“And from there?” I asked. He smiled noncommittally. I knew we would learn soon enough. Next day the word had gotten around to the crew, and all kinds of rumors flew about. First we were going to Brisbane, then Pearl Harbor, then Dutch Harbor, and finally Midway. Something told me we were on our way home. It was now many months since we had left Cavite. We had already been out a long time on this patrol.
Home seemed so far away that night. How would my son greet me? I put my hands behind my head and looked up at their photographs—Marjorie and Spike. Well, they’d waited a long, long time. For months now, in our letters, we had been planning what our first night would be like. We’d settled on dinner in some quiet little restaurant, candles on the table, a full-course meal, topped off by a bottle of expensive wine that had to rest in a bucket of ice. We wouldn’t discuss the war. Marjorie wouldn’t talk to me about the Wolf. No questions about the ships we sunk, or the escapes we had. We would talk about ourselves and about Spike, and about the home we intended to build after the war.
That house had been started one quiet night in the sound shack when I was writing a letter to Marjorie. I talked about a house—a dream house. I even included a few sketches. In the next batch of mail, Marjorie included a number of suggestions. She had ideas about the location of the kitchen. Spike’s room should be here. We’d have a sunroom there. Throughout the long months at sea in every letter I wrote I carried the plans a bit further. Finally between us, we had it finished, just as we wanted it. The last time I saw Spike he was twenty-six days old. I wondered about my brother Roy. He owns a bar in ’Frisco. I promised myself a terrific binge there. Angela, his wife, would top off the evening with her specialty—a spaghetti dinner with all the trimmings. Toward dawn I fell asleep, and it seemed only a few minutes before Lamby was shaking me, telling me it was time for my watch.
We arrived at the new patrol area in midafternoon, and things began to pop at once. It began when Lieutenant Mercer, at the periscope, summoned the Captain. He had spotted a ship—a two-mast affair.
“You’re right,” observed Captain Warder. “Here are the masts, now… Battle stations!”
Our approach was perfect. We fired a few moments later, and the whine of the fish heading straight for the Jap was music in my ears. This time there was no miss. I began to report it.
“They’re going…” I wasn’t able to complete the sentence. A terrific explosion rocked the Wolf. It was the concussion from our torpedo; we must have struck a munitions carrier. It was as terrific and deafening as a depth charge. I tore off the earphones and held my splitting head. My ears were ringing. Maley was shouting, but I couldn’t make out his words. He pointed to the intercom system. I leaned over and pressed my ear against it and heard the Captain giving a blow-by-blow description of the sinking ship. His voice sounded as if he were at the end of a bad telephone connection.
“Christ, boys,” he was yelling. “We knocked the lifeboats right off her… There go the smokestacks… Some damn fool is trying to blow the whistle, steam is coming out of there. There go the Nips jumping over like rats. There’s a second explosion. She’s going down already. She’s breaking apart.” He paused and called to Lieutenant Mercer: “Jim, hurry up if you want a picture of this. Only the stern is showing now.”
Ensign Mercer clipped his camera to the eyepiece. “Got her, sir,” he said.
A moment later Captain Warder, back at the periscope, announced, “There she goes… Good-by!”
My ears still rang from the first blast, but I replaced my phones and listened. A few minutes later I heard the underseas roar that meant her boilers had exploded.
Paul took off his headset. He leaned over and yelled in my ear.
“That’s one Jap bastard that won’t do any damage, Eck!”
The Captain, still scanning the surface, kept up a running description. I put my ear against the intercom again.
“Congratulations, forward room and sound,” he was saying. “Good work, everybody. Wait a minute: There are lifeboats up there. Men are swarming over the sides. Damn it, this sinking can be seen from the beach very easily. I can’t take any chances. We’ll have to take prisoners rather than let them hit the beach and spread the alarm.”
His voice dropped. “I don’t understand that… Wait a minute, though… Yes, I do! We blew the oars right out of the boat. I’ve been wondering why they weren’t rowing. There must have been plenty of men on that ship… I’m figuring on going into that Gulf, and I don’t want those men to spread the alarm. We’ll track them until dark. If conditions permit, we’ll take prisoners.” He kept his eye to the periscope. Men were swimming aimlessly about; others were clinging to spars and debris. Every piece of wreckage had a figure clinging to it. “Those lifeboats are crowded to the rims now,” he went on. “There’s a lot of people swimming around up there yet. All right Jim, mark this lifeboat, zero… zero… five… Look out for signs of activity. Let me know at once if anything shows up.”
He turned the periscope over to Ensign Mercer. As he came by the sound shack, he looked in. “Good work, boys,” he said. “Take it easy for a little while. We may be busy later.”
Lieutenant Deragon went over our records to see if we could identify the ship we’d sunk.
A few minutes later Ensign Mercer, after checking tides and currents, told the Captain the Japs were being floated out toward the Celebes. They were on their way to the open sea, without oars or provisions. According to the charts, the nearest land was 600 miles to the south.
Captain Warder was silent for a moment. “Well,” he said at last, “we won’t have any prisoners tonight.” He paused again. “They’ll never make it. Those poor bastards swimming around… Well, there’s nothing we can do about them.”
We waited until darkness and then surfaced. Jap lifeboats were still bobbing up and down. They must have been a terrified group when they saw the long black shape of the Seawolf bear down on them. The first two Japanese the Captain saw were youngsters. They looked about sixteen, he said. They were stark naked, clinging to two pieces of wreckage. Their clothes had been blown off by the blast. The Captain leaned over the rail cable. “Savvy English?” he shouted.
One boy turned, screamed what sounded like a panic-stricken warning, then let go of his piece of wreckage and swam off. The Captain shouted after him, but he churned the water like a long-distance swimmer and finally vanished in the darkness. Captain Warder asked the remaining boy if he could “Savvy English.” The other shook his head.
“Sousa,” the Captain called, “go down to the rail and see if you can make out a name on that wreckage.”
Eddie leaned far over and examined several pieces floating about, but he could find no identification.
Sousa threw a line out to the boy, but the Jap chattered and would have nothing to do with it. Sousa shouted in exasperation, “Grab hold the line, grab hold!” but the Jap pushed it away each time it dropped nearby. Captain Warder watched this scene silently.
“All right, Sousa, you can’t do anything with him,” he said finally. “Pass the word below to bring up a life jacket and a bottle of whisky.” They were handed up and tossed to the Jap. He caught them and held them. Captain Warder commented dryly:
“If he puts on that jacket and drinks the whisky, he’ll never know what hit him.”
The current was strong. In a few minutes the Jap who wouldn’t be rescued was out of sight and on his way to the open sea.
At that he was given more than the men on the Perch, and the Sea Lion, and the Shark. They didn’t even get a life jacket or a bottle of whisky.