The silence suddenly exploded into the deafening clang-clang-clang of the general alarm.
I wondered why the officer of the deck could never get into his head the fact that the general alarm was not to be tested on Sundays. I consoled myself with the thought that this "bust," as the Navy calls its blunders, would bring the commander on his neck.
The clang-clang-clang continued stubbornly, and the shrill scream of the bo'sun's pipe beeped through the speaker.
"All hands to battle stations! All hands to battle stations!"
"This is no drill! This is no drill!"
But I wasn't buffaloed. We knew that the army had been on an alert throughout the islands until the previous night. This must be some admiral's cleaver idea of how to make an off-hour general quarters drill for the fleet realistic.
I bucked a line of Marines hurrying up the ladders through the hatch to their battle stations at the machine-guns and AA batteries topside.
The Leathernecks were pulling on their lifejackets and panting unprintable things about general quarters as they scampered upward. Every one grumbled about GQ--especially at this hour, when their Sunday-morning-after-Saturday-night liberty was interrupted so abruptly.
Down in the innards of the ship I could hear a rhythmic thudding against the side of the hull. That meant the five-inch anti-aircraft guns of other vessels in the harbor were firing. I thought I could hear that tat-tat-tat again. Maybe it was machine-gun fire.
I sauntered into sick bay, my battle station.
Behind me, cinching up a tie, came Lieutenant Commander Edward Evans, senior medical officer. His face appeared worried as he stepped through the door.
"What's it all about, Doc?" I asked him.
The sound of the guns of the other ships kept beating through the steel sides of the New Orleans. It sounded like a Hollywood version of jungle tom-toms.
"I don't know," he said, expressionless. "I just saw a plane falling out of the sky. It was burning."
I told him I thought that was carrying a drill pretty far.
He gave his head a little twist to the side and looked beyond me.
"I don't know, Padre. This might be the real thing."
We stood there a minute, just saying nothing and listening. The noise was increasing, and we knew more ships had begun firing. We heard the fast, dull pumping of the pompom guns as they joined in the racket. They sounded like some one trying to say "pawm-pawm" with his mouth half-closed.
"I think I'll run topside and take a look, if you don't mind," I told him.
I moved quickly this time. Faster than when I came down from my room. Much faster.
I ran to the well deck, where I could get a clear view of the harbor.
Off our starboard quarter, about five hundred yards, the mighty Arizona was sending a mass of black, oily smoke thousands of feet into the air. The water around was dotted with debris and a mass of bobbing, oil-covered heads. I could see hundreds of men splashing and trying to swim. Others were motionless.
Flashes of orange-red flames snapped out of the AA guns, bright against the jet clouds ascending all along Battleship Row.
The cage-like foremast of the Arizona poked through the smoke at a crazy, drunken angle.
The Weavie--that's what we called the West Virginia--looked as though her back had been broken. She was sagging amidships, and her bow and stern angled upward.
Forward of the Weavie the Oklahoma's main deck was disappearing beneath the water. She was rolling on her side, and her big bottom was coming up. I could see hundreds of her crew jumping into the water. Dozens of others were crawling along her exposed side and bottom, trying to keep up with the giant treadmill.
Off our starboard beam I heard the drone of airplane motors. I saw a Jap dive-bomber gliding down toward Battleship Row. He seemed to be loafing in, deliberately taking his time to pick out just what he wanted to hit.
I couldn't take my eyes off him. I followed him down until I saw the bombs drop out of his belly. Sticking out of the cockpit was the helmeted head of the Jap pilot. There was something mocking about the big rising-sun balls under the wings of the plane.
Minutes seemed to tick away while the bombs moved downward. I gaped with a sense of fascinated helplessness. I couldn't resist trying to reach out to stop those bombs before they hit.
They were coming down for the big battleship California.
The bombs hit her amidships, right by the stacks. A flash, fire and smoke jumped into the air all at once.
The Jap opened his throttle wide and raced away from his victim with a terrific roar. Now our own guns began thundering in my ears. The sky all around the plane was laced with streaming trails of tracers. The Jap couldn't get through that stuff--but he did.
More planes came, one after another. With a sort of abandon, they floated by in slow, aggravating glides, right through the very center of our noisy barrage of AA fire.
I wondered if the devil himself could have immuned these planes against our shells. What was this new, horrible, evil power that turned Pearl Harbor into a bay of terrible explosions, smoking ships, flames, and death?
Coming from the direction of Diamond Head, another Jap bomber sloped into its glide.
It seemed as though every gun of the New Orleans and the entire fleet nozzled a cone of fire at it. The wall of exploding steel was in the right place this time. The plane's dive became steeper, and it tumbled out of the sky. A long ribbon of black crepe trailed out behind it as the plane disappeared. It crashed in the backyard of Naval Hospital.
We'd got one! They could be hit!
I felt better. The men around me on the well deck and the sweating gun crews on the quarterdeck above shouted like freshmen at the first touchdown of the day. I guess I shouted and screamed as loudly as any one.
Mike Jacobs, master at arms, was standing near me. He grinned at the string of smoke in the sky and drawled, "I guess chaplains can cuss like bo'sun's mates when they have to."
Maybe he was right.
Lieutenant Francis Lee Hamlin, handsome and wiry main battery officer, moved alongside me. With the ship's big guns useless against the swarms of Jap planes, he stood as helpless as I, watching them drone in, drop their loads, and scream off toward the sea.
"Padre," Lee said, grinning under his long, dark-brown hair, "I figure if the Lord is going to look out after anyone of us in this, He's going to look after you. If you don't mind, I'll stick close by."
I knew Lee was only kidding, but as I ran toward sick bay on the double, he was close behind me.
The passageway below was dark, and our heels made weird hollow sounds on the steel deck. No lights were burning, because someone on the dock decided we might want to get under way in a hurry. In a burst of misguided initiative he had cut all lines from the dock to the ship--including the power line.
Far forward we could see sunlight pouring into the wardroom.
"We'd better dog down the ports in there," I heard Lee holler. Open port-holes not only invited the machine-gun bullets of the Jap strafers above, but they would provide an easy entrance for sea water if we took a hit.
The wardroom had a queer, deserted appearance. For the first time since I had been aboard there were no officers sitting in the white, linen-covered chairs. The felt table tops reflected the sunlight in a green flood against the gray walls.
Only "Deacon" Smith, the stocky little Negro mess-boy, was in the room. He was already at work closing the ports and dogging them against the awful panorama outside.
Lee and I slammed others shut, and the room grew darker and darker. It seemed there was no one in the world but the three of us. Things were running through our heads so rapidly that none seemed to stop long enough for us to find out what they were.
We heard the exploding bombs, the burning ships' magazines letting go, and the never-ending barking of the big AA guns, the pumping pompoms, and the rattle of machine-guns. We wondered how long it could last--and how many seconds or minutes or hours would pass until we and the New Orleans would become a part of the terrifying funeral pyre that now was Pearl Harbor.
Smith was working feverishly, and as he moved closer I could hear him singing.
The cacophony of the guns and bombs grew louder and louder and so did the throaty, rich baritone voice of the young Negro.
"Swing low, sweet char-iot" the "Deacon" sang in defiance of the enemy's chariots swooping down with their deadly loads.
"--A-comin' fo' to car-ree me home."
I turned to Lee and we both grinned. Somehow we found in the little mess attendant's music reassured him. He had no way to shoot the enemy out of the sky, but he seemed to feel he could sing death away.
I lost Lee in the pitch-darkness and felt my way to sick bay to report to Dr. Evans what I had seen in those few terrible minutes topside.
"You're right, Doc. This is the real thing."
He was pacing back and forth in the room, his face white and grave. The noise from above had told him more than I could.
His instruments were ready, and so was he. He knew the heart-breaking stream of broken human beings that would keep coming into that little sick bay until this war was history. He had seen it before, in the FIrst World War and during China service.
Dr. Evans was a skilled veteran, ready but not eager for the blood-stained months ahead. Outside sick bay I heard the booming voice of a big gunner's mate named George. His red hair took on an eerie hue under the dim blue battle lights.
"Get those . . . . . . . . . . . . lines down the hatch to the magazine," he shouted.
Ropes tumbled through the hatches from the deck to the cruiser's bowels far below.
Suddenly the impact of our helpless, hopeless situation hit me. We had been under a temporary overhaul, and the ammunition hoists were without power. The gunners topside were ducking machine-gun bullets and shrapnel, training their guns by sheer guts and sweat, and they had no ammunition other than the few shells in their ready boxes.
The sharp voice of barrel-chested young Lieutenant E. F. Woodhead snapped through the foul clouds of expended powder smoke that were coming below through the ventilators.
He was gathering every man in sight--the shipfitters, the big turret men, the repair parties--every one who had no specific job at the moment.
"Get over by that ammunition hoist," he ordered. "Grab those shells and get them to the guns!"
The big five-inch shells, weighing close to a hundred pounds, were being pulled up the powerless hoist by ropes attached to their long, tube-like metal cases.
A tiny Filipino messboy, who weighed little more than the shell, hoisted it to his shoulder, staggered a few steps, and grunted as he started the long, tortuous trip up two flights of ladders to the quarter-deck, where the guns thirsted for steel and powder.
A dozen eager men lined up at the hoist.
The parade of ammunition was endless, but the cry kept coming from topside for more, more, more.
I saw a Jewish boy from Brooklyn reach for a shell before he had caught his breath from the previous trip. The sweat from his face was no longer coming in big drops. Now it was a steady stream that ran along the ridge of his nose, splashed to his chin, and fell away. His legs tried to buckle under the punishing weight, but he wouldn't let them.
The boys were putting everything they had into the job, and it was beginning to tell on them.
But no one complained.
I wished I could boost one of the shells to my shoulder. The cool metal of the shell casing against my shoulder and neck would feel good. I would be busy, and feel better inside. But a chaplain cannot fire a gun or take material part in a battle.
Yet those devils-coming out of the sky without warning and sending to their deaths thousands of men of a nation at peace--were violating every rule of God and man.
There was little time for more reflection as I climbed the ladders to the quarterdeck above.
Minutes turned to hours. Physical exhaustion was coming to every man in the human endless-chain of that ammunition line. They struggled on.
They could keep going only by keeping faith in their hearts.
I slapped their wet, sticky backs and shouted, "Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition."
--Lieutenant Commander Howell M. Forgy, Ch. C
Presbyterian Chaplain, USS New Orleans
From: The United States Navy in World War II
Part I, Chapter 2, ". . . And Pass The Ammunition"
Compiled and edited by S.E. Smith
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