The Commodore Page 6

  SIX

  Nouméa

  Two days later Sluff found himself waiting outside the flag offices on board USS Argonne, the submarine tender that had been converted to a support ship for Commander, Southern Pacific (COMSOPAC). Looking around, Sluff thought these were rather cramped quarters for a vice admiral and his staff. He sat in one of three metal straight-backed chairs lined up against the bulkhead out in the flag passageway, like a truant awaiting a session with the principal. There’d been no offers of coffee and a distinctly chilly reception in the outer office from the assembled yeomen. It was the end of the day, and Sluff wondered if it was the end of his command tour as well.

  J. B. King had arrived in the harbor at midday yesterday, her decks crowded with survivors from the Calhoun, Morgan, and Walke. Normally a lowly destroyer would have been sent to anchorage in the beautiful harbor’s spacious roads, but because of the wounded, she went pierside. Once everyone had been taken off, they conducted a freshwater washdown, refueled, and took aboard fresh provisions. At noon the port captain discovered that a destroyer was taking up pier space and directed them out to anchorage forthwith. For the rest of the day the ship declared holiday routine, and as many people who could got some much-needed sleep.

  Sluff was not one of them. All the message traffic that had been backing up since they’d lost their long-haul communications antennas arrived like an avalanche. Some of it was not friendly. Admiral Lee had sent a more detailed report of the battleship action claiming that the sole Japanese battleship had been so badly damaged by Washington’s fire that she’d been scuttled. The South Dakota’s damage was extensive, if a bit superficial in terms of her fighting ability. There was a vague reference to the fact that she’d lost all electrical power a few minutes into the engagement. Investigation to follow. The loss of three out of his four van destroyers was cast in the light of a valiant sacrifice, the destroyers eating the Long Lance torpedoes obviously meant for the two battlewagons. Except for USS J. B. King, whose maneuvers raised some questions. The fact that King had been out of touch since the engagement was described as officially “worrisome.”

  When he’d read that, Sluff had called the exec and asked him to compile the track sheets from the night of the battleship fight. He had wanted to be ready for the inevitable summons to the headquarters ashore. Normally J. B. King would have had a division commander or a squadron commander to answer to, but the formation that night had been a catch team with no unit commander to boss the destroyers.

  “Commander Wolf, the chief of staff will see you now,” a voice announced from the flag office doorway.

  Sluff got up and followed the yeoman into one of the inner offices, where Captain Miles Browning, chief of staff to Vice Admiral Halsey, sat behind his desk like the dragon he very much pretended to resemble. He was partially bald, with a slight mustache and the look of a man who is perpetually fed up with just about everything. Sluff thought the office wasn’t very large, considering that this headquarters served the commander of all American forces assigned to the Guadalcanal campaign. There was a conference table in the middle of the room, a steel desk for the chief of staff, behind which was a bank of portholes overlooking the anchorage where the sun was headed for the far, blue horizon. There was a set of wooden batwing doors that led into the inner sanctum, the admiral’s office. Three oversized ceiling fans sluggishly stirred the air but did little to cool the room, and the ship’s own vents simply irritated the hot, humid air. There was a single chair in front of the desk. Captain Browning indicated with his chin that Sluff was to sit there. Sluff thought it felt a little staged, like a Naval Academy come-around. Sluff decided to be as hard-nosed as this guy seemed to be.

  “Commander Wolf,” Browning began, “questions have been raised about the performance of J. B. King during the engagement off Savo two nights ago. Do you have some answers to that?”

  “Probably, sir,” Sluff said. “What are the questions?”

  Browning frowned. Apparently that wasn’t the answer he’d expected. He leafed through some messages on his desk, picked one up, scanned it quickly, and then looked up at Sluff. “Says here you left the battleship formation when the shooting started and then went radio silent. Explain yourself, if you can.”

  “If I can?” Sluff replied. “Is this some kind of court, Captain?”

  Browning’s face reddened. “Watch yourself, mister,” he growled. “I ask the questions, you answer. Why did you leave the formation against orders?”

  “There were no orders, for starters,” Sluff said. “We received two tactical signals that night. The first was to anticipate night action. The second was to start shooting when the heavies did.”

  “Bullshit,” Browning snapped.

  “No, not bullshit, Captain,” Sluff said, trying to control his temper. “Those were the only two tactical signals we received before the fight began. We had been assigned a station in the van upon join-up, but other than that, there was no op order, no standard operating procedures, no communications plan or other instruction as to what Admiral Lee wanted us to do.”

  “He wanted you to screen the heavies, for Chrissakes,” Browning said. “That’s your job. That’s what destroyers do.”

  “Well, yes,” Sluff said. “We assumed that. But he put four tin cans ahead of the battleships and then said nothing further. Once the Japs showed up on radar, all he told us was to start shooting when the big guys did. And that’s what we did.”

  “Then what the hell is this ‘departed the formation’ business?”

  “We tracked the approaching column of Jap ships on our radar. There was one group coming down the east side of Savo. There were more Japs on the other side of Savo, but at that time, we couldn’t see them. When the battlewagons opened fire, so did we. All of us, all four destroyers. The range was extreme but the Japs got a pasting, mainly from the two battleships, with us small boys getting our licks in, too. On our radar, it looked like their formation fell apart, but then they regrouped, headed east for about a minute and a half, and then turned north. South Dakota quit shooting, but Washington never stopped.”

  “Okay, so: Then?”

  “That turn to the east got my attention,” Sluff said. “If they were just running, they’d have come about a hundred and eighty degrees and bent on the turns. But they didn’t—they got broadside to us for ninety seconds, and then they turned north. As far as I was concerned, that meant torpedoes were coming. Long Lance torpedoes.”

  “You saw torpedoes on your radar did you?” Browning scoffed.

  Sluff stared at him, knowing he was being baited. “No, Captain,” he said softly. “We didn’t see torpedoes on the radar. You can’t see torpedoes on a radar but you can read operational reports. You can study previous engagements. You can learn from those. The Japs aren’t chicken. They’re street fighters. And when they get sideways to you in a night fight for a minute or so, and only then haul ass out of there, it can only mean one thing. The Long Lances are coming. I chose to maneuver out of the torpedo water. That’s why I ‘departed the formation’—it was doomed.”

  “You had no orders to do that,” Browning snapped. “So who the hell—”

  “The destroyers were on the sidelines during that fight, Captain,” Sluff interrupted. “When battleships duke it out, destroyers take cover. As I said before, we, in fact, had no orders at all, other than to open fire when the heavies did. Which we did. We all did. But once I thought the Long Lances were coming, I decided to stay alive to fight another day.”

  “You decided?” Browning said. “Who do you think you are, Wolf? I’ll tell you what you are: You’re a brand-new, untested CO in a brand-new, untested ship. What could you possibly know about a night surface action?”

  Fuck it, Sluff thought. This guy was every inch the prick everyone said he was. “More than any aviator,” he said, having noted the gold wings on Browning’s khaki shirt.

  Browning’s face went bright red as he rose out of his desk chair. “You listen here
, Tonto—”

  “All right,” a gravelly voice said. “That’s enough.” Sluff turned to find Halsey himself, all bushy eyebrows and crocodile-faced, standing there in the batwing doors. “Miles, I want to talk to the skipper, here.”

  “But, Admiral, we can not tolerate this kind of insolent—”

  “He was there, Miles,” Halsey interrupted. “We weren’t. I want to hear what happened. Captain Wolf, get in here and start from the beginning.”

  Sluff followed the admiral into the inner office, but not before giving Browning a look that said, See you outside if you think you’re man enough. Browning just glared. Halsey sat down behind his desk, lit a cigarette, and then pointed to a decanter of Scotch on a side table. “I take a splash of soda,” he said. “Fix one for yourself.”

  Sluff was a bourbon man, but this was not the time to quibble with Bull Halsey. He fixed the admiral a drink, poured an inch for himself, and then sat down in one of the three chairs in front of Halsey’s desk. He was still thinking about going back out there into the other office and pitching Browning through a window.

  “Let me set the stage,” Halsey said. “Two nights ago, the Japs came down from Rabaul to once and for all smash Henderson Field with a fourteen-inch shelling and then land a convoy’s worth of troops, probably fifteen thousand soldiers, to take the airfield and run the Americans into the jungle. Two nights before that they came for the same purpose, and a force of our cruisers and destroyers drove right into them, literally, right into them, and made them turn back. At great cost, I might add.”

  “Yes, sir, we saw them, or what was left of them.”

  “Okay, then,” Halsey said. “When Callaghan and Scott went up against two battleships, some cruisers, and a bunch of torpedo destroyers, they got their asses kicked. But: The Japs lost one of their battleships, so they turned back. For one day. To regroup. When it became obvious they were gonna try again, I sent two battleships up there to see if we could stop them. And it worked. The Japs lost a second battleship, and the next morning Marine air on Cactus destroyed most of that convoy. Drowned those sunsabitches. Now the Nips’re all back in Rabaul wondering what the hell happened.”

  Sluff tried the Scotch. Not bad, he thought. “Yes, sir,” he said, for want of anything else to say.

  “I was eavesdropping when you were talking to my chief of staff,” Halsey continued. “I am sympathetic with the fact that you didn’t know what was going on and that you had no specific orders. Three of the van destroyers were subsequently blown to pieces. You managed to avoid getting sunk. Tell me some more about that.”

  Sluff told him that they were indeed make-learns out here in the South Pacific, as everyone seemed happy to remind him. So he and his officers had studied the reports of previous battles, talked about what they would do, given certain tactical situations, and then trained to do that. “We were blasting away against that eastern column,” he said. “Guns under radar control, shells landing where they were supposed to. Then the Japs opened up and we got a taste. One shell exploded overhead and took down all our radio aerials. But it was nothing compared to what the battleships were doing. Every time they fired a salvo we were all blinded. Everybody except our radars, of course.” He paused to take a breath. “It was my exec who warned me about what the Japs might be doing.”

  “Turning to launch torpedoes.”

  “Yes, sir,” Sluff said. “Their five-inch guns—our five-inch guns—they can raise some hell. But nothing like what one of those Long Lance torpedoes can do. Walke was right behind us and, by the light of the battleship guns, I saw her get blown in half, both ends jumping into the air and then disappearing in a cloud of fire and steam. Then the other two, Calhoun and Morgan, blew up. I’m ashamed to say that I was glad—for just an instant—that I’d ordered King to turn away, but those three ships never had a chance.”

  “What happened then?”

  “It looked like South Dakota stopped shooting just as she was illuminated by star shells and a ship’s searchlight from the west side of Savo. We’d been shooting at the first Japs to show up, but I think the main group was coming down on the west side of Savo, using the island to mask them. She started catching hell. The Japs concentrated on her and she was obviously taking hits. But Washington kept going and kept shooting, so I drove down her unengaged side to stay out of her way. Our radar showed a big one in the general direction of Washington’s fire, and she was shooting back. She was the only one we could see firing, so she may have been a battleship, too.”

  “She was,” Halsey said. “IJN Kirishima. Sank later that night.”

  Sluff grinned. Some good news, for a change. “Anyway, Washington finally broke it off and headed southwest. South Dakota had already turned south, so suddenly we were alone out there, behind the big guys now, and there were several Jap ships still coming, although they’d slowed down a lot. I turned around and headed back towards where the other three destroyers had gone down.”

  “Why didn’t you stay with the battleships?” Halsey asked.

  “We couldn’t contribute anything to their withdrawal,” Sluff said. “We had no comms with anybody, and there was the matter of three destroyers’ worth of survivors in the water. I decided to go back for them.”

  Halsey looked at him for a long moment and then nodded. “How many did you get?”

  “Between four and five hundred,” Sluff said. “Some of them went to Guadalcanal, others to Tulagi, the rest we brought here.”

  Halsey whistled softly. “That’s a job well done, Captain,” he said. “Very well done. And you couldn’t tell Ching Lee what you were doing because you’d lost your long-haul antennas.”

  “Yes, sir,” Sluff said. “We rigged a temporary antenna at first light, but our first priority was getting people out of the water. It was bad out there, Admiral. There was so much fuel oil, the guys in the water couldn’t see us from fifty feet away. Even the sharks wouldn’t come in. We had to use our topside speakers to call them in toward the ship. The Marines finally sent out Mike boats for the worst of the injured, and they did a better job getting people out of the water.”

  Halsey sipped on his Scotch. The setting sun filled the office with an orange glow. Sluff yawned and Halsey saw it. He put down his glass. “Okay, you go get some rest. We’re reorganizing the destroyer forces and this time we’re going to make sure every ship has a squadron commander. What’s your readiness status?”

  “We’ve refueled and reprovisioned. I need some ammo, but they wouldn’t bring it pierside. I expect to rearm tomorrow at anchorage.”

  Halsey nodded approvingly. “We may have stopped them for the moment, but they’ll be back. And so will J. B. King. I’ll take care of Admiral Lee’s concerns. You get rearmed.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Sluff said, standing up. He hadn’t finished the Scotch but it had hit him anyway.

  “You okay?” Halsey asked.

  “Indians and firewater,” Sluff said. “I appreciate the hospitality, but I don’t drink unless I know there’s a night off to recover.”

  Halsey grinned. “I can guarantee you one night off, Captain,” he said. “But after that—”

  “Yes, sir, we’ll be ready.”

  “Once again: Good job getting those people out of the water. The battleships couldn’t stay there, not with Jap destroyers swarming everywhere, and you were the only tin can left. Good decision.”

  “Thanks, Admiral,” Sluff said.

  As he walked through the chief of staff’s office, he and Browning exchanged angry looks. “Be seeing you, Commander,” Browning said, deliberately not calling Sluff by his proper title of Captain.

  “Anytime, Captain,” Sluff replied. “Call me Tonto again when you come. See what happens. Sir.”

  Browning glared again, but kept his mouth shut. Sluff wondered if Halsey had overheard their little exchange. Suddenly, he didn’t give a damn.

  SEVEN

  The phone over his head squeaked. Sluff opened both eyes this time, and saw day
light streaming through his lone unbolted porthole. He looked at his watch. Almost nine. As he reached for the phone he realized the exec must have put the word out: Leave the skipper alone until he’s had the sleep he needs. “Thanks, Bob,” Sluff said. “I better get up and at ’em before the new commodore catches me sleeping in. Appreciate that, by the way. Not sure how you kept the entire ship quiet like that.”

  “You may not have been the sole late sleeper,” Bob said. “I’ve alerted the signal bridge to be watching for a light from Gary and Mose is inbound with coffee and a fat pill.”

  He’d returned to the ship after his meeting with Halsey and met with the exec and the department heads. Everyone was impressed that he’d actually met Halsey and even had a drink with him. Sluff told them what the admiral had said about their efforts to rescue all those people. He kept his little argument with the chief of staff to himself. After his debrief, he and the exec retired to the inport cabin, where Sluff did tell the exec about Browning, and predicted that there might yet be some fallout from all that.

  “Best cure for that noise is to get back to sea and away from all this headquarters crap,” Bob had said. “And, in that regard, we finally have a home. We’ve been assigned to DesDiv Two-Twelve. One Commodore Latham is the division commander, embarked in Gary. I don’t know if there’s a squadron commodore. There’s one other ship, the Westin, and they’ll be arriving in port here tomorrow at noon. We’ll chop when they get here and probably head north tomorrow afternoon sometime.”

  “Perfect timing,” Sluff had said. “I’ll feel a lot better with a divcom between me and all these flags.”

  “That depends on the new divcom,” Bob had pointed out. “Some of these guys can be real sundowners. And, now, Captain, I have some more message traffic for you.”

  Two hours later the ship had come fully back to life. The deck divisions were giving the topside another scrubbing to remove the final traces of fuel oil from the survivor-pickup operation. The engineers were completing repairs on one of the main feed pumps in preparation for lighting off the forward plant. Sluff had ordered the signal bridge to send an Able Jig to the commodore, whose flagship had anchored two miles away to receive a fuel barge. ComDesDiv 212 had replied with a curt acknowledgment and a request for a readiness-for-sea report. The ammo barge had come alongside King at the appointed time and a conga line of sailors was humping five-inch rounds fore and aft to the pass-down scuttles.