She was dark, with masses of black hair, deeply tanned, and very slender. Her face was rather too thin, I thought, giving her full sensual lips an almost outsized appearance. The dance was one of those difficult affairs where there are at least ten men to every woman, and it was hard to get away from the determined stag line. I cut in on Jim once myself, nearly gasped aloud when Joan stepped into my arms from Jim's reluctantly released embrace.
It was not only her lips that were sensual I decided, after someone else had taken her away. She was sensual all over.
Jim gave her new partner less than half a dozen steps before he claimed her back, and then he led her into a corner as far removed from the stag line as possible. But keeping Joan undiscovered must have been about as hard to do as keeping a gold mine under wraps, and the determined stags, conspicuously Keith and Hugh, gave him no peace. Half an hour before the party had been scheduled to break up, I realized Jim and Joan were no longer there.
Walrus was not quite the same when we moved back aboard, more of the bridge superstructure had been removed and a 20-millimeter gun had been installed at either end of it. The Admiral was of the opinion that we should be able to take care of ourselves in case we ran into one of the wooden armed sampans which had been appearing in ever-increasing numbers around the home-island waters of Japan. Some of the boats had been replacing their three-inch anti-aircraft deck gun with a broadside four-inch or five-inch also.
Our Operation Order this time directed Walrus to proceed to Dutch Harbor for briefing, and thence to Kiska, which was to be our patrol area. The Japs had landed at Kiska and Attu and attacked Dutch Harbor at the same time as they had made their attempt on Midway. There were those who even claimed that the Midway attack was a feint, and that the real objective of the enemy the whole while had been to gain a foothold in the Aleutians. This was a bit hard to believe, considering the size of the fleet he had sent to take Midway, but the theory sounded plausible to some.
The evening before Walrus got under way, I had dinner again with Captain Blunt and the Admiral in the latter's quarters in Makalapa, as the Navy housing area was termed. Several other officers were also present, two of them skippers of boats just in from Australia. The talk was desultory, mainly anecdotal but through it all ran a grim undercurrent. The United States, recognizing Germany as the principal menace, was indeed devoting its strength: and resources to the ETO, just as President Roosevelt had said we would. We in the Pacific would have to wait our turn as patiently as we might.
It was a hard outlook to be in sympathy with.
Things were rough indeed in Australia, according to the skippers just back from there. There was hardly a family but had one or more male members already in the war against the Axis before the Japanese struck. Now they felt defenseless, exposed, ripe for the plucking should the enemy make a deter- mined effort. Our own Guadalcanal invasion, and the campaign in the Solomons, were their only hopes of staving off an invasion. From their point of view the Japanese had so far shown themselves invincible and were only a few miles away in Malaya, Sumatra, Java, and New Guinea.
It was with thoughtful concentration that I attacked the Operation Order next day, as Diamond Head faded over the horizon. The Japanese had landed on Kiska, and were presumably preparing for further conquests in the Aleutian area. Their supplies were undoubtedly being brought in by submarine and transport, though so far little was known about the size of this traffic. Our job would be to reconnoiter, report any suspicious or unusual movements, any movements of the enemy at all, in fact-and, of course, try to intercept as much of the supply traffic into and out of Kiska as we could.
The Operation Order went on to caution us that United States fleet units also were operating in those Waters, and that Japanese fleet units might well be expected. We were to attack immediately any unidentified war vessels encountered, having due care to the possibility of their being friendly and the necessity for adequate, recognition signals. We. would be informed, so the order said, of the proximity of any friendly vessels or planes.
It didn't seem to be a very satisfactory system to me, and still didn't after we had arrived at Dutch Harbor with the Walrus and had our briefing as promised in the Operation Order. The idea of operating in the close proximity of our own forces, worrying-in addition to the normal quota of worry about the intentions and movements of the enemy-over what our own ships were doing, where they were going, and above all, whether they would be able to recognize us as friendly, was not too pleasing. We had all read entirely too many treatises about the manner of treating suspected submarine contacts: Full-scale all-out attack instantly, no waiting around.
Said the doctrine, "The only good submarine is a dead one."
Fine and dandy-but what if it had been on your side?
I need not have worried. The thirty days we spent patrolling off Kiska amounted to the most wasted month any submarine spent during the whole war. The weather was lousy; no other adjective could describe it. It was cold, freezing or nearly so, always rough except when very close into land, over- cast, foggy or misty almost all of the time, and not once during the whole period did we sight an enemy ship?
Once our surface forces planned an assault, and a bombardment was carried out for several hours. We had hoped that some Japanese action might have been forthcoming as a result, that perhaps some ship might have attempted to escape or enter the harbor. And for a time, as we read the operation dispatches received, it appeared that we might he stationed in a position where such vessels would be forced to pass near enough to give us a chance for an attack. We had grown rusty in our attack procedure, tempers had flared over trifles, our daily drills had been performed perfunctorily; try as Jim and Keith might, they could not evoke interest in them, and my efforts along the same line produced little better result. Now, with the prospect of action to relieve the deadly boredom, we all took on a new incentive. For a week we drilled with a will, spent longer than usual at some of the operations which required polishing, overhauled the torpedoes once more, especially, so that there would be no hitches on their account, and then the whole thing, so far as we were concerned, fell apart into little useless pieces.
It must have been one of the last preparatory dispatches of the operation, and Dave and Hugh's initial eagerness to decode it gave way, less than halfway through, to disgust.
When finally typed in the smooth the message said: WALRUS PROCEED TO POINT ONE HUNDRED MILES DUE SOUTH OF SOUTHWEST CORNER KISKA RPT ONE HUNDRED MILES DUE SOUTH OF SOUTHWEST CORNER KISKA X. REMAIN ON SURFACE X. FRIENDLY FORCES REQUIRE YOUR SERVICES NAVIGATION MARKER X. DURING AND AFTER ASSAULT BE PREPARED TO VECTOR IN AND ASSIST SURVIVORS DAMAGED AIRCRAFT.
We didn't even have the satisfaction of seeing any of our surface units, the cruisers and old battleships, sweep by route to the bombardment. It was nice weather, for Kiska, with visibility about five miles, and we knew when the task force went by because they told us by radio. But as far as seeing anything was concerned, the day was exactly like all the others we had spent in the area.
Jim's suggestion was probably about right: Our task-force commander, worried over the possibility of enemy submarines, must have insisted that the only US submarine in the vicinity be withdrawn. If any submarines were to be detected, didn't want to have to worry over recognition procedures be- fore permitting his destroyers to do their stuff.
We went through the motions of the remainder of time on-station without further incident. Tempers grew short again, harsh words were exchanged and apologized for, and Russo wore himself out trying to inject a little variety in our monotonous existence. After a full month cruising aimlessly around Kiska, our radio brought not the release we had anticipated but a directive to remain for three days longer pending the arrival of the submarine sent from Pearl Harbor to relieve us.