No Ordinary Joes (12 page)

With the final transfer of funds completed, the
Trout
turned and headed toward the open sea. On board was the richest ballast any ship had ever carried. Fenno’s instructions were to transport the money directly back to Pearl Harbor for transfer to the American treasury and not engage the enemy. But Fenno was itching to sink a Japanese ship. He set course for the East China Sea.

Two weeks after leaving Corregidor, Fenno got his wish. The
Trout
sank a 2,700-ton cargo ship off the northern coast of Formosa using three torpedoes. Tim was still wrestling whether to say anything about Graham’s taking the coins. It upset his sense of right and wrong, especially after he heard Graham talking about being a deacon in his church back home in Sacramento, but he finally decided not to make an issue of it. He was the youngest and the lowest-ranking man on the ship, and this was not a good time to alienate anyone. He would, however, turn Graham in after the war, he told himself.

The next week was uneventful except for the foul winter weather: gale winds and mountainous seas. It gave Tim a chance to continue his naval education. So far, he’d studied how to operate the bilge system, how to fire a torpedo, how to go into the engine room and start the big Fairbanks-Morse engine from scratch, and how to put power to the screws (propellers). Sometimes he felt like he was back in school again, constantly reading manuals, looking at drawings and blueprints, listening to the officers’ instruction. But this wasn’t like school back in Dallas, where he was rarely interested in the assignments. He liked studying about the submarine. It was important to him to move up in rank.

Not satisfied with just one sinking, Fenno scored another kill, this time an enemy gunboat passing through the Bonin Islands south of Japan near Iwo Jima. Fenno wanted more, but soon a message arrived from Pearl Harbor ordering him to return to base. Word had come from Washington—a
sub loaded with gold and silver was too valuable to risk chasing after enemy gunboats and freighters.

On the afternoon of March 3, 1942, after fifty days on mission, Tim was topside as the
Trout
moored port side to the USS
Detroit
at Fleet Air Base in Pearl Harbor. Its precious cargo was quickly transferred to the
Detroit
to be taken to America. For the mission, Commander Fenno was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross for “extraordinary heroism.” Tim and the rest of the crew all received a prestigious Silver Star Medal. And for his part in guiding the
Trout
through the minefields of Manila Bay, as well as his heroic efforts in the climactic final hours of the Philippine defense, including the personal evacuation of General MacArthur and his family from Corregidor, Lieutenant Commander John Bulkeley was presented the Congressional Medal of Honor by President Roosevelt.

At a time when there was almost no good news to report from the war, the
Trout’
s mission made headlines across the country and helped lift the nation’s beleaguered spirits. Seventeen-year-old Tim McCoy felt proud to have been part of such a heroic effort.

Tim sat in his hotel room, staring out the window, trying to figure out something to do to pass the time. He and the rest of the crew of the
Trout
were staying at the posh Royal Hawaiian. The Navy had taken over the three fanciest hotels on the island—the Royal Hawaiian, Moana, and Halekulani—to house and feed the sailors between combat patrols; enlisted men stayed for free, officers paid $1 for a suite. Before the war, these were the hotels for movie stars and rich tourists, off-limits to servicemen.

Tim was bored, unimpressed with Hawaii, or at least Honolulu and Waikiki. Sailors had taken to calling Oahu “the Rock,” comparing it to Alcatraz: isolated, overcrowded with military personnel, a departure point for the horrors of combat and possibly death. For many of these young men, the tension was relieved only by alcohol. For the first time in his life, Tim had awakened with the curse of a hangover.

Out his window, he saw men standing in line to catch a bus. He’d always been an impatient, fidgety kind of kid, and to him, Hawaii was a place
where he was always waiting—waiting to wash his Skivvies, waiting for chow, waiting to be sent off to battle again. It also felt like a lot of the locals didn’t like servicemen. With the arrival of so many sailors and Marines, the population on the island had ballooned dramatically. Services were strained. In addition to the flood of service personnel, thousands of others had come to the island seeking the promise of important war work. At first these new arrivals, or malihinis as the natives called them, were greeted warmly, but soon this swarm of new people were viewed with a wary eye: they drank and cussed too much, made too much noise, and started too many fights.

To Tim, like most Navy men, Honolulu was a dirty town inhabited by Japs, Chinks, and dark-skinned people running around unwashed and barely able to speak English. Racial slurs and epithets were part of normal conversation. Men who’d never interacted with people of color or different ethnicity now found themselves in the minority. Tim didn’t feel comfortable walking the streets. The atmosphere felt tense, especially with so many of the men wandering the streets drunk, most of them not good at handling their liquor.

Another thing Tim didn’t like about the island was the lack of women. Most of the white women on the island had returned to the mainland after December 7. Tim heard an estimate that the ratio of men to women in Honolulu was 500 to 1. With such scarcity, sailors looked at every woman they saw as if she were a Betty Grable or a Hedy Lamarr. The Navy and the USO staged dances, but as with everything else on the island, the men had to stand in line to wait their turn to dance. Tim had been to one dance at the Navy Rec Center in Waikiki, but with over a thousand men attending and only about thirty women, he left early.

He wasn’t interested in the brothels, either. Honolulu brothels were now servicing up to 30,000 men a day, and for many of these servicemen it would be their only encounter with a woman before they died. There was also the chance of catching a venereal disease. (More men in World War II would get VD than be wounded in action.) To a huge number of young servicemen, it was worth the risk. Not to Tim.

“I have no desire to be the hundredth guy some whore does it with in a day,” he said. “Or, for that matter, the first. I can’t even imagine.”

Tim quickly glanced at his cards, then glared at Petty Officer Joe Boyle sitting across the table. For some unknown reason, Boyle had made it his assignment to ride Tim. Along with four crewmates, they were playing poker in Boyle’s room at the Royal Hawaiian. One of the other players was Doug Graham, whom Tim had seen steal the coins on the
Trout
. Between Boyle, Graham, and the ten beers he’d downed, Tim was feeling irritable.

“Where’s your ante?” asked Boyle.

“I forgot,” replied Tim, tossing a matchstick into the pot. He took another swig of his beer.

“Is everybody from Texas as stupid as you?” needled Boyle.

Tim set his cards down.

“Kiss my ass,” he muttered.

“What did you say?”

“You heard me, asshole.”

Boyle slowly stood.

Common sense should have told Tim that fighting with an officer was a sure way to get washed out of the submarine service, sent to the brig, or court-martialed, or all three. But at that moment, none of that occurred to him. He unloaded from somewhere south of the lobby, his right fist nailing Boyle squarely on the jaw. Down he went, out cold.

Tim turned and headed out the door. He didn’t know anything about maritime law, but he was pretty sure he was in big trouble.

T
he physical part of boot camp was easy for seventeen-year-old Gordy. He’d always been wiry and full of energy. All of the hockey and skating, as well as riding his bike up and down hills in Yakima to deliver newspapers, had prepared him well for the calisthenics and marching. Plus, he had a good attitude, happy to be on his own, proud to be in the Navy. Unlike many of the inductees, he didn’t grouse about sweeping the Grinder or spending endless hours learning to tie knots. He’d even been able to send part of his weekly $21 boot-camp pay home.

Gordy was good about writing to his mother about life in the Navy. He always used U.S. Navy stationery and always signed with his whole name—Gordy Cox—but never added an “I Love You” or any other sign of affection.

Gordy set down his test paper. He’d answered only half the questions, and he had no doubt he’d flunked. For most of his life he’d been told he was slow, so there was no reason for him to believe he’d do any better on a test now that he was in the Navy.

The test was one given to the thousand recruits who’d just finished the seven weeks of boot camp. Those who scored in the top 20 percent would go on for special training. The rest would be assigned to a ship and go to sea. That was fine with Gordy.

When the results of the test were finally announced, Gordy was one of the 20 percent who’d passed. They assigned him to Communications School.

“I can’t imagine how dumb those guys who failed must be,” he said.

Gordy graduated from Quartermaster Signalman’s Radio School in Communications School and was waiting at the base in San Diego for assignment when there was a call for volunteers for submarine service. He’d never thought about being a submariner and had no intention of signing
up, but while standing in line, a friend gave him a shove in the back and he was a volunteer. He could’ve easily stepped back into line, but not wanting to draw attention to himself, he agreed to go. The next day he signed the papers, and a week later he was on a ship heading to the sub base at Pearl Harbor.