Gerold Frank - U.S.S. Seawolf - Submarine Raider of the Pacific

One read, “From Mac to Snyder: Merry Christmas, I love you.”

The other read: “From Snyder to McCoy: Best Wishes for Continued Prosperity and Good Luck in the Coming Year. Be glad when you’re dead, you rascal, you.”

We got a kick out of that. When we finally got into the control room, for no reason at all Manila jumped into my head, and I said, “I wonder how many of the boats got out of Manila.”

Zerk, the supreme pessimist, sucked his pipe. “Damn few,” he said.

I bristled. Perhaps it was homesickness after the Christmas tree, or impatience, but I stood up and snapped at him. “For Christ sakes, you’re such a crepe-hanger somebody ought to punch you right in the face.”

Zerk looked up and grinned. “Well, that’s the way I see it,” he said.

I stomped out. I felt low. I went into the galley and poured myself a big mug of hot coffee. I sat over it and began thinking. We were doing all right. This first mission of ours was damn important from more than one point of view. Here were the Japs, oozing confidence out of every pore, completely sold on the plans of their High Command, converging on a dozen different points; and where they found opposition they swiftly overwhelmed it.

They were coming down, step by step, clutching at everything within reach, eager for the petroleum-rich lands below them. The Wolf ’s first attack served notice to the Jap fleet that the United States wasn’t entirely caught off guard. Some units of the Asiatic Submarine fleet were still operating. The Japs simply couldn’t cruise into any cove or harbor and think themselves completely safe from us. We were around. And because we were around, and because they now knew we were around, they dared not send unescorted merchant shipping over unprotected sea lanes. They’d have to pull warships off important jobs and assign them to convoy duty. We were doing fine. What was I glum about?

It was nearly midnight now, and I should have hit the sack, but I still didn’t feel like sleep. Men were dropping into the galley, into Kelly’s Pool Room, and everybody I passed on the way out was saying, “Merry Christmas.” That warmed me up still more. I looked in on the radio shack. Snyder and Maley were in there, Snyder with the phones on, Maley bent over a book. Snyder saw me. He pushed his phones off his ears and said, “It’s sure noisy around here. I don’t know if I got anything here or not.”

“Why don’t you go aft and get some coffee?” I said. “I’ll take over.” He went out, and I slipped on the phones. Maley looked up, grunted, and went back to his reading.

It was noisy. We were close to shore, and I could hear the soft roar of the surf rolling up the beach. I listened hard. A distant, continuous echoing roar, like a seashell at your ear: that was the sound from the minute animal life clinging to the Seawolf’ s keel. And then a backyard-like chattering—the merged sound of fish whistling, croaking, sighing. All these were the familiar sounds of the sea. I heard nothing suspicious.

I pushed off one earphone and turned to Maley. “Merry Christmas, kid,” I said. He looked up and smiled. “Merry Christmas, Eck,” he said, and went back to his reading.

Outside I heard the voice of Swede Enslin, “Merry Christmas, Mr. Deragon,” and then our exec’s mild, “Same to you, Swede.”

There was a lump in my throat. I had to swallow a few times, sitting there, thinking, Here it is Christmas, and Marjorie and Spike alone at home, not knowing if I’m dead or alive, and we’re off Corregidor, and men are dying in Bataan, and we don’t know if we’re going to be dead or alive ourselves twenty-four hours from now…

Maley started to whistle softly. He had a gift for whistling. I sat there listening with one ear, my other tuned to the familiar sounds of the water, and all at once I felt better. Maley whistled pretty notes; he trilled like a bird. Well, it was Christmas. Marjorie and the little fellow were O.K. They were in a good home; they had enough food and heat. I wondered what they were doing this very minute. I’d sent her some beautiful things I’d picked up—raw silk, bolts of cloth, even a Mohammedan kriss, to decorate our home. Did the ship carrying those gifts ever get through?

I heard a man’s heavy tread. It was Snyder.

“Okay, Eck,” he said. “I’m ready to take over.”

I took off the earphones. “Nothing to worry about on the gear, Snyder,” I said, and I went forward and went to sleep.

There was a surprise Christmas Day. Gus Wright came into the mess hall and announced what we’d have for dinner that night—mince pies. He’d been up all night baking them, twenty of them. Gus was the hero of the boat that day. He was a thin fellow, about twenty-eight, with buck teeth and a pleasant way about him; and the fuss the crew made over his surprise made him so happy that his eyes got watery, and he went back into the galley and banged his pans around until he got it out of him. A Christmas tree, mince pies—well, it was a better Christmas than the boys had on Bataan and Corregidor, we thought.

All went smoothly aboard the Wolf until we approached south of Subic Bay, around 11 p.m. the night of the twenty-sixth. I began hearing pings. Captain Warder scoured the sea and horizon with his binoculars. Visibility was practically unlimited. A bright moon shone.

“I don’t see a damn thing,” he said.

But these pings could come from a Jap sub concealed under water, and we’d be silhouetted against the moon. We dove. When the moon set, we surfaced with infinite care and inched our way forward. At a point several miles off Corregidor, we picked up a small signal light. It was pointed toward us, blinking on and off, somewhere on the pitch-black shore. Someone was sending to us.

Frank Franz raced to the bridge and replied with our blinker gun, a tube-like instrument with a powerful light in it which can be aimed directly at a point miles away and can’t be seen at the right or left of the point. We established contact with the shore.

The message came through. A pilot was coming out in a FT boat to escort us through the heavily mined harbor.

A few minutes before midnight the PT boat suddenly emerged out of the darkness and unloaded a soft-spoken young man. He joined the Skipper on the bridge. The motors began to hum. I knew by the feel of the boat answering the rudder that we were going through the mine field, moving with infinite care toward the harbor. Then the Wolf halted; we had Mariveles Harbor on our port beam. The pilot left us.

Just before dawn, we pushed on again, heading farther into Manila Bay. The Skipper had orders to submerge there at a specified point. We finally found it and went down.

We marked time. Now and then a faint pounding came to our ears, as though someone were hammering on the hull of the Wolf . You couldn’t mistake that sound. The Japs were bombing Manila. These were the explosions of their bombs coming down to us through the water. We listened, frustrated and impotent. We had little or no air support left in the Philippines then, and it wasn’t pleasant knowing that our own men were being bombed on the surface and that we couldn’t help them.

We surfaced at dusk and ran awash. We made a small target, difficult to observe. At 7 p.m. a message came over my radio ordering us into Corregidor. Captain Warder looked around.

“There’s a ship out there,” he said slowly. “She’s burning.”

We finally glided alongside the dock. We tied up. I received permission to secure the sound gear and some topside. I scrambled up the ladder and out the hatch. A shadowy figure grabbed my arm. It was the deck watch.

“Don’t wander off too far,” he warned me. “They’re expecting an air raid.”