Brett Ashton - Vengeance - Hatred and Honor

“Okay, I’ll allow it,” Captain Fort answered as he wrote on a piece of paper and signed it. “Give this to the lieutenant outside, and he will inform the master at arms that I am granting you permission to remain armed. Is there anything else?”

“No, sir.”

“Good. The lieutenant outside has your orders. And once again, welcome aboard,” he said, getting up and offering a handshake.

“Thank you, sir,” I replied, shaking his hand and getting up myself.

“That will be all,” he said, dismissing us.

The commander and I turned and exited the room to find the lieutenant, back behind his desk.

“Jake,” the commander said after I asked the lieutenant for my orders, “Admiral Halsey wanted me to give you this as my last official act as your XO,” he said, pulling an envelope out of his uniform jacket and handing it to me.

I opened it and unfolded the paper inside. I couldn’t believe my eyes.

Citation: Lieutenant Commander Jacob S. Williams is hereby awarded the Navy Cross for heroism in combat. LtCdr Williams was cited for his early recognition of the battleship Oklahoma’s critical condition and quick response in his efforts to save the crew of the doomed ship. In a bold independent action, while under extreme combat conditions, even after sustaining injuries to himself, he continued to risk his own life by proceeding down the portside of the Oklahoma while it was under attack. On his own initiative, while evading strafing fire and torpedoes from the Japanese planes, he ordered the abandonment of the ship by word of mouth, thus saving many of the lives of the crew, whose battle stations were below decks, by giving them time to escape from the rapid flooding. His bravery, quick thinking and comprehensive knowledge of the ship’s systems, which were not even under his command, led him to take the decisive action that saved, at the very least, dozens of his crew’s lives. His courage, knowledge, and leadership while under fire, far exceed the normal expectations of his duties as an officer and reflect the finest traditions of the United States Navy.

“Very well done,” he said. “It has been an honor to serve with you, Jake. Admiral Nimitz will be aboard the North Carolina to pin the medal on you the day after tomorrow. Here is a twenty-four hour liberty pass. I suggest you put your family’s affairs in order.”

Shortly after the Showboat (the crew’s nickname for the North Carolina ) pulled out of Pearl, and after the obligatory man overboard drill, I decided to set myself back to the task of learning the ship’s systems. In the time that passed since Captain Fort’s accepting me into the crew and the ship’s pulling out, I had been working hard on learning the ship’s anti-aircraft systems. It wasn’t conceptually that much different than that of the Oklahoma , so it wasn’t as steep of a gradient as I expected. Still, the more you go over something you study, the better it sticks, and since the lives of everybody on the Showboat rested on my knowledge of these systems, I put myself hard to the task.

There were a lot more guns on this ship, though. Coordinating between them and the four five-inch directors and ten turrets was going to be interesting. Not even to mention the many machine guns which were being added to the ship, which had an officer under my command to coordinate them.

The CO was very interested in getting his hands on a lot more larger-caliber automatic weapons than we had on board at the time. There was a lot of that going on in the fleet at the time.

There was a new twenty-millimeter gun called the “Oerlikon” appearing in quantity on the decks of every ship in the fleet. And the Swedes had even designed a quadruple forty-millimeter gun called “Bofors” that looked very promising as a replacement for the one point one-inch guns. The fleet seemed to be gearing up to use battlewagons and cruisers for screening aircraft carriers against air attack. It seemed doubtful even then, considering the attack on Pearl, that this war was going to involve battleships slugging it out with each other on the open seas very much, if at all.

This was going to be a carrier war, with other large capital ships filling a support function. The United States literally had dozens of carriers, in several different sizes, under construction at the time. I had to make sure I was ready for anything that could happen in the air above the task force we would be in and make sure the Showboat would be able to rise to the task. A lot of drilling was going to happen over the next couple of weeks in preparation, and we all had a lot to learn if we were going to avoid a repeat of what happened to the Okie .

I was studying at the desk in my state room when I heard a knock at the door.

“Come in!” I shouted, annoyed a little bit by the interruption.

The door opened to a marine sergeant in dress uniform. He was one of the captain’s orderlies.

“Sir, Captain Fort and Commander Crocker would like to meet you on the fantail,” he said.

“Do you have any idea what this is about?” I asked.

“No, sir, but they said to be sure you brought your handgun and some ammunition.”

“I’m never without it,” I told him, “so that’s not a problem.”

I followed the sergeant to the main deck and to the fantail where the CO, XO, and another marine were waiting for me. The CO had an empty soup can and said, as I walked up to them, “Good morning, Lieutenant Commander.”

“Good morning, Captain.”

“Of course, you remember your former executive officer advising me to let you carry your sidearm while on board, don’t you?”

“Yes I do,” I replied.

I had been expecting something like this ever since the interview with the captain and had been looking forward to showing off my skills to someone else. It was an easy guess that there was a friendly wager between the two senior officers of this ship riding on top of this as well.

“Now, I trusted my good friend Jesse Kenworthy’s word that you could shoot a can tossed up in the air with that thing as a major part of my decision. Am I right?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And I really don’t like having my decisions end up being wrong because of a personal friend’s exaggerated sea story. Understood?”

“I understand, Captain,” I said, undaunted by his hint.

“The XO seems to think you wouldn’t be able to hit this can if I were to throw it up in the air. What do you have to say about that?”

“I’d say, with all due respect to the XO”—I calmly unsnapped the holster with a smile growing on my face—“he doesn’t know what he is talking about, sir.”

The two marine orderlies exchanged glances and grins.

“Very well, then, let’s see how many times you can shoot this before it hits the deck. And don’t put any holes in my ship! Do you understand?”

“Yes, sir,” I replied, pulling out my trusted Colt. “Throw it up that direction so it doesn’t go over the side so we can count the holes. Throw it kind of high, any time you are ready,” I told him switching the safety off.

“Okay, here goes,” he said, tossing the can into the air.

The first time he tossed the can the wind blew the can straight up over my head and I let it fall back to the deck because I didn’t want to chance having the bullets come back down and hit the ship or crew. I explained why I didn’t shoot and told him to toss it just a little further outward the next time.

The second time he tossed the can almost straight up but out just far enough that I didn’t have to worry about where the bullets were going to come down, so I took aim and pulled the trigger.