Brett Ashton - Vengeance - Hatred and Honor

I was pretty good back in the day at doing trick shots and won a lot of bets shooting objects thrown in the air with my Colt forty-five. I was kind of a ringer on the team, though, because I was a very qualified marksman.

“Yeah, it’s not like you don’t have enough trophies at home anyway, is it?”

“Ah Frank, one can never have enough things for his wife to dust while one is at sea I always say!”

Lieutenant Feinstein was just making a point about how nobody would ever beat Babe Ruth and how the Yankees just were not the same since he left the team when the ship’s 1MC crackled to life and changed our lives forever.

“ Air raid! Air raid! Real planes! Real bombs! This is no shit! ”

Puzzled and completely caught off guard by what we just heard, we sat looking blankly at each other for a moment. For the briefest time, everything went quiet. I looked around, and even the mess clerks stopped what they were doing and looked at whatever 1MC speaker was the closest to them.

I honestly was thinking, “Whatever joker pulled a prank like that will be court-martialed and personally keel-hauled by me,” when the 1MC came to life again with an all-too-familiar sound that we had only heard before in drilling: the call to general quarters.

“ Bong , bong, bong, bong, bong! Battle stations! All hands battle stations! This is not a drill! Repeat, this is not a drill! All hands battle stations! ”

Still stunned the other officers sat for a moment, all looking at me.

“ Well, go! ” I shouted. “ You heard him! Go! ”

Simultaneously, we all jumped out of our chairs, knocking several of them over.

Just as we began to scatter, there was a violent explosion. Boom! The ship jumped, as if trying to leap right out of the water. Dishes and coffee cups flew from the table and shattered on the floor. Clouds of dust shook down from the overhead. The lights flickered for a brief second.

And that’s when I first fully understood this was for real. The Okie was under attack. But by whom?

I heard one of the other officers shout “ What the hell was— ” but he never finished his sentence, being interrupted by another explosion. Boom! Closely followed by another boom! The lights flickered again, more dishes broke, and several people were knocked down by the violence.

“I have to get topside,” I thought as I ran toward the passageway on the port side that leads aft from the wardroom. My battle station was on the top of the forward main mast. The ship’s big fourteen-inch main guns would not be of any use during an air raid, but battle stations are battle stations, and I could always assist the air defense officer in spotting targets if need be.

I could have taken the hatch just forward of the wardroom and gotten topside right away, but with the ship obviously under attack, I wanted to stay under cover as long as I could. Bombs and torpedoes throw a lot of sharp metal splinters, not to mention the probability of strafing fire. The long climb up the ladder to the spotting tower, while potentially exposed to enemy strafing fire, was not something I was looking forward to.

That decision led directly to my first Purple Heart, but may have also saved my life. I was a short way down the passageway when boom , another explosion. “Jesus!” I said, as I was thrown against the bulkhead and bruised my right shoulder. The lights flicked out, came back on for a second, and then went out again. Then all was dark.

You never think about it much when you are on a ship, but there is always some kind of noise. If it’s not the whistle blowing, or the continuous string of announcements, or ringing of bells to mark the time each half hour, there is the sounds of the boilers, the engines when you are underway, vibrations from the propellers, which work their way through the ship, or the ventilation fans and any number of electrical motors going on around you all of the time. These sounds just work their way into you and become part of what tells you the condition of the ship is normal. A better way to describe it is these sounds are the pulse and breath of life that is not part of the crew, but of the vessel itself.

All of a sudden, all of that was gone. The Oklahoma herself had died. There was nothing left except the sounds of her crew, frantically trying save her and themselves.

In the sudden pitch blackness that surrounded me, I could tell the ship was already beginning to list by feeling the slant of the bulkheads and deck I was standing on. I realized that the machinery spaces several decks below must have begun to flood, causing the power to fail. We were taking on water fast and were nowhere near battle-ready conditions.

“It’s a torpedo attack!” I thought, realizing I had not really known until then what exactly was causing the explosions. It was doubtful any armor-piercing bomb could reach that deep into the ship through the heavy armor topside that had been added when the ship was reconstructed.

Knowing the layout of the ship, I continued aft to try to get to a ladder up to the upper deck next to a hatch on the forward part of the superstructure, just aft of the number two turret. I could smell burning fuel oil and smoke filling the passageway as I moved, feeling my way along the bulkhead for guidance in the dark.

Boom! The left side of my forehead struck something from the shock of the next explosion. I don’t know to this day what it was, but it was very hard. I could feel the beginnings of blood trickling down my face as I felt the cut on my forehead.

I could tell by the slanting of the bulkhead next to me and the deck below my feet that the ship was listing more. The sound of the ship groaning under the stress could be heard in between the shouts of the other crewmen in the passageway. The smell of smoke was growing rapidly. “Why the hell don’t they get the emergency lights on?” I thought.

Just then, I saw a sliver of light to the left in front of me, shining down through the smoke. I had found the ladder up and could see sunlight beyond it. There was a crewman lying at the bottom of the ladder who had apparently been knocked off by the last torpedo blast and was still moving but stunned.

“ Come on! Get up! ” I shouted at him, picking him up off the deck. “Can you climb?”

“I think so,” he said.

“ Go! Go! Go! ” I replied, shoving him up the ladder before me.

Several other crewmen followed me closely up the ladder, having seen the light to the outside of the ship through the rapidly thickening smoke.

I reached the top of the ladder and stepped out onto the upper deck just forward of the superstructure.

One thing that always strikes me, even to this day, is when I emerged onto the main deck from that hatch, I found myself bathed in warm bright sunlight. You know how grey and dark those old photographs you see of the Pearl Harbor battle are? The old black and white pictures don’t show how truly beautiful a day it was. How strikingly blue the sky was. There was hardly a cloud in it. And the warm tropical sunlight just shone on the sparkling waters of Pearl Harbor, surrounding the ship and the white uniforms of the crew as they raced to their battle stations. The contrast between what I was seeing and what I was feeling was stunning.

I looked back at the hatch I had just come out of. It was dark inside and smoke was beginning to pour out of it, carried by the wind around the number two turret. Inside the ship, I could see a flashlight in the darkness and was relieved to know that it would be less difficult for the crew remaining inside to find their way out. However, on the outside of the ship, everything was covered in oily water, causing a lot of the crew to lose their footing and slip on the deck.