There were letters for Pozericki, which would have to be forwarded. Most of them were addressed in the same rounded, immature, feminine hand. The mail sacks were filled with letters -addressed in rounded, immature, feminine hands, and when the boys opened them and held them, the atmosphere of the ship was oppressive with longing and sweet desire, and every man felt almost capable of swimming home.
Stud Clancy had a letter from his mother. He took it below and lay down in his bunk, and turned his face to the wall. The sight of the handwriting had stabbed him with such sudden pain that he could not open the envelope. He lay with it in his hand for a moment, his eyes closed, seeing behind the lids an autumn day, with a red-and-gold-streaked evening sky, coming home with his gun, beloved Patch snuffling at his heels, and seeing his mother in the kitchen, knowing that she was singing as she moved about from the stove to the table. After a while he got up and put the letter, unopened, in his locker. He would read it some other time, later, when he could bring himself to look at the handwriting.
Tyler Williams had a letter from his mother, signed "With love from Mother and Dad," and urging him to write to Mary Taylor, "such a sweet girl." Tyler smiled wryly to himself. Of course Mary Taylor was a sweet girl. And just about as exciting as a dish of prunes. Mary Taylor, God bless her, was born an old maid. He certainly wouldn't mislead her by writing to her, even to please his mother.
Bullitt had no letters. Williams had gone to the sick bay to read his, and it was with something like pleasure that Bullitt interrupted him there with his news. Word had just been received on the bridge that on the following day, instead of maneuvers, they were to have an inspection in the morning by the fleet medical officer in command, with his staff.
Williams stood up with a sigh. He was extremely familiar with these fantastic inspections, in which the requirements of medical standards were compounded by the Navy devotion to order. In a shore hospital the inspecting medical officer was accompanied, along with his staff, by a hospital corpsman carrying a bottle of alcohol and a clean towel, so that when the officer ran his finger along any suspected surface for soil, the finger might afterward be cleaned with alcohol and dried on the towel.
Williams rolled up his sleeves. They were to be examined in their preparation for action, and in their disposition of the medical equipment of the ship. The medical storeroom, the battle stations, every first-aid station and locker would have to be checked and arranged in perfect order, and the sick bay would have to be cleaned in the meticulous way a man might paint a room, effacing his footsteps as he backed out of the door.
"We won't count on having sick call tonight," Bullitt said, briskly pulling out the contents of a shelf to rearrange it. "I have passed the word along that no one is permitted to be ill." From the note of satisfaction, almost of smugness, in his voice, it was obvious that it was his, Bullitt's, day that they were preparing for.
Inspection day dawned bright. The harbor was glassy calm; they were a polished ship upon a polished sea. Williams, after four hours' sleep, drank a mug of scalding hot coffee and dressed himself with care in his whites.
The medical commander. Rear Admiral Doctor Hector Tolson, was a slim, erect, graying man with a manner of extreme gravity, and the two junior doctors who followed him up the accommodation ladder of the AJax wore similar expressions, but rather tentatively, as if they were trying them on for size.
Admiral Tolson had brought with him a practice casualty plan, and he proceeded at once to the bridge with his aides, in Captain Thompson's company. From here the plan was to be put into action. Typed forms were distributed to Doctor Claremont, Chief Bullitt and Williams; and to Lieutenant Palazzo, Chief Kronsky and McNulty. The AJax was presumed to have been attacked by enemy dive bombers, and there were simulated casualties on the open deck of the fantail, in the number-two and number-five five-inch-gun mounts, as well as m two of the forty-millimeter-gun tubs on the starboard side.
When the boys selected to play the parts of the victims had been put into place, with slips of paper pinned to their uniforms describing the nature of their injuries, the plan went into action. Teams of stretcher bearers, selected from the crew, had been painstakingly, if sarcastically, trained by Chief Bullitt, and they now brought the victims to the medical battle stations. On the open deck of the fantail, Chief Bullitt applied tourniquets, splinted .arms and legs, and bound compresses on flesh wounds and head wounds, after which the stretcher bearers carried the victims to the wardroom, to join those already taken there for primary treatment from points nearer that station. Here Doctor Claremont, assisted by Williams, was to decide where to place them and which ones would have precedence on the dining-now-operating table, and to dispatch those who had been treated to their bunks below. Admiral Tolson's aides followed this procedure, with particular attention to the efficiency with which the stretchers were brought in and out of the narrow passageway and carried below.
When this part of the inspection had been completed, Admiral Tolson and his aides, their faces gravely expressionless, withdrew for a brief consultation, after which they made the customary formal inspection of the first-aid stations, the storage room, the life rafts, the medical and survival equipment of the small boats, and, last of all, the sick bay itself.
It was, indeed, clearly Bullitt's day. When the inspection party gathered in the captain's cabin, and after Admiral Tolson had talked with Doctor Claremont, Bullitt was summoned. "Doctor Claremont tells me you have done an excellent job, Chief," the admiral said, permitting himself to spend a slight smile of approval from what seemed to be a rather limited supply of good will.
"Thank you, sir," Bullitt said, standing at attention before him, looking at a point slightly above and to the left of the admiral's head, with a slow, slightly scornful expression, as if a compliment was really superfluous, since he himself was aware of the superiority of his appointments.
"Doctor Claremont tells me that it was you who worked out the traffic pattern for the wounded to be brought in and out of the wardroom."
"Yes, sir," Bullitt said, in a sepulchral tone.
"I will recommend it to others," Admiral Tolson said.
"Thank you, sir," Bullitt said, after a barely perceptible pause, which seemed to indicate that perhaps the permission to do this was not the admiral's to give.
When the inspection party left the ship, and the crew could inhale again, Captain Thompson called Doctor Claremont back to his cabin. He was in very good spirits. "You've done it, my boy," he said. "Admiral Tolson told me that without doubt we are the best-equipped destroyer, medically, in the entire squadron."
Doctor Claremont looked down at his shoes, rather sheepishly. "I'm afraid it really was mostly Bullitt's doing, Captain," he said.
Captain Thompson dismissed this modesty with a shrug, "We expect good work of an experienced chief," he said. "But you had the wisdom and judgment to let him have a free hand."
"I don't know that I let him do anything, Captain," Doctor Claremont said, looking up with a half-smile. "I didn't seem to have much choice."
Captain Thompson laughed and got up from his desk, and came around to clap Doctor Claremont on the shoulder. "That remark almost makes me think you'll be a Navy man yet, in spite of yourself," he said. "Every officer learns in time that his chief is sort of like a second wife. You have to let him have his own way a good part of the time to keep peace in the family."