Tales of the South Pacific Part 26

"No, it was real. Your arm was almost broken, wasn't it? He tried to kill her with a club, didn't he? Just as we planned it."

I laughed at myself. "And I was running like a fool to try to save her! >From Achille! Boy, oh boy!"

Tony grinned at me, in that silly old way of his. "We figured on that, too, Bus. We knew you were sentimental. That you liked to protect women. We knew you would try to catch Achille before he reached the door. Why do you suppose I b.u.mped you when you started to chase him? Did you think you stumbled?"

We looked at one another across the dusty jeeps and bulldozers there along the sh.o.r.e. Tony dragged out some papers. "How about signing them for me, Bus?" I leafed through them. Statements to his bank that Latouche De Becque Barzan Fry was his lawful wife. A will. A letter to his insurance agent. The usual stuff. I witnessed them for him, sealed them in an envelope, and censored it.

That Sat.u.r.day night the moon was full. You know how it rises out of the jungle on such nights. First a glow, then the trees burst into flame, and finally the tallest ones stand like charred stumps against the moon itself. In the moonlight, with the drum beating and the little bell ringing, Tony married the girl.

I kissed the bride and hurried back to the fighter strip. I couldn't think. To h.e.l.l with dinners and Luana Pori and crazy men like Tony Fry and women like Latouche. I was sort of tied up inside. You fellows know what to do in a case like that. Even though it was against orders I revved up a plane and took off. Into the darkness. But when I was over the jungle and out across the ocean, the moon made everything bright and wonderful. I flew back very high. Below me was the plantation. Just a sliver chopped out of the dark jungle. I could see the salon, the little house Lisette and I had, Latouche's sleeping house, the white fence. I dived and buzzed the place until my ears rang. I'd give them a wedding present! You know what a plane does for you at a time like that. You can climb and twist. It's like playing G.o.d. And when you come down, you can sleep.

On Sunday the s.h.i.+p came to take us north. I hurried out to the plantation to get Fry. I found him sitting on a bench among the flowers. Latouche in a skimpy bra.s.siere and shorts lay with her head in his lap. He was reading Chinese Lea to her.

"This book says the future of America is with Asia," Latouche said in French.

"You know, Bus?" Tony began. "This guy is right. You wait. We'll all be out here again. We'll be fighting China or India or Malaysia. Asia's never going to let Australia stay white. Bus, if you're smart, you'll move out here somewhere. This is the crossroads of the world from now on."

"Time's up!" I said. Tony closed the book and looked at me.

"Bus!" Latouche said softly. "Get me one flower for my hair." I picked her a flamboyant. It was too big. "I take one piece of that green and yellow gra.s.s," she said. She wore it at a c.o.c.ky angle.

"The s.h.i.+p's in," I said.

"Well," she replied. "It got to come some time."

"I'll go pack," Tony said. Latouche shrugged her shoulders and followed him across the garden. In her evanescent clothes she was a dream, not a girl at all. She was the symbol of what men think about in lonely places. Her b.u.t.tocks did not bounce like those of tramps in Scollay Square, nor heave like those of fat and virtuous dowagers. Her shoulders stayed in a straight line as she walked. Her black hair blew lightly over her shoulder. Her legs were slim and resolute, an anchorage in the ocean of any guy's despair. She disappeared into the tiny house.

Well, you know what happened. We moved up to Santo and waited there a while. It always makes me laugh when I see a war movie. The hero and his buddy get on a s.h.i.+p in Frisco and right away land on the beachhead, where the buddy gets killed and the hero wipes out four j.a.p emplacements. You get on the s.h.i.+p at Frisco, all right. But you get off at Luana Pori. You wait there a couple of months. You move up to Santo and wait some more. At Guadal you wait, and in the Russells. But the day finally comes when even a moron can see that the next move...

THE STRIKE.

IT was now midsummer. The sun blazed directly overhead, and at times it seemed as if we could stand the heat no longer. But we had to work, for a strike was in progress. Upon us depended the success of Alligator, the great Kuralei operation.

So all through the steaming h.e.l.l of January and February we worked on. Each day a few men would find their p.r.i.c.kly heat unbearable and would have to be hospitalized. Or fungus would break out in their ears. Or athlete's foot would incapacitate them. Incessant glare of sun on coral sent some to the hospital until their eyes recovered, and once or twice men keeled over for no reason. We sluiced them off with cold water and sent them to bed for the day. But mostly we worked on.

I was in a strange Navy. I saw two major strikes, and yet I never set foot upon what you would call a real wars.h.i.+p. I was as true a naval officer as circ.u.mstances would permit, and yet I never saw a battles.h.i.+p except from a considerable distance. I never even visited a carrier, or a cruiser, or a destroyer. I never saw a submarine. I was a new type of naval officer. I was the man who messed around with aircraft, PT boats, landing barges, and the vast sh.o.r.e establishment.

For a long period prior to the actual landing on Kuralei and before the attack on Konora, I served as Admiral Kester's representative at the Naval Supply Depot which was to provision the fleet serving in those operations. I left Noumea with trepidation, for I had never before worked with the men who labor in silence behind the front, hauling, shoving, and bickering among themselves. It now became my duty to help the housekeepers of the Navy.

The Depot to which I was thus attached was located along the southern edge of an extensive channel. Much of the fleet could have been stationed there, but we got only the supply boats and small craft that provision larger units. At times we would have as many as one hundred and twenty s.h.i.+ps in our channel, s.h.i.+ps from all over the world. They brought our Depot a ma.s.sive supply of goods of war. Some of the cargoes they carried were strange, and ill.u.s.trated better than words the nature of modern war. Three s.h.i.+ps came in one week loaded mostly with paper. We built a special warehouse for it, two hundred feet long and sixty-five feet wide! In it we had a wilderness of paper. One man did nothing but take care of brown manila envelopes! That was all he did for twenty-one months! Yet into those envelopes went the plans, the records, the resumes of the world's greatest fleet. We had another man whose sole responsibility was pens, ink, paper clips, and colored pencils. This man came to his tropical job from Minnesota. He had sores in his armpits for almost eighteen months. Then he went back to Minnesota.

SeaBees had constructed the Depot. It consisted of an area two miles long, a mile deep. Two hundred odd quonset huts were laid out in neat rows along the sh.o.r.eline of the channel. Three thousand men worked at the Depot. One entire company of SeaBees did nothing but oil the coral to keep dust down. Ten men had no responsibility but to mend watches as they arrived from s.h.i.+p and aircraft navigators. Sixteen men were bakers, and all night long, every night, for two years, they made bread, and sometimes cake.

We had two docks at the Depot, and a special road paralleling the sh.o.r.eline up and down which rolled trucks day and night, seven days a week, month upon month. The drivers were all colored men, and their commanding officer permitted them to paint their trucks with fanciful names: The Dixie Flyer, The Mississippi Cannonball, Harlem Hot Spot, and Coconut Express.

More gear lay on the hot coral than ever we got into the buildings. Twelve men walked among this gear day after day, endlessly, from one pile to another. They checked it to see that rain water was not seeping through the tarpaulins. They also guarded against mosquitoes that might breed in stagnant pools behind the stacks.

There were no days at the Depot. Sunday was not observed. Nor was there day itself. As many men worked at night as did during daylight hours. In this work strange things happened. Two truckloads of jewelers' gear would be lost! Completely lost! Trucks, invaluable watches, hair springs, all records. Gone! Then, three months later the gear would be found at some place like Noumea or San Diego. It was futile even to guess at what had happened. All you knew was that one night, about 0300, that jewelers' gear was in the Depot. You saw it there! Now it was in San Diego!

Constantly, in a stream that varied only in size, officers and men from the fleet came to the Depot. They came with chits, signed always by some nebulous authority whom they considered sound but whom the men at the Depot had never heard of. "We got to have two thousand feet of Grade A wire," a seaman would plead urgently. "Give him 1200 feet!" There was no appeal. "We need four more gas stoves."

"Give him three."

"Skipper says we got to have two more Aldis lamps."

"Where you headed?"

"North."

"OK. Give him two."

In two weeks you heard every possible excuse for getting equipment. You became calloused and looked at everyone as if he were a crook. At church, if you went, you wondered, "What's he saying that for? What is it he wants?" Suspicious, charged with heavy responsibility, eager to see the fleet go forth well armed but knowing the men of the fleet were a gang of robbers, you worked yourself dizzy and knocked off twenty-five percent from each request.

If to the above characteristics you added a capacity to do twice as much work as other naval officers, a willingness to connive and battle endlessly for what you wanted, and an absolute love of red tape, you were a real Supply Officer!

Captain Samuel Kelley, 54 years old, five feet four, 149 pounds, native of Madison, Wisconsin, graduate of Annapolis, was a Supply Officer. He was a small man of tireless energy and brilliant mind. He would have succeeded in anything he tried. Had he stayed in the regular line of the Navy, he would surely have become an admiral in command of a task force. Slightly defective hearing made such a career impossible. It was a good bet, however, that he would one day be admiral in charge of the Supply Corps.

It was Captain Kelley that I came north to work with. I was taller than he, so that when I reported, I tended to stoop a bit in his presence. His first words to me were, "Stand at attention. Put your hat under your left arm. And never wear an aviator's cap in this Depot."

Captain Kelley had a mania against aviators' baseball caps. Men in the air arm of the Navy loved the tight-fitting, comfortable little caps. And when Marc Mitscher started wearing one, it was difficult to keep the entire Navy from following suit. But no men serving under Captain Kelley wore baseball caps. He issued the order on the day he arrived to take charge of the Depot. Next day he put two enlisted men in the brig. The day following he confined an officer to quarters for four days. After that, we learned our lesson.

Captain Kelley inst.i.tuted other innovations, as well. The Depot was a supply activity. Quickly officers of the regular line found themselves ousted from good jobs and relegated to minor routine posts. Several of the line officers thus demoted were civilians at heart and had no concern with their naval future. They protested the captain's decision. Within three days they received orders elsewhere and took with them unsatisfactory recommendations that would forever prevent them from being promoted in the Navy.

The captain's princ.i.p.al innovations, however, concerned free time, entertainment, and recreation. Each morning we would see him outside his quarters doing ten pushups, twenty stomach bends. He was in much better physical condition than his junior officers, a fact which gave point to his subsequent actions. First he lengthened the working day. Daytime hands reported to work at 0700. They worked till 1200. After one hour off, they worked until 1700. One night in eight they worked all night and had the next day to sleep. This meant a sixty-three hour week, with the thermometer at 95 or more. Two officers made formal protests. Unfortunately, they were line officers and were transferred.

Shortly after this protest the captain made another announcement. All games were canceled. "The men can rise an hour earlier, if they wish. They can do setting-up exercises. All this time off for games is unnecessary. The devil finds work for idle hands." So all games, except c.r.a.p and poker, were abandoned.

On the night of the day athletic schedules were discarded, some toughies cheered the captain as he entered the moving-picture area. He promptly turned, ordered the lights extinguished and the movie operators to their quarters. We had no shows for a week, and in that time all seats in the movie area were torn out. Coconut logs were strung along the ground for men to sit upon. When the movies were reopened, the same toughies cheered again. The entire Depot was restricted to quarters, and for a month we had no shows. By that time sager counsels prevailed among the men, and when movies were resumed, there were no cheers. From then on, officers and men alike met the captain with stony silence. If he came into the club, all present stood at attention until he was seated. No one spoke above a whisper until he left.

"The Navy ash.o.r.e is too lenient," the captain told us one day at dinner. "A great movement is on. I have been sent here to bring some kind of discipline into this organization. I propose to do so. We will shortly be faced with responsibilities almost beyond our capacity to perform. At that time there will be no place for weaklings."

That was the first news his subordinates had that a strike was scheduled. It was tremendous news. From then on speculation never ceased as to where the strike would be directed. Men argued until late at night the relative merits of Truk, Rabaul, Kavieng, and Kuralei. Strong spirits advocated Kuralei; weaker men shuddered at all four.

In the course of this discussion I discovered two interesting facts. The first was that most of the Supply Corps officers didn't give a d.a.m.n about the strike. They never argued about when it would hit or where. Their concern was in how many bolts would be needed, how much gasoline. Yet when the final score was tallied, I repeatedly found that it was these indifferent officers who had made the strike possible. Details entrusted to the agitators and debaters might go awry, but not the fine-spun responsibilities of the dry, uninterested supply men.

My second discovery was much more challenging. I found that I was the only man at the Depot who was sure where the strike was headed! Not even Captain Kelley knew!

I used my discovery as only a mean man would. I sat next to the captain at mess and frequently felt the steel of his impartial goad. He disliked me, but not particularly. I was merely another undisciplined line officer, and what was worse, a reserve. "A mountebank, a huckster, a dry goods salesman!" I once heard Captain Kelley describe a reserve officer who joined the Navy from a large Cleveland store. I had no illusions as to what he thought of me. When he called me to his office and told me that as long as I was attached to his staff I would report to work at 0700 not 0702, he added icily, "Perhaps the training will stand you in good stead when you return to business life."

Therefore, when I found myself with a weapon in my hands, I used it like a bludgeon rather than as a rapier. At least once each day I would refer to some admiral. I'm not sure that Admiral Kester even remembers my name. I was merely his messenger. But at the Depot one would have thought that Admiral Kester and I were... well, that he consulted me before making any decision. Whenever I mentioned him or Admiral Nimitz, whom I saw once, at a distance, or Admiral This or Admiral That, I looked right at Captain Kelley. He knew the game I was playing, but he couldn't tell whether or not I was bluffing. If I really did know some admirals, then later on I might be able to hinder his progress in the Navy. He had to be careful how he handled me! On this battleground Captain Kelley and I arranged a truce. He left me to myself. I did not undermine him with his own officers. It was this armistice that made life bearable for me. And the structure of the armistice was my snide, mean, contemptible insinuation week after week that I knew where the strike was directed and he didn't. I never said as much, but I certainly devised a hundred means of imparting that suggestion to Captain Kelley!

My plan of battle did not endear me with my fellow officers who groaned and sweated under the Captain's saddle. They called me, "Old Me'n'e Admiral!" They were a bit envious. I tried to be a good sport about it and affected never to know what they meant.

I was therefore most pleased when an old friend of mine was a.s.signed to the Depot for additional duty in connection with the strike. Lieut. Bus Adams was older than I and a world roustabout. He was a pilot, and in the recent fighting over Konora had been banged up a bit. As relief from further flying duties, he was sent to the Depot to advise on aviation details. He reported to the captain with a dirty aviation cap under his left arm.

"Those caps are not permitted in the Depot," Captain Kelley said sharply.

"I have wings, sir," Bus replied.

"Mr. Adams! I determine the uniform here!" Bus did not acknowledge the rebuff. Nor did he stop wearing the baseball cap. Slouched over his left ear, it became a badge of freedom around the Depot. For some hidden reason, perhaps like the reasons which protected my special privileges, Captain Kelley refrained from forcing the issue with Adams.

He used subtler methods. At meals, which I remember as a horrible experience, the captain would relate one story after another of naval aviators who had been disciplined, broken, returned to civilian life. He spoke of courts-martial, inefficiencies, thefts, and other discrepancies until one would have judged all aviation personnel to be subnormal and a menace. Day after day we heard these sallies directed at Bus.

Adams refused to let the captain get under his skin. Instead, he would make ultra-polite conversation in which some aviator always won the war single-handed. He was especially fond of an offhand reference to Billy Mitch.e.l.l or the Prince of Wales and the Repulse. His choicest barbs were usually unpremeditated. Once he said, "I suppose Seversky will replace Mahan in the next generation at Annapolis!" Captain Kelley actually s...o...b..red his coffee at that remark. A much more telling blow was also offhand. Adams observed one day that disposition of one's forces was of paramount importance. "For example: A squadron of twenty good fighters aloft at Pearl Harbor would probably have kept ten American wars.h.i.+ps from being sunk."

A few other officers were also strong enough to ignore Captain Kelley. Most of them were reserve line officers. They were as far in the Navy as they would ever get. They loved the service, but had no allusions as to their worth. They were cla.s.sified A-(V)S, which meant "Aviation Volunteer Specialist," but which everyone knew meant "After Victory Scram!" One very wealthy ensign in Communications merely waited for peace and a return to Long Island. He viewed Captain Kelley as one might have viewed any other temporary plague.

The other officers had to bear the captain's cold furies. They would sit at their desks and pray for 0900 to pa.s.s. Generally speaking, if Captain Kelley did not upset the Depot and publicly excoriate his a.s.sistants by 0900 in the morning, they were safe for the day. Usually they were not so lucky. Some minor defect in their work would be discovered by the captain, and before everyone in earshot, the culprit would be humiliated. Day after day Captain Kelley raged and stormed at his officers. Frequently, the cause, if ignored, would have been forgotten by noon. As it was, however, there grew up in the Depot a clique of eight or ten officers who daily sought to divert the captain's wrath from themselves by pointing out someone else's mistakes. In this way officer was set against officer, and there developed an atmosphere of hatred deeper than any in which I had previously lived. No defection, however small, escaped attention. Like boys before a whipping post, the officers would breathe easily because it was someone else that morning, not they.

Bus Adams refused to play any part in that dirty game. Several times he took the blame for petty discrepancies which it would have been beneath the dignity of a naval aviator to dispute. "h.e.l.l," he used to say to me. "Why should I dirty my hands in that foul stew? What can that bunch of sisters do to me? Next month I'll be tangling with Zeros. I can't waste my energy on the Supply Corps!"

But next month never came. Instead, one dismal incident after another occurred, until I wondered whether I was working with men or children. One especially petty affair will explain what I mean. Captain Kelley's incipient deafness made it necessary for him to ask that certain conversation be repeated. "What's that, Mr. Adams?" he would say, leaning forward slightly. Bus, accordingly, made it a point to drop his voice at the last sentence of any interesting comment he was making. "What's that, Mr. Adams?" the captain would ask in his birdlike manner. Then Bus would shout something proving that aviators alone were saving the Navy. I remember once when his bellowed reply was, "He flunked out of flight training, so they found him a job in the Supply Corps!" Another time he echoed, "We would have sunk two more j.a.p s.h.i.+ps, but we ran out of supplies!"

Bus could speak like Charles Laughton, the actor who portrayed Captain Bligh in Mutiny on the Bounty. Frequently when he had two or three whiskeys safely stowed he would thrust his lower jaw out, walk like a martinet on the bridge, and stick his face into mine. "What's that, Mr. Christian?" he would sneer in the manner of the great slave-driver. Bus repeated this performance often enough so that enlisted men finally got wind of it. Then, for several weeks, two hundred warehouses rang with the battle cry: "What's that, Mr. Christian?" Then for Christian, the luckless mutineer, was subst.i.tuted the name of any officer who might at that moment be under Captain Kelley's heel. "What's that, Mr. Adams?" would come bursting forth from some dark building. In mock terror a clown on the outside would chatter in reply, "Yes, Captain Bligh!"

It became my unpleasant task to visit each of the two-hundred-odd buildings and tell the men in charge that no further catcalls would be tolerated. I pride myself on the fact that not once did I wink or show by any outward manifestation what I thought; although at times I must admit that I found it difficult to keep a straight face when some able mimic would sham mock horror at the thought of my suspecting him. I remember one gaunt lad in particular called Polikopf, whose strange name later became famous at the Depot. He was a gifted mimic, and one of the first to adopt the cry, "What's that, Mr. Christian?" He feigned ignorance of what I was talking about.

"Very well, Polikopf," I said, "but in the future save your gibes for the enlisted men. It's dangerous to go about mocking naval captains."

"Aye, aye, sir!" he replied in military fas.h.i.+on. I could detect no mimicry in his voice, although there must have been much in his mind. "I'll follow your advice, sir! Save my efforts for the enlisted men."

The result of my extensive tour was that any bitterness the enlisted men felt for Captain Kelley was thereafter hidden. I took no sides in the arguments that were rife among the officers and men alike concerning the captain's ability. As a matter of fact, I now think he was one of the ablest men I knew in the Navy. The incident of the hurricane doors will show what I mean.

One day the Depot received orders from Noumea to take proper precautions against hurricanes. Our entire island received the order. Other activities made up a routine hurricane bill whereby personnel would be evacuated to safe land and gear lashed down as well as possible.

Such cavalier precautions would not do for Captain Kelley. He appointed a committee to study what should be done in event of sustained and gusty winds up to 150 miles an hour. He established one building as a testing ground, and ran small handcars loaded with concrete down inclines to determine at what point quonset huts buckled. He studied all he could find on hurricanes, and then asked me to converse with planters and natives in the region to discover what they knew of hurricanes.

I visited each available plantation and learned from the owners that hurricanes occurred about once in nine years. The season lasted from January through March. They started with heavy rains which lasted two days. On the beginning of the second day winds began to rise, and on the night of the second day they came in short bursts, followed by calm spells in which the rain was intensified. If that stage was reached, a proper hurricane was in progress, and it must blow itself out.

From natives I learned much about the big winds. In their horrible Beche-le-Mer they told me much that was fanciful and more that was instructive. One old man who had lived near the channel for half a century told me, "Wind he come, he come, he come. Takem, takem, takem! Trees he go, ocean allay, allay! Bimeby wind he go Vanicoro, he go Banks, he go, he go. Bimeby stop." The old man told me this with much waving of arms and with many words I did not understand. It was enough, however, to lead my inquiries in the right direction. I determined that whereas floods and lightning might come when the wind was east and north, trees were usually blown down only in the first stages of the hurricane when wind blew from the southeast. By the time it had worked around to the west, danger was gone.

I relayed this information to Captain Kelley. Characteristically he decided instantly that any quonsets whose ends opened to the southeast must be completely repacked so that gear inside would strengthen the relatively frail tin walls. This was a prodigious job, and when the captain informed his officers that work on the project would start immediately, they showed astonishment.

"We must take no risks that can be avoided," he insisted.

"Can we do this before the task force arrives?" an officer asked.

"If not, we must do it while the force is here," said Captain Kelley. "We shall stow gear at one end of the building and issue it at the other end. By tomorrow noon see that all issue desks are placed at the north or northwest ends of buildings."

Two nights later the Depot was in the swing of a full nine-hour day followed by special four-hour emergency duty at night, ending with another nine-hour day till dawn. Each man worked thirteen hours a day, seven days in a row. On the seventh night they worked an additional six hours and were then given a day to sleep. Lights blazed all night. Men shoved and sweated. Even middle-aged men who normally worked as guards were called to duty. A company of Marines was brought in to take over their guard duty.

Navy chow ash.o.r.e is rarely as good as it is afloat, and for enlisted men it is usually much worse. As work increased, quality of chow decreased, and lamentations were loud. Nevertheless, men worked on. With no beer, no movies, poor food, frightened officers, and relentless Captain Kelley in charge, the men worked on, ninety hours a week. Tension, at such times, mounts.

Half the buildings were secured against hurricane when two unfortunate things happened. The rain started and the fleet came in. The rain alone could have been tolerated. The skies opened torrentially every morning, afternoon, evening and night. "Like a cow on a flat rock," old Navy hands said. In between the sun shone and generated steam wherever water lay. Men's s.h.i.+rts were never dry save for one fleeting instant when the sun had finished evaporating rain water and sweat had not yet started to pour. Mold grew everywhere, and men afflicted with fungus found it spreading rapidly. The rains were started.

But to have rain and the fleet at one time was too much. For most s.h.i.+ps' crews the Depot was a place to loaf and a place from which the most wonderful things could be procured, if... If you knew somebody, you might get a radio! If you could w.a.n.gle a chit, you might get two new knives! If you pestered a hot, ill-tempered storekeeper long enough, he might give you a wrist-watch band in desperation. And if you could manage to finagle a boiled ham, or a tinned turkey, or a coconut cake... well, you could probably get an entire quonset hut! And the storekeeper thrown in!

All day men of the Depot would work and quarrel with men of the fleet. Then at night they would wrestle with boxes to protect their buildings against a hurricane which might never come. And invariably the fleet wanted what had two days before been packed at the bottom of the pile against the doors. It was my job to keep the enlisted men happy, and I think I succeeded. At any rate, the Depot never before had handled so much gear in so short a time. But I could not have succeeded in keeping spirits up had I not received help from a most unusual quarter: a man in a long black coat! Said he was from Naval Intelligence!

He appeared one night at about 0200. It was a dark, rainy night, and work had been knocked off. The floodlights were dark, and in the channel rode a hundred s.h.i.+ps. Mysteriously, at the east end of the Depot a man in a long black trench coat appeared. "Naval Intelligence," he whispered to the guard. "What's up?" the guard whispered in return. "Horrible," Longcoat replied. "j.a.p saboteurs have landed at the other end of the island!"

"Oh, my G.o.d!" the guard whispered. "Stand your post! We're getting reinforcements. They're going to try to blow this place up. Stop the strike! We've got to outwit them. I'll be in charge. When I flash my light once, you will fire twice. Up in the air. That'll keep us together. Then the troops can take over!"

"Yes, sir!" the guard replied grimly.

Up and down the buildings the man in the long coat went. Few of the men standing guard had ever expected to be addressed by a man from Naval Intelligence! They were stunned at the audacity of the j.a.ps. But they were ready!

At about 0235, the man in the long coat suddenly appeared where three guards could see him. Flash... The guards fired twice each into the dark night. Longcoat hastened to another vantage point. Flash... Four more guards fired. Down the long row of buildings hurried Longcoat, flas.h.i.+ng his light and drawing a fusilade. When he reached the last guards he flashed his light four times. A true volley of shots responded. Then Longcoat disappeared.

By the time the second batch of guards had fired, half the officers were out of bed. By the time the last watchman had followed instructions, many officers aboard s.h.i.+ps were awake. Lights flashed in earnest now. Bells jangled, and before long Captain Kelley himself appeared, quiet, incisive, and determined.

"It's a hoax, sir!" a lieutenant reported.

"What's that, sir?" Kelley asked.

"A hoax, sir. Somebody fooled the guards!"

Captain Kelley said nothing. He grew pale with anger and personally interrogated each guard. He did not raise his voice nor display his rage in any way. Relentlessly, he pursued his questioning, and by the time he had reached the last guard descriptions and hints had mounted so rapidly that we knew for certain who the culprit was.

We went directly to his bunk, and there we found him, shoes wet, and a long coat at the foot of his bunk. It was Polikopf! He had followed my instructions to the letter!

Captain Kelley did the speaking. "Polikopf?" he asked.

"Yes, sir!" the boy in the bunk replied.

"Stand up!" Naked, Polikopf obeyed.

"Put your clothes on!"

"Yes, sir!"

"Did you give the guards orders to fire?" Captain Kelley asked.

"Yes, sir!"

Captain Kelley turned his back on Polikopf. "Arrest that man!" he ordered. The Master-at-Arms led Polikopf away.

By that time sleep was impossible! I and another officer inspected all guards, checked their revolvers, and issued new ammunition. When we reached the office, base police were there. While we talked the Island Commander called on the phone. Blinker was going out to all the s.h.i.+ps. One replied, in the slow code of a learner, a message which all could read: "G.o.d help Polikopf!"

G.o.d and Bus Adams did help Polikopf! G.o.d helped by having created in man a sense of humor. n.o.body could listen to the story of what happened without smiling. If you had enough rank, you laughed. And if you were an admiral, you roared, but only behind doors.

Polikopf's adventure, had it occurred in peacetime, would have been disastrous. He would have been jailed, at the least. But in the South Pacific, with a great strike in the offing, with j.a.ps trying to infiltrate positions, and with nerves on edge, his actions were a hilarious burlesque of naval life. Men laughed more at Polikopf and his long coat than at any movie the area ever had! For myself, I think it was the long coat that saved him. The idea of anybody in a long coat, all wool, when the thermometer was at 90, was so hilarious that one simply had to laugh. And the burlesque of Naval Intelligence, which is the most secret and circ.u.mspect of all military organizations, was too much. Everyone had to roar at the long, woolen coat.

That is, everybody but Captain Kelley. He was coldly furious, and ordered a court-martial first thing next morning. But when the problem arose as to what Polikopf was to be charged with, Captain Kelley was stumped! He started to speak three times. Each time he stopped. "d.a.m.n it!" he said, sending Polikopf back to his cell. "This needs some looking into!" He went in to breakfast.