Herman Wouk - The Winds of War

“My God,” Connelly said, looking around at Pug, his face drawn, “what a shambles!”

Speechless, Victor Henry nodded and sat on a folding seat, as the flying boat swooped low past a smashed gutted battleship with tripod masts, sunk to the level of its guns and resting on the bottom at a crazy angle. The Clipper threw up a curtain of spray that wiped out the heart-rending sight.

Journey’s end .

Passing several clanging, speeding Navy ambulances, Pug went from the customs sled at the Pan Am landing straight to the Cincpac building, where officers and sailors busily swarmed. They all wore unsure scared expressions, like people after a bad earthquake. A very handsome ensign in whites, at a desk that barred access to Cincpac’s inner offices, looked incredulously at Pug who wore wrinkled slacks and a seersucker jacket. “The admiral? You mean Cincpac, sir? Admiral Kimmel ?”

“That’s right,” Pug said.

“Sir, you don’t really expect to see Admiral Kimmel today , do you? Shall I try his Assistant Chief of Staff?”

“Give the admiral a message, please. I’m Captain Victor Henry. I’ve just come in on the Clipper with a personal letter for him from the marine commandant on Wake Island.”

The very handsome ensign gestured wearily at a chair and picked up a telephone. “You may have to wait all day, or a week, sir. You know what the situation is.”

“I have the general picture.”

A minute or so later, a pretty woman in a tailored blue suit looked through the double doors. “Captain Henry? This way, sir.”

The ensign stared at Victor Henry walking past him, as though the captain had sprouted another head. Along the corridor, the offices of Cincpac’s senior staff stood open, and the sound of excited talk and typewriter clatter drifted out. A marine rigidly saluted before high doors decorated with four gold stars and a Navy seal, and labelled in gold COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF, PACIFIC FLEET. They passed into a wood-panelled anteroom. The woman opened a heavy polished mahogany door.

“Admiral, here’s Captain Henry.”

“Hey, Pug! Great day, how long has it been?” Kimmel waved cheerily from the window, where he stood gazing out at the anchorage. He was dressed in faultless gold-buttoned whites, and looked tanned, fit, and altogether splendid, though much older and quite bald. “Have I seen you since you worked for me on the Maryland ?”

“I don’t think so, sir.”

“Well, the years are dealing kindly with you! Sit you down, sit you down. Been flying high, haven’t you? Observing in Roosia, and all that, eh? They shook hands. Kimmel’s voice was as hearty and winning as ever. This was an outstanding officer, Pug thought, who had been marked for success all the way and had gone all the way. Now, after twenty-years of war exercises and drills against Orange, the fleet he commanded lay in sight beyond the window, wrecked in port, by the Orange team in one quick real action. He appeared remarkably chipper, but for his eyes, which were reddened and somewhat unfocussed.

“I know how little time you have, sir.” Pug drew out of his breast pocket the letter from Wake Island.

“Not at all. It’s nice to see an old familiar face. You were a good gunnery officer, Pug. A good officer all around. Cigarette?” Kimmel offered him the pack, and lit one for himself. “Let’s see. Don’t you have a couple of boys in the service now?”

“Yes sir. One flies an SBD off the Enterprise , and -”

“Well fine! They didn’t get the Enterprise or any other carrier, Pug, because the carriers at least followed my orders and were on one hundred percent alert. And the other lad?”

“He’s aboard the Devilfish in Manila.”

“Manila, eh? They haven’t hit the fleet at Manila yet, though I understand they’ve bombed the airfields. Tommy Hart’s got some warning now, and he’ll have no excuse. I only hope the Army Air people in Manila aren’t as totally asleep as they were here! The Army was and is completely responsible for the safety of these islands and of this anchorage, Pug, including the definite responsibility of air patrol and radar search. Nothing on God’s earth could be clearer than the way that is spelled out in the islands’ defense instructions. The documents leave no doubt about that , fortunately. Well you have something from Wake, don’t you? Let’s have a look-see. Were you there when they hit?”

“Yes, sir.”

“How bad was it? As bad as this?”

“Well, I’d say about two dozen bombers worked us over. Mainly they went after planes and air installations, Admiral. No ships were there to get bombed.”

Cincpac shot a glance at Victor Henry, as though suspecting irony in his words. “Say, weren’t you supposed to relieve Chip Wallenstone in the California ?”

“Yes, sir.”

Kimmel shook his head, and started to read the letter.

Pug ventured to say, “How did the California make out Admiral?”

“Why, don’t you know?”

“No, sir. I came straight here from the Clipper.”

Not looking up, in the brisk tone of a report, Kimmel said, “She took two torpedoes to port and several bomb hits and near misses. One bomb penetrated below decks and the explosion started a big fire. She’s down by the bow, Pug, and sinking. They’re still counter-flooding, so she may not capsize. She’s electric drive, and the preliminary estimate” — he pulled toward him a sheet on his desk and peered at it — “a year and a half out of action, possibly two. That’s top secret of course. We’re releasing no damage information.”

Cincpac finished the letter from Wake in a heavy silence, and tossed it on the desk.

Victor Henry’s voice trembled and he swallowed in mid-sentence. “Admiral, if I broke a lot of asses, including my own — ah, is there a chance I could put her back on the line in six months?”

“Go out and see for yourself. It’s hopeless, Pug. A salvage officer will relieve Chip.” The tone was sympathetic, but Victor Henry felt it did Cincpac good to give someone else catastrophic news.

“Well, that’s that, then, I guess.”

“You’ll get another command.”

“The only thing is, Admiral, there aren’t that many available battleships. Not any more.”

Again, the quick suspicious glance. It was hard to say anything in this context without seeming to needle the commander of the Pacific Fleet. Kimmel made a curt gesture at the letter Pug had brought. “Now there’s a problem for you. Do we relieve Wake or not? It means exposing a carrier. We can’t go in without air cover. He’s asking for a pile of things I can’t give him, for the simple reason that the Russians and the British have got the stuff. Mr. Roosevelt was a great Navy President until the European fracas started, Pug, but at that point he took his eye off the ball. Our real enemy’s always been right here, here in the Pacific. This ocean is our nation’s number one security problem. That’s what he forgot. We never had the wherewithal to conduct proper patrols. I didn’t want to rely on the Army, God knows, but equipment only has so much life in it, and what would we have had to fight the war with if we’d used up our planes in patrolling? Washington’s been crying wolf about the Japs for a year. We’ve had so many full alerts and air raid drills and surprise attack exercises and all, nobody can count them, but — well, the milk is spilled, the horse is stolen, but I think it’s pretty clear that the President got too damned interested in the wrong enemy, the wrong ocean, and the wrong war.”

It gave Victor Henry a strange sensation, after Berlin and London and Moscow, and now this staggering personal disappointment, to hear from Admiral Kimmel the old unchanged Navy verbiage about the importance of the Pacific: “Well, Admiral, I know how busy you are,” he said, though in fact he was struck by the quiet at the heart of the cataclysm, and by Kimmel’s willingness to chat with a mere captain he did not know very well. Cincpac acted almost as lonesome as Kip Tollever had.