By this time we had to get back to our boats. We shook hands. I never saw him again.
Quite a talkfest was filling the air in Kelly’s Pool Room when I climbed down. Maurice (“Red”) Jenkins, Chief Machinist’s Mate, who came from Ohio and could make dice turn somersaults, wanted to know what in the name of Mary were we going to do now. Pop Rosario, the Filipino messboy, whose wife and children were, as far as he knew, dead at the hands of the Japs, would have been happy to climb out on the dock and meet the Japs hand to hand when they finally closed in. Where were we going now? Everyone guessed and nobody knew. Why had they brought us into Corregidor again? What was our next job?
That night we heard Tokyo Rose call for the surrender of the men on Bataan. “You are encircled,” she cried. “You can give up now without dishonor.”
“_____, ________,” someone said precisely and profanely. We laughed.
At dawn the Wolf went out to sea again and submerged. Once more we heard the dull rap! rap! of Jap planes dive-bombing our shipping in Manila Harbor. We thought, “Well, hell, General MacArthur isn’t going to let them get away with that too long! He’ll get even, all right. We don’t have to worry about that.”
At dusk we surfaced and came into the same dock as before. Now we set to work in earnest. There were stores to load, and we worked without rest. Apparently we were going out that same day, and we weren’t going out on a picnic. The sun rises in that latitude about 5 a.m., and we had to work fast if we wanted to get outside the mine, field while it was still dark, and remain on the surface and still be fairly well hidden from the Japs. By midnight oil lines had been hooked up to the Wolf, and hundreds of gallons were flowing into our tanks. We worked like stevedores bringing the endless stores aboard. The highly secret and confidential papers and other invaluable data were stowed in a safe position. I helped with the fuel line, and I carried boxes aboard. I looked over my radio gear, checking and rechecking it.
About an hour before midnight, as I was working in the sound room, Gunner Bennett stuck his head in. He had four yellow rectangular cans in his hands. I thought they were candy, at first—cans of hard candy.
“You know what these are, Eck?” said Gunner. “Dynamite.” And before I was able to bounce back from that news, he said, “Here’s the dope. Plant these. If we have to, before this ship is captured or abandoned, we got to destroy all gear that might help the Nips. That includes your radio and sound gear.”
He gave me the cans, and I took them gingerly. Then he stuck his hand in his pocket and brought out four fuses, about five feet long. “These are slow-burning,” he said. “But if you have to set them”—he grinned—“it won’t matter if you get out of here fast or not. You won’t be going nowhere.”
We both laughed. I didn’t think it was a very funny joke, and neither did Gunner. I stowed the dynamite into one of the lockers in the sound room and forgot about it.
At midnight the intercom coughed and announced “Deck force on deck. Others remain below. We are pulling out in a few minutes.”
As I crossed through the control room on my way to the radio shack, I saw a man’s legs coming down the conning tower ladder.
Life on a sub is so intimate that you instantly recognize your crewmates from any angle of vision you see them, and whether they are nude or fully dressed, walking away from you or coming toward you. These legs were strangers. And whoever it was, he was wearing big brown Army regulation shoes—something none of us wore on the Wolf. Then a pair of khaki trousers; and finally the rest of the stranger. He wore a tan field jacket; he turned, and I glimpsed a staggering amount of gold braid on the visor of his cap. Then I recognized him from photographs I’d seen. It was Captain James Fife, Jr., one of the highest submarine command officers in the United States Navy. Later he became Chief of Staff, Submarines, Asiatic Fleet, and received the Distinguished Service Medal. A broad-shouldered, rugged sea veteran, he looked around, his practiced eye taking in the Seawolf’s control room in one approving glance, nodded a courteous “good day” to me, and strode to the charts and began studying them.
More legs—strange legs—began to come down the ladder. This pair was the skinniest pair of shanks I had ever seen. Then bare knees; then a pair of shorts, and then the entire figure came into view, crowned with a white pith helmet. This, I learned later, was Major Wilkinson, aide to General Wavell.
All sorts of scuttlebutt ran through the boat now. It seemed we were taking the U.S. Submarine High Command out from Corregidor. The Swordfish would take out other members of the staff. Among those who left Corregidor at that time, we learned later, were Admiral Hart, Rear Admiral William Glassford, and other ranking U.S. officers.
With our visitors came two radiomen, Don Irish and Duke Woodard. Don, a tall, red-headed fellow about thirty, was gaunt and emaciated after his ordeal on the Rock. It took him days to fill out and regain his vitality. Woodard was thin, too, and suffered intensely from an ulcerated leg wound. Loaiza took him over, and I didn’t see much of him until later. Don told me how they fought to keep their radio going on Corregidor, and gave me another picture of the doggedness and determination of the men who held out so long and so bravely against the Japs.
When they were ready to transmit, he said, four volunteers dashed out with a reel of wire, strung it over scrub brush, and rushed back to send their messages. Seconds later, Jap bombers roared over and blew the antenna to shreds. Undaunted, the Americans watched their chance, raced out again from their tunnel, and strung up a new antenna. And again the Japs rained fire and death from the air to destroy it. Yet, in the midst of that furious and ceaseless barrage, the boys strung up their antenna, sent their messages out, and kept the world informed of what they were doing. Food was a real problem, Don said. They ate only two meals a day, and most of each meal was rice. Their water supply was low. Their ammunition supply was low. Don couldn’t give enough credit to the anti-aircraft batteries, who ran up records for shooting Jap planes out of the sky. The Americans had a delaying job to do, and they did it.
Captain Fife, having gone to the charts, virtually lived with them. He rarely came through the boat. The wardroom was crowded twenty-four hours a day. The messboys had to set up three eating shifts to accommodate everyone: three breakfasts, three lunches, three dinners—the cooks worked marvels preparing meals for more than eighty men on their tiny stove. They and the Filipino boys were real soldiers on the trip out. They never grumbled, yet they were continuously preparing food, serving food, removing food, setting dishes, washing dishes—and, in between, filling and refilling the ten-gallon coffee urn. An average submarine crew can drink thirty gallons of coffee every twenty-four hours—and more when it’s under tension.
Bit by bit the word had been going through the boat that we were heading for Australia, taking the High Command there. That was a short trip—we’d be there in a few days.
Australia meant cable facilities and our first chance to let our folks back home know we were safe. The first moment I had I sat down at my desk and began composing one cable after another to Marjorie, trying to find words to explain all I wanted to say: how I felt when I couldn’t reach her, how I knew she must have worried, how much I missed her and Spike, how I had their photographs right here in front of me when I worked and above my bunk when I slept, so that I saw them the last minute before I fell asleep and the first moment I awoke every morning. At last I settled on: “Feeling fine don’t worry love to all.” I had it neatly typed, with address and signature, and folded in my pocket days before we reached Australia.