Retribution_ The Battle for Japan, 1944-45 - Max Hastings [73]
Many men slept on deck, so that warships at night were strewn with slumbering forms on gun positions and galleries, beneath the boats and in hammocks slung between rails on every corner of the superstructure. Prostrate figures crowded under the folded wings of aircraft on carrier flight decks. Lifejackets served as pillows. Locked into the unchanging routine of four hours on, eight hours off, overlaid with dawn and dusk calls to “general quarters,” men learned to sleep in the most unpromising circumstances. James Fahey, a New Englander who served on the cruiser Montpelier, seldom occupied his bunk, instead lying down on the steel deck with his shoes for a pillow. If it rained, “you stand back under cover192 and hope it does not last very long.” Some sought space as far as possible from explosives or fuel, but on a warship almost any refuge was illusory.
Naval forces often kept station in a given area for days on end, steaming circular courses rather than dropping anchor. Machinery was never silent, never still. There were always watches to be kept and duties to be filled; echoing broadcast announcements; hurrying feet on ladders; eyes and ears watching and listening at dials, screens, headphones. Everybody was tired almost all the time, yet so effective had this navy become that “there weren’t many fuck-ups193,” in the words of a young reservist. “It was an exhausting life194 that discouraged reflection, introspection, or anything more intellectual than reading.” A destroyer officer observed pityingly that two of his comrades, junior-grade lieutenants, were geriatrics of twenty-seven, “too old for the duty they had195…The hours were too long and the physical demands too great. That’s when I learned that war is for kids.” Louis Irwin, a beer salesman’s son from Tennessee, had joined the navy at seventeen in 1942, “for lack of anything better to do196. I wanted a bunk to sleep in and not a foxhole.” Irwin found himself most apprehensive not in combat, but on refuelling duty in heavy seas, facing the peril of being washed overboard.
During bombardment missions in the island battles, the big ships’ guns fired hour upon hour, day after day, as long as forward observers pointed targets and ammunition held out. A novice sailor on the battleship Pennsylvania fell asleep under one of its vast gun turrets, then remained oblivious through general quarters and a piped warning that the main batteries were about to fire. Concussion almost killed him. A shipmate recorded: “Everyone had a new respect197 for the fourteen-inch guns after that.” All 45,000 tons of a battleship shook when its main armament fired. Recoil thrust the vessel aside. Far below in the engine spaces, “it felt like being taken apart198 in the boiler rooms of hell. You could see motor mounts jump and steam lines move.” Consequences became even more dramatic aboard smaller ships. Repeated concussions from the destroyer Howorth’s five-inch guns caused all the urinals in the heads to break free from their bulkheads.
Off-duty, in quiet times there might be a movie show, but mostly there was nothing to do save sleep and play cards. Machinist’s Mate Emory Jernigan saw $20,000 on the table in a messroom poker game. Men played high, because they had nothing else to spend money on. Jernigan reckoned that 20 percent of the ship’s gamblers ended up with 80 percent of the players’ money. Ben Bradlee’s commanding officer learned that the torpedo officer on their destroyer owed him $4,000 in card money. The captain ordered Bradlee to play his debtor double or quits until he lost.
Whereas ashore a combat officer’s life was little better than that of an enlisted man, afloat those with commissions were privileged. Few ordinary sailors enjoyed war service, but some officers like Bradlee did, especially if they were fortunate