The First cut his motors still further to listen, and the speed of the 412 dropped. “I guess those are ours,” he said.
The captain cocked his head a little. “Something wrong.” he said. “Doesn’t sound right.” And he cocked his head on the other side, like a listening spaniel. “Ever heard an E-boat?” he asked.
“No, I haven’t. You know damn well I haven’t.”
“Neither have I,” said the captain, “but those don’t sound like PTs or MTBs to me.” He peered over the rail. The signalman had his blinker ready to make a recognition signal. The captain said quickly, “Kill the motor.” Through the milky light the E-boats came. They seemed to grow up out of the night, the misty shapes of them high-powered and unmistakable. The 412 drifted easily in the water.
The captain said hoarsely to the signalman. “Don’t signal, for God’s sake!” He was silent for a moment and there seemed to be E-boats all around. “Listen,” the captain said. ‘We’ve maybe got to make a crash run. I don’t know when.” (Ten lines deleted by censor.)
The E-boats moved slowly past. They must have seen the 412 lying uneasily in the moonlight. Perhaps it didn’t occur to them that a hostile craft would lie so still so near to their guns. The breathing of the crew was almost audible. The E-boats were nearly past when one of them, just on the chance, blinked. (One line deleted by censor.) The gunners brought down their barrels. The engines of the 412 roared and the boat leaped in the water. She stood up on her own crest and tore away. (One line deleted by censor.) Her wake in the last of the moonlight was creamy behind her. She whipped over the water like a gull. But the E-boats did not fire on her. They continued placidly on their way.
Five minutes of the run, and the First throttled down and the 412 settled back into the water and leveled out and the sound of her motors died away. “God Almighty,” the captain said. And he whistled to himself. “That was close.” (Three lines deleted by censor.) “Let’s lie here and get our breath. That was too close.”
The moon lay close to the water at last. In a few minutes it would be dark, deliciously dark, safe and dark. Then men stirred about nervously on the silent boat.
And then across the moon a dark shape moved and then another. “Good God,” the captain said, “there’s a convoy. That’s what the E-boats were for.” A large dark hull moved across the moon. “We’ve got to get to them,” the captain said excitedly.
“They’ll get us sure,” said the first.
“No they won’t.” (Three lines deleted by censor.)
He called his orders softly. The torpedo men moved to their places. The 412 turned silently and slipped toward the passing convoy. There seemed to be ships of all sizes, and the 412 could see them against the sinking moon and they could not see the 412. “That big one,” the captain said. “She must be at least five thousand tons.” He issued his orders and took the wheels himself. Then he swung the boat and called softly, “Fire!” There was a sharp explosive whisk of sound and a splash, and the torpedo was away. He swung again and fired another. And his mouth moved as though he were counting.
Then without warning the sea and the sky tore to pieces in a vomit of light and a moment later the 412 nearly jumped out of the water. “Run,” the captain shouted. “Run!” And the 412 leaped up on its fantail again and pushed its bow into the air.
The explosion was gone almost the moment it had started. There wasn’t much of any fire. It just subsided and the water closed over it.
“Ammunition,” the captain shouted. “Ammunition or high-test gasoline.”
But the rest of the fleet was not silent. The tracers reached out for the sea, and the rockets, even the flak rockets. The crossfire reached to sea and combed the sea and searched the sea. (One line deleted by censor.) Some time later the captain touched his First’s arm and the First pulled down the boat again. In the distance, as the moon went down, the E-boats were probably beating the ocean looking for the 412 or the submarine or whatever had hit their ship. But the 412 had got away. (One line deleted by censor.) The pitch blackness lay on the water after the moon had gone. Ocean and land and boat were blotted out.
“Let’s get the hell out of here,” said the captain. “Let’s get on back.”
A DESTROYER
November 24, 1943—A destroyer is a lovely ship, probably the nicest fighting ship of all. Battleships are a little like steel cities or great factories of destruction. Aircraft carriers are floating flying fields. Even cruisers are big pieces of machinery, but a destroyer is all boat. In the beautiful clean lines of her, in her speed and roughness, in her curious gallantry, she is completely a ship, in the old sense.
For one thing, a destroyer is small enough so that her captain knows his whole crew personally, knows all about each one as a person, his first name and his children and the trouble he has been in and is capable of getting into. There is an ease on a destroyer that is good and a good relationship among the men. Then if she has a good captain you have something really worth serving on.
The battleships are held back for a killing blow, and such a blow sometimes happens only once in a war. The cruisers go in second, but the destroyers work all the time. They are probably the busiest ships of a fleet. In a major engagement, they do the scouting and make the first contact. They convoy, they run to every fight. Wherever there is a mess the destroyers run first. They are not lordly like the battleships, nor episcopal like the cruisers. Most of all they are ships and the men who work them are seamen. In rough weather they are rough, honestly and violently rough.
A destroyerman is never bored in wartime, for a destroyer is a seaman’s ship. She can get under way at the drop of a hat. The water under fantail boils like a Niagara. She will go rippling along at thirty-five knots with the spray sheeting over her and she will turn and fight and run, drop depth charges, bombard, and ram. She is expendable and dangerous. And because she is all these things, a destroyer’s crew is passionately possessive. Every man knows his ship, every inch of it, not just his own station. The Destroyer X is just such a ship. She has done many thousands of miles since the war started. She has been bombed and torpedoes have gone under her bow. She has convoyed and fought. Her captain is a young, dark-haired man and his executive officers looks like a blond undergraduate. The ship is immaculate. The engines are polished and painted and shined.
She is a fairly new ship, the X, commissioned fifteen months ago. She bombarded at Casablanca and Gela and Salerno and she has captured islands. Her officers naturally would like to go to larger ships because there is more rank to be had on them, but no destroyerman would rather sail on anything else.
The destroyer X is a personal ship and a personality. She is worked quietly. No one ever raises his voice. The captain is soft-spoken and so is everyone else. Orders are given in the same low tone as requests for salt in the wardroom. The discipline is exact and punctilious but it seems to be almost mutually enforced, not from above. The captain will say, “So many men have shore leave. The first man who comes back drunk removes shore liberty for everyone.” It is very simple. The crew would discipline anyone who jeopardized the liberty of the whole ship. So they come back in good shape and on time. The X has very few brig cases.
When the AT is in a combat area she never relaxes. The men sleep in their clothes. The irritating blatting sound which means “action stations” is designed to break through sleep. It sounds like the braying of some metallic mule, and the reaction to it is instant. There is a scurrying of feet in the passageways and the clatter of feet on the ladders and in a few seconds the X is bristling with manned and waiting guns, AAs that peer at the sky and the five-inch guns which can fire at the sky too.
The crouched and helmeted men can get to their stations in less than a minute. There is no hurry or fuss. They have done it hundreds of times. And then a soft-spoken word from the bridge into a telephone will turn the X into a fire-breathing dragon. She can throw tons of steel in a very short time.