(L-R: Ancient decorative thermometer, Eddie Layton’s scrimshaw tooth and that lovely girl the Japanese Navy presented in commemoration of heroic events by different peoples).

Sorry. I got dragged into the past this week putting together a slide-show for the good people at the ex-USS Midway Library. The theme of the pitch was to be how Midway got her name, and about the people who built the foundation of victory in the great Pacific war long ago. It brought back the magical time when our pal Mac Showers was still alive to tell us about it. And of course the other men from those days who then still lived to share the memories. It was going through those old notes that caused a bit of temporal dysphasia- A mighty ship, now aged, named for a battle long past, fought by courageous young men from two amazing nations.

It was this month back in 2012. Mac’s family was in town to do the estate sale for the unit he had at The Madison, the assisted-living high rise in the Ballston neighborhood of Arlington, Virginia. I wandered over to Willow after work to see them, and for the big contract kick-off and uncertainty that was swirling around the Government customer, just as it is today in the here-and-now.
Willow was welcoming in the growing dusk and the wine and stories flowed as they always do when Mac’s family is together.

The table buzzed with conversation, and laughter as always. Mac’s daughter was having the same disassociation issue that I had been- thinking I ought to talk to him about something or other, and her habit in that expectation is life-long. Clearing things out from Mac’s apartment and the attic at the house surfaced some interesting things. Between the salad and the entrée, Donna pulled out an ivory-colored box and handed it to me. There was an object of similarly colored material within, and a note yellowed with time along with a card.

Reading Donna’s note to me aloud made me blush, and I am not going to inflict it on you. But there was a square, type-written provenance of the object brings us around to Eddie Layton, Mac’s boss at PACFLT HQ during the war, and one of those historical figures who actually was in a position to change the world, and did. Of course, so did Mac, and that is why this story is being told.
Here is what Eddie’s wife Miriam wrote to Mac and his wife Billie long ago, after Eddie passed on. The Big Secret that had enabled the victory against the Axis powers had finally been revealed.
British and American code-breakers had wormed into the enemy’s military communications, and the Fascists had fallen. Credit for that was a matter of contention, cloaked in The Big Secret. Those in power took the fame to their graves. It took thirty years for The Secret to be told, and when it was, it showed the truth.

After Chester Nimitz failed, and Jasper Holmes failed, Mac had managed to get the Distinguished Service Medal presented to Joe Rochefort’s surviving family. Joe was the man responsible for providing the intelligence that enabled some other gallant men to stop the Japanese cold at the battle of Midway in June of 1942, barely seven months after the debacle at Pearl Harbor. Here is what

Miriam’s note said:
“Dear Mac and Billie –
My pleasure and gratitude to you for making it possible for me to be present at the Rochefort ceremony overflows! It was such a great thing to have accomplished.

For all your wonderful help and support I’ve looked around for something of Edwin’s to send you. I know he would applaud this offering. I want it to represent my gratitude and affection for all you have done for me.

A bit of background – the first year Jack Kennedy was in the White House the media announced that Jackie was giving her husband a piece of scrimshaw for Christmas. Not to be outdone, I wrote to a jeweler in New Bedford who made scrimshaw about sending cufflinks for Edwin’s Christmas. He sent me two pairs on approval. Edwin was so delighted with them that we kept them both.

Several years later when we went to New England, we visited the whaling museum in New Bedford where he bought several rough ugly-looking whale’s teeth. He learned the technique from the Jeweler and a new hobby was launched.

He polished the tooth, drew his picture on thin paper and using a dentist’s scribe incised his design on the tooth and rubbed India Ink into the scratch marks. I feel it would please Edwin to know you have one of the four teeth he decorated with scrimshaw. He had great respect and affection for you too. I enjoyed seeing you and Billie so much.

My only regret was that the time was so brief. Thank you so much for your support and helpfulness over the last two years.

With love,
Miriam Layton
June 8, 1986”

Mac had typed the following note across the bottom of Miriam’s letter:
“This letter accompanied the Layton-made scrimshaw received on 11 June 1986.”

I was stunned, then and now. After a health emergency of my own last year, I huddled down with everyone else and let the strangeness of the COVID season wash over us. And began to think of the same things the old pals had been thinking about the disposition of the treasures of their lives. I had not seen Eddie’s scrimshaw since the plague relocation to Refuge Farm, and it struck me that it might have been lost in the confusion.

It wasn’t. And that is how Eddie Layton, the fiery intelligence officer that Mac had described to me so many times now has a presence in the living room, in the handsome glass-fronted corner cabinet that graced at least four generations of the Socotra family homes.

Looking at it in wonder, I remembered the story Mac told about the end of the Pacific War- the Japanese had given up, and the victorious Allies were converging on the Sagamai-wan to cement the victory with the signing of the treaty.

Eddie was there, along with the others who had guided the long struggle from Pearl Harbor to Tokyo Bay.

Mac was relaxed and a bit pensive as he described the scene from long ago, as Eddie Layton told it. Mac turned to me and said: “Eddie was playing acey-deucy in the wardroom of the battleship South Dakota when Admiral Richmond Kelly Turner strode into the space.”

““Terrible” Turner was in a state of high excitement. Like Eddie, he was another of Admiral Nimitz’ personal guests. He had left Washington staff jobs like Communications behind with the outbreak of hostilities. He had commanded all the amphibious landings in the Pacific, from Guadalcanal to Iwo Jima. There is no doubt that he was a talented officer. But he was a son-of-a-bitch to his staff and he liked the bottle. Eddie told me he was pretty fired up that evening. He started to shoot his mouth off about beginnings and ends of things and the wardroom hushed at the sound of the drunk four star’s booming voice.”

“What was he saying?” I asked.

“He was going off on Admiral Kimmel, of all things, the guy who was left holding the bag for the disaster that Terrible Turner himself caused by not passing critical radio intelligence to the commanders in Hawaii. According to Eddie, Turner was saying something to the effect that “Goddamned Kimmel had all the information and he didn’t do anything about it. The court of inquiry said so, and they ought to hang him up higher than a kite!”

“But it was Turner himself who did not allow the critical Bomb Plot messages go to Pearl Harbor!” I exclaimed. “He must have known that. The court of inquiry was a white-wash to scapegoat Kimmel and let everyone else responsible for the disaster skate free.”

Mac’s smile turned to a thin line of his lips. “You bet. Eddie sat there, stunned at what he was hearing. He had been there, in Kimmel’s office at the beginning before the attack, and then here at the end, the architect of the disaster was shouting that Kimmel ought to be hung up by his fingernails.”

“I guess you can’t do anything against four stars,” I said thoughtfully, trying to imagine the scene in the wardroom of a big gray boat of war.
“Well, Eddie was pretty fired up, too. He corrected Turner in mid-rant. He told the Admiral that he had been Kimmel’s intelligence officer, and he had been there in person.”
“So, what happened?” I asked, trying to imagine the scene.
“Eddie said the Admiral charged across the deck and grabbed him by the throat. Eddie was putting his dukes up to pummel the Admiral when the skipper of South Dakota, Emmet Forrestal, got in between them and broke it up.”

I looked at Mac with amazement. The idea of decking a four-star Admiral made me admire Eddie Layton even more.

Looking over at the white tooth curved in the corner cabinet, nestled with the Japanese girl and her fan and anchored with the ancient temperature gauge, I have a little piece of something very special, created by the same hands that almost duked out a four-star hero.

I wonder who should possess it next? Ideas are welcome. That is one story that should live.

Copyright 2021 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com