A Boy at War Read online

  Up on the pier a man, one arm in a sling, was calling to Adam. With the light behind him, he looked huge. “Sailor,” he called, “does that pile of crap hold water?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The man came down the ladder one-armed, but fast, and dropped into the boat. There were officer’s bars on his collar. “Row,” he ordered.

  “Sir—” Adam began to explain that he was just a kid, not a sailor.

  “Sailor, shut your mouth. Get this slop bucket moving.”

  Adam rowed out into the open. He didn’t want to do it, didn’t want to leave the safety of the pier. But it was just one more crazy thing in a crazy day. In the real world he knew what to expect. Sure, unexpected things happened, but most things happened in a regular way. Every day he got up, got dressed, and went to school. On Saturday he cleaned his room, and on Sunday they went to church. Not like this, where everything that happened was like nothing that had ever happened before.

  “Row, sailor! Put your back into it.” The officer swore. He swore at the Japanese, at their bad manners and their lousy timing. “Sunday morning, they sneak attack us? For God’s sake, I was in bed with my wife. Row, sailor!”

  “Where are we going, sir?”

  “The Westy.” He checked his watch.

  “What time is it, sir?”

  “Will you row and shut up!” He adjusted his arm in the sling. “It’s 0850.”

  Adam fixed his eyes on the officer’s big, chunky face. “Sir . . . Lieutenant Pelko, sir, do you know him?” Officers knew one another.

  “Pelko? What kind of name is that? What ship?”

  “The Arizona.”

  “The Arizona? Take a look,” he said furiously. He pointed to where the smoke was thickest. “There, that! That! That’s what’s left of it, that pile of scrap. The USS Arizona is gone,” he said bitterly.

  Adam thought about his father, how clever he was, how he could do anything. He’d been in the navy a long time and he was so smart. He could have seen it coming and gotten out. Somehow he’d gotten off in time, before the ship was hit. Maybe he was on the West Virginia right now.

  “Starboard, sailor, more starboard.” The officer pushed down on the oar. His hand over Adam’s was like a piece of carpet, warm and hairy. “Where do we get sailors like you? Babies!”

  A launch passed close enough for the officer to jump to his feet and order it alongside. “Come on, move! Never mind tying on. Give me a hand!” Not waiting for anyone, he leaped across and fell into the launch, still shouting orders. A sailor on the launch grabbed for Adam and swung him aboard. The launch never stopped moving. The rowboat was left to drift.

  As they passed the battleships—one after another—the men on the launch became silent. It was like an earthquake had hit. The USS Oklahoma had turned over and was lying on its side, propellers sticking up in the air. The water around the once-proud battleship was thick with oil, and it stunk. Smoke and filth. Life rafts, pieces of boats, and men floundered in the watery debris.

  The West Virginia was just aft of the Arizona and it was on fire. The officer stood, ready to board his ship. High above them men on the Westy were looking down and cheering. Adam searched their faces, looking for his father, but they were too far away to be seen clearly. He scrambled up the ladder after the officer.

  On the main deck, Adam ran one way, then the other. “Pelko,” he kept saying. “Lieutenant Pelko?”

  The sailors looked at him blankly and kept going.

  Adam ran through dark, narrow passageways, down ladders, then up ladders. The ship shook. Adam was blown through a doorway. A hail of debris clattered down around him. Boulders seemed to be bouncing across the decks. Men were screaming. Everything was loose and coming apart. The noise was deafening, as if the ship were being sledgehammered to pieces.

  In a passageway a sailor with an ax tore open a locked ammunition trunk. A box was thrust into Adam’s hands, and he was ordered to follow the man ahead of him. Out on the deck, next to a gun pod, a colored sailor crouched over twin machine guns, shooting at the attacking planes. The deck shook. Adam dropped the box. Pieces of the ship and pieces of men rained down around him. A foot. An arm. He saw everything through a red haze. He ran. He slipped in blood. The launch was still at the foot of the ladder, and he fled the ship.

  The launch was stalled. The coxswain, a stump of cigar in his mouth, was frantically working on the engine. “Kid,” he shouted as Adam jumped in the boat, “get me that wrench.” It was as if he’d been waiting for Adam, not for who he really was, but for who they thought he was—a sailor. And maybe he was a sailor, at least for now. Whatever he was, he wasn’t what he’d been this morning.

  The launch crew worked on the engine. The boat was sitting directly under a massive anchor that shook every time a bomb fell. Finally the engine started and they moved away looking for survivors.

  As they passed port side to the overturned Oklahoma a man escaped from an underwater porthole and shot to the surface like a seal, hair slicked back, eyes huge. He wouldn’t get into the boat, but, dog paddling, kept turning to his ship, saying his mates were down there and he’d wait for them. Berman, the coxswain, cut the throttle and sat there, talking to the guy. Nobody else came out of the ship, but the man still wouldn’t get in the launch, and they left him.

  The harbor was dotted with small boats picking up men who had leaped from the burning ships. Oil was everywhere: tarlike floating islands on the surface of the water. Adam worked alongside Rinaldi, the sailor who had pulled him into the launch. He was a cocky fireplug of a guy. He’d point to someone in the water, and then they’d throw out lines or a life buoy or one of the long boat hooks. The men came out of the water black with oil, sometimes only their eyes showing. Adam looked at each man. Any one of them could have been his father.

  Some men refused help and swam toward shore. Some men they brought to the boat were burned so badly they could hardly be touched. Adam reached to help a man into the boat and skin came off in his hand. He gagged, then vomited over the side. Ashamed, he looked at Rinaldi. “That’s okay, buddy,” Rinaldi said.

  Men flopped and twisted on the deck, barely able to speak. A man with a terrible wound in his side kept thanking them and telling them that he had to get back to his ship.

  Berman never stopped chewing on an unlit cigar, and he never stopped cursing. First he cursed the Japs. Then he cursed the Americans—the admirals and generals and the high command. Why hadn’t they known the attack was coming? How did they let it happen? Where was the admiral—sitting on his fanny, drinking tea? Get him over here, let him see this! He’d like to stick his face in it!

  One man with huge tattooed arms hung on the edge of the boat. His face was black with oil. “Boys,” he said. He was looking at Adam, nodding at him as if he knew him. “Good boys,” he said. And then he just slid away under the water, went down and didn’t come up.

  Nothing in Adam’s life had prepared him for any of this. Not for the maimed, not for the wounded. Not for the dead they left floating in the water. He’d read about war. He’d imagined himself in a war, but never like this. War was a fight between equals. It was clean. It was fair. The best man won. But this—what was it? There were no words that he’d ever learned, no book that he’d ever read, that had prepared him for this. What was it? It was stink and blood and dying.

  When the launch couldn’t hold any more survivors, they headed for the docks. At Ford Island, the men who could, walked off. The others were carried off on stretchers.

  The naval air station was wrecked, the hangars burned down to the girders. Every one of the PBYs that Adam had always thought looked like flying dolphins had been hit and were strewn like trash across the field. Survivors kept coming off the boats and crawling out of the water. They were in rags. They were naked. They were covered with oil.

  Rinaldi was guiding a man who had been blinded by oil. Adam ran ahead to find a medic. The medics were running from man to man. Adam finally got one to stop. The medic po
inted to a building on the other side of the field. “If your man can walk, take him there.”

  They were almost to the emergency hospital when the warning siren wailed. The three of them dropped down behind a wall. Near them, sailors were pulling machine guns out of wrecked planes and setting them up. The siren kept wailing, but no planes came, no bombs fell. “Let’s move on, buddy,” Rinaldi said.

  The emergency hospital had been set up in a mess hall, a big, open room. The wounded were lying everywhere, on tables and on the floor. The dead were stacked up under a window.

  Adam walked through the room, looking at each man, looking for his father. The wounded called out to him for water. He found a sink and filled Dixie cups, glad for something to do.

  “Where do you guys think you’re going?” A marine sergeant stopped Rinaldi and Adam as they left the building. He was clean. He was neat. He was in uniform. He had a gun strapped around his waist.

  “You’re a marine,” Rinaldi said, “but we’re navy.”

  “You’re marines now. If you can walk and hold a gun, you’re a marine.” He pointed to a group of men. “Over there with the rest of the volunteers.”

  Rinaldi looked at Adam and shrugged. The sergeant blew his whistle. “Line up! Let’s look like something! Whatever you were, you’re a marine now. I know you’re a bunch of cooks and clerks. You probably thought you were working in a country club, but this is war, and we’re forming a fighting company.”

  All the time the sergeant was talking, Adam was watching the smudgy sky. Navy antiaircraft guns were firing. The noise—the chatter and boom—was continuous.

  “First thing we do is clean up.” The sergeant didn’t talk. He yelled. “I want you looking like marines. Follow me! On the double!” He ran, and they all ran after him.

  Adam stayed glued to Rinaldi. Even if he wanted to, he didn’t know how he could tell Rinaldi that he didn’t belong here. Once they found out that he was just a kid, they’d throw him out. Maybe. Or maybe they needed bodies. Better to say nothing, anyway. As long as he was here, there was a chance he might find his father.

  The sergeant set them loose in a navy barracks. “Clean up and find clothes. Take what you need. You don’t have to pay for this.”

  The barracks had been ransacked already, footlockers emptied, clothes, bedding, books, bottles—everything thrown on the floor. They found towels, but there was no running water, and all they could do was smear around the oil on their skin.

  “This needs paint thinner,” Rinaldi said, rummaging through a footlocker. He found a bottle of Aqua Velva after-shave lotion. “This is going to do it,” he said, dousing himself with it, then passing it to Adam.

  He threw a blue work shirt to Adam. “What happened to your back, buddy? It looks like you went through barbed wire.”

  “Bullet,” Adam said.

  “It just skinned you,” Rinaldi said. “Lucky.”

  Adam scrubbed at the oil on his arms, and the whole mystery of the day came over him. Look where he was! Here in this barracks, covered with oil, wearing someone else’s work shirt and pants. He didn’t know why he was here. It was like the army song—he was here because he was here. That was it. When he thought about the day—was it only a day?—it was as if everything that had happened had to happen.

  The shirt mostly fit, except the sleeves were short. The pants were okay. He found socks, but there were no boots, and he put on a pair of black dress shoes.

  Rinaldi stuck a sailor cap squarely on Adam’s head. “The official look, buddy.” Rinaldi’s cap was pushed to the back of his head. Adam had a quick look at himself in a mirror, then pushed his cap back like Rinaldi’s.

  Rinaldi nodded. “Now you look like something.”

  They had hardly stepped outside when the sirens went berserk again. He and Rinaldi dove into a drainage ditch and waited for bombs that didn’t come. Adam’s face was in the dirt. He had that sweet Aqua Velva smell all over him. He giggled. He couldn’t stop giggling, and he didn’t understand why. This wasn’t a funny place, nothing funny was going on, but he couldn’t stop. Maybe it was because he was alive. He’d been shot and he’d just kept going, like a cartoon, like Popeye the Sailor Man. Nothing could stop him.

  Or maybe he was laughing because now he was a sailor. Did you become a sailor just by putting on a uniform? Not in the ordinary, regular world. But everything today was turned inside out. So maybe he was laughing for no reason, because this was a world without reason. Next to him Rinaldi started laughing too.

  “All right, you guys, what’s the joke?” The sergeant was above them. “Let’s go! Look alive!”

  Adam jumped to his feet, and he and Rinaldi fell in with the others.

  “Dress right. Dress left. Left turn! Forward . . . march!”

  They marched double time. They ran. Adam stumbled into the man in front of him, stepped on his heels and was cursed. Rinaldi rolled his eyes in sympathy.

  They marched to the marine armory, where they were each given a rifle, a .30 caliber bolt-action Springfield, complete with a sling. Some of the men acted like they’d never seen a gun before. Adam knew about .22s, but this gun weighed a ton. He sighted it, getting the feel of it. He watched Rinaldi loading the clip and did the same. Then he set the safety and slung the rifle over his shoulder.

  The sergeant marched them to the beach, counted off ten men, and left them there on guard. Everyone else loaded onto a launch, and they headed across the harbor toward the main gate. The enemy planes were gone, but the AA guns were still firing. When they passed the Oklahoma, rescue operations were in progress. Workmen with burning torches were cutting holes in the hull trying to reach the sailors trapped inside. But there were no workmen, no rescue operations on the Arizona, which seemed to have sunk even deeper into the bay. Only its flag still fluttered on the stern. Once Adam had climbed all over that ship, and his father had showed him off. All those men who had lined the decks, the sailors and the officers standing at attention in their gleaming white uniforms. . . where were they now?

  For a while nobody talked. Then they started, one sailor after another, and it was the same story over and over.

  “When the planes came, I was in the sack.”

  “I was having my first cup of java.”

  “I had my whites on, I was on my way to church.”

  “I was sitting in the head with my pants down.”

  “This is history, you men,” the sergeant said. “You’re going to tell this to your kids, if you live that long, so look sharp. There’s an enemy out there. The Jap planes could come back anytime.”

  Everyone began to talk again. The scuttlebutt flew.

  “The Japs can land anywhere they want . . . who’s to stop them?”

  “They could be in Honolulu right now, kissing their Jap cousins.”

  “I heard they landed paratroopers on the Punchbowl.”

  The Punchbowl. Adam thought about his sister and his mother alone in that little house. The talk about the Japs, the Japs, the Japs made him sick, but when he thought about his father, he wanted to kill, too. His nerves were shaved razor thin.

  The main gate was a mob scene. Traffic was backed up both ways, and civilian workers, most of them Japanese, crowded around every vehicle that came through, demanding rides and blocking the road.

  “Everybody back!” the sergeant bellowed. “Clear the gate! Back! Back!” He formed the squad into a line, and with rifles raised, they began pressing the crowd away from the gate.

  People gave ground, but they were angry. “Why are you doing this?” they shouted. “We’re not the enemy!”

  “Where are the buses?”

  “Bombs are falling on Honolulu!”

  “We have to get home.”

  Once the gate was cleared, vehicles began to move again, and the sergeant took Rinaldi and a couple of other men to unload machine guns from a truck. He left an old guy, Tom, a supply sergeant, in charge.

  “Boys, spread out a little,” Tom said. “You heard the
sarge. We got to keep an eye on these people.”

  Adam took a position along the edge of the road, rifle at the ready. From the moment he’d heard about the Japanese para-troopers on the Punchbowl, Adam knew he had to go home. Every few minutes he took a few more steps away from the gate. With every step he asked himself if he was right to leave. What would his father say? You’re deserting your post! And what about Rinaldi and the sergeant? He kept taking steps. He knew it wasn’t wrong to worry about his mother and sister . . . but was he just making excuses for himself?

  He kept looking back, but nobody was watching him, and he moved farther and farther away from the gate. Beside him, a truck was rolling slowly along. “You going to Honolulu?” Adam called through the open window. The driver was Japanese. He could almost have been Davi’s older brother. He had that same sleepy look.

  “Honolulu, yeah,” the driver said. The cab and the back of the truck were packed with people. “Hop on, sailor. I could use an armed guard. I don’t know what I’m going to find up ahead.”

  Adam was up and in the back of the truck in a second. It was a piece of luck. The civilians made room for him. “What ship you on, sailor?” a woman asked. She was wearing dungarees, a shirt, and a bright kerchief tied under her chin.

  Adam hesitated for a moment. “The Westy,” he said.

  One man—he was no taller than Adam—kept looking at the gun, then at Adam, with a kind of considering look, as if he knew Adam was only a make-believe sailor. Adam frowned and turned away, as if he had more important business.

  The highway was jammed with vehicles, and they stopped a lot. Every time the traffic started moving again, the people in back yelled at the driver to go. “Go! Go! Move!” And each time, the driver stuck his hand out the window and waved, and said, “Hold your horses, people.”

  “Hey, sailor,” he called to Adam. They were stopped again. “Stand in front, by the cab. You see a Jap plane, bang on the top.”

  “I’m watching,” Adam said, his eyes on the horizon. Guarding the truck was important too. He watched the sky. If an enemy plane appeared, he would bang as hard as he could on the cab. He would alert everybody. He would save them.