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The Man in the Yellow Raft
by C.S. Forester
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The Boy Stood on the Burning Deck
U.S.S. Boon — June 1942
I n this ststoryry his name is Ed Jones; his real name is completely different from that. He runs a filling station near where I live, and I often buy gas there; his is not a calling that promises high adventure, nor is it likely to demand selfless devotion to duty. Just after the war the crossroads was quite a lonely point, and Ed's filling station was the only building within half a mile. With the population shift into California there are now great tracts of houses within sight, and there are rows of markets and shops. One might expect in consequence that Ed has made a fortune, but now each of the four corners of the crossroads is occupied by a filling station, and there are plenty of others not far away. Ed agrees that he makes twice as much money as he did when he came here, after his discharge from the Navy; but he points out philosophically that he can buy with his doubled income no more than he could before, and he works four times as hard to earn it.
But I want to write about Ed Jones, and not about his filling station; he is the more interesting subject. I have known him for all these years, and I have always liked him, and his sturdy wife Mary, and the four postwar children whom I have seen growing up from babyhood. And I have used the name Ed Jones not only because it is unlike his real one but because it does not suggest heroism or self-sacrifice; neither does he himself — I might otherwise have called him Ironside or Strong. I knew he had served in the Navy during the war, but it was only recently that it came out in casual conversation that he had served in the destroyer Boon, and my interest was caught at once, because I have been writing stories about the Boon. I did my best to induce him to talk, but without any great success; Ed is not a very communicative man.
It did not call for any great degree of cunning to enlist the services of Mary, his wife. She was on my side almost from the start, but even her coaxing achieved little. Ed only laughed when he did not shrug his shoulders. Then one day when I was about to drive away Mary put her head in at my car window — it was one of the moments (and there are plenty of them) when she looks twenty rather than forty.
"I still have all the letters that he wrote me during the war," she said, breathlessly. "That's just the sort of thing I'm after," I said. "Are you going to let me read them?"
"Hey, hold on a minute," interposed Ed. "Those letters — you know — they're not — "
"They're twenty years old," protested Mary. "And there's nothing to be ashamed of. And — " she turned back to me — "you wouldn't — "
"I wouldn't read anything I wasn't supposed to read," I said. "I'm pretty good at that. I expect they were most of them read by a censor at some time or other, anyway."
That was how it happened that one evening I found myself sitting in the Jones's house with a cup of coffee at my elbow, and the sound of the television turned down to the lowest limit the children would tolerate, while Mary brought me the letters. She blushed quite charmingly, with a gesture to excuse the sentiment of a young bride who had tied the letters up in pink ribbons (faded now) and packed them in a heart-shaped box which had presumably once held a Valentine's Day gift of chocolates.
To a man who deals with history letters contemporary with the events he is studying are frequently valuable material. Accounts written later are usually coloured by the knowledge of what actually happened, and are distorted by later prejudices and legends. Wartime letters may be distorted too, admittedly, through the necessity of obeying wartime censorship regulations, and also because husbands and wives often wished to appear more cheerful than they actually were. But even the letters that are distorted badly convey an atmosphere, a mood, that is hard to recapture otherwise, and which is important when reconstructing a period; and sometimes they at least give clues that lead to the unearthing of forgotten facts.
"Thank you, Mary," I said, and shot a glance at Ed before beginning to read; he appeared to have all his attention concentrated upon television.
The letters were love letters, naturally; from the first they contained much of what might be expected to he written by a young sailor who had newly joined the Navy and was newly separated from his young bride. My eye ran rapidly down paragraphs that had little bearing on the war, trying not to read the tender passages while making sure there was no history buried in them. The letters were all dated and in sequence, and as I read I was conscious of a feeling that I could see into the future, that I had a Cassandra-like ability to prophesy. The letter of December 6th, 1941, written from machinist's mates' strikers school, had a light-hearted gaiety that I knew could not endure; and I was ridiculously pleased with myself as though I had really achieved something, when the next letter, of December 8th, written after Pearl Harbor, confirmed my feeling.
It was interesting to read how Fireman Third Class Jones reacted to that news. The earlier letters had breathed a certain patriotism, whose sincerity could be guessed at despite the writer's difficulty in expressing it; this new letter told of a hardened resolve, of a grimmer determination, and it was easy to read into it the writer's certainty that every recruit around him felt similarly inspired. That was an historical fact.
"You don't have to read them if they're not what you want, you know," said Mary.
"You couldn't stop me," I answered, reaching for the next letter.
I still felt like Cassandra as I read on; when Fireman Second Class Jones wrote that he was being transferred out of training center and wondered what was going to happen next I knew that he was going to the Boon, and so he was — here was his new Fleet Post Office address to prove it. And when he speculated regarding where Boon would he sent, I already knew. I could not merely follow him and the Boon across the Pacific and back again — I could travel ahead of them. There were things I knew about which only showed up vaguely in the letters, thanks to the censorship. I knew about the torpedoing of the Japanese cruiser, and I knew about the rescuing of the navy pilot in his rubber boat ten days after the battle of the Coral Sea, and I knew, although Fireman First Class Jones did not, that the Boon was going to be one of the ships transferred back to Pearl Harbor to meet the next Japanese thrust, the one that ended in Japanese disaster at Midway. I was conscious of a quickening of the pulse as I reached for the next letter. I wanted to know about Midway, and how the Boon comported herself there. The accounts of the battle are so taken up with the action of the carriers, and with the attacks and counter-attacks launched by the aircraft, that there is nothing to spare for an insignificant destroyer like the Boon. I wanted to know how much the lower deck knew about the battle; how conscious the men were of having taken part in one of the decisive battles of the war; there was so much I wanted to know. And here was the next letter, just the top and bottom of it, connected by a thin thread of paper, with all the middle of it cut out by the censor's scissors. My keen anticipation was replaced by a dull disappointment. There it was. Fireman First Class Jones had been promoted to Machinist's Mate Second Class — and then this gap. Some of it I could fill. Jones's rapid promotion was proof of his reliability and of the good opinion which his officers held of him; it was also an indication of the rapid expansion of the United States Navy. Clearly on arrival at Pearl there had been considerable transfers of personnel — skilled ratings had been taken out to help man the Hood of new construction. Fresh recruits had been put on board and the gaps among the petty officers had been filled by promotions. I could be quite sure of this; but what had Boon achieved in the battle? What had been Jones's experiences? I broke in upon his contemplation of television.
"What happened here?" I asked, calling his attention to the gap in the letter. He had to look at it twice before he could be sure which letter it was.
"Oh, that?" he said. "I didn't know they'd cut all that out of that letter. I wrote that from the sick bay at Pearl."
"So I see," I said. "How did you get there? What happened?"
He told me in the end, neither willingly nor fluently. To a reader that long-drawn interchange of question and answer would be tedious, no doubt. This is the tale of what happened; this is the completed picture, put together as though Jones's halting answers to my questions were the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, but with nothing else added.
Machinist's Mate Second Class Ed Jones had the duty, at General Quarters, of attending to the throttle of the port engine in the Boon. He stood on a restricted area of iron deck down in the engine room with the wheel of the valve in his hands and an instrument board on the bulkhead before him. Turning the wheel to the right reduced the amount of steam admitted to the turbine from the boilers; turning to the left increased it, and of course the speed of the turbine — and hence of the port propeller — varied in proportion. On the board in front of him appeared repetitions of the signals from the bridge regarding speed, the five speeds ahead and the three speeds astern and stop. By reference to the tachometer there he could adjust the speed of revolution of the turbine in accordance with the demands made upon him; the control was sensitive enough for him to be able to produce almost exactly any number of revolutions required. And on the board was the dial of another tachometer as well, which registered the revolutions of the starboard engine, and it was Jones's business to see that the two readings agreed.
So during battle that was where he stood, hands on the wheel, adjusting carefully to left or to right, or spinning hurriedly when a large change of speed was ordered; a very solitary and usually monotonous job that demanded unflagging attention. A critic might suggest that all this could be as well done, or better, by a machine; an apparatus that would respond automatically to the signals from the bridge and to the readings of the tachometers. That is perfectly true — such an apparatus would be absurdly simple compared with many employed in ships of war. But that was the real point; this was a ship of war, and the regulation of the flow of steam was a vital function, one of overwhelming importance. A shell fragment or a near miss could put such an apparatus out of action easily enough, and that would be a disaster — there would be nothing to replace it. Naturally a shell fragment could put the human operator out of action too, but that would not be such a disaster. Once his dead body had been dragged out of the way another man could take his place.
Boon took her way out from Pearl Harbor along with the two carrier task forces which were going to fight the battle. She was part of the screen, naturally, part of the tight ring thrown about the vital carriers to protect them as much as possible from submarine and air attack. The tighter the ring the more efficient the protection and the greater the demand for good seamanship. The carriers had to make extravagant turns into the wind to fly off their planes and to fly them on again, and then the screen had to dash madly in far wider arcs to maintain their covering positions; there was fuelling at sea to be carried out, pilots to be rescued. A very small miscalculation could mean a collision and disaster. So could a very small mistake by Jones. The best of captains on the bridge could only watch, helpless, as catastrophe loomed ahead, if Jones in an absent-minded moment spun that wheel the wrong way or did not pay instant attention to the captain's signals.
Boon had hardly secured from General Quarters after sunrise on that historic morning when the warnings sounded again and the men had to go back to their battle stations.
"Did you expect a battle?" I asked, when Jones reached this point in his answers to my questions.
"Oh yes," said Jones. His tone echoed the fatalism of the man under orders, or perhaps the steady determination of the man with a duty to perform.
"So what happened then?"
Jones ran down below, down the iron ladders, to his station at the throttle valve. He experienced a momentary regret as he did so, for on deck it was a beautiful day of sunshine and occasional cloud, just warm enough and delightful. He wished that fate had made him a gunner at one of the 20 mm guns, so that he could stay topside and enjoy it. His battle station was too brightly lit to be called gloomy, but it was stark and inhospitable and lonely. He stood there with the steel deck gently swaying under his feet, busy enough after a few moments when the bridge signalled for revolutions for 25 knots — about as fast as the old Boon could go without straining herself — and then for repeated small variations to keep her in her station screening the carrier. The speed itself, with the old destroyer vibrating and trembling, was enough to make Jones quite certain that action was impending, but he knew nothing more than that. He could only stand there, watching his instrument board and moving his wheel, while the fate of the civilised world — of the uncivilized world as well — was being decided over his head. He knew nothing of the Japanese carrier force far away over the horizon, of the fleets of planes soaring into the air and returning, of the fighters wheeling overhead maintaining combat air patrol high up in the blue. He could not guess at the decisions that were being reached by the admirals — decisions that might determine his immediate death or survival, but which would affect his whole future life, even if he lived on to old age as a civilian.
He knew nothing of how the Japanese admirals had been tempted into delivering a blow at Midway, so that they were caught off guard by the sudden unexpected appearance of the American carriers within striking distance of their own. The hours went by for Jones in solitary monotony while death rained down on Midway and the bombers from Midway went in to heroic death round the Japanese carriers, and while the planes from his own task force avenged them a hundredfold in a new surprise attack. Jones knew almost nothing of what was going on; the breaks in the monotony — the only indications that the task force was engaged in operations — were the occasional sudden turns, when the Boon lay over, without warning, under full rudder. When she did that Jones might well have lost his footing, but he was an experienced seaman by now, and he could steady himself by his hands that gripped the wheel, although even then he sorely wrenched himself in his efforts to combat the sudden inclinations. These told him, however, that the task force was flying planes on and off and that the screen was having to wheel about to shelter the carrier.
Then the monotony was abruptly broken in a new way. Every gun the Boon carried suddenly began to fire. The loud bangs of the 5-inch and the earsplitting cracks of the small calibres were carried by the fabric of the ship direct, it almost appeared, to a focus in the steel cell where Jones stood. The concentrated noise was frightful, and the deck on which he stood and the wheel which he held in his hands leaped and vibrated with the concussions, and it seemed as if every five seconds the ship was making a radical alteration of course, lying over madly first one way and then the other, so rapidly and unexpectedly that this, combined with the vibrations, came nearer than ever before to sweeping him off his feet.
He could guess perfectly well what was going on. The suddenness with which it all began, the fact that the small guns were firing as well as the large ones, and the constant alterations of course, told him that they were under air attack. Any other kind of daylight battle would have developed more slowly and the small calibre guns would not have opened fire as yet, while if they were hunting a submarine the guns would not be firing at all, most likely, and certainly not for so long continuously. Being under air attack made no difference to his circumstances; all he had to do still was to attend to his signals and tachometers, and regulate his valve.
The destiny of the world was being decided over his head; the Japanese carrier planes had at last discovered the presence of the task force and were hurtling in to the attack. They were coming in with the speed and skill developed in years of training; their pilots were displaying the courage of their race; some of them more reckless even than usual, for they knew of the disasters that had befallen some of their own carriers and were frantic for revenge — frantic with desperation, some of them, for they guessed that their sinking carriers could no longer provide them with a refuge, so that the pilots' lives at longest could be measured by the gasoline in their tanks.
Suddenly it appeared to Jones as if the Boon had leaped clear out of the sea, as if his feet were pressing like ton weights upon the deck beneath them, and as if his thighs were being driven into his body, and then the deck fell away beneath him and the Boon rolled and pitched and plunged so that once more only his grip on the wheel saved him from being flung down. He knew, of course, what had caused all this. It was the near miss, the bomb bursting close alongside, which to this day is coldly recorded in the statistical accounts of the battle. It left the Boon strained and buckled although she could still steam and still fight and still cover the aircraft carrier she had to guard with her life. Jones knew that she was strained and buckled — he had cautiously to shift position to keep his footing, and, looking down, he could see that the steel plate on which he stood was inclined slightly upwards from one edge, where it had torn free from its weld to its neighbour, leaving a gap, and it threatened to part altogether and drop him down into the bilges below.
But he could not think about, that; his tachometer was registering a declining number of revolutions and he had to spin the wheel hurriedly to bring it back to its proper figure, even while his brain told him that the boiler room must have suffered damage so that the steam pressure had fallen. Not even that deduction had full time to mature. Even as he was thinking along these lines a new hellish noise burst round him. Wango — wango — wango — but much faster than human lips could enunciate those sounds. Some low flying torpedo plane, its torpedo launched, was doing what further damage it could, and had opened fire with its machine guns. The bullets beat upon the thin steel plates; the heavy calibre ones came clean through and the tracers set the Boon on fire. To Jones those seconds were like being in an iron pipe while a dozen men pounded the outside with hammers, but it was only a matter of seconds. The tachometer was behaving erratically, echoing what was going on in the boiler room, and he had to work hard on the valve to keep it steady.
Then the Boon lay over again in another desperate turn, and he became aware of a fresh complication. There was a rush of flame up through the gaps in the plating on which he stood, flames licking knee-high around him. He had to shrink to one side to avoid them, and then, as the Boon steadied herself on her new course, they died down leaving only a red glow below. The Boon lay over again, and the flames lifted their heads again. A ruptured fuel tank had leaked some of its contents into the bilges, and the oil had been set on fire. With the motion of the ship the flaming oil was washing back and forth under Jones's feet, rising higher towards him as the Boon turned. Amid the continuous din of the guns Jones was being roasted over an intermittent fire.
Yet whether Boon was turning or not, there was still some fire below him; the iron deck on which Jones stood was growing hotter and hotter. Amid the varied stinks that filled the engine room Jones noticed a new one — the acrid smell of burning leather, and at the same time he was conscious of agony in the soles of his feet. The worn-out old shoes that he kept for wear in the engine room were charring against the hot iron. He took his hands from the valve long enough to tear off his outer clothing, and he trampled that under his feet to insulate them from the plating, kicking off the smouldering shoes. That gave him a momentary respite, but momentary only. Soon his jumper and trousers were smouldering too, as he stood on them. He was leaping with the pain.
"What about damage control?" I asked.
"They'd had a lot of casualties," explained Jones. "And there were plenty of other fires to put out, too."
"How long did this go on?"
"Oh, I don't know. Long enough."
The guns were silent by now, for the Japanese planes had gone, the pilots to their deaths. Akagi and Kaga, Hiryu and Soryu, the four proud Japanese carriers, were sunk or sinking, and the battle of Midway was won. The Boon lay over once more, as she turned to help pick up survivors from the sinking Yorktown, and Jones was momentarily bathed in flames again. And then came the signal from the bridge.
"Stop."
Jones spun the wheel as his tortured feet charred on the hot plating, and then down the ladder came clattering the damage control party. It was only a matter of moments for the foam to extinguish the flames in the bilges, and even a brief spraying from a hose cooled the twisted plating on which Jones stood. Nor did he have to bear the agony of standing much longer, for he asked for, and obtained, a relief. He was a vigorous and athletic young man, and he was able to go up the ladder hand over hand without torturing himself further by putting his burned feet on the rungs, and then he could crawl on hands and knees along the deck for a little way before he collapsed. And the task force returned victorious to Pearl Harbor, and Boon went into dry dock, and Jones went into the hospital.
"Didn't anybody ask you how your feet got burned?" I asked.
"Not specially. A lot of fellows got burns that day. Worse than mine," said Jones.
"What about this?" I went on, indicating the mutilated letter.
"Oh, of course I wrote to Mary. I wanted to tell her how I'd come to be in the hospital, naturally, and I suppose they cut it out."
I could picture that part quite well; the weary officer with a hundred letters to censor, reading a description of the flaming bilges of the Boon. The damage had not been announced, and this was censorable material. He would take his scissors and cut out the offending passage. His brain would be too numb to think much about the heroism written between the lines of that passage; or perhaps he took heroism for granted.
Now I have told the story. One of the best-known pieces of verse in the English language tells of a boy standing on a burning deck; I can only write a short story. Of course, in addition, I can go on buying gasoline from Ed Jones.
