Counterattack Page 7

  “Good evening, Mr. Secretary,” Telford said. “It’s nice to see you, Sir.”

  “Hello, Telford, how are you?” said Secretary of the Navy Frank W. Knox.

  “Fine, and on my out, Sir,” Telford said. “Is there anything I can send up?”

  “All we want right now is a drink, Max, thanks,” Fowler said. He waited until Telford had left, closing the door behind him, and then went on, “Frank told me at lunch, to my surprise, that you two don’t know each other.”

  “Only by reputation,” Pickering said, crossing the room to Knox and giving him his hand.

  “I was about to say just that,” Knox said. “How do you do, Pickering?”

  The two examined each other with unabashed curiosity.

  “Scotch for you, Frank?” Senator Fowler asked, looking over his shoulder from the array of bottles.

  “Please,” Knox said absently, and then, “Dick tells me you’re going to work for Bill Donovan.”

  “That didn’t work out,” Pickering said.

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” Knox said.

  “Why should you be sorry?”

  “It takes away an argument I was going to use on you.”

  “What argument was that?”

  Senator Fowler knew Frank Knox almost as well as he knew Fleming Pickering. Sensing that their first meeting already showed signs of becoming confrontational, he hurried over with the drinks.

  “You all right, Flem?”

  “Oh, I think I might have another. You can’t fly on six or seven wings, you know.” He walked to the array of liquor.

  “I gather your meeting with Bill Donovan was not entirely successful?” Fowler asked.

  “No, it wasn’t,” Pickering replied.

  “You want to tell me why?”

  “Well, aside from the fact that we don’t like each other, which is always a problem if you’re going to work for somebody, you were wrong about his wanting to make me one of his twelve disciples. What he had in mind was my being a minor saint—Saint Fleming the Humble—to one of his Wall Street moneymen.”

  “You have been at the sauce, haven’t you?”

  “It is a blow to the masculine ego, especially in these times of near-hysterical patriotism, for an ex-Marine to be told, ‘No, thanks, the Corps can’t use you.’ I have had a drink or five. Guilty, Your Senatorship.”

  “I don’t think I understand you,” Fowler said.

  “After I saw Donovan, I tried to enlist, and was turned down.”

  “You were a Marine?” Knox asked.

  “I was,” Pickering said, “but, as the General reminded me, only a corporal.”

  “Both Napoleon and Hitler were only corporals,” said Frank Knox. “I, on the other hand, was a sergeant.”

  Pickering looked at the dignified Secretary of the Navy, saw the twinkle in his eyes, and smiled.

  “Were you really?”

  “First United States Volunteer Cavalry, Sir,” Knox said. “I charged up Kettle Hill with Lieutenant Colonel Theodore Roosevelt.”

  “The good cousin,” Pickering said.

  “Oh, I wouldn’t put it quite that way,” Knox said. “Franklin grows on you.”

  “I will refrain from saying, Mr. Secretary, how that man grows on me.”

  Knox chuckled. “The Marine Corps turned you down, did they?”

  “Politely, but firmly.”

  “The Marine Corps is part of the Navy. I’m Secretary of the Navy. Are you a bartering man, Pickering?”

  “I’ll always listen to an offer.”

  Knox nodded, and paused thoughtfully before going on.

  “The reason I was sorry to hear that you’re not going to be working for Bill Donovan, Pickering, is that I came here with the intention of making this argument to you: Since you will be working for Donovan, you will not be able to run the Pacific & Far Eastern Shipping fleet, so you might as well sell it to the Navy.”

  “Since Fowler apparently has been doing a lot of talking about me,” Pickering replied, not pleasantly, “I’m surprised he didn’t tell you I told him I have no intention of selling any more of my ships. To the Navy, or anyone else.”

  “Oh, he told me that,” Knox said. “I came here to try to get you to change your mind.”

  “Then I’m afraid you’re on a wild-goose chase.”

  “You haven’t even heard my arguments.”

  Pickering shrugged.

  “We’re desperate for shipping,” Knox said.

  “My ships will haul anything the Navy wants hauled, anywhere the Navy wants it hauled.”

  “There are those who believe the maritime unions may cause trouble when there are inevitable losses to submarines and surface raiders.”

  “My crews will sail my ships anywhere I tell them to sail them,” Pickering said.

  “There are those who believe the solution to that problem, which I consider more real than you do, is to send them to sea with Navy crews.”

  “Then they’re fools,” Pickering said.

  “Indeed?” Knox asked icily.

  “Pacific & Far Eastern doesn’t have a third mate, or a second assistant engineer, who is not qualified to sail as master, or chief engineer,” Pickering said. “Which is good for the country. My junior officers are going to be the masters and chief engineers of the ships—the vast fleets of cargo ships—we’re going to have to build for this war, and my ordinary and able-bodied seamen and my engine room wipers are going to be the junior officers and assistant engineers. You can’t teach real, as opposed to Navy, seamanship in ten or twelve weeks at the Great Lakes Naval Training Center. If somebody is telling you that you can, you had better get a new adviser.”

  “What’s the difference between Navy seamanship, Flem, and ‘real’ seamanship?” Fowler asked.

  “It takes three or four Navy sailors to do what one able-bodied seaman is expected to do on a merchantman,” Pickering replied. “A merchant seaman does what he sees has to be done, based on a good deal of time at sea. A Navy sailor is trained not to blow his nose until someone tells him to. And then they send a chief petty officer to make sure he blows it in the prescribed manner.”

  “You don’t seem to have a very high opinion of the U.S. Navy,” Knox said sharply.

  “Not if what happened at Pearl Harbor is any indication of the way they think. I was there, Mr. Knox.”

  Knox glowered at him; Fowler saw the Secretary’s jowls working.

  “There are those,” Knox said after a long pause, “who advise me that the Navy should stop trying to reason with you and simply seize your vessels under the President’s emergency powers.”

  “I’ll take you to the Supreme Court and win. You can force me—not that you would have to—to have my ships carry what you want, wherever you want it carried, but you can not seize them.”

  “A couple of minutes ago, the thought entered my head that I might be able to resolve this difference reasonably by offering you a commission in the Marine Corps, say, as a colonel. That now seems rather silly, doesn’t it?”

  “I don’t think silly is the word,” Pickering said nastily. “Insulting would seem to fit. To both the Corps and me.”

  “Flem!” Senator Fowler protested.

  “It’s all right, Dick,” Knox said, waving his hand to shut him off. “And I don’t suppose saying to you, Pickering, that your country needs your vessels would have much effect on you, would it?”

  “My ships are at my country’s disposal,” Pickering said evenly. “But what I am not going to do is turn them over to the Navy so the Navy can do to them what it did to the Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor.”

  “That’s an insult,” Knox said, “to the courageous men at Pearl Harbor, many of whom gave their lives.”

  “No, it’s not,” Pickering said. “I’m not talking about courage. I’m talking about stupidity. If I had your job, Mr. Secretary, I would fire every admiral who was anywhere near Pearl Harbor. Fire them, hell, stand them in front of a firing squad for gross derelict
ion of duty. Pearl Harbor should not have happened. That’s a fact, and you can’t hide it behind a chorus of patriotic outrage that someone would dare sink our fleet.”

  “I’m ultimately responsible for whatever happens to the Navy,” Knox said.

  “If you really believe that, then maybe you should consider resigning to set an example.”

  “Now goddamn it, Flem!” Senator Fowler exploded. “That’s going too goddamned far. You owe Frank an apology!”

  “Not if he really believes that, he doesn’t,” Knox said. He leaned over and set his glass on the coffee table. “Thank you for the drink, Dick. And for the chance to meet Mr. Pickering.”

  “Frank!”

  “It’s been very interesting,” the Secretary of the Navy said. “If not very fruitful.”

  “Frank, Flem’s had a couple too many,” Senator Fowler said.

  “He looks like the kind of man who can handle his liquor,” Knox said. “Anyway, in vino veritas.” He walked to the door and opened it, and then half-turned around. “Mr. Pickering, I offered my resignation to the President on December seventh. He put it to me that his accepting it would not be in the best interests of the country, and he therefore declined to do so.”

  And then he went through the door and closed it after him.

  Fleming Pickering and Richardson Fowler looked at each other. Pickering saw anger in his old friend’s eyes.

  There was a momentary urge to apologize, but then Fleming Pickering decided against it. He had, he realized, said nothing that he had not meant.

  III

  (One)

  On Board USS Tangier

  Task Force 14

  1820 Hours 22 December 1941

  “Now hear this,” the loudspeakers throughout the ship blared, harshly and metallically. “The smoking lamp is out. The smoking lamp is out.”

  Staff Sergeant Joseph L. Howard, USMC, was on the bow of the Tangier when the announcement came. He was smoking a cigarette, looking out across the wide, gentle swells of the Pacific at the other ships of Task Force 14.

  The USS Tangier, a seaplane tender pressed into duty as a troop transport, with the 4th Marine Defense Battalion on board, was in line behind the aircraft carrier USS Saratoga, which flew the flag of Rear Admiral Frank Fletcher, Commander of Task Force 14.

  Behind the Tangier was the Neches, a fleet oiler, riding low in the water. The three ships considered most vulnerable to attack formed the center of Task Force 14. Sailing ahead of the Saratoga were the cruisers USS Astoria and USS Minneapolis. The cruiser USS San Francisco brought up the rear. The cruisers themselves were screened by nine destroyers.

  Task Force 14 had put out from Pearl Harbor five days before, six days after the Japanese had attacked Pearl, under orders from Admiral Husband E. Kimmel, the U.S. Pacific Fleet Commander, to reinforce Wake Island.

  Wake Island desperately needed reinforcement. Already there were what the Corps euphemistically referred to as “elements” of the 1st Marine Defense Battalion. These amounted to less than four hundred Marines, commanded by Major James P. S. Devereux. Devereux had two five-inch naval cannon, obsolete weapons removed from men-of-war; four three-inch antiaircraft cannon, only one of which had the necessary fire-control gear; twenty-four .50-caliber Browning machine guns; and maybe a hundred .30-caliber Brownings, mixed air- and water-cooled. That, plus individual small arms, was it.

  Staff Sergeant Joe Howard knew what weaponry had been given to Major Devereux’s “elements” because he’d talked to the battalion’s ordnance sergeant. It had been decided, literally at the last minute, that the ordnance sergeant would be of more value to the Corps left behind at Pearl, doing what he could to get the newly formed 4th Defense Battalion’s weaponry up and running.

  And he knew what Task Force 14 was carrying to reinforce Wake Island. In addition to the 4th Defense Battalion, at near full strength, and the Brewster Buffalos of VMF-211 that would fly off Saratoga and join what was left of the dozen Wildcats already on Wake, there were, aboard Tangier and in the holds of other ships, nine thousand rounds of five-inch ammunition; twelve thousand rounds of three-inch shells for the antiaircraft cannon; and three million rounds of .50-caliber machine-gun ammunition.

  After the devastating, humiliating whipping they had taken at Pearl on December 7, the Navy and the Marine Corps were finally coming out to fight.

  Howard took a final, deep drag on his Camel, then flicked the glowing coal from its end with his thumbnail. He carefully tore the cigarette paper down its length and let the wind scatter the tobacco away. Then he crumbled the paper into a tiny ball between his thumb and index fingers and let the wind take that away, too.

  Howard was “under arms.” That is, he was wearing his steel helmet and a web belt from whose eyelets hung a canteen, a first-aid pouch, a magazine pouch for two pistol magazines, and a Model 1911A1 .45-caliber Colt pistol in a leather holster. The canteen was empty, as were the magazine pouch and the magazine in the .45. Ammunition had not been authorized for issue to the guard, much less to the troops, although there was a metal box in the guardroom with a couple of dozen five-round stripper clips of .30-06 ammunition for Springfield ’03 rifles and a half-dozen loaded seven-round .45 magazines.

  Joe Howard had seen the Officer of the Guard slip one of the loaded magazines into his .45 just before guard mount. The Officer of the Guard was a second lieutenant, a twenty-one-year-old, six months out of Annapolis. Joe had wondered whom he thought he was going to have to shoot.

  He hadn’t said anything, of course. Staff sergeants in the Marine Corps don’t question anything officers do, even twenty-one-year-old second lieutenants, unless it is really stupid and likely to hurt somebody. If Lieutenant Ellsworth Gripley felt that it was necessary to carry a loaded pistol in the performance of his duties as officer of the guard, that was his business.

  Howard set his steel helmet at the appropriately jaunty angle for a sergeant of the guard and set out to find the Officer of the Guard. He was a little worried about Second Lieutenant Ellsworth Gripley, USMC. It had finally sunk in on the young officer that this wasn’t a maneuver; within forty-eight hours the 4th Defense Battalion would be ashore on Wake Island and engaging the Japanese, and he would be expected to perform like a Marine officer.

  Lieutenant Gripley wasn’t afraid, Joe Howard thought. More like nervous. That was understandable. And he saw it as his duty to do what he could to make Gripley feel a little more sure of himself.

  The ships making up Task Force 14 were, of course, blacked out to avoid detection by the enemy. One of the functions of the guard detail—in S/Sgt. Joe Howard’s opinion, the most important function—was to make sure that no one sneaked on deck after dark for a quick smoke. The glow of a cigarette coal was visible for incredibly long distances on a black night. Even so, there seemed to be a large number of people, including officers, who seemed unwilling, or unable, to believe that their cigarette was really going to put anyone in danger.

  They seemed to think that maybe if three or four hundred people lined the ship’s rails, merrily puffing away, a Japanese submarine skipper could see this through a submarine periscope, but one little ol’ cigarette, carefully concealed in the hand? Not goddamned likely.

  Because of his zealous enforcement of the no-smoking regulations, Howard had already earned a reputation among some of the officers as a rather insolent noncom. Marine officers are not accustomed to being firmly corrected by staff sergeants. Or to being threatened by them:

  “Sir, if you don’t put that out right now, I’ll have to call the officer of the guard.”

  When he had said that, the cigarettes were immediately put out. But in half a dozen instances, the officer had asked for his name and billet. He didn’t think the information had been requested so the officers could seek out the Headquarters Company commander to tell him what a fine job S/Sgt. Howard had been doing.

  He had had less trouble with the enlisted men, although there were about ten times as many of them as there were o
fficers. The lower-ranking Marines were either afraid of defying orders or of Japanese submarines—or probably of both. And Joe Howard was aware that most of the senior noncoms probably knew, as he did, just how far a cigarette coal could be seen at night and did not wish to end their war by drowning after being torpedoed.

  And, besides, they would be in a shooting war soon enough. The word had leaked out of Officer’s Country, via a PFC orderly whom Joe had known at Quantico, that at 1800 hours they were about 550 miles from Wake Island. The Task Force was making about fifteen knots, which translated to mean they were then thirty-six hours steaming time from Wake. In other words, they should be at Wake at daybreak the day after tomorrow.

  The ships in the center of the Task Force, the Saratoga, the Tangier, and the oiler, had been making course changes regularly, zigzagging across the Pacific so as to present as difficult a target as possible for any enemy submarine that might be stalking the Task Force. The cruisers and destroyers had been making course changes that were more frequent and of greater magnitude than those of the carrier and the ships following in its wake. The destroyers had been weaving in and out between the larger ships like sheepdogs guarding their flock.

  Joe Howard had grown used to changes in course—the slight tilting of the deck, the slight change in the dull rumble of the engine, the change in the pitching and rolling of the Tangier—to the point where he paid almost no conscious attention to them.

  But now, as he made his way aft along the portside boat deck, looking for Lieutenant Gripley, he slowly came to realize that this course change was somehow different. He stopped, putting his hand on the damp inboard bulkhead to steady himself.

  For one thing, he thought, it’s taking a lot longer than they normally do.

  And then he understood. The Tangier, and thus all of Task Force 14, was not changing course, but reversing course.

  What the hell is that all about?