It might be caused by the water striking the coral reefs. That produces a whistling sound. Or by porpoises breaking the surface of the water. Yet, as I listened, Maley beside me, I knew it was none of these. I racked my brains. What were the peculiarities of these waters… Suddenly I had it. Reef fish! Small, green-bellied “croakers” which emit a blubbering, bullfrog-like grunting under water that can deceive the most expert ear. I told it to Maley, and he grinned. I reported to the Captain, feeling a little sheepish.
“Fish, Eckberg?” Over the intercom came a chuckle. “Better go back and finish your sleep. You need it.”
We surfaced as darkness fell. As soon as the hatch was opened, we started our Diesels to recharge batteries. Captain Warder, always the first man on the bridge when we surfaced, climbed up, and after him the Officer of the Deck, a duty taken in rotation by the officers. Then came the night lookouts; then the signalmen; later the mess cooks with the garbage of the last twenty-four hours, which they cast overboard. Of the sixty-five men in the Wolf, these were the only ones who went topside day or night without special permission. If more were permitted, a crash dive would catch them like rats. Groups of the men below crowded about the ladder, breathing deep gulps of the fresh air coming down from the bridge and sucked aft by the Diesels. The smell of baking bread came to me as I lay in my bunk. The cooks had begun their “hot cooking”—meats and fish and baking—because the odors could escape now, and the blowers were wafting these tantalizing smells into every compartment.
Maley took over the radio watch to receive and transcribe messages now that we could use our antenna. The sea was choppy and the Wolf rolled considerably. I was alternately asleep and awake, and finally gave up altogether, wandering into Kelly’s Pool Room in time to hear a tinny jazz band playing “It’s Three O’Clock in the Morning.” It was Radio Tokyo, and Tokyo Rose was on. She was a female Lord Haw Haw who had sold out to the Japs, and she opened her program with old-fashioned sentimental songs. The idea, I suppose, was to make us homesick. She was taunting us now about Japanese victories and Allied defeats. She sunk the U.S. fleet as we listened, night after night. “Where is the great United States fleet?” she began in her phony Oxford accent. “I’ll tell you where it is! It’s lying at the bottom of Pearl Harbor.” She went on to tell us all the details. Her voice rose hysterically:
“Why don’t you give up, you fools out there? You can’t stand up against the power of the Imperial Fleet!”
Some of the men were playing cards on the mess tables, two of the mess cooks were peeling potatoes, and our retorts were unprintable.
There were all sorts of stories about Tokyo Rose. One was that she was an Englishwoman who’d married a Jap. We listened; amazed at the statistics she reeled off to prove we were being licked. She gave names and tonnage of the ships she said we had lost, and the dates and the places. This might have worked on us after a while, if it weren’t for John Street, a slow-spoken, casual, six-foot Machinist’s Mate from Colorado. John loved figures. He liked to read them, write them, and add them up. A crack accountant was lost when he went into the Navy to take charge of No. 2 engine on the Wolf. He was always armed with the “book”—a combination dictionary and encyclopedia—and under his bunk he’d packed away Jane’s Fighting Ships, the latest edition of the World Almanac, and a Universal History in one volume. Street would take out a carefully sharpened pencil, wet the point between his lips, and as Tokyo Rose cited the destruction of the American fleet, he took down the names of the ships. Then he looked them up. “She’s all wrong,” he’d say, mildly. “We didn’t have that many ships in the fleet in the first place.”
After she signed off we tuned in Station KGEI, the short-wave station in San Francisco. Now we heard the list of Jap ships the U.S. had sunk. John listened to this as carefully, and as methodically looked up the record. He said sadly, “Hell, there’s no more navies left in the world.” We knew the Frisco radio was broadcasting for Jap consumption.
Now the Wolf was moving cautiously. We were cruising off the northeastern coast of Luzon, off Aparri itself. The Japs had landed here within the last twenty-four hours. This was the spearhead of their attack, their toughest job. Luzon was more heavily protected than any other Philippine island, and the Japs had to take Luzon if they wanted a base for planes. They’d hit Aparri hard, roaring up to the beach in armored barges and streaming ashore by the thousands, falling in front of withering fire, yet pouring in until by sheer weight of numbers they gained a foothold. If we could get a crack at one of those transports… If we could send a fish into the guts of one of those big babies…
These were very dangerous waters. We dove at 4:30 a.m. I completed my morning watch at 8 a.m. and fell asleep in my bunk, in shorts and sandals this time. About an hour later I was awakened by a shout. Something on sound again! It looked as if I’d never catch up on sleep. I took over the sound shack. I searched. I sent up my message to the conning tower: “Sound has something, sir.”
Lieut. Holden’s deep voice came back: “Very well. Control, what’s your depth?”
“Eighty-five feet, sir,” came from the man at the depth gauge.
“Bring her up to periscope depth, and we’ll have a look.”
“Aye, aye, sir.” The word was relayed to the bowplanesman:
“Bring her up and be careful. We may have something up there.”
The Wolf rose silently through the dark waters.
“Here we are, sir,” from the bowplanesman.
“Up periscope.” Holden’s voice was almost casual. We heard the drone of the periscope sliding upward in its channel. A moment later: “Down periscope!” Holden’s voice had a new note in it. “Call the Captain.”
A messenger hurried to Captain Warder’s stateroom. In less than two minutes the Skipper, in shorts and sandals, was climbing up the ladder. His sandals made a slapping sound. His deliberate words came over the intercom: “What do you have, Mr. Holden?”
“A Jap destroyer, sir. Portside bearing three one zero relative.”
“Good!” said Captain Warder. “Up periscope.” He held it up there less than fifteen seconds. “Down periscope. Battle stations.”
His voice had scarcely faded away before the raucous aaaap! aaaap! of the battle-station alarm blared through the boat. Half-naked, their bodies gleaming in the yellow light, the men tumbled out of their bunks. The narrow passageways were suddenly filled with men and then as suddenly cleared as each man fitted into his assigned position.
The approach party—the men who had to plot the maneuvering to place the Wolf in the best possible position to fire, taking into account her course and the enemy’s course and speed—grouped themselves about the plotting table in the control room. They were Ensign Mercer, Ensign Casler, Frank Franz, and one H. H. Thompson, called “Hard-Hearted Henry” simply because of his initials. Maley hurried in to stay with me in sound. Rudy Gervais, an exuberant Frenchman, just twenty-one, his face shining, his dark brown eyes alert, took over as helmsman.
Everyone was at his post.
In sound, Maley and I, with our phones on, listened hard. As from a great distance, I heard a gentle Ping!… Ping! as though someone had plucked the E string of a violin. This was the telltale sound of the enemy’s sound-detection apparatus. He was searching for us—sending out electrical sound waves—and we were listening for him. We waited.