Behind the Tangier was the Neches, a fleet oiler, riding low in the water. The three ships considered most vulnerable to attack formed the center of Task Force 14. Sailing ahead of the Saratoga were the cruisers USS Astoria and USS Minneapolis.
The cruiser USS San Francisco brought up the rear. The cruisers themselves were screened by nine destroyers.
Task Force 14 had put out from Pearl Harbor five days before, six days after the Japanese had attacked Pearl, under orders from Admiral Husband E. Kimmel, the U.S. Pacific Fleet Commander, to reinforce Wake Island.
Wake Island desperately needed reinforcement. Already there were what the Corps euphemistically referred to as "elements" of the 1stMarine Defense Battalion. These amounted to less than four hundred Marines, commanded by Major James P. S. Devereux. Devereux had two five-inch naval cannon, obsolete weapons removed from men-of-war; four three-inch antiaircraft cannon, only one of which had the necessary fire-control gear; twenty-four .SO-caliber Browning machine guns; and maybe a hundred .30-caliber Brownings, mixed air- and water-cooled. That, plus individual small arms, was it.
Staff Sergeant Joe Howard knew what weaponry had been given to Major Devereux’s "elements" because he’d talked to the battalion’s ordnance sergeant. It had been decided, literally at the last minute, that the ordnance sergeant would be of more value to the Corps left behind at Pearl, doing what he could to get the newly formed 4thDefense Battalion’s weaponry up and running.
And he knew what Task Force 14 was carrying to reinforce Wake Island. In addition to the 4thDefense Battalion, at near full strength, and the Brewster Buffalos of VMF-211 that would fly off Saratoga and join what was left of the dozen Wildcats already on Wake, there were, aboard Tangier and in the holds of other ships, nine thousand rounds of five-inch ammunition; twelve thousand rounds of three-inch shells for the antiaircraft cannon; and three million rounds of .50-caliber machine-gun ammunition.
After the devastating, humiliating whipping they had taken at Pearl on December 7, the Navy and the Marine Corps were finally coming out to fight.
Howard took a final, deep drag on his Camel, then flicked the glowing coal from its end with his thumbnail. He carefully tore the cigarette paper down its length and let the wind scatter the tobacco away. Then he crumbled the paper into a tiny ball between his thumb and index fingers and let the wind take that away, too.
Howard was "under arms." That is, he was wearing his steel helmet and a web belt from whose eyelets hung a canteen, a first-aid pouch, a magazine pouch for two pistol magazines, and a Model 1911A1 .45-caliber Colt pistol in a leather holster. The canteen was empty, as were the magazine pouch and the magazine in the .45. Ammunition had not been authorized for issue to the guard, much less to the troops, although there was a metal box in the guardroom with a couple of dozen five-round stripper clips of .30-06 ammunition for Springfield ‘03 rifles and a half-dozen loaded seven-round .45 magazines.
Joe Howard had seen the Officer of the Guard slip one of the loaded magazines into his .45 just before guard mount. The Officer of the Guard was a second lieutenant, a twenty-one-year-old, six months out of Annapolis. Joe had wondered whom he thought he was going to have to shoot.
He hadn’t said anything, of course. Staff sergeants in the Marine Corps don’t question anything officers do, even twenty-one-year-old second lieutenants, unless it is really stupid and likely to hurt somebody. If Lieutenant Ellsworth Gripley felt that it was necessary to carry a loaded pistol in the performance of his duties as officer of the guard, that was his business.
Howard set his steel helmet at the appropriately jaunty angle for a sergeant of the guard and set out to find the Officer of the Guard. He was a little worried about Second Lieutenant Ellsworth Gripley, USMC. It had finally sunk in on the young officer that this wasn’t a maneuver; within forty-eight hours the 4thDefense Battalion would be ashore on Wake Island and engaging the Japanese, and he would be expected to perform like a Marine officer.
Lieutenant Gripley wasn’t afraid, Joe Howard thought. More like nervous. That was understandable. And he saw it as his duty to do what he could to make Gripley feel a little more sure of himself.
The ships making up Task Force 14 were, of course, blacked out to avoid detection by the enemy. One of the functions of the guard detail-in S/Sgt. Joe Howard’s opinion, the most important function-was to make sure that no one sneaked on deck after dark for a quick smoke. The glow of a cigarette coal was visible for incredibly long distances on a black night. Even so, there seemed to be a large number of people, including officers, who seemed unwilling, or unable, to believe that their cigarette was really going to put anyone in danger. They seemed to think that maybe if three or four hundred people lined the ship’s rails, merrily puffing away, a Japanese submarine skipper could see this through a submarine periscope, but one little ol’ cigarette, carefully concealed in the hand? Not goddamned likely.
Because of his zealous enforcement of the no-smoking regulations, Howard had already earned a reputation among some of the officers as a rather insolent noncom. Marine officers are not accustomed to being firmly corrected by staff sergeants. Or to being threatened by them:
"Sir, if you don‘t put that out right now, I’ll have to call the officer of the guard."
When he had said that, the cigarettes were immediately put out. But in half a dozen instances, the officer had asked for his name and billet. He didn’t think the information had been requested so the officers could seek out the Headquarters Company commander to tell him what a fine job S/Sgt. Howard had been doing.
He had had less trouble with the enlisted men, although there were about ten times as many of them as there were officers. The lower-ranking Marines were either afraid of defying orders or of Japanese submarines-or probably of both. And Joe Howard was aware that most of the senior noncoms probably knew, as he did, just how far a cigarette coal could be seen at night and did not wish to end their war by drowning after being torpedoed. And, besides, they would be in a shooting war soon enough. The word had leaked out of Officer’s Country, via a PFC orderly whom Joe had known at Quantico, that at 1800 hours they were about 550 miles from Wake Island. The Task Force was making about fifteen knots, which translated to mean they were then thirty-six hours steaming time from Wake. In other words, they should be at Wake at daybreak the day after tomorrow.
The ships in the center of the Task Force, the Saratoga, the Tangier, and the oiler, had been making course changes regularly, zigzagging across the Pacific so as to present as difficult a target as possible for any enemy submarine that might be stalking the Task Force. The cruisers and destroyers had been making course changes that were more frequent and of greater magnitude than those of the carrier and the ships following in its wake. The destroyers had been weaving in and out between the larger ships like sheepdogs guarding their flock.
Joe Howard had grown used to changes in course-the slight tilting of the deck, the slight change in the dull rumble of the engine, the change in the pitching and rolling of the Tangier - to the point where he paid almost no conscious attention to them.
But now, as he made his way aft along the portside boat deck, looking for Lieutenant Gripley, he slowly came to realize that this course change was somehow different. He stopped, putting his hand on the damp inboard bulkhead to steady himself.