sent broken windowpanes clinking to the tiles. Amid shouts and cries the passengers jumped for the windows. Fat cigar-shaped airplanes, with orange circles painted on their flamboyant jungle camouflage, were flashing past in the rain; Pug noted their twin engines and twin tails. Smoke and fire were already rising from the airfield across the lagoon, and more explosions, bigger flames, heavier smoke, came fast. Pug had often seen bombing, but this attack, destroying an American installation with impunity, still outraged and numbed him. The marauding bombers, blurry in the rain, kept crisscrossing the islands and the lagoon with thunderous engine roars, meeting only meager bursts of fire. Soon a line of bombers camewinging straight for the Pan American compound, and this was what Victor Henry was fearing. An attack on the Clipper might strand him and paralyze his war career before it started. There was no way off Wake Island, except aboard that huge inviting silvery target. Savage explosions and crashes burst around them as the planes bombed and machine-gunned the hotel, the Pan Am repair shops, the dock, and the radio tower. A gasoline dump close by went up in a colossal sheet of white flame, climbing to the sky with a terrific howl. The passengers dove under tables or huddled in corners, but Victor Henry still crouched at the window beside the pilot, watching. They saw spurts of water approach the flying boat. They saw pieces of the Clipper go flying. When the bomber sounds faded, Pug followed the pilot out onto the pier at a run. Like a clothed ape, Ed Connelly clambered over the slipery flying boat in the rain, making it rock and slosh. "Pug, so help me God, I think we can still fly! They didn't hole the tanks or the engines. At least I don't think they did. I'm hauling my passengers the hell out of here now, and I'll argue with Hawaii later." The passengers eagerly scrambled aboard. The Clipper took off, and it flew. Below, smashed airplanes named and all three islands poured smoke. Pug could see little figures looking up at the departing Clipper. Some waved. Even in the dead of night, nine hours later, Midway was not hard to find. The pilot called Victor Henry to the cockpit to show him the star of flame far ahead on the black sea. "Christ, these japs had the thing all lined up, didn't they?" he said. "They hit everywhere at once. I heard the radio they'already in Malaya, Thailand, Hong Kong, they're bombing Singapore"C(over) an we land, Ed?"(re) "We've got to try. I can't raise them. All the navigation lights are out. Midway has a lot of underground tanks. And if we can just get down, we can fuel. Soooo-here goes." The riving boat dropped low over dark waters, lit only by the glare from blazing hangars and buildings. On slapping into the sea, it hit something solid with a frightening clang, but slowed and floated undamaged. The airfields of Midway, they soon learned, had been shelled by a japanese cruiser and a destroyer. An eaflarated mob of almost naked fire fighters was flooding the blazes with chemicals and water, generating giant billows of acrid red smoke. Victor Henry found his way to the commandant's office and tried to get news of the Pearl Harbor attack. The lieutenant on duty was obsequious and vague. The commandant was out inspecting the island's air defenses, he said, 'and he had no authority to show top secret dispatches, but he could tell the captain that the Navy had shot down a mess of Japanese planes. 'How about the California? I'm going there to take command of her."The lieutenant looked impressed. "Oh, really, sir? The California? I'm sure she's all right, sir. I don't recall any word about the California." This news enabled Victor Henry to sleep a little, though he tossed and muttered all night and got up well before dawn to pace the cool hotel veranda. The goony birds of Midway, big book-beaked creatures which he had heard about but never seen, were out by the dozens, walking the gray dunes. He saw them clumsily Ely, and land, and tumble on their heads. He watched a pair do a ridiculous mating dance on the beach as the sun came up, plopping their feet like a drunken old farm couple. Ordinarily Victor Henry would have seized the chance to inspect Midway, for it was a big installation, but today nothing could draw him out of sight of the flying boat, rising and falling on the swells and bumping the dock with dull booms. The four hours to Hawaii seemed like forty. Instead of melting away at its usual rate, time froze. Pug asked the steward for cards and played solitaire, but forgot he was playing. He just sat, enduring the passage of time like the grind of a dentist's drill, until at last the steward came and spoke to him, smiling. "Captain Connelly would like you to come up forward, sir." Ahead, through the pie;dglass, the green sunny humps of the Hawaiian Islands were showing over the horizon. "Nice?" said the pilot. "Prettiest sight I've seen," said Pug, "since my wife had a girl baby." 'Stick around, and we'll take a look at the fleet." Nobody aboard the Clipper knew what to expect. The rumors on Midway had varied from disaster to victory, with graphic details both ways. The Clipper came in from the north over the harbor and hooked around to descend. In these two passes, Victor Henry was struck sick by what his disbelieving eyes saw. All along the east side of Ford Island the battleships of the Pacific Fleet lay careened, broken, overturned, in the disorder of a child's toys in a bath. Hickam Field and the Navy's air base were broad dumps of blackened airplane fragments and collapsed burned hangar skeletons. Some dry docks held shattered tumbled-over ships. Pug desperately tried to pick out the California in the hideous smoky panorama. But at this altitude the ships with basket masts looked alike. Some of the inboard vessels appeared just slightly damaged. If only one was the California! "My God," Connelly said, looking around at Pug, his face drawn, what a shambles!" Speechless, Victor Henry nodded and sat on a folding seat, as the flying boat swooped low past a smashed gutted battleship with tripod masts, sunk to the level of its guns and resting on the bottom at a crazy angle. The Clipper threw up a curtain of spray that wiped out the heart-rending sight lourmy) s end. Passing several clanging, speeding Navy ambulances, Pug went from the customs shed at the Pan Am landing straight to the Cincpac building, where officers and sailors busily swarmed. They all wore unsure scared expressions, like people after a bad earthquake. A very handsome ensign in whites, at a desk that barred access to Cincpac's inner offices, looked incredulously atPug, who wore wrinkled slacks and a seersucker jacket. The admiral? You mean Cincpac, sir? Admiral Kimmel?" "That's right," Pug said. "Sir, you don't really expect to see Admiral Kimmel today, do you? Shall I try his Assistant Chief of Staff?" "Give the admiral a message, please. I'm Captain Victor Henry. I've just come in on the Clipper with a personal letter for him from the marine commandant on Wake Island." The very handsome ensign gestured wearily at a chair and picked up a telephone. "You may have to wait all day, or a week, sir. You know what the situation is." "I have the general picture." A minute or so later, a pretty woman in a tailored blue suit looked through the double doors. "Captain Henry? This way, sir." The ensign stared at Victor Henry walking past him, as though the captain had sprouted another head. Along the corridor, the offices of Cincpac's senior staff stood open, and the sound of excited talk and typewriter clatter drifted out. A marine rigidly saluted before high doors decorated with four gold stars and a Navy seal, and labelled in gold comMANDER-INCHIEF, PACIFIC FLEET. Hey passed into a wood-panelled anteroom. The woman opened a heavy polished mahogany door. "Admiral, here's Captain Henry." "Hey, Pug! Great day, how long has it been?" Kimmel waved cheerily from the window, where he stood gazing out at the anchorage. He was dressed in faultless gold-buttoned whites, and looked tanned, fit, and altogether splendid. though much older and quite bald. "Have I seen you since you worked for me on the Maryland?" "I don't think so, sir." "Well, the years are dealing kindly with you! Sit you down, sit you down. Been flying high, haven't you? Observing in Roosia, and all thatch?" They shook, hands. Kimmel's voice was as hearty and winning as ever. this was an outstanding officer, Pug thought, who had been marked for success all the way and had gone all the way. Now, after twenty years of war exercises and drills against Orange, the fleet he commanded lay in sight beyond the window, wrecked in port by the Orange team in one quick real action. He appeared remarkably chipper, but for his eyes, which were reddened and somewhat unfocussed. "I know how little time you have, sir." Pug drew out of his breast pocket the letter from Wake Island. 'Not at all. It's nice to see an old familiar face. You were a good gunnery officer, Pug. A good officer all around. Cigarette?" Kimmel offered him the pack, and lit one for himself. "Let's see.
Don't you have a couple of boys in the service now?" "Yes, sir. One flies an SBD off the Enterprise, and-" "Well, fine! They didn't get the Enterprise or any other carrier, Pug, because the carriers at least followed my orders and were on one hundred percent alert. And the other lad?" "He's aboard the Dfish in Manila." "Manila, eh? They haven't hit the fleet at Manila yet, though I understand they've bombed the airfields. Tommy Hart's got some warning now, and he'll have no excuse. I only hope the Army Air people in Manila aren't as totally asleep as they were here! The Army was and is completey responsible for the safety of these islands and of this anchorage, Pug, including the definite responsibility of air patrol and radar search. Nothing on God's earth could be clearer than the way that is spelled out in the islands' defense instructions. The documents leave no doubt about that, fortunately. Well-you have something from Wake, don't you? Let's have a look-see. Were you there when they hit?" "Yes, sir." "How bad was it? As bad as this?" 'well, I'd say about two dozen bombers worked us over. Mainly they went after planes and air installations, Admiral. No ships were there to get bombed." CincPac shot a glance at Victor Henry, as though suspecting irony in his words. "Say, weren't you supposed to relieve Chip Walenstone in the California?" 'Yes, sir." Kimmel shook his head, and started to read the letter. Pug ventured to say, "How did the California make out, Admiral?" "Why, don't you know?" 'No, sir. I came straight here from the Clipper." Not looking up, in the brisk tone of a report, Kimmel said, "She took two torpedoes to port and several bomb hits and near misses. One bomb penetrated below decks and the explosion started a big fire. She's down by the bow, Pug, and sinking. They're still counterflooding, so she may not capsize. She's electric drive, and the preliminary estimate"-he pulled toward him a sheet on his desk, and peered at it-"a year and a half out of action, possibly two. That's top secret of course. We're releasing no damage information." Cincpac finished the letter from Wake in a heavy silence, and tossed it on the desk. Victor Henry's voice trembled and he swallowed in mid-sentence. "Admiral, if I broke a lot of asses, including my own-ah, is there a chance I could put her back on the line in six months?"'Go out and see for yourself. It's hopeless, Pug. A salvage officer will relieve Chip." The tone was sympathetic, but Victor Henry felt it did Cincpac good to give someone else catastrophic news. "Well, that's that, then, I guess." "You'll get another command." "The only thing is, Admiral, there aren't that many available battleships. Not any more." Again, the quick suspicious glance. It was hard to say anything in this context without seeming to needle the commander of the Pacific Fleet. Kimmel made a curt gesture at the letter Pug had brought. "Now there's a problem for you. Do we relieve Wake or not? It means exposing a carrier. We can't go in without air cover. He's asking for a pile of things I can't give him, for the simple reason that the Russians and the British have got the stuff. Mr. Roosevelt was a great Navy President until that European fracas started, Pug, but at that point he took his eye off the ball. Our real enemy's always been right here, here in the Pacific. This ocean is our nation's number one security problem. That's what he forgot. We never had the wherewithal to conduct proper patrols. I didn't want to rely on the Army, God knows, but equipment only has so much life in it, and what would we have had to fight the war with if we'd used up our planes in patrolling? Washington's been crying wolf about the japs for a year. We've had so many full alerts and air raid drills and surprise attack exercises and all, nobody can count them, but-well, the milk is spilled, the horse is stolen, but I think it's pretty clear that the President got too damned interested in the wrong enemy, the wrong ocean, and the wrong war." It gave Victor Henry a strange sensation, after Berlin and London and Moscow, and now this staggering personal disappointment, to hear from Admiral'Kinnnel the old unchanged Navy verbiage about the importance of the Pacific. "Well, Admiral, I know how busy you are," he said, though in fact he was struck by the quiet at the heart of the cataclysm, and by Kimmel's willingness to chat with a mere captain he did not know very well. Cincpac acted almost as lonesome as Mp Tollever had. "Yes, well, I do have a thing or two on my mind, and you've got to go about your business too. Nice seeing you, Pug," said Admiral Kimmel, in a sudden tone of dismissal. Janice answered Pug's telephone call and warmly urged him to come and stay at the house. Pug wanted a place where he could drop his bags, and get into uniform to go to the California. He drove out in a Navy car, took suitable if brief delight in his grandson, and accepted Janice's commiseration over his ship with a grunt. She offered to get his whites quickly pressed by the maid. In the spare room he opened his suitcase to pull out the crumpled uniform, and his letter to Pamela Tudsbury fell to the floor. In a dressing gown he glanced through the letter, which he had written during the long hop from Guam to Wake Island. It embarrassed him as one of his old love letters to Rhoda might have. There wasn't much love in this one, mostly a reasoned and accurate case for his livingout his life as it was. The whole business with the English girl-romance, flirtation, love affair, whatever it had been-had begun to seem so far away after his stops in Manila and Guam, so dated, so unlike him, so utterly outside realities and possibilities! Pamela was a beautiful young woman, but odd. The best proof of her oddness was her very infatuation with him, a grizzled United States Navy workhorse with whom she had been thrown together a few times. Dour and repressed though he was, she had ignited a flash of romance in him in those last turbulent hours in Moscow. He had allowed himself to hope for a new life, and to half believe in it, in his elation over his orders to the California. And now-how finished it all was! California, Pamela, the Pacific Fleet, the honor of the United States, and-God alone knew-any hope for the civilized world. A knock at the door; the voice of the Chinese maid: "Your uniform, Captain?" 'Thank you. Ah, that's a fine job. I appreciate it." He did not tear the letter up. He did not think he could write a better one. The situation of a man past fifty declining a young woman's love was awkward and ridiculous, and no words could help much. He slipped the envelope into his pocket, When he passed a mailbox on his way to the Navy Yard, he stopped and mailed it. The clank of the box was a sad sound in a sad day for Captain Victor Henry. Sadder yet was the trip to the California, through foul-smelling water so coated with black oil that the motor launch cut no wake, but chugged slimily along in smoky air, thumping like an icebreaker through a floating mass of black-smeare............