Torpedo Run Read online

  TORPEDO RUN

  Robb White

  BOOK ONE: The Boat

  1

  She was nameless, with only a number given to her by the Navy, but her crew called her Slewfoot. She was 77 feet long, 20 feet wide, and drew 4 feet of water. When her temperamental engines were right and her bottom was clean she could go 60 miles an hour, which, for a boat, is very fast. In the narrow waters around Bayonne, New Jersey, where she was built, she looked pretty big. On the vastness of the Pacific Ocean, going about her deadly business in the dark nights of war, she was a splinter.

  During World War II, Slewfoot and the rest of the PT boats were the smallest warships the Navy had. Like many small things in nature, Slewfoot's life depended on her speed, for she had no protection against gunfire, torpedoes, bombs, or strafing planes. Unlike the Navy's other ships, she had no armor; there was nothing for a man to hide behind when the tracers began to arc toward him, for Slewfoot was built of wood and mostly plywood at that.

  She was designed to hit and—run. Designed to carry three engines with the combined ram of four thousand horsepower to get Slewfoot into position and—out again.

  Seventy-seven feet of plywood carrying a wallop. On the forepeak there was a 37-millimeter cannon. On both bows were 20-millimeter cannon. Amidships forward were two rocket-launching racks. A little aft of them were two sets of twin .30-caliber machine guns. Farther aft, two on each side, were twin .50-caliber machine guns in turrets. On the stern there was a Bofors 40-millimeter cannon. Sometimes there were more guns than there were men to shoot them.

  In addition to the guns, cannons, and rockets, Slewfoot carried two flip-over torpedo racks, each armed with two torpedoes capable of sinking any ship afloat.

  And, against submarines, she had depth charges in racks on the stern.

  Riding Slewfoot in battle was a little like riding a bomb. In her tanks she carried three thousand gallons of highly explosive aviation gasoline. When the PTs were hit they rarely sank in the slow and heartrending way of other ships. PTs simply vanished in one quick, awful flash of flame and smoke. Compared with other warships, Slewfoot was manned by a bunch of kids. The oldest man aboard was the Captain, an ancient twenty-one. The rest of them were nineteen, eighteen, even seventeen years old. There were usually a dozen men riding Slewfoot through the dark sea, their eyes straining for sight of the enemy, engines muffled, guns manned and ready.

  There were motor machinist's mates—"motor-macs"—to baby the three Packard engines; torpedomen for the "fish"; gunners. There was a quartermaster who watched over the charts and and the movements of the ship; and a boatswain's mate—the bosun—to care for the boat itself. There was a radarman to watch the thin line going around and around; and, of course, the cook. There were two officers—the captain and the executive officer.

  The men could sleep in the "dayroom" forward, just abaft the chain locker, in bunks along the sides. It was like sleeping in a crowded elevator that had broken loose and was falling to the bottom of the shaft, over and over. But you got used to it just as you got used to standing forever with your knees loose and bent, and learned, many the hard way, what the man meant when he said, "One hand for you and one hand for the ship."

  It took you only once to find out why they told you to fall down on a PT boat. Standing up, holding on, your bent, loose knees absorbed the pounding of the hull against the sea, your body balanced with the astounding roil and pitch. If you fell down, when you tried to push yourself up, the deck dropped out from under you, then the boat came up as you came down. It was like trying to stand up on the bare back of the father of the Strawberry Roan.

  One hand for you, one hand for Slewfoot.

  The PT boats would take on anything—if the skipper and the crew had guts enough. The size of the enemy's battleships was awful, but the PTs took them on in wholesale lots. They fought it out with destroyers, cruisers, carriers, barges, landing craft, aircraft, even submarines and artillery on the shore. They lost some, they won some.

  A battleship can stand off twenty-five miles away and paste you. PTs can't do that. They've got to go in close and hit and get out—if they can. The boats can do it—all it takes is a skipper with guts enough and a crew who believes in the skipper.

  The Skipper of Slewfoot was a quiet, small, inoffensive man named Jones with the courage of a lion. Jones never raised his voice, never seemed angry or depressed or—afraid. If Jones said, on Slewfoot, "Let's go get 'em," the crew were ready to go get 'em. They had absolute faith in Jones. If he took you in close to the enemy—so close you could see the men behind the guns that were shooting at you—he'd bring you out again. Or so they said on Slewfoot.

  In a little boat like that, where the twelve men lived so closely together—and died together—there was a feeling you didn't find on the big ships. There wasn't room for the too-bad-Jack-I'm-getting-mine attitude; no room for the selfish man, or for the coward (although every man on Slewfoot had been scared stiff, many times), or for the griper and the discontent. If you didn't like duty on Slewfoot—out. Just like that—out. If you couldn't get along with your shipmates—out. If you couldn't stand up in the searing blaze of the enemy's searchlights with the stuff he was throwing at you like a fiery wall and shoot—out;

  And if you didn't believe in the Captain you were in trouble.

  In the daytime Slewfoot hid up one of the stinking New Guinea rivers, covered from stem to stern with big tropical leaves and branches so the enemy airplanes couldn't spot her and blast her in the daylight. In the daytime Slewfoot's crew lived on Snob Hill back in the jungle but not out of sight of their boat.

  Snob Hill was a charming place to live. When it wasn't raining it was getting ready to rain in five minutes. The number of bugs that could bite you, sting you, eat their way into you, walk on you, and spit in your eye was unbelievable. There couldn't be that many bugs—but there were.

  Snob Hill was an area of mud a little higher than the rest of the mud. The regulation two-foot tent pegs were useless; the crew of Slewfoot used pegs ten feet long, and even they didn't get to the bottom of the mud.

  The tents were a dirty, greenish gray and looked about like the jungle all around them. To keep their cots from sinking out of sight into the mud while they slept, the men strapped tree limbs to the cot legs. You started out with the cot up against the ceiling of the tent—you woke up level with the mud, sometimes below it.

  All manner of things lived in the mud—frogs, lizards, salamanders, snakes, worms—but the worst were the leeches. They were long, slimy, and black. All you had to do was put your foot down in the mud and the leeches would appear, squirming toward you—so many of them that it looked as if the mud were moving. If you couldn't get out of the mud and tear them off, they could suck you dry.

  One day in 1943, the crew of Slewfoot was down on the strip of mangy beach between the jungle and the sea trying to dig a hole in the soggy ground. It was raining and the rain soaked the ground they were digging in and poured into their hole faster than they could scoop it out.

  Finally the Executive Officer, whose name was Peter Brent, stopped digging for a moment, looked up at the gray, close, soaking clouds and said, "This is no place for him. Let's get the boat and do it right."

  The crew, soaked with rain and covered with mud, stopped digging and looked at him, surprised. A FT has no business on the open sea in daylight, for then she can be seen and an enemy ship can stand off out of her range and slaughter her. Or the planes, like vultures in the sky, can swoop down on her and take her.

  The Executive Officer knew that just as well as the crew did but miybe he was a little closer to it. Anyway, he walked away from the hole full of mud and rain; the rest of the men, carrying their shovels, followed him back through the dripping, foul-smelling jungle to Sle
wfoot.

  The chief motormac's name was Sko. In the records of the Navy it was written Skowalskila-tovich, or something like that, but on Slewfoot his name was Sko. Next to Jones, the Skipper, Sko was the oldest man aboard—twenty—and had more time in the Navy even than the Skipper and the Exec. And he was a good motormac who could nurse those three big Packard engines into life when nobody else could make them do anything but shine. Now he dried off the ignition harnesses while the rest of the crew got ready to go to sea.

  They took the rotting tarps off the guns and rockets and torpedoes and cannon and unlimbered everything that could shoot. Sam, the cook, went up to Snob Hill, climbed the topless palm tree and took down the flag that flew there night and day. It was, Sam noticed, ragged on the free end and stained with the steam from the jungle, but it was still the flag. He folded it the way he had seen the Marines do it and carried it down to Slewfoot.

  Then, when Sko got a roar out of the Packards, they untied Slewfoot from the trees on the bank and started easing her down the river.

  "We'd better muffle 'em," the Executive Officer called down to Sko. "Don't want to wake up any shore batteries."

  Sko, who sat in a tractor seat right over the engines, put the mufflers on the exhausts so that the roar died to a low purr and the speed dropped off. Some of the crew thought Sko had the dirtiest job on the boat. Sitting over the engines that way, he got all the heat they put out, and the sickening fumes of gas and oil and rubber. And when the Skipper shoved the three throttles forward, the sound of the engines became so great that, to Sko, it seemed solid. Those things didn't worry him as much, though, as another thing. Sko never knew what was going on topside—never knew when an enemy shell was going to come in there with him and wipe out him and the engines and the gas and the boat. He just had to sit there in the bouncing tractor seat and listen to the guns yammering up on the deck and wait.

  The Executive Officer conned the boat slowly down the river, ducking his head under the low-hanging and concealing jungle. It was like going down a dark green, soaking wet tunnel; but at the far end he could see the Pacific, now gray and closed in by the rain.

  This was a dangerous thing to do, and the Navy wouldn't like it if they heard about it. But, he thought, it's the only decent way to do it.

  The men stood at their battle stations, looking down the greenish tunnel. None of them had anything to say, and none of them looked aft at the flag.

  Slewfoot slid out of the jungle's shelter and as she did, the rain stopped and, suddenly, the sun shone and even the brown water seemed to sparkle. "That helps," the Executive Officer remarked to Murphy, the quartermaster. "That's all we need—plenty of sun so the Japs can see us from here to Tokyo."

  Murphy, a beat-up little Irishman who looked a lot older than he was, didn't say anything. This was the worst day he had ever known, and he was afraid that if he started talking about it he might begin to cry. He tried to figure that it was all just part of the war and that's the way it went, but it didn't do any good. He was glad when the Exec shoved the throttles forward—now he had something to do.

  Slewfoot's lean, curved bow came up and her squat stern went down and she moved. All hands were rocked back on their heels as the boat leaped forward, throwing two perfectly formed sheets of brownish water away from her.

  The Executive Officer took her out on the sea until she was clear of the great roil of dirty brown New Guinea water flowing from the mouth of the river and was in the clean, blue, shining water of the Pacific itself.

  All hands were alert now as they always had to be in the PT boats. Some scanned the cloud-rimmed sky for planes, some searched ahead, some to the side, while others watched the long green line of New Guinea—watching for the little flashes of guns. There was a finger on every trigger; Sko was watching the engines, making sure that, if it was needed, they would put out everything they had; the Exec, standing on the little steering platform, half his body above the nothing windshield, wiped spray out of his face and looked ahead.

  Then the Exec rang for all engines to stop and pulled the throttles back. Slewfoot lost her balance and settled heavily in the water to lie there, wallowing in the slow waves. Now she was awkward and uncomfortable to be aboard for she was built to go, not to lie there thrown this way and that by the sea.

  The Executive Officer said, "All hands stay at your battle stations except you, Murph, and you, Preacher."

  The Preacher was a rated torpedoman named Welborn who said that if he survived the war he was going to wander all over the world preaching to the people not to fight each other any more.

  The Exec and Murph and the Preacher went aft past the 40-millimeter cannon, past the depth charge racks, past the smoke generator, all the way to the stern.

  The Executive Officer said, "Make it short, Preacher. It'll be like shooting fish in a barrel if we get caught out here with no way on."

  The Preacher said, "I don't know how it goes—in the Book."

  "Just say the way you feel," the Exec told him.

  The Preacher went to stand beside the flag. "Oh Lord," he said, "please let this man be welcome in Your Kingdom for he was the best man we ever knew. Amen."

  Then the Exec and Murph and the Preacher did the wrong thing, for the flag is not supposed to go too. But they left the flag wrapped around the Skipper when they rolled him off the stern; and in the water it unfurled a little as it sank, the red and white and blue growing dimmer until they couldn't see it any more.

  It began to rain again as they went forward and Sko started the engines. You couldn't tell on the way back if any man aboard Slewfoot had tears in his eyes because their faces were wet with rain; but every one of them looked back at least once to the unmarked place in the Pacific Ocean where Jones, the Skipper, was buried with the flag.

  In the days to come every one of them wished with all his heart that Jones had not been killed.

  2

  Peter Brent, the Exec, and Sko were sitting in the crew's quarters listening to the rain thudding on the deck above and talking about the war and the future of Slewfoot and the death of the Skipper.

  After the battle for Guadalcanal, the United States forces were moving westward again, driving against the Japanese, who had moved, since 1941, down into the southwestern Pacific islands, just as they had moved into the Philippines, Guam, and all the islands of the Central Pacific. On land and on sea this was bitter, mean, dirty fighting, the terrible land and its stinking jungle almost as great an enemy as the Japanese. The mission of the PT boats was to stop the flow of reinforcements coming over the sea from the Empire, to sink the ships carrying troops and supplies before they could reach the shores of the islands.

  "We got a long way to go," Sko said, looking at a map of the Pacific. He didn't do this often because it always depressed him. So far to go. The immensity of the Pacific. The miles and thousands of miles of that ocean. With, at last, the islands of the Japanese far to the north. On the land areas scattered across these miles a lot of Marines were going to die and on those millions of square miles of Pacific a lot more sailors were going to die.

  Slewfoot was tied up to trees on the banks of the Morobe River, which flowed out of the island of New Guinea in the Bismarck Archipelago. Sko was sitting on a narrow wooden bench only 8° south of the Equator but 148° east of Greenwich, England. A year ago he had never heard of New Guinea, the Arafura Sea, the Morobe River. Sko folded the map so he couldn't see it. "Man, I never thought I'd ever wind up in a place like this," he said.

  "You haven't been anywhere yet," Peter Brent told him. "Wait until you hit the bright lights and soft music of Walingai, Madang, Wewak, Kairiru, Valif—or Aitape, now that's a spot."

  "So what are the poor people doing today?" Sko looked over at Brent, wondering how to say what he wanted to say without being a greaseball. He just couldn't say, "Peter, next to the Skipper, you're the best PT-boat officer in the Navy and I—and all the rest of the crew—want you to be skipper now." So what could he say?

&n
bsp; He said, "Are they going to let you stay as skipper, Mr. Brent?"

  "I don't know," Brent told him.

  "All they've got to do is send us out one of those shiny ensigns they've got in Melville, Rhode Island. Wouldn't take long to get the shine off him and make an executive officer out of him. Then we'd be set."

  When Brent didn't say anything it worried Sko. "You want to be skipper, don't you? I mean, you don't want somebody else running the boat, do you?"

  "How would you feel, Sko, if somebody said, 'Okay, you take Jones's place'?"

  "I see what you mean. He had big shoes. And when I first saw him I said to myself, 'Oh, oh, we're in trouble.' Remember that day in Tulagi when he came through the mud with his pants rolled up and said he was going to be the new skipper? He looked like one more drop of rain would wash him clean away. Man, he was wispy. And I thought to myself, 'That little twerp can't fight his way out of a wet paper bag with a hole in it.'" Sko looked up at the overhead where the rain was soaking through the patch the bosun had put on the shell hole. "I was wrong."

  "You were wrong."

  "I don't go for these big, serious words," Sko said, still looking at the film of rain running along the plywood, "but Jonesy was all courage. And I don't mean like these guys who'll walk up and slap a giant and get their brains beat out. Jonesy would figure it out so he slapped the giant down." Sko kept on looking at the overhead. "What I mean is, Skipper, you were right there with Jonesy all the time. You never said well maybe we ought to pass this one up, or not go in so close, or slip on by in the dark. You never did."

  "With Jonesy it wouldn't have done any good," Brent told him.

  "What I mean still is … well, I think if they let you go on running the boat we'd come out okay. The Navy ought to be able to see how logical that is. You know us and we know you and old Slewfoot could keep on blasting 'em like she always has. Just send us one of them shiny ensigns for an exec."