“Eckberg, you’re due for a little rest in the States,” he said. “To insure that rest, is there any school you’d like to attend?”
I thought that over. If I knew anything, it was physics, and physics and electronics were becoming more and more important. Whole new worlds were opening up.
“I’d like to brush up on radio, sir,” I said.
He nodded. “Good!” he said. “Radio it is.”
In much the same fashion Captain Warder made the rounds of all the old-timers, telling them they were due for a rest. The word had gone around that he was due for another war assignment. It would take him off the Wolf.
The trip was routine, but cold. As we came farther north, we began to freeze. We’d been in tropical waters for a long time. We’d lived in a pair of shorts and little else for months. Bit by bit we began to pile covering on us. Pretty soon I was wearing an old leather jacket, and under that two sweatshirts, then a dungaree shirt, and then an undershirt. In my bunk I shivered under two woolen blankets. Loaiza was muttering constantly about the “frigid” weather, lamenting in Spanish, “I can’t stand it another minute.”
We were about halfway home when we began discussing our perennial question, what were we going to do our first night home. I knew what I’d do. First I’d telephone Marjorie. I’d talk to Spike over the telephone. He might even be able to say, “Hello, Pop.” I’d get a kick out of that. Then I’d drop over and surprise my brother Roy in his barroom.
About midnight some of the crew began to drift into the radio room. The shack normally held three men, if they weren’t too big, but before long six were in it somehow. How the bull flew! Every man was determined that the rest of the gang had to hear what he was going to do. We were given graphic descriptions, long and detailed. But after a while the men began to drift out. We were all impatient. None of us could stay in one place long. For the first time the Wolf was beginning to cramp us. We were focusing on the world outside, and that world was terribly big. Only Maley and I were left, and idly I brought out our old song book. There it was, little the worse for wear. And there was the song, “Begin the Beguine.” The book fell open to the page. I mused over the words. I thought, How many times I’ve opened this old book to that page and these words diverted my mind from things that wouldn’t let me relax. “Begin the Beguine,” whether I knew the words or not, was an old friend of mine. And pretty soon I was humming it, and Maley joined me, and we were both singing at the top of our lungs. We were happy. Nobody complained, but now and then an alarmed head was stuck in. The Wolf’s crew was relaxed. Not so long ago one peep out of us, and protests rained about our heads. We’d been under tension. Everybody had been living on nerve—all save Captain Warder, I think. Somehow he knew the secret of relaxation.
In my own case the tension of these last twelve months was to stay with me for a long time after I came home. Marjorie was to be unhappy, Spike afraid to talk to me, because I was so irritable. For weeks after, I’d wake up at two and three in the morning, walk around, smoke half a dozen cigarettes, and try to fall asleep again. For a long time I couldn’t sleep more than three hours at a time.
We were still singing when Lieutenant Deragon poked his head around the corner. We shut up. We must have been pretty loud to bother him. He came into the doorway a minute later, arms akimbo, looked at us, and finally announced:
“Eckberg, I have listened to you moan and groan that damn thing for about a year now. That in itself is all right, but every time you tackle it, it becomes worse. Now either learn the words or shut up.”
I’d already shut up, so I just grinned at him.
The Wolf moved on. The night of the fifth day out, I strolled into Kelly’s Pool Room. Dishman, Zerk, Swede, and a few other men were in there, with John Street the center of attention. They had been discussing the Wolf’s toll of Jap ships. John was sitting there, chewing on a pencil, a pad of paper in front of him.
“O.K.,” he was saying, “here’s the way I figure it.”
I sat in. I’d heard a hell of a lot of those ships go down.
He was adding the totals. “Comes out to over a dozen ships known sunk, and maybe half a dozen damaged. That’s not bad.”
“Not bad!” I said. “Hell, it’s wonderful.”
“You want to remember,” Dishman put in, “most of these we got were men-of-war. The Wolf did okay. There’s nobody got anything to say against her.”
The Wolf came in sight of the Golden Gate. The word came down from the bridge and ran through the ship like wildfire. Requests to go topside were flying up to the conning tower. The reply came, “Nobody allowed on the bridge.” It seems we had a rendezvous with a ship which was to escort us into the Gate. As soon as we passed the Gate, deck hatches were opened.
“Let the boys up on deck,” said the Skipper, “but pass the word that it is cold up here, and they’d better put on all the clothes they have.”
There was a mad rush to the hatches. We were making good speed, and when I came up, the wind almost took my breath away. And the cold. The wind whistled down the deck with numbing effect. The first thing I saw was the mountainous Golden Gate. It looked somber under a dreary gray sky. I could see the pencil-white line of surf, and in the distance, the outline of familiar sights. My mind was in a whirl. Here was the good old U.S.A.! God, I was glad to see it! I stood there and stared. Here was home. Here was a place I hadn’t seen for twenty-five long months. I thought, What in hell ever made the Japs think they could overrun my home? Why, every man, woman, and child would have used clubs to keep them away if they had to. The Japs might have caught us by surprise at Pearl Harbor, but this was home. No Jap would ever dare to try anything here. I don’t think I ever had such sense of pride and love for my country as I had on the deck of the Wolf that cold day, cruising slowly over the slate-black waters into port.
Suddenly we stopped. I thought, What now? In peacetime we could expect to be held up by customs officials and agents of the Department of Agriculture. If one of these inquisitive fellows was coming aboard, I’d gladly volunteer to throw him into the bay. We certainly had no agricultural produce on the Wolf. We didn’t have enough fresh fruit to feed an ant.
A speedboat dashed out to us. A young Navy lieutenant clambered aboard. We must have looked bedraggled and woebegone compared to this pink-cheeked young officer. We were bundled up in sweaters, our underwear was hanging out of our shorts, we were unshaven, our noses were red, our cheeks sunken, and we had six- to nine-inch beards. What was this stranger aboard for?
“Why, he’s the pilot,” somebody said.
A pilot? We resented that. Our Skipper managed to bring us through all sorts of hell without a pilot, didn’t he? He could bring the Wolf in here with his eyes closed. In a few minutes we got under way again. The air was full of planes now. It seemed strange to stand on deck and not hear the order, “Take her down.” Subconsciously we expected to be strafed any minute. We proceeded up that bay, and now it seemed the entire water front was celebrating our arrival. Whistles were blowing, flags were flying, and overhead the planes were dipping in salute.
For us? I couldn’t get it. None of us on deck could. Why, the Wolf, so far as the man on the street was concerned, was a ghost. She was a submarine that had been commissioned one December day, before the war, and then vanished, except for a brief note here and there. All anyone knew was that the Seawolf had done herself proud. How did that Navy announcement read?… “a cruise that would go down as one of the epic stories of submarine warfare”?