Free No Ordinary Joes by Larry Colton Page A

enemy planes to come sweeping down again. He glanced at battleship row, or what was left of it, looking for his old ship, the
Maryland
. Moored next to the USS
Oklahoma
, it was spared the direct torpedo hits that sunk the
Oklahoma
and killed hundreds of men.
    The
Gudgeon
docked at the sub base and the crew went ashore to await orders. Word spread that FDR had declared war. “Let’s go into Pearl City tonight and kill some fuckin’ Japs!” someone shouted.
    With everyone restricted to base, that wouldn’t happen. The next day the
Gudgeon
crew began loading torpedoes and supplies. They were going to war.
    On December 11, 1941, Chuck was at his station below deck as the
Gudgeon
slid past the still-smoldering ruins of battleship row and out into the openwaters of the Pacific. Plan Orange had already been abandoned; the sub commanders were now under new orders to do whatever was necessary to disrupt Japanese naval forces until America’s fleet could regain its strength.
    Like the rest of the crew, including the officers, Chuck didn’t know where they were headed. He did know, however, that the
Gudgeon
was the first U.S. warship to head off on an offensive strike against imperial Japan in this new war. Among the men there was a sense of fear, but even more than that, the mood was revenge. Almost everyone on board had lost a friend in the attack on Pearl Harbor. Four of Chuck’s ex-crewmates on the
Maryland
had been killed.
    A day into the voyage, thirty-eight-year-old Lieutenant Commander Joe Grenfell, a 1926 graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, opened the ship’s orders. Their destination was Bungo Suido, the southern entrance to Japan’s Inland Sea. The
Gudgeon
, alone and unprotected, was going right smack at the enemy’s homeland.
    Chuck had mixed feelings. On the one hand, he was proud to be taking it right to the “bastards who did that to our men and ships at Pearl Harbor.” He had boundless faith in Grenfell and the other officers. But he was also scared. Would they run into the Japanese fleet that had carried the planes to the raid on Pearl? Did the Japanese have secret antisub weapons that nobody knew about? What if the enemy was tracking the
Gudgeon’s
every movement? Was the
Gudgeon
mechanically capable of what might be a two-month trip? What if he wasn’t psychologically strong enough to endure the journey? Adding to his level of apprehension was the fact that the ship had been ordered to adhere to strict radio silence.
    With the attack on Pearl Harbor, the rules of combat had changed. The London Naval Treaty, a pact the United States had signed following World War I that authorized submarines to strike only enemy warships and merchant vessels escorted by warships, was no longer in effect. Late in the day on December 7, the Navy Department had issued the order: EXECUTE UNRESTRICTED AIR AND NAVAL WARFARE AGAINST JAPAN . That meant every ship was now a target.
    Adding to the anxiety, there was a critical shortage of torpedoesavailable at Pearl Harbor, with no sign that production could increase fast enough to solve the problem; the order was to use no more than two torpedoes when shooting at a merchant ship.
    By the third day of the voyage, Chuck and the rest of the crew had settled into a routine. He stood watch—four hours on, eight hours off—and slept in the enlisted men’s crowded bunk space in the aft torpedo storage space. On watch, he tended to the diesel engines, making sure they were performing properly, the strong smell of diesel fumes a constant. Most of his free time he spent studying so he could pass his qualifying tests. What little time he had left, he joined friends in playing poker and drinking coffee in the crew’s mess. Others played cribbage or acey-deucey, but he stuck to poker: five-card draw and seven-card stud. He loved the rush of gambling, even if he was at risk of losing a week’s pay in one sitting.
    One week passed at sea for the
Gudgeon
, then a second, the journey