Oatmire groaned. He thought back to the conversation he’d had with his closest friend on the staff when he had suggested that perhaps someone else would be better for the job. Anybody else. But they both knew his orders weren’t going to change. These orders had come from General MacArthur himself.
“What I don’t get is, why me?” The look on Oatmire’s face made it clear that he still didn’t understand his situation.
“Look, Oatmire, if MacArthur sent Sutherland on that ship, those squids would all be on their best behavior. They’d never say anything in front of him. Besides, MacArthur would miss him too much. He is the chief of staff, after all. You, on the other hand, nobody is even going to notice. Hell, nobody is even going to miss you here.”
“Thanks a lot.”
“You know me. Just trying to cheer you up.”
Oatmire’s thoughts were interrupted by a change in the engine noise. The launch that had been bravely pushing through the Pacific chop suddenly slowed to a crawl, nearly wallowing in the waves. Oatmire had thought that going slower would be a good thing, but he realized that he was mistaken.
He looked up, but there was nothing on the horizon. “What’s going on? Why are we slowing down?”
“We’ve got two aircraft incoming, sir. I don’t think that they’re ours.”
Following the sailor’s glance, he saw the two planes. “I’ll be damned.”
The aircraft remained at high altitude, so it was impossible to determine whether they were friend or foe. Maybe someone with sharper eyes could tell the difference, but squinting over the sights of a typewriter had taken its toll on Oatmire’s vision. However, the fact that there were only two planes was suspicious. American aircraft generally flew in squadrons, but the Japanese were flying sorties with smaller numbers of planes, reflecting their dwindling forces.
One thing for sure, if they were Japanese, the launch would be defenseless if they came by for a strafing run. One good burst from the machine guns of a Zero would reduce them to splinters, or at least put enough holes in the hull to ensure that their journey wouldn’t last much longer.
The boatswain had slowed to eliminate any wake, which was the most telltale sign of a vessel moving on the surface, even one as small as this.
Oatmire held his breath and kept quiet, as if the pilots could hear him all that way up. It would seem as if their small boat would hardly be worth the effort, but it was hard to say how vengeful a Japanese pilot might be feeling.
Once the planes had started to slip from sight, the boatswain reengaged the throttle, and the launch began making headway once again.
The small boat resumed its bouncing journey, but Oatmire kept one eye on the sky in case the planes returned.
He doubted that his adventures with the United States Navy could have gotten much worse, but he was wrong about that.
Finally, a brooding gray silhouette appeared on the horizon.
“There she is, sir,” the boatswain said helpfully, evidently just in case army officers were blind in addition to being prone to seasickness.
“I see her.”
Since the incident with the aircraft passing overhead, Oatmire had been more than alert. He studied the ship ahead with interest.
He was glad to see that the ship was large, which would be some countermeasure against the Pacific swells, but that was as far as the allure went.
He remembered once seeing a tall ship, a massive wooden vessel with canvas sails, rigging like gossamer, and a carved and painted figurehead portraying a Romanesque woman or maybe a minor goddess. Even a landlubber like Oatmire had been struck by the beauty of that ship, almost like a massive swan sweeping silently across the water. The navy vessel on the horizon did not resemble that majestic tall ship in any way.
“What the hell is that?” Oatmire asked.
“That’s the USS Kalinin Bay,” the boatswain replied, sounding puzzled. “Didn’t anyone tell you where you were going?”
“I was told that I was visiting a ship. That looks like a giant floating shoebox.”
For once, the boatswain cracked a smile. “You wouldn’t be far wrong, sir. The Kalinin Bay is an escort carrier. What we call a Jeep carrier or baby flattop.”
The boatswain then launched into a surprisingly detailed explanation of a Jeep carrier, which had very little to do with Jeeps, although there might be some of those stowed in the hold for transfer to Leyte. Instead, this was a small carrier intended for just twenty-seven aircraft and with a complement of more than nine hundred men, including pilots and aircrew. The so-called Jeep carriers could be built relatively quickly and deployed to Pacific outposts, where the resources of a full-size carrier would be wasted. More than fifty of these Casablanca-class escort carriers were now scattered around the Pacific, forming a small navy in themselves. The boatswain stopped short of explaining that Kalinin Bay was named for a remote body of water in Alaska.
In comparison, a full-size aircraft carrier such as the famed USS Enterprise transported up to ninety-six planes and more than twenty-two hundred personnel, almost as much of a floating city as a ship.
The smaller carrier had been built for utility rather than looks. Oatmire had thought that USS Kalinin Bay resembled a giant floating shoebox, which was an apt description. Though shorter in length than the mighty USS Nashville, the Jeep carrier somehow looked bulkier due to its sheer sides. Oatmire stared with some apprehension at the rope ladder that hung down the side of the ship, blowing around in the ocean breeze like a loose thread.
“Here we go, sir,” the boatswain said. “My advice is, don’t look down. And don’t stop climbing.”
The launch nosed up against the steel skin like a baby whale nudging its mama. Oatmire looped his seabag over his shoulders, swayed unsteadily with the weight, then lurched forward. A wave had slapped them away from the ship, opening a gap between the launch and the dangling ladder. For a moment it seemed as if Oatmire might fall into the sea and never be seen again. But the skilled boatswain yanked at the throttle and the rudder, closing the gap so that when Oatmire did fall, he managed to grab the ladder and hang on for dear life.
Oatmire knew that he couldn’t stay there forever, feet planted in the bucking launch and wet hands grasping the ladder. He forced himself to start to climb.
Below him, the launch pulled away.
“Good luck, sir!” the boatswain shouted, and then the small boat headed back across the sea.
Fueled by sheer terror and adrenaline, Oatmire managed to climb the ladder. The ladder was not secured at the bottom, which meant that from time to time it swung out over the water like a pendulum when the ship rode a large swell. “Dear God,” Oatmire muttered, holding on for dear life until the pendulum swung back and smacked him against the steel skin of the ship. At the top, hands reached down and helped him over the side. Oatmire flopped onto the deck and lay there gasping like a freshly caught fish.
As he caught his breath, Oatmire began the first of his naval observations.
First of all, he noted that there was no fanfare. Apparently the ship’s captain hadn’t even taken the time to be there to greet him — that was how far down the pecking order Oatmire was in the scheme of things.
The ship was apparently already at anchor and had not stopped expressly for him. The business of the ship was going on around them, sailors busy coiling lines and mopping up oil spills from the flight deck. Other sailors were busy doing jobs and working on equipment that Oatmire couldn’t even identify. He felt more like a landlubber than ever.
The arrival of a junior army officer did not warrant any sort of ceremony and was scarcely noticed, even if he was coming from General MacArthur. If it had actually been MacArthur arriving on the ship, it would have been a different story. The ship’s officers would have all been on hand to greet him, and most of the ship’s crew would have been gathered in formation, all wearing their best uniforms. Of course MacArthur wouldn’t have bothered to go aboard a Jeep carrier, no more than a chef would have stopped to eat at a roadside diner.