Though I slept through few nights outside the breakwater, what with one thing or another carrying away by the rushing waves and low freeboard of the Battleship, there were not many.

I remember vividly one of those interrupted nights. That night’s excitement was the visit of the liberty party from the General Buckner. There was no need for anyone to wake me. Heavy blows against the hall, shouting, the pounding of running feet on deck, were conclusive that something had come seriously adrift. I slipped on a pair of overshoes and one of those fine, hooded great-coats the Army issues for foul weather, vaulted up the ladder and out into the thirty-knot gale tinged with puffs of whirling snow the appeared out of the gloom.

The noise was coming from the port side. Running over to investigate the source of the disturbance, I peered down. The tank lighter was tied up there. I had checked her lines before turning in, but then she was empty. Now, I looked down on a lot of people. Where had they come from? As my eyes accommodated to the dark, I made out officers in blues without overcoats, soldiers, sailors in dress blues without pea-coats and a Negro steward.

The immediate problem was not how they got there, but how to get them aboard the battleship before they froze. The tank lighter was bucking and plunging against the side of the ship; it seemed impossible to get them out without crushing someone in between. We lowered a cargo net, but their hands were too numb to grasp it, and some were too terrified to try, but we got a few that way. Then someone noticed that every fourth or fifth wave that ladder-like ramp of the lighter reared up to the level of our deck. We made them climb it one by one, as a crew of six deck hands picked them off on the rise, like ripe fruit. Our galley had been manned; as each came aboard, he was hurried down there for a cup of hot coffee whlle the Master-at-Arms broke out cots the he deployed in the warm compartment near the boilers. No one was hurt.

Then we got the story. They were the liberty party of the General Buckner, a transport just out of the States bound for China. Somehow they had missed the last boat. There had been no place for them to sleep at the landing, and the addled Beachmaster had loaded them all into a small landing craft, dreaming no doubt, that it was the Ark. As soon as they turned the breakwater, it began to fill with seawater. The crew had very little time. They saw our great bulk and made for it, dumping the passengers into the tank lighter and running for the beach. Later we heard they made it.

The only noteworthy sequel came next morning. One of our officers, who had a big night on the beach, felt his way up the passage to the wardroom and peered in. He seemed to see Marines, rubbed his eyes, but could still see them. He tottered back to his room for his glasses, came back but, it was no go, they were still there. He sat down and ate his cornflakes glumly, without a word, passing the whole thing off as one of the mysteries of the Nagato.

Copyright 2015 Vic Socotra
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