Caine Mutiny, The - Herman Wouk [279]
BATTLE-SCARRED PACIFIC VETERAN
NEW EXEC OF LOCAL NAVY DEPOT
The story, written in the stiff wordy prose of a high-school theme, made much of Queeg’s exploits on the Caine. There was no mention of the mutiny or the court-martial. Willie stared at Queeg’s face for a long time, then crumpled the sheet, went into the wardroom, and tossed it through the scuttle into the sea. At once he regretted it; he knew he should have shown it to Keefer. He was upset by the reminder of old horrors, and by the brief mention of May, and most of all by bitter envy of Ducely. He knew that this was a foolish feeling. He wouldn’t have traded places with Ducely; but he had the feeling anyway, nasty and strong.
When the news of the atom bomb came through, and then hard upon it the announcement that Russia had declared war on Japan, a complete change took place in the officers and the men of the Caine. There were holiday faces on the decks and in the passageways. The talk was of peacetime plans, of marrying, of going to school, of setting up in business. There were die-hards in the crew who maintained that it was all propaganda, but they were cried down. Every day the admirals sent out stern warnings that the war was still on; they made no impression.
Like the others, Willie began to calculate his chances for getting out of the Navy; but about the decks he kept a stiff face, and pushed the ship’s routine along against the current of merry relaxation among the crew. It annoyed and amused him at once to see the new officers clustering like bugs around the wardroom radio, exclaiming impatiently at the delay in announcing Japan’s surrender. The more recently aboard, it seemed, the louder they complained. The ship’s doctor in particular (the Caine had a doctor at last, a June arrival) announced at frequent intervals his entire disgust with the government and the Navy, and expressed his belief that Japan had surrendered a week ago, and the whole thing was being kept secret while laws were hastily drawn up to keep the reserves in service for another couple of years.
On the evening of August 10, a more than ordinarily silly movie was being shown on the forecastle. Willie sat through a reel of it, and then went below. He was on his bunk in his room; reading Bleak House, when he heard the jazz music on the radio break off sharply. “We interrupt this program to bring you an important news bulletin-” He leaped to the deck and scampered to the wardroom. It was the surrender announcement: just a couple of sentences, and then the music resumed.
“Thank Christ,” Willie thought, in tremendous exaltation, “I made it. I came out alive.”
There was no noise topside. He wondered whether anybody else on the ship had heard it. He went to the scuttle and peered out at the moonlit harbor and the dark bluish mass of Okinawa. Then he thought, “Keefer will take her to the boneyard. I will never be the captain of a United States warship. I missed.”
A military band blared from the radio, When Johnny Comes Marching Home. A single green star shell suddenly burst over Okinawa and floated slowly down near the moon. Then, all at once, an unbelievably brilliant cascade of lights and fireworks began rising from the island: a million crimson streams of tracers, countless blue and white searchlights fanning frantically back and forth, red flares, green flares, white flares, star shells, a Fourth of July display many miles long of ammunition suddenly sprayed to the starry black heavens in a thank-prayer for peace. And a masculine chorus boomed from the radio,
“When Johnny comes marching home again,
Hurrah, hurrah,
We’ll give him a hearty welcome then,
Hurrah, hurrah-”
Now the deck overhead began to thunder with the dancing and jumping of the sailors. And still the bursts of color rose from Okinawa in million-dollar streams, a glory of triumphant