When we arrived in Surabaya, it was under almost its first concerted bombing of the war. The very first raid had come only four days ago, when nearly eighty Jap bombers, with a tremendous fighter escort, raided the harbor, and aimed many of their bombs on the large hotels in town, thinking the Dutch and U.S. High Command was there.
We waited until a tall, gangling Navy lieutenant came aboard, a .45 at his hip, and a satchel in his hand. He was the paymaster, and he was escorted by two sailors both sporting .45’s. He gave us a week’s pay in Dutch guilders. Then there was more excitement. Gus Wright came into the mess hall with a five-gallon can.
“Milk,” someone shouted, and we went for it.
Gus pulled off the cover, stuck a dipper in it, and we gathered around and gulped down fresh milk until we were bloated.
Then we went ashore. The town was so busy we could hardly believe our eyes. We hadn’t seen anything like it for a long time. But, after all, this was the third greatest naval base in the East, second only to Singapore and Hong Kong. A jetty more than a half-mile long lay along the harbor’s entrance, and here thousands of barrels of oil were daily piped into tankers for the vessels of the Allied nations. One glance, and I knew the Japs weren’t having much trouble finding this base from the air. Two rivers outlined it clearly.
In the town, trolleys jammed with people—whites, blacks, turban-crowned Orientals, and slim, brown-skinned Javanese—rattled through the busy streets. Most of the large buildings were painted a sickly green—part of a camouflage plan. The streets were colorful. Brilliant-saronged natives brushed elbows with army and navy men dressed in almost every uniform of the Allied nations. Rawboned Australians, looking more like Texans than Texans themselves, strode along wearing their traditional up-swept hats. The city was dotted with large onion-shaped air-raid shelters, about thirty feet high, camouflaged green to blend in with Surabaya’s vegetation. Dutch soldiers walked through the streets with huge eighteen-inch Luger pistols in their holsters.
The crew of the Wolf wandered about town, gorging themselves on fresh fruit piled up in the open markets, visiting the bars with their half-size swinging doors, and catching up on air and light and sunshine.
Our second day in town Captain John Wilkes, U.S. Submarine Squadron Commander, told Captain Warder that a rest camp had been established at Malang, a tiny town high in the mountains about fifty miles south of Surabaya. The crew was divided into two sections, one to stay and repair the ship, the other to go to Malang for three days; then the crew sections alternated, and the second group was to have its three days’ rest. We were to be guests of the local Dutch naval garrison.
I was in the first group. We started for the railway station in town the morning of our third day and got there just as the air-raid sirens began to wail. We were all in whites and conspicuous from the air. We’d been told the Japs kept an eye out for white uniforms. The Javanese natives milled about, panic-stricken; we tried to reassure them by moving casually through the crowd. Lieutenant Holden suggested that we better get out of the station. One of the first objectives of bombers is a railway station. We climbed a twenty-foot embankment and found ourselves in a rice field, with about six inches of water in it. Water or no water, we crouched in the field and waited.
The planes came over a minute later, twenty-seven in formations of V’s, flying high and straight. They paid no attention to the railway station, however; they continued toward the water front and dropped their bombs there. We heard the explosions. Then, a minute later, they were roaring back—only one plane missing. Surabaya’s aircraft defenses were pretty bad then.
We enjoyed ourselves at Malang. We met a radio operator there from a Dutch submarine, who was in a pitiful state. He was one of two survivors; his boat had been sunk by Jap depth charges near Java, in very shallow water, and it sank with an angle at the bow. The two escaped through torpedo tubes. He was still shaky, and as he talked about it a muscle in his jaw pulsed and twitched. He had lost all his teeth during the ordeal. And he’d come to Malang to get himself a brand-new set of store teeth.
Jap bombing planes came over Malang daily, but they didn’t bother with the little resort. They were hunting a large bomber airfield a couple of miles away, but so cleverly camouflaged by the Dutch that the Japs never located it—at least, not while we were there. We’d watch our own B-17’s take off each morning, and then a few hours later the Japs would sail by, probably cursing as they searched in vain for the field.
We were called back to the Wolf at the end of our third day. In Surabaya we learned the Wolf had been forced to go through her regular hide-and-seek routine. The air-raids never let up; the Japs were methodical, roaring over the water front between 9 and 10 a.m. The Wolf would nose out into the bay before 9 a.m., submerge, and cruise about or lie on the bottom. At dusk she returned to the dock again.
We wondered why new orders hadn’t arrived. We were ready to register a loud protest if they meant ferry duty again. But at last Captain Warder came briskly aboard after a conference, and his first order was to take on a full allowance of warhead torpedoes.
That meant action. Our freighting days were over. And we got action—far more than we ever bargained for.
CHAPTER VI
Fire One!… Fire Two!
“TAKE IN all lines.” Captain Warder’s voice rang out in the darkness. The great Dutch port of Surabaya lay about us in a half-circle, blacked out against the enemy.
“All back one-third!”
The U.S.S. Seawolf trembled as she backed into the harbor.
We turned around until we were headed due north. Heavy with fuel and food and torpedoes, we began snaking our way through the mine-filled waters on our fifth mission of the war, once again charged with unrestricted submarine warfare—to sink and destroy enemy shipping wherever encountered. It was still early in 1942; the Japanese juggernaut, triumphantly crushing all resistance, was roaring southward with growing fury; and the Seawolf, done at last with assignments as transport and ferry, was on her way to glory. We had aboard a Dutch pilot who knew every inch of these waters, the position of every mine. By his side on the bridge stood Captain Warder, and together they peered through the darkness as we moved forward, gliding past the dark shapes of wharves and jetties with their cranes grotesque against the purple sky. Above the steady purring of the Wolf’s Diesels came the sharp chug! chug! of a motor. The Wolf came to a halt, riding in a mirror-smooth sea; a flurry of conversation on the bridge, and the pilot, with a wave of his hand, climbed over. The Wolf moved on, alone.
Our bow was pointed for Macassar Straits, between Borneo and the Celebes. The Dutch were fighting a desperate delaying action, aided by Flying Fortresses operating from secret bases in Java, against the Japs who had to cross Macassar Straits to get to the rich oil wells of Borneo. At midnight of the second day I received a short coded dispatch which was rushed to the Skipper. A few minutes later the Wolf veered sharply to the right, reversed her course, and, working up to full power, raced back the way she came. The news spread swiftly. We were going to Lombok Straits, a narrow passage between Lombok and the island of Bali, 120 miles southeast of Surabaya. The Japs’ southward push to gain that great semicircular chain of islands, Java, Bali, Lombok, Flores, and Timor, which alone stood between the Japs and Australia, had gained such momentum that they had already overrun the Celebes Sea area, our original destination. Now our job was to get to the Lombok Straits and impede that southward avalanche. At any other time we might have been excited about skirting the coast of romantic Bali, but now the Wolf’s crew was all business. The Japs were cleaning up; no one could stop them. How swiftly they were coming down we learned with shocking suddenness that night when radio frequency told us Singapore had fallen. The Japs had taken it the very day we left Surabaya. There were grim faces aboard the Wolf. Singapore gone? That had been a symbol of might and resistance before any of us had been born. The picture of Japanese strategy—hedgehopping island by island—became clearer, and so did the part we were to play. The Japs wanted Java; their aim was to smash the Dutch defenses protecting Bali which would be one of their stepping-stones to Surabaya. From Sumatra they would cross the Sunda Straits eastward; from Bali they would cross westward, and from Borneo and the Celebes southward; and with an endless supply of men and matériel, they would launch a triumphant blow against Java, heart of the barrier. Once Java was theirs, Surabaya with its invaluable harbor, its magnificent naval installations, its inexhaustible riches, would be in their hands.