Cuttlefish
Posts: 2454
Joined: 1/24/2007
From: Oregon, USA
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May 18, 1945
Location: Hakodate
Course: None
Attached to: TF 21
Mission: Surface combat
System Damage: 3
Float Damage: 0
Fires: 0
Fuel: 475
Orders: Await further orders
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Here and there, around the world:
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Frank Barnwell sits at the table in his kitchen and looks out over his garden. The garden is filled with sunlight and it promises to be a fine spring day in Brighton. He looks back down at the letter he is reading, the one denying his request to return to active duty.
It’s just as well, he tells himself. I must have been barking mad to make the request in the first place. After all I’ve been through and survived only a fool would want to go back.
He folds the letter and puts in back in the envelope. He thinks of his old mates and wonders how they are getting on there in Burma. Heat, bad food, mosquitoes, and Japs. Yes, only a fool would want to go back. He sets the letter aside and picks up the latest copy of The Argus, scanning it first, as he always does, for news of the war in Asia.
Fool or not, he wishes he was there.
---
The Rickshaw Man slips into Hong Kong like a dirty, tattered shadow. He’s gotten used to the claw he now wears in place of his left hand and has even learned to use it to sinister effect. In a way it is a measure of his master’s regard for his services that he has it. Any less valuable servant would have been killed for disobeying orders and, worse, failing the mission.
Shun has the hand now, the Rickshaw Man reflects. Well, that is fair. He wonders what Shun will do with it. Keep it as a memento, he hopes. It is discouraging to think of one’s bitter enemy simply tossing a part of oneself aside. But Shun never was very predictable.
In any event the Rickshaw Man has a new assignment. Du is already looking past the end of the war to a day when he might need a bolt hole. If the Communists ever take control of China Du is finished and Du, more farsighted in this regard perhaps than many heads of state, sees this as a real possibility. Hong Kong would make an ideal place to retire and it is the Rickshaw Man’s job to prepare the way.
He puts aside his reminiscences and sets about getting the job done.
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Ensign Mark Turnby, resident of the prisoner of war camp known to its inmates as The Mitsui Madhouse, squints up at the sun before plying his shovel again. He hopes a someone will be along soon with a bucket of water and a dipper. Digging slit trenches is thirsty work.
The area has not been bombed lately but it is best to be prepared. News through the grapevine says the heavies are busy working over places to the south, places like Nagoya and Osaka and Sasebo. Despite the tragedy of losing friends to his own side Turnby still cheers the bombers on. Anything to end the war and get out of this dump and back home.
At least he and his fellows here have it easier than most. He doubts there is another POW camp in Japan where the guards are bribed to take good care of the prisoners. Turnby and the others are fed as well as the guards, which is not all that well but better than nothing, and really scarcely guarded at all. Right now, for instance, Turnby is so laxly watched that he could put down his shovel and walk right out of the compound without drawing a yell or a shot. But where would he go?
He drives his shovel into the ground again and thinks for the one thousandth time about his family. He thinks about girls he knows, and he thinks about eating a steak. He would give his left hand for a big, juicy steak, fried up right and smothered in onions and mushrooms. Dirt flies over his shoulder as he chases the imaginary steak down with a nice cold beer and then enjoys a big dish of ice cream. His stomach growling, Ensign Turnby works on in the bright sunshine.
---
Harry S. Truman sits in the Oval Office and looks again at the plan that the Joint Chiefs have set in front of him. It is risky and ambitious and if it works could bring the war to a swift conclusion. If it fails it could be a disaster.
Truman is tempted to just wait for the first test of the Manhattan Project, tentatively scheduled for two months from now. The scientists have assured him that it will work, and if it does it would possibly render the plan in front of him unnecessary. But if it fizzles then two months or more will have been lost, months during which the war could have been brought to a conclusion.
It is a terrible decision to have to make. Either way tens of thousands of people are going to die. Truman is simply given some control over who dies and when. This isn’t the job he signed up for, but it is his job now. As he himself says, this is where the buck stops.
“Mrs. Conway,” he calls. Rose Conway, efficient as ever, is in the doorway almost immediately. “Get me Admiral King on the phone, please.”
“Yes, Mr. President,” says Mrs. Conway. A moment later she informs him that Admiral King is on the line.
Truman picks up the phone. “This is Truman,” he says. “Proceed with Operation Longbow.”
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