ANOTHER CONTACT IS SCHEDULED IN SEVERAL HOURS, AND PERHAPS HE WILL BE ABLE TO FURNISH A MORE PRECISE LOCATION AT THAT TIME.
ADMIRAL NTMTTZ HAS ORDERED THE CATALINAS TO BE PREPARED TO DEPART AT 2330 1 MAY BY WHICH TIME WE SHOULD HAVE AN ON SITE WEATHER REPORT FROM
SUNFISH
, WHICH WILL ALSO BE ADVISED OF CATALINA ETA ON SITE.
I WILL OF COURSE KEEP YOU ADVISED OF ALL DEVELOPMENTS.
BEST PERSONAL REGARDS,
DAN
END PERSONAL FROM RADM WAGAM TO BRIGGEN PICKERING
T O P S E C R E T
«This is very good news, General,» Colonel Platt said.
'Yes, I thought so. That will be all, Colonel, you are dismissed.»
note 97
United States Submarine Sunfish
121° 03» East Longitude 39° 58» North Latitude
Yellow Sea
1025 2 May 1943
Since he'd come aboard the
Sunfish
, Chief Carpenter's Mate Peter T. McGuire, USNR, had to some extent increased his knowledge of the customs of the Naval Service. Thus as he stuck his head through the port leading to the conning tower, he politely inquired, «Permission to come up, sir?»
Lieutenant Commander Warren T. Houser, USN, and Lieutenant Chambers D. Lewis III, USN, looked down at him. Except for his face, Chief McGuire was bundled in cold-weather gear, including a parka with a wolf fur-trimmed hood. All of those on the conning tower were wearing cold-weather gear. «Permission granted,» Captain Houser said.
The third man on the conning tower, the chief of the boat, chief bo'sun's mate Patrick J. Buchanan, did not look at Chief McGuire. Chief Buchanan had come to loathe and detest Chief McGuire—who had the bunk immediately above his— virtually from McGuire's first moment aboard. He did not wish to look at him. If he never saw him again in his life, it would be too soon.
These feelings were perhaps not very charitable, and he knew it. He was well aware that some lesser human beings were simply not equipped by their Maker to sail aboard submersible vessels. In fact, he was usually quite sympathetic to their plight. But Buchanan's patience and understanding had been pushed beyond his limits.
Early on, Captain Houser explained to him that Chief McGuire suffered from claustrophobia, a malady that was unsuspected until the first time the
Sunfish
slipped beneath the surface. There was simply nothing to be done about it, Houser elaborated. They were just going to have to deal with it for the duration of the patrol.
Chief McGuire's symptoms went far beyond a feeling of unease at being contained, at feeling that the walls, so to speak, were closing in on him. There were psychosomatic manifestations. He had severe headaches, for one thing.
For another, he suffered psychosomatic gastric problems, including nausea, flatulence, and diarrhea. In Chief Buchanan's many years at sea, during manypatrols on submarines, he had never before encountered smells as foul as those he encountered when visiting a head vacated as long as a half hour before by Chief McGuire.
For another, Chief McGuire's sleep was disturbed. He tossed and turned as long as he was in the sack, and he frequently whimpered in his sleep, like a small child having a bad dream. It is not pleasant under any circumstances to take one's rest in a small, confined area with one's nose separated from the man above by not more than twenty inches. When the man above is whimpering or breaking wind, or worse, regurgitating without warning and with astonishing force ninety percent of what he ate at the last meal, it is even less pleasant.
Chief Buchanan often thought that in the old Navy—and maybe even today, on say a destroyer, or other smaller man-of-war—the problem would have solved itself. The chief would have fallen overboard. The skipper would have penned a letter of condolence to his next of kin, authorized the auctioning off of the contents of the chief's sea chest, conducted a brief memorial service, and that would have been the end of the sonofabitch.
«How are you feeling, Chief?» Lieutenant Lewis asked.
Lewis actually showed sympathy to the bastard, as did Captain Houser. And Lewis was even genuinely worried about the state of Chief McGuire's health generally and his mental health specifically. McGuire had lost perhaps twenty-five pounds, and there were deep black rings under his eyes. No one on a submarine has an enviable tan, but McGuire's skin was an unhealthy white.
«I'm all right,» McGuire said, not very convincingly. «It's only when I'm downstairs and they close the hole in the roof that I start getting sick.»
«Well, if everything goes all right in the next hour or so, Chief,» Captain Houser said, «we'll be on our way home.»
«I hope,» Chief McGuire said, and then broke wind. The sound immediately penetrated his cold-weather gear. By the time the odor inevitably followed, the skipper of the
Sunfish
, her chief of the boat, and Mr. Lewis, her supercargo, all had independently decided to look in the direction of the prevailing wind to see what might be out there.
«Bridge, Radio,» the squawk box went off.
To provide Chief McGuire with a space on the bridge, Captain Houser had decided to dispense with the services of the talker who normally would have relayed commands from the bridge.
Captain Houser bent over the squawk box, pressed the switch, and said, «Radio, go.»
«Captain, I have a faint signal on the aviation frequency, transmitting G.S.»
«Radio, send five G.S. signals at thirty-second intervals,» Captain Houser asked.
«Aye, aye, sir,» the radio operator replied.
«You don't suppose they've actually found us, and on schedule?» Lieutenant Lewis asked.
«You don't believe in miracles, Mr. Lewis? Shame on you,» Captain Houser said.
«Captain, I've been thinking,» Chief McGuire said.
«Not now, Chief, please,» Captain Houser said.
«That maybe I could go with the airplanes,» McGuire plunged ahead.
«I thought you got sick on airplanes, Chief,» Lieutenant Lewis asked.
«Not as sick as I am on here,» McGuire replied. «And anyway, Flo gave me some inner-ear airsickness pills.»
Captain Houser held up his finger before Chief McGuire's pale face and said, «Sssssssh!»
«I believe, Captain,» Lieutenant Lewis said, «that Chief McGuire is referring to Commander Florence Kocharski, of the Navy Nurse Corps.»
Commander Kocharski had confided in Lieutenant Lewis that the inner-ear seasickness pills she had given Chief McGuire were placebos, usually prescribed for women in the early stages of pregnancy. Sometimes, Flo said, they stopped morning sickness and sometimes they didn't. But they wouldn't do Chief McGuire any harm.
«Thank you, Mr. Lewis, I never would have guessed.»
«Bridge, Radio.»
«Go.»
«Aircraft sent Verifier Sea Gypsy. It checks.»
«Continue sending G.S. at thirty-second intervals.»
«Aye, aye, sir.»
«I hope he's not far away,» Houser said, almost to himself. «I don't like sitting out here like this.»