ends of the boats during their short journeys. One day, March would
take his position at the steering wheel. The next he would handle the
big levers controlling the Kingston valves on the main ballast tanks.
Then he would work with the men in the engine room, after having
studied Diesels in some of his classes. He did a stretch in the torpedo
room several times when they shot the practice torps at special targets
towed by a surface boat. He worked the interphone system as orderly,
took over the little radio shack, spent several hours in the battery
room, working the diving planes.
“I’ve done everything so far but cook lunch and cut the crew’s hair,”
he said to Stan one day, as they relaxed wearily for fifteen minutes
after dinner before going to their studies.
“Same here,” Stan said. “But I haven’t been assistant pharmacist yet.”
“Oh, that’s right,” March recalled. “I haven’t passed out any pills
yet. And I don’t think I’ll have to.”
“Do you feel that you know the crew’s jobs pretty well now, March?”
Stan asked.
“Most of them,” March replied. “I know I could take over most of them
without any trouble. But I’d like another trip or two in the torpedo
room, and I want to be at the diving controls for a crash dive before
I’ll feel sure of myself.”
“I agree with you on the diving controls,” Stan said, “but I feel okay
on the torps now. What I want is a little time on the sound-detector
devices.”
“You can never have too much time on those,” March said. “Every
additional hour of experience with them makes you all the better, I
think. But it’s wonderful that they teach every officer to do every job
on the boat—not just the work of the other officers but of every
enlisted man on board.”
Not only did they handle every job of the crew on the sub, but they
spent hours every day in classroom and laboratory. They studied engines
and motors and navigation and torpedoes, and—above all, lately—theories
of approach and attack. In addition to their work on the training subs
themselves, they carried out attack problems in the wonderful “mock-up”
control room in one of the buildings. Here was a real control room,
with controls and periscopes complete. Standing in position at the
’scope, as if he were the Skipper of the ship, March sighted about on
the artificial horizon which looked quite real to him. Suddenly he saw
what seemed to be two ships appear on the horizon. First he had to
identify them. Then he had to judge their speed and course accurately
while they still looked like only tiny spots in his periscopes.
Calling out orders, he directed the course of the “submarine” he was
commanding so that he would be in position to fire torpedoes. Then the
’scope went down, as would happen in actual combat. His “sub” was
traveling under water, without even the revealing ’scope-ripples to
show the enemy where he was. Then he surfaced again, looked through the
’scope to see if he and the “enemy” ships were where they ought to be
in relation to each other.
If he was right, he ordered the setting of the torpedo courses and then
called “Fire one! Fire two!”
Then he would go over his record with the instructors. He would find
out just how well he had done in handling the complete tactical problem
that had been presented to him. Had he identified the ships correctly
as to nationality, type, size? Had he judged their speed and course
correctly? And finally—had his torpedoes hit home? If he had handled
the problem correctly, he felt almost the thrill that might have come
with sinking an actual enemy ship.
Several afternoons a week, March went out on the training subs. He
asked for more time at the diving controls and got it. He asked for two
torpedo-room watches and his request was fulfilled. Then he began to
take over the duties of the various officers. He served as
communications officer, engineering officer, electrical officer,
navigation officer—and finally as diving officer. The first time he
gave the orders to take the ship down, his heart was in his throat,
even though Sutherland was standing by his side to take over at the
slightest mistake. He didn’t believe that he could possibly remember
all the things he had to, but he found, as the orders started coming
from his mouth, that his mind ordered them out without his thinking
about them. He knew so well, by this time, the logical order of events,
that his mind went straight along that path without a hitch.
What pleased March most of all after this experience—even more than the
pleasant commendation of the executive officer—was the word spoken to
him by Scott, the radioman. Scott had been on the training subs during
most of March’s trips, too, and they had spoken to each other
frequently. But on the dock after March’s turn as diving officer, Scott
saluted and nodded with a smile.
“If you’ll pardon me, sir,” he said, “I’d like to mention that you
handled that diving like a veteran.”
“Thanks, Scott—it’s swell of you to say that,” March mumbled.
“You know—a bunch of students is likely to get a little funny feeling
when we know a new officer’s goin’ to take us down,” Scott said. “But
we couldn’t have been safer with the Skipper himself than we were with
you.”
March wrote about that in the letter he wrote to Scoot Bailey that
evening. He had been so busy, working hard sixteen hours a day, that
Scoot seemed miles and years away.
“I’m beginning to feel like a real submariner at last, Scoot,” he
wrote. “For a while I thought there was so much to learn that I’d never
get there. But I’m at home now, and I think I can make it all right. I
suppose you’ve been feeling much the same way—despite the fact that
flying is so much simpler than pigboating—and that you’re getting the
feeling of being a pilot, without having an instructor in your lap
every minute.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER SEVEN
ORDERS TO REPORT
Scoot Bailey read March’s letter and grinned.
“So flying’s easy, he says?” he muttered to himself. “He should have
been here going through what I’ve been through! Aerodynamics, engines,
controls, meteorology, gunnery, navigation, bombing, figure-eights,
barrel-rolls, spot landings!”
He shook his head and looked at the row of textbooks on the desk before
him.
“He’s right, though,” he said. “I do begin to feel like a flier. At
first, before I’d ever been up in a plane, I thought I was one—one of
those so-called natural fliers, only there isn’t any such thing. Then
when I first flew I realized I didn’t know much of anything. Next, when
I got so I could handle the trainer pretty well, with the instructor
right there, I decided flying was pretty simple after all.”
He sat back and recalled the day that had changed his mind about that.
“But when he finally told me to take it up alone—boy, oh boy! There I
sat in that flying machine with no teacher there to hold my hand.
That’s when I thought I didn’t even know what direction the stick
moved, I didn’t know which way to push the throttle. What ever gave me
the nerve to give her the gun and take off I can never figure out. But
when that was over and I was still alive and in one piece, I’d got over
the worst of it.”
He realized that a submariner had no equivalent of soloing in a plane
to go through. He’d have to remember to write that to March.
“After that I straightened myself out,” Scoot’s thoughts went on. “I
wasn’t too cocky and I wasn’t too scared. I just knew that I had
learned to fly a little bit, that there was still a tremendous amount
to learn, and that if I worked hard enough I could learn it and turn
out to be a pretty good pilot.”
Scoot was on the advanced Navy trainer now, a fast ship that came
closer in speed and maneuverability to the fighters he would eventually
fly.
“In another week I’ll be heading for the training carrier,” he said
with a glow of satisfaction. “I’ll get my wings and I’ll be a real Navy
pilot, but I’ve still got a lot to learn. Taking off from those heaving
decks—and landing on ’em again—is going to be quite different from the
same moves on these nice flat Texas plains.”
As Scoot thought about it, about the work March had been doing, he
realized that there was a great deal in common in their fields. Flying
a plane wasn’t much like handling a submarine, but both of them got
away from the normal positions of most people. The flier got away from
the earth’s surface in one direction. The submariner got away from it
by going under. They both handled craft that could travel in a
three-dimensional sphere, not just over the surface like a tank or a
battleship.
“March practices coming up with a Momsen Lung,” Scoot told himself,
“while I practice coming down with a parachute. That Lung’s just a sort
of underwater parachute.”
A plane was just a vehicle to get explosives into position for firing
at the enemy and so was a submarine, Scoot concluded. And sometimes
they even handled the same explosives—torpedoes!
“Now if someone would just invent a flying submarine,” Scoot thought,
“March and I could get together again. But I guess that’s not very
likely outside the comic strips. When you think of the terrific water
pressure a sub has to stand, you can’t very well imagine hooking wings
on to something that heavily plated with steel. And think of the
batteries! No—I’m afraid March and I will be separated for some time.
It seems a shame, though, sub and plane ought to make a mighty fine
team.”
The next week, as Scoot started off from Corpus Christi for the
training carrier off the shores of Florida, March was setting off on
one of the most important underwater trips of his training. It was a
trip of two days on which March was to act throughout as navigation
officer, still his specialty despite his training in every other job on
the ship. March knew his navigation thoroughly while he was still on
surface ships, but with the intensive extra study he had gone through
at New London, especially on dead reckoning and “blind” navigation for
underwater travel, he was a master.
During the trip, on which Stan Bigelow also acted as engineering
officer in charge of the Diesels and motors, they got the real feeling
of being on patrol. They simulated traveling through enemy waters and
so ran submerged most of the daylight hours, the Skipper taking a look
around occasionally with the periscope.
Numerous drills were also rehearsed during the voyage—fire drills,
man-overboard drills, crash dives. They simulated a chlorine gas
danger, acting as if the sea water had got into the batteries to give
off the deadly fumes. Gas masks were out in a hurry and the battery
room was sealed off with only two “casualties.”
“The only thing we haven’t tried on this trip,” March said at mess the
first evening, “is some of the first aid we’ve learned.”
“Well, if someone will volunteer to simulate appendicitis,” the Skipper
laughed, “I’m sure Pills will try an operation. But you forgot
something else we haven’t tried—a depth-charge attack.”
“I’d just as soon skip that, sir,” Stan said, “at least until the real
thing hits me.”
“No way of simulating it, anyway,” the Captain commented. “But it’s
about the only thing we leave out in this training.”
“There’s one big difference,” March said. “In training, if you make a
mistake, why you just get a bad mark from the teacher. In real
submarining in war time, you’re likely to get—dead. And carry a lot of
others along with you.”
“What do you mean?” the Skipper asked. “That’s true at the beginning,
of course, but not now. You’re really navigating this boat, Mr. Anson.
Nobody else is doing it, and nobody’s checking up on you. If you do it
wrong, we’ll pile up on Montauk Point!”
March gulped. And Stan looked a little worried.
“What’s the matter, Stan?” March asked. “Are you scared? Think I’m not
a good enough navigator?”
“No, I was just wondering,” Stan said, “if the same thing applied to
me—if I’m really totally responsible for all these engines on this
trip.”
“Of course you are, Mr. Bigelow,” the Skipper smiled. “And I’m sure
you’ll handle them very nicely, just as I’m confident Mr. Anson will
take us just where we’re supposed to go. You are not allowed to take
over these duties until you have proved conclusively, in your previous
work, that you could do so.”
As darkness descended over the waters of Long Island Sound, the
training sub surfaced and found herself just where she was supposed to
be at that time, much to March’s relief. Hiding behind a point of land
near the end of Long Island, they charged their batteries, while a
skeleton crew stayed on watch. Most of the others went to bed for a few
hours’ sleep in the bunks which lined the walls of most of the rooms.
March and Stan shared a tiny cabin, but were not in it at the same
time, as their watches followed one another.
Before dawn the next morning the sub set off from its cove, submerged,
and followed the next course under water. Sending up the periscope at
about ten o’clock, the Skipper saw the target boats at the designated
spot and the sub went through a series of simulated attacks on enemy
shipping, crash diving to get away from “destroyers” attacking them,
lying on the bottom with all motors shut off for a spell, then sneaking
away at a depth of two hundred feet in a circuitous course to outwit
the enemy waiting for them.
During all the trip the Skipper and Lieutenant Commander Sutherland
were closely observing, without seeming to do so, the actions of March
and Stan, and of the student diving section which had shipped with them
for this special trip. They were interested in seeing not just whether
the men could handle their jobs, but _how_ they did it—if calmly or
with too much tension. On occasion one or the other of the two senior
officers would give a conflicting order or misunderstand something
reported by Stan or March, just to see what happened. Not once did Stan
or March become upset, and the two older men smiled at each other
meaningly.
[Illustration: _The Sub Set Off and Submerged_]
“Two good officers,” the Skipper said. “I wish I could get out on
patrol again and take along a couple of new young men like that.”
“I’d go anywhere with them myself,” said Sutherland. “Why do we have to
be so old, Skipper?”
“Didn’t you have enough action in the last war?” the Captain asked.
“No, sir, and neither did you!”
“Well, men like Anson and Bigelow will have to do it for us this time,
I guess,” the Captain said. “And I suppose we’re doing an important job
if we help at all to make them such good pigboat officers.”
“They’re ready to be assigned now, don’t you think?” Sutherland asked.
“Yes, without a doubt. They can’t learn any more except through actual
experience. They might as well start getting it right away.”
March and Stan felt sure that their training was coming to an end. So
far as classes were concerned, they knew that they had covered just
about all the work that the school had to give them. They had studied
so hard that they felt mentally exhausted.
“I don’t think I could cram one more fact into my head,” Stan said.
“It’s going to take some time for the facts I’ve been putting in there
to assemble themselves and settle down in some orderly fashion.”
“We’ll be leaving before long,” March said. “But there’s one thing I
want to do before I leave. I want to see Winnie and Minnie.”
“Oh—in the escape tower?” Stan exclaimed. “Of course—we’ve never made
the hundred-foot escape.”
“We don’t have to, but just about everybody does,” March said. “Want to
do it with me tomorrow?”
“Sure, if there’s a group going through,” Stan agreed. “By the way,
what happened to that fellow Cobden who flubbed the fifty-foot escape?”
“He made it,” March said. “And he’s already done the hundred-footer,
too. The psychiatrist found out what was bothering him. When he was
just a kid he was swimming with a gang and one of ’em ducked him and
held his head under water a bit too long. He got some water in his
lungs, passed out, but they revived him. He’d forgotten all about it,
really—except underneath, of course. He said that later when he made up
his mind to learn how to swim well, it took a lot of grit to make
himself do it. He didn’t know why it bothered him, but he had the guts
to fight it out and really learn how to swim. Never did any diving,
though—didn’t like being completely under water.”
“And after all these years that old experience pops up!” Stan exclaimed.
“It just goes to prove that all these tests are so sensible!” March
said. “What if he hadn’t found that out until he got in a sub on duty
somewhere? His going to pieces then might have wrecked it, or caused
plenty of trouble.”
“He’s all over it now?” Stan asked.
“Sure,” March said. “As soon as the doc got the story out of him and
explained it, Cobden just laughed and said he felt foolish. Went right
over to the fifty-foot level and did the escape. He even joked with the
Chief and said that he shouldn’t hold his head under water—it might
make a neurotic out of him.”
“That’s swell!” Stan commented.
“Yes, and he insisted on taking the hundred-foot escape right away,
too,” March went on. “But they were smart. They wouldn’t let him. They
thought he might be acting under a temporary fit of courage and bravado
and the old fear might come back on him later. So they made him wait a
couple of weeks. It went fine, though.”
Before going to the escape tower the next day, March looked up Scott,
the radioman, and reminded him of their date to look at Winnie and
Minnie together. So Scott and March and Stan went to the hundred-foot
tower together that afternoon, donned their swimming trunks, their
Momsen Lungs, and stepped under the metal skirt in the water at the
bottom. As March started up the long cable leading to the surface, he
realized that the hatch and platform there were made exactly like the
top of a real sub. And there on the walls were the two beautiful
mermaids, Winnie and Minnie, smiling at him. He could not smile back,
because of the Momsen Lung mouthpiece, but he waved at the girls and
went slowly up past them.
At the fifty-foot platform an instructor swam out and around him,
waving his arms to indicate that March was moving up at the correct
speed. As he broke the surface he felt fine, as if one of the last acts
at New London had been accomplished. Stan and Scott followed him
quickly, and then the three of them were presented with the special
diplomas, decorated with pictures of Winnie and Minnie, stating that
they had made the hundred-foot escape.
As March and Stan walked back to their quarters, March said, “Now I
feel ready for anything!”
And waiting for him were his orders—to report in two weeks to
Baltimore, Maryland, for duty aboard the new submarine, _Kamongo_.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER EIGHT
_KAMONGO_
“_Kamongo?_” Stan exclaimed, holding in his hands the orders which
directed him to the same ship. “What kind of fish is that?”
“Never heard of it,” March said. “They’re building so many subs these
days that they’re running out of fish to name them after. Let’s ask the
Exec tonight at mess.”
Captain Sampson knew about the Kamongo.
“A very important creature,” he said. “If there hadn’t been a Kamongo,
we probably wouldn’t be here today.”
“What do you mean, sir?” Stan asked, wondering at the officer’s smile
and twinkling eyes.
“Well, the story has to go very far back in history,” the Captain said,
“back when the earth was mostly covered with water and the only living
creatures were _in_ the water. There had to be something that crawled
out of the water and learned how to live on land. That was Kamongo.”
“How did he do it?” March asked. “Did he have lungs?”
“Maybe a Momsen Lung,” Stan suggested with a laugh.
“Not quite.” Captain Sampson smiled. “We don’t know that it was Kamongo
itself that did the crawling out, but it must have been something like
him. You see, another name for Kamongo is Lungfish. He’s a kind of
fish—more fish than anything else in many ways—but he’s also got lungs
of a sort. He can live under water or above it. And so can a submarine.
I think it’s a fine name for a sub. I’d like to be boarding her with
you.”
“_Kamongo_,” muttered Stan, almost to himself. “_Kamongo._”
“Yes, I’ve been thinking the same thing,” March said. “Getting used to
our ship’s name. It’s like suddenly finding out you’ve got a wife and
somebody tells you her name—and you’ve never heard it before.”
“If you say it over more and more,” Stan said, “you get to like it.
It’s got a good sound.”
“Yes, I think so,” March agreed. “It’s got strength. And for some
reason it sounds sleek and trim. And being able to live above or below
the water—that’s our ship, all right!”
“Two weeks,” Stan mused. “You’re going home, I suppose?”
“Yes, I’m going home,” March replied. “It may be the last time for
quite a spell.”
“I’m going, too,” Stan said. “Good old Utica, New York. I’m glad it
isn’t far.”
So Stan and March said goodbye the next day, as they said goodbye to
all the others they had come to know so well at New London. But to each
other they were able to say, “See you in a couple of weeks—aboard
_Kamongo_!”
Then March went home, and saw his mother and Scoot’s family and many of
his old friends. But Hampton did not seem right without Scoot himself.
It had been a wrench when he went off to New London without him, but
there he had been so busy, so absorbed, that he had hardly had time to
miss his friend of so many years. Now, back in the town they had grown
up in together, the town wasn’t all there without Scoot.
March had written Scoot a note before leaving New London, telling him
that he was going home on leave before reporting for duty. And Scoot
had gnashed his teeth on getting the letter, realizing that March had
finished his training first. Scoot felt that he was finished, too, for
he had done everything but fly down the funnel of the training
carrier—backwards.
“What’s left for me to learn?” he asked. “Unless they set up some real
Jap Zeros here for me to shoot at I don’t see what else I can do.”
Then, just four days before March had to leave Hampton, Scoot got his
own orders—to report in three weeks’ time to the new aircraft carrier
_Bunker Hill_ at San Francisco!
He raced home from Florida as fast as he could go, and he and March had
two days together before March left. They talked submarines and
airplanes all day and all night, and Scoot’s family had to wait until
March left before they had a really good chance to visit with him.
But March felt better when he got on the train for Baltimore. It was
good to have seen Scoot for even that short time. There were a million
other things they could have talked about, but they had got close to
one another again in that time and they had gained greater spirit from
their companionship.
He tried not to think that he might not see Scoot again—ever. But he
couldn’t help facing it.
“After all,” he told himself, “submarine duty is no bed of roses.
People do get killed in it. And flying a Navy fighter against the Japs
is not the safest occupation in the world. There are lots of young
fellows going out on such jobs who won’t be coming back from them. How
do I know but what Scoot and I—or one of us, anyway—are among them?”
But such thoughts did not stay with him long. No matter what the facts
of the matter or the statistics of casualties in wartime, March felt
very confident of returning home safe and sound and going on to live to
be at least ninety-five. As the train rolled along ever nearer to
Baltimore, he thought more and more of _Kamongo_, his new home, his new
ship on which he was to be the navigation officer.
“She’s probably about 1500 tons,” he said, “like most of them they’re
building now. Trim and neat, about three hundred and some odd feet
long. She’ll have one three-inch deck gun and a couple of antiaircraft
machine guns. Eight or ten torpedo tubes—fore and aft.”
He tried to picture _Kamongo_ in his mind, so much more modern and
powerful than the old O-boats on which he had been training.
“Air-conditioned,” he mused. “All the new ones are. I’m lucky to get on
a brand-new ship! Freshwater showers. Plenty of refrigeration for
carrying good food. Why, we’ll probably come up with turkey on
Christmas Day!”
He pictured his life in the submarine, his meals, his quarters.
“I may have a little cabin of my own—not much more than a telephone
booth, but all mine. Maybe not, of course, but these new ones really
make you comfortable. Probably five officers aboard, crew of about
fifty-five or sixty.”
He wondered where they would go, where they would hunt out the enemy
ships.