Neptune's Inferno_ The U.S. Navy at Guadalcanal - James D. Hornfischer [120]
“It was a sore mental struggle and the decision was not reached until after hours of anguished consideration,” Nimitz wrote Catherine. “I feel better now that it has been done. I am very fond of G. and hope I have not made a life enemy. I believe not. The interest of the nation transcends private interests.”
When Nimitz’s message was decoded in Washington that afternoon, the COMINCH was preoccupied arguing with General Arnold about fifteen groups of Army planes that King believed had been earmarked for the Pacific. His terse reply seemed more like a response to a recommendation than an exchange of views on a tentative idea. Addressed to Nimitz marked, “Personal and Secret / Most Secret,” it contained a single operative word: “APPROVED.” With that, Robert L. Ghormley’s career as a leader in the war zone was over.
AFTER SCOTT’S VICTORY at Cape Esperance, the Navy made its first public release of details about the sea battles of the previous two months. The public hungered for news of the war’s first American-led offensive. A dispatch went out detailing Scott’s victory over Goto. With this good news cushioning the blow, it also acknowledged the defeat at Savo Island. On his visit to Henderson Field, Hanson Baldwin of The New York Times had sniffed out the latter story, as well as the torpedoing of the North Carolina. Though he itched to file stories, he saw a larger need. American readers certainly deserved to know the truth about Savo. The question was whether it put sailors at risk in the continuing fight. Baldwin wrote a series of stories, including an account of Savo as he had learned it on the beaches of Guadalcanal and the decks of warships. His eventual accounts withheld the number of ships sunk, their names, and the vulnerabilities that resulted in their loss. “I fudged this very carefully because I realized it was very important that the Japs not know exactly how damaged we were.”
At Espiritu Santo, Norman Scott’s healthy ships scavenged from the wounded. The Salt Lake City, still seeping water through stressed rivets, and the Boise, damaged to within three degrees of her life, were ordered home for repair. Before leaving for Nouméa on October 15, the two cruisers gave up the dregs of their magazines to the San Francisco and the Helena, respectively. The admiral himself visited a hospital ship and paid tribute in the sickbay. “Not once during the entire visit was I answered with a grumble or a bellyache or a whine, but invariably with a grin or at least with an attempt at one,” Scott wrote to his wife, Marjorie, at their home in Washington. “Sometimes the answer would be low, and I would lean well over to make the conversation easier going. It might take a few seconds, and then I would hear, ‘I’m doing pretty well, thank you, sir.’ One like that, and your heart goes right out to him. It is the custom in the Navy to remove one’s cap in the sick bay. Mine will always be off to those men.”
Scott doffed his cap, too, to his old friend of a quarter century, Bob Ghormley. “Dear Ghorm,” he wrote him, “Going back to our old days of friendship—twenty-four years—I do not feel like saying that I am sorry about this situation of yours. That doesn’t express it. It seems to me, if what you say is literally true, that the change was inevitable. I doubt if many people can really appreciate the endless difficulties you ran up against, beginning with the Cactus show before the 1st of August, when you came into the South Pacific. It is too much to expect that you would not run into a dead end eventually.
“Now that you have scrapped a good scrap give the guilty ones one more good stiff punch—where it will do our mail the most good.
“If and when you reach Washington please phone Mrs. Scott. We will both appreciate it.
“Best luck as ever, Sincerely, Norm.”
AMONG GHORMLEY’S LAST ACTS as theater