Rescuing our six prisoners had cost us several hours, and though we raced through the night, we were not able to get close enough to the coast by daylight next morning to patrol for any coastal shipping. We tried to run in on the surface, but twice planes forced us to dive, and the second time we stayed down. However, we kept our radar antenna mast out, since it could be used as a rather poor radio antenna, and thus it was that at seven minutes after one that afternoon we heard that Japan had surrendered, and the war was over.
A wild cheer rang through the boat. We had known it was coming, and had been following the signs, but now it had come. The fighting was over. We had made it. I could well understand and appreciate the joy felt by everybody on the ship.
My own feelings I could not understand so well. Instead of wild exultation, a fit of the deepest despondency descended upon me. I tried to join in the happiness of my officers and crew, but after a while I left them. I went to my stateroom and drew the curtain. I didn’t bother to turn on the light — just sat there on the bunk, not stirring. During the next several hours I was aware that the curtains fluttered once or twice, as though someone had started to call me and then had thought better of it, or had been stopped by someone else.
Eventually it was time to surface. After we had brought Piper up, I told the officer of the deck that I was going out on the main deck for a while. This, of course, was never permitted without good reason, and never without the Captain’s express permission. But I was the Captain, and I kept my reasons to myself.
The night was clear and cloudless, with just a hint of the moon soon to rise. The air was warm, seemingly devoid of the oppressive mustiness I had so often noticed. The sea was nearly calm. It was a night of peace. I wearily paced the deck, around and around from bow to stern, and back to the bow again. The same old thoughts were still running through my mind. After this, what? Why Trigger, and not Piper, or Tirante? Why Penrod Schneider, Johnnie Shepherd, Stinky, and Willy Kornahrens? What about Johnnie Moore, the man who had ordered me to submarine school against my will, back in September of 1941? He had gone down as skipper of Grayback, after a series of outstanding patrols.
What about Penrod’s wife, Sammy, who had christened Dorado as she was launched? And Al Bontier, who had had the bad luck to run his new Razorback aground off New London, as a result of which he was transferred off the ship and to Pearl, where they gave him the recently overhauled Seawolf? And what about the skipper of that destroyer escort who to his dying day must reproach himself for not having tried harder to identify the submarine which desperately signaled him as he ordered the fatal hedgehogs thrown?
What was the difference between Dave Connole, cut short after bringing Trigger back into the pay-off column once more, and Jack Lewis, who caught pneumonia on our first run up in the Aleutians three years ago — what indeed was the difference, except that one of them was dead?
As I turned about the deck, always it came back to the same thing. We had won the war. It was over — finished — and somehow I had had the incredible luck to be spared. But what little divided those of us who were alive to see this day from those who were not? Just a few feet over the side, the long, cool, clean, silent water was the answer. It could claim many secrets — had claimed them for thousands and tens of thousands of years — one of them might as well have been me — could still be me…
I shrank from the abyss of lunacy yawning in front of me. The revulsion from four years of tension, and ultimate rejection of the subconscious idea that I might not make it after all, had plumbed its depth. Stinky and Johnnie Shepherd had not taken my place in the Trigger; it had simply been their bad luck, and my good.
A call from the bridge, with a sort of wild, half chuckle to it: “Captain, Captain. Here’s a message for you!” I walked swiftly forward.
Jerry Reeves was standing there, holding a piece of paper in his hand. “You old bastard, sir!” he said. “Why didn’t you tell anybody?”
The message said: FOR PIPER X MESSAGE TO COMMANDING OFFICER FROM MRS. BEACH SAYS DAUGHTER BORN AUGUST TENTH X BOTH WELL X CONGRATULATIONS X COMSUBPAC SENDS
The war had come to an end, and life, for some of us, was beginning.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Son of a well-known naval officer, Edward L. Beach Jr. graduated from the Naval Academy in 1939. During World War II Captain Beach participated in the Battle of Midway, and his submarines conducted twelve combat patrols that sank or damaged forty-five ships. A highly decorated officer, Beach received the Navy Cross and the Silver Star. After a number of postwar assignments, Captain Beach served as naval attaché to President Dwight Eisenhower from 1953 to 1957. In February 1960 Beach began his record-breaking voyage in the nuclear submarine USS Triton, which circumnavigated the earth submerged in sixty-one days. During her nearly thirty-one thousand mile journey, Triton set a speed and endurance record that stands today. In May President Eisenhower presented Beach with the Legion of Merit. Captain Beach retired from the Navy in 1966. In addition to a brilliant naval career, Beach wrote novels, memoirs, and naval histories, works that earned him numerous literary awards. Among his books is the bestselling Run Silent, Run Deep. In honor of both Edward L. Beach and his father, Edward Sr., the home of the U.S. Naval Institute in Annapolis, Maryland, was named Beach Hall. Edward Jr. died in December 2002.