Brett Ashton - Vengeance - Hatred and Honor

But then I sat there in the darkness under a flashlight held by the chief, turning it over and over in my hand while it cast an eerie shadow on the floor. I was thinking of my wife and kids at home, of the way this ship used to be, and her crew members, both dead and alive. When was the last time I walked with Susan in the park where I asked her to marry me? When was the last time I rocked one of my children to sleep? When was the last time I actually enjoyed a sunset from the deck of a ship at sea? When was the last time I actually enjoyed just being an officer in the navy?

As my attention finally turned back to the Oklahoma , I realized everything there was a mere shadow of what it used to be, almost as if stuck passing half of the way between existence in this world into some sort of ghostly nonexistence. And the shadows of the way the ship currently was began to grow in my mind, while the images in my mind of what the Oklahoma used to be dimmed and became engulfed totally by the shadows and were no more.

The ghosts of the crew had left.

I put my rusted gun in the bag provided by the chief, breathed a heavy sigh, and said to him “Let’s go.” We worked our way upwards until we came out of a hatch on the main deck, very near where I was when Chief Fitzgerald got killed. When I reached the top deck, I stood there and paused for awhile, looking back and forth across the deck, feeling somehow dazed and empty.

“What are you looking for, captain?” the chief suddenly asked.

“What am I looking for?” I said out loud, having been startled by the suddenness of his question. “What do you mean?”

“What are you looking for, captain?” he repeated, looking straight back at me.

A little bit startled again by the unexpectedness of the question, plus feeling a very deep stinging sensation stirring in my soul from the question, I replied, “Why do you ask, chief?”

“Well, I’ve seen hundreds of crewmembers from the Oklahoma come back to this ship, and with an almost desperate expression, look around here for something, but none of them ever leave with anything more than what you have in that bag. And yet somehow, after telling me their story, they seem to feel better. It kind of makes me wonder if what you really came here looking for isn’t here on the Oklahoma but instead has been following you all along.”

“Explain yourself, chief,” I said, losing a little patience with him. In those days it was rare, if not outright unacceptable, for an enlisted man to question any officer in this fashion, let alone a captain. Yet, there was something about him; I found I could not resist this old sailor’s questioning. And the question itself seemed to be burning deep within me.

“Well, captain, you had to know what the oil and warm salt water would do to this ship and all of its contents. And you also had to have known there is nothing here of any tangible value to anyone anymore. There is nothing here on board except large piles of junk, and even the ship itself is nothing but scrap metal. So there is no sensible reason why you should have come back here, and yet, here you are, sir. Like so many of your shipmates before you.”

I gave the chief a long, questioning look.

Unflinching, he continued, “There is no more explanation for it, sir. Except to ask you, what are you looking for, captain?”

I had plenty of duties as the skipper of the Buffalo , which were no doubt falling behind as I spent more time there. But somehow, standing there between the third and fourth turret of the Oklahoma , I felt I had to tell the chief about the attack. I went through the whole thing, exactly as I remembered, and told him every little detail. As I told him, we walked again through the same parts of the ship I had gone through during the attack. I held nothing back from the time of the meeting in the wardroom until I stepped off the ship into the harbor and showed him exactly where everything happened, including where and how Joe Fitzgerald died.

Then I told him everything about being in the water and getting picked up by the boat while the attack still raged on around us. I also told him about the dispensary and the wounded coming in, the bomb in the courtyard, and the pretty nurse who was kind enough to put my stitches back in. And then there was the heroic run the Nevada made, and failed at, and the plight of the crew of the California as she sank, still tied to her berth and engulfed in burning fuel oil from the other battleships in the row.

Something in my mind began to shift at that point, and I felt myself relax in a way I had not been able to since December of ‘41. The only way I can describe it is a huge weight which had been pressing unseen upon my spirit had lifted and disappeared.

When I was done telling my story, we crossed the plank back to the dock and, being finished with our task, I handed him the hardhat, flashlight, and coveralls and put my own hat back on.

“If you ever feel you need to visit the Oklahoma again or want to see anything else, just feel free to come back,” the chief said to me.

“Thank you, chief, but I think I’m finished here.”

“Thank you for your story, sir,” he replied with another sharp salute. Returning his salute I turned and walked away leaving the shadows of the battleship Oklahoma forever behind me.

Later that evening, when I returned to the Buffalo , I decided to go down to the ship’s machine shop and work on my handgun. Such visits by the skipper might have been out of the ordinary on most ships, but the metal working tools on board were sufficient for the type of gunsmith work I was frequently doing to my Colt to keep it shooting the way I wanted it to. The crew had even set aside a tool box for me for the finer work on the triggers and such that I was continuously adjusting.

On the radio in the background was a USO show featuring Bob Hope doing an “interview” with a “Japanese Ensign Hari Kari Isasyko, a veteran kamikaze pilot of forty seven missions…”

As I worked at getting the pearl handgrips off of my old gun, I couldn’t help thinking about my visit to the Oklahoma earlier and that old chief. I wondered if he was a wise old man who probably knew I had a story to tell, and I had to tell it. How many of my other Oklahoma shipmates had told their stories to him?

One thing I knew he was right about; it wasn’t nearly what I expected it to be.

My chain of thoughts wandered back to that day in the wardroom before the Japs first attacked, and I found myself thinking of how our meeting went that morning. That kind of light-hearted joking around seemed to be a lot more frequent then, as compared to now. Maybe it was partly because of my promotion to captain, but even before that, there was a lot more seriousness because of the war. A lot of the men were willing enough to fight for their country, but many of them sorely wished to return home as well. “It’s a hard thing to miss your family,” I thought, “but we do still need to do what must be done.”

While I was working to get the rusted screws off of the grips of my old gun, I thought back when I had first found it on the wreck of the Oklahoma . For a moment, I had dared to hope it would still be salvageable with the right tools. But the barrel and slide had become so pitted that the etching could no longer be read, and the barrel would most likely not be able to withstand the pressure of being fired. I knew there was nothing I could do but to clean and polish the grips and put them on my newer gun.

I again recalled how angry Susan was when I had it engraved.

God, I missed her and the kids. It suddenly struck me that James was now three and a half years old. “What had I missed?” I wondered. June was nine. Robert was seven. James was walking, I knew, because I had seen the pictures Susan had been sending. Potty trained? I didn’t know. Talking? I didn’t know that either. I wouldn’t even recognize the sound of his voice. How would he even know who I was?