Sentinels of Fire

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On my very first day aboard USS Malloy, a Jap fighter plane came within fifteen feet of taking my head right off before it exploded just above the water on the opposite side of the ship. The captain looked down at me from the bridge wing once all the shooting stopped, shot me a lopsided grin, and said, “Welcome aboard, XO. How do you like your coffee?”

An hour later I thought of a truly smartass reply, but at that very moment, I was speechless and a bit deaf, too. I had literally just come aboard. The bridge messenger, a young seaman who looked to be no more than twelve years old, led me forward along the starboard side through all the guntubs to ascend the weather-deck ladders up to the bridge. We’d gotten halfway up the first ladder when that kamikaze came in out of nowhere, its screaming engine audible above the sudden burst of fire from the midships forties, joined immediately by all the twenty-millimeter mounts. I had been standing underneath a four-barreled forty-millimeter gun mount when the gunners first spotted him. Every gun on that side opened fire. The messenger and I dropped back down to the main deck and huddled under the ladder to avoid the shower of brass cartridges raining down on our heads. The muzzle blasts were so powerful that I couldn’t catch my breath, but that was nothing compared to seeing that Jap plane diving right at us, right at me, with that big, ugly bomb slung under its fuselage, even as pieces of its wings, tail, and undercarriage were being torn off by the gunfire from Malloy’s massed batteries. At the last moment, the pilot lost either his nerve or his head, because the plane pitched up, rolled, and then kited right over the ship before crashing down into the sea, pursued by a sheet of flaming gasoline.

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