LST 742

By Wally Wood

At 0530 on a frosty January morning at our camp on the outskirts of Tokyo I located the idling deuce-and-a-half with the brigade’s personnel records. I tossed my duffle bag into the back on top of the waterproof chests and joined the driver in the cab, a private first class named Williams.

“You know where we’re going, sergeant?” he asked. “Some guys say we’re going to Alaska.”

“I doubt that.” I took a swig of tepid coffee from my canteen.

The brigade’s move was a military secret. The quartermaster had issued parkas and pile caps, trigger-finger mittens and Micky Mouse boots—fat, insulated rubber things—so someplace cold. The hostesses who pushed drinks in the bars outside the camp’s gate knew where we were going: “You go DMZ. You freeze ass off.”

PFC Williams was from some Nebraska farm town. Joined the Army because the judge told him to join or go to juvie. I didn’t volunteer we had that in common. Two friends and I got caught burglarizing the house. My buddies got jail. The judge said military discipline would straighten me out. Three years in the infantry gave me time to think although I don’t know if I straightened out. Facing discharge with no civilian prospects, I signed up for six more years. As the recruiter said, do twenty and have a pension at age thirty-eight.

Williams was pissed about the move. He’d been fucking a bar girl. He loved her, wanted to marry her, take her home to the family’s feed and grain store. He was afraid she’d find someone else to shack up with before he could get back to Japan. I thought she would.

“You married, sarge?”

“I married the army.” The girls I’d known in high school were married, having babies, a few even finishing college. The guys I knew—the ones who stayed out of trouble—had jobs; they worked for their dads as plumbers, mechanics, carpenters. My dad sold insurance. That was another life. Not mine.

Even with Japanese cops on motorcycles and MPs in jeeps to clear the roads, it took the entire sunrise and then some for the convoy, sixty trucks and jeeps, to snake its way from the camp to Yokohama harbor. I watched Japanese commuters watch this parade of U.S. military force trundle past and out of their country and wondered what they thought. Good riddance?

The convoy crept into an area filled with giant warehouses and signs of marine industry. We rounded a corner and Williams exclaimed, “Jeeezus, sarge! Look at the size of that mother!”

LST 742— Landing Ship, Tank—was a big mother. The three-story-high bow was split wide. A ramp was a drawbridge from the ship’s hold to the quay. Jeeps and trucks were driving into the ship’s gut.

The LST was a big deal in WWII. They had a flat bottom and could sail right up onto a beach, open the bow doors, drop the ramp, and the tanks and trucks could drive right off without wetting their tootsies. Longer than a football field, 64-feet wide and three decks high, an LST could carry sixty vehicles and three hundred troops.

LST 742 (LSTs did not get names) was navy gray and rust streaks stained the hull. Japanese stevedores in blue coveralls and yellow hardhats scurried purposely around, guiding us onto the ramp, then onto a second ramp that climbed to the main deck open to the air. Our spot was toward the bow and beside the rail, which was nothing more than a waist-high cable.

A sergeant first class armed with a clip board appeared at the driver’s window. “Kill the engine, leave the key, roll up the windows good and tight.” He noticed me. “Who the fuck are you?”

I told him I was shepherding the brigade’s personnel records. He found my name on a sheet, checked it off, and told us to take our gear and pick out a bunk below. “Meeting in the galley at 1500 hours. Be there.”

Japanese stevedores were chaining the trucks to cleats welded to the deck, tightening the chains until they twanged like piano strings. Williams and I retrieved our duffle bags and picked our way back to the deck house. A door that could be dogged shut opened to a companionway down to the troop berthing area—racks stacked four high lining both walls. LST 742 might have seen hard use, but everything was clean, with freshly painted beige walls and navy gray deck. It smelled of disinfectant. I had an absurd vision of Japanese women in coveralls and aprons bustling through the area with brushes and rags and mops the way they swept through Japanese trains.

“Don’t bunk close to me,” I told Williams. “I snore like a freight train.” Warned, he continued down the passageway. I chose a bottom bunk close to the companionway and galley. My gear squared away, I explored the ship, which, big as it was, took no time—head, sickbay, and tank deck. As I watched, the ramp that led up to the main deck rose into the steel ceiling with a thunderous clanking, a trap door slowly closing. The moment the way was clear, the stevedores began directing the rest of the convoy’s vehicles into parking spots and chaining them down.

Two GIs were in the galley, a corporal and a private. The corporal’s nametag said Culver. He looked older than most guys, in his 30s, with thinning black hair and wrinkles around his eyes. His fatigue shirt was faded but crisp and sharp; he’d had a tailor sew in the creases. His stripes did not cover the dark patches that said he’d once worn SFC stripes. How does a sergeant first class get busted to corporal?

Culver was supervising a private Evarts who was carrying cases of C-rations from one of the trucks and stacking them. Supervising meant sitting on a galley stool at one of the rimmed tables—rimmed so your meal tray won’t slide off as the ship rolls—and drinking coffee. Something about him rubbed me the wrong way—his expression? His gung-ho tailored shirt? The way he made Evarts do all the work?

Still, he respected rank. “Coffee, sergeant?”

“Sounds good.”

“Yo! Evarts! Get the sergeant some coffee.” Private Evarts stopped, one foot out the hatch to the main deck, returned to a restaurant-size, stainless coffee urn, and drew me a mug. Very civilized. “Cream? Sugar?” Culver asked.

“You got cream?”

“Yeah . . . well, we ‘requisitioned’ some extra rations,” he said with a sly look.

An Sp3 arrived and introduced himself as a medic. The couple hours we spent bullshitting in the galley while the ship sat beached and immobile was the last time I spent much time with him.

We knew by the metallic grinding toward the bow that the ramp was being raised and the bow doors closing. LST 742 gave a little shudder as a tug pulled us off the quay and began rocking in Tokyo Bay’s gentle chop. The medic turned white and scurried to sickbay where he puked up his guts and scarfed down anti-seasick pills. “If this little rocking makes him sick, he’s gonna have a rough fucking trip,” said Culver as if he were an old salt.

At three o’clock, the full complement of GIs—less the medic—gathered in the galley. Ten of us: SFC Ogren, the senior NCO with his clipboard was the man in charge. Two cooks, Culver and Evarts. Six privates and PFCs, all mechanics and drivers, Williams and Grady and Claude and Billy and Junior and Roy. And me.

SFC Ogren shouted, “Ahhh-ten-HUT!” as 1st Lt. Perkins came through the galley hatchway. We jumped to our feet and the lieutenant looked embarrassed.

“At ease, men. At ease. Take your seats,” He sounded like one of those officers who wants to be your good buddy until some shit happens; then he can be a mean son of a bitch if he doesn’t fall apart.

He’d been up on the bridge. Now we were at sea, he and the captain together opened the sealed orders. “We’re on our way to Inchon, South Korea.” No surprise.

A five-day trip. Every morning at ten and every afternoon at three—Perkins used civilian time—we start the vehicle engines and let them idle for five minutes to keep their batteries charged. SFC Ogren will assign vehicles. No other duties. No reveille. Lights out in the troop quarters at ten thirty. Bridge and crew quarters are off limits. “We’ve got a Japanese crew and I want you to stay out of their way. I don’t think they speak English anyway. Any questions?”

Culver had one. “Sir, since me and Evarts have to prepare the chow, do we have engine duty too?”

The lieutenant looked at Ogren, who looked amused. “Heating a pot of water and opening packs of C-rations shouldn’t be too much for you and Evarts,” said Ogren.

Chow would be a can of pork and beans, or spaghetti and meatballs, or beef stew, or whatever you fished out of the pot three times a day. Plus, the C-ration hardtack (thick round crackers that came in a can with a tin of jelly), candy, and cocoa. All that supplemented by the rations Culver and Evarts had stolen: coffee, half-and-half, bread, jam, cornflakes, and a case of “homogenized, pasteurized, reconstituted” milk.

The sound of the engines changed, the deck began to throb, and we sensed the ship’s motion. The lieutenant said, “Dismissed,” and we scattered. I went out on deck. We were underway, our wake a churning white track. Stepping awkwardly around the chains anchoring the trucks, I made my way to the bow to stand in one of the gun tubs as we rode out of Tokyo Bay and into the Pacific. The ocean was relatively calm, but with its flat bottom the LST rocked and rolled anyway.

Chilly in the wind, I retreated to the records truck cab for an unobstructed view of sky, sea, and the Japanese coast. And there, in the fading January light, was Mt. Fuji in all its sacred, snow-capped glory. I watched until it was too dark to see more than the black water, the blue-black sky, the shadowy coastline broken momentarily by pinpricks of light. I wasn’t happy to be shipped back to Korea but I’d make do. Not that I had a lot of choice.

As I opened the driver’s door, I remembered that only a waist-high cable as a rail stopped me from tumbling three stories into the Pacific. Better to climb out the passenger side and pass between the parked trucks, an obstacle course of chains and cleats. You might trip, but you wouldn’t fall overboard.

We settled into a routine. SFC Ogren assigned the vehicles we were responsible to warm up twice a day. He told me that as an NCO I didn’t have to participate, but that felt chicken-shit and said I’d do my share.

The cooks—that is Evarts—kept a pot of water hot on the stove to heat cans of C-rations. He kept the coffee urn charged. Culver and the drivers began interminable games of poker. The medic remained in sickbay. Ogren had a case of Johnny Walker Black Label stashed in his jeep and (I suspect) drank a bottle a day in an officer’s cabin he’d commandeered. A couple years later I saw him in the drunk ward at Fuji Army Hospital where his cirrhosis was about to kill him.

I spent the daylight in the records truck cab, my book propped against the steering wheel. Sheltered from the wind with a boundless view of sea and sky, the misty coast creeping past far to starboard, and Herman Melville’s Billy Budd, it was glorious, one of the best times I spent in the Army.

My buddy, the librarian back at camp, suggested Billy Budd and Two Years Before the Mast and a couple Horatio Hornblower novels. “Perfect for an ocean cruise.” I’d always liked reading. I kept a book handy even in the bunker on the line during the war but my choices were what was handy: Tobacco Road, The Fountainhead, Captain from Castile, miscellaneous porn. This librarian, a civilian, said I was too intelligent to be wasting my time on crap and actually typed up a reading program for me. I was going to miss him and the library’s comfortable easy chairs.

At the end of the second day at sea, I was eating a can of chicken stew at a galley table as far from the card players as I could get, my book open under one hand, my fork in the other, when Lt. Perkins came over. “What are you reading, sergeant?” I showed him the cover. “Billy Budd?” He sounded surprised. “What do you think of it?”

“Took me a while to get used to Melville’s English. But I like it.” As soon as I finished it I planned to begin it again.

“What do you think of Claggart, the master-at-arms?” He slipped onto the stool across from me and put his coffee between us. “Do you think he’s pure evil?”

The lieutenant was serious, his light blue eyes curious. Asking like he actually wanted my opinion. He’d not shaved that morning and his cheeks had a light blond stubble. His beard was so light he probably didn’t have to shave every day. “Sir?”

“Why do you think Claggart tells the captain Billy is inciting mutiny? He knows Billy’s innocent. He knows it’s a hanging offense. Why does he want Billy dead?”

I’d been in the army almost five years and never had a conversation like this. Never met an officer who actually crossed the line between officer and enlisted to talk about a book. Perkins had to be ROTC and a short-timer, mentally already a civilian.

“He’s jealous?” My tone was tentative. “The way the men love and respect Billy.”

“And what about Captain Vere? He knows Billy’s innocent. But Billy hits Claggart, right in front of the captain. Striking an officer was a hanging offence.”

“I think . . . I think the captain’s in a real box. Billy’s innocent but guilty, and the navy doesn’t have room for extenuating circumstances. It doesn’t matter what Claggart accused. Billy hit him.” I paused. “And Billy thinks the captain’s doing the right thing by hanging him.”

We talked for another fifteen minutes or so about the book, about Melville, about other books. He recommended A High Wind in Jamaica, glanced at his watch, stood, and thanked me for the conversation. I didn’t stand or salute.

I did think about Billy Budd. Billy didn’t deliberately attack Claggart. He was frustrated by Claggart’s lie. And the world was a cleaner place with Claggart dead.

The next afternoon from my seat in the truck cab I noticed the shadows shifting. I climbed down, walked aft, and saw from our wake we were making a U-turn. I found Lt. Perkins’s cabin and told him. He said he’d check it out. Ten minutes later he came down to the galley to tell us there was a storm. We were running for a sheltered bay somewhere back up the coast to sit it out.

I returned to the truck, and in the fading light watched the LST nose its way through a gap in the cliffs, out of the white caps, and into a small bay surrounded by high, wooded hills, and drop anchor. The engines went silent and the ship’s rocking was appreciably less, calm enough the medic was able to come into the galley, pale and famished. He filled up on pork and beans and C-ration hardtack.

By dawn we’d been joined by a small freighter and three fishing boats. The rain poured down and I could see the wind whipping the pines up on the hills. We sat snug and sheltered. It was not too nasty however to run the vehicle engines at ten and three. I spent the day reading in my rack or in the galley.

Everything Evarts did—or didn’t do—provoked Culver. He treated him like a houseboy rather than another GI. True, Culver outranked Evarts but he acted like a slave driver: “Get me another cup of coffee.” “Clean up those cans and shit.” “Find a fucking mop and mop this fucking floor.” Culver he took the orders without question, without muttering, without changing his expression. He wasn’t cheerful, but he wasn’t sullen either. I wondered if he was mentally all there.

Late on the fourth night out of Yokohama, I caught Ogren in the galley spooning out C-rations. I sat across from him and asked, “What’s the story with Culver?”

“Culver?” Ogren’s eyes were bloodshot and I could smell the scotch. “He’s pissed the war’s over.” I gave him a what-does-that-mean look. “In the war Culver was a fucking hero. Silver Star. Bronze Star with oak leaf cluster. Purple Heart. Plus all the usual shit: Combat Infantryman Badge, campaign ribbons, service ribbons. The usual shit.”

Three medals for heroism. Impressive. “How’d he get the Silver Star?”

“The story I heard is he was leading a night patrol and they ran into a gook ambush. The machine gunner was too excited, and his first burst went high, just scratched Culver. That was his Purple Heart. But there they were, eight guys flat on the dirt. Can’t go forward, can’t go back. Pinned down good and tight, three Chinese on the machine gun waiting for reinforcements.”

I recalled the distinctive earthy stink of Korean soil in your face as you tried to sink all the way into it, tried to become too small to hit.

“So anyway, Culver thinks he recognizes the gun from the sound of it—a Russian model that reloads with a drum instead of a belt. It takes a few seconds to get an empty drum off the gun and snap the new one on and chamber a round. So when the gunner empties the drum, Culver runs quick like a bunny toward the three Chinese, dropping just before the gunner can open up again. The next time he hears the drum go empty, he gets close enough to lob two grenades into the middle of the Chinese, one after another. Boom . . . boom . . . and that was it.”

I could not tell what he thought of the story. Admiration? Doubt? “And you believe that?”

“It got Culver a Silver Star and another stripe. Made him an SFC.” Ogren took a sip of the light brown liquid in his coffee mug.

“How’d he get busted?”

Ogren pushed the can of chili aside. “During his second tour, the chinks would mount a big-ass attack, we’d fall back, and after a day or two they’d run out of rice and low on ammo and we’d counter-attack and take everything back.” I’d played that game a couple times myself. “Anyway, Culver’s in the bunker when some Korean kid—like an eight-year-old girl—comes running at them. She’s barefoot and screaming, ‘GI! GI!’ The Chinese would wire a grenade to a kid and tell her the GIs would take it off, and when we tried . . . boom!”

“Yeh, I’d heard that.”

“Anyway, Culver drops the kid. But there’s no grenade. Who knows what the kid was doing. But she’s dead and the company commander’s totally pissed. ‘You could have fired a warning shot . . .you can’t shoot civilian kids . . . how’m I gonna explain this to battalion? . . . blah . . . blah . . . blah.’ Culver mouthed off to the captain, said it wasn’t a big deal, so he lost the stripe.”

“And the second stripe?”

“That was at Carson last year. He was training cadre. Saturday morning inspection, everybody’s lined up, all spit and polish, and the lieutenant tells Culver his CIB is tarnished and tells the first sergeant to gig him. I don’t know what the asshole lieutenant thought he was doing. But Culver steps out of ranks, grabs the lieutenant, and decks him. So now he’s Corporal Carver.”

“I guess they couldn’t do more. Him being a war hero and all.”

“Well, the colonel, knowing the asshole lieutenant was way out of line, asked Carver where he wanted to be stationed because they couldn’t keep him at Carson. He said he wanted a combat unit in Korea. So here he is. Got his wish.”

Ogren told a good story, but the hero stuff sounded like bullshit. The next morning I climbed into the back of the records truck. I had to slide the chests over to make room to work the latches, but no problem finding Carver’s 201 file. I moved to the watery sunlight at the back, and read the citations. “Coming under enemy machine gun fire while leading a patrol during the night of . . . .” He was a no shit hero. I returned the file and latched the chest closed.

Sometime during that night I sensed the LST’s big diesels turning over as we got underway. Strong rocking woke me a little after 0630 and I went out on deck. We were in heavy seas, once again heading south. I was almost disappointed. I was finishing my second mug of breakfast coffee when Culver told Evarts to take the GI can filled with our trash—cans and cardboard, coffee grounds and moldy bread—and dump it off the fantail. Evarts said, “A sign says nothing gets thrown off the ship. Signed by the captain.”

“The captain? The Jap captain?” Culver’s tone rang with contempt. “I don’t give a shit what a Jap captain says.”

“Maybe the Jap captain doesn’t want US Army trash washed up on a beach,” I said.

He turned on me. “What does a pussy clerk know about anything?” Heavy stress on ‘clerk.’ To Evarts: “Dump the fucking trash. That’s an order.”

I outranked him, but why get into a pissing contest? I doubted that Ogren or Perkins cared. I gripped my mug like a rock. Evarts gave a helpless shrug, and began to drag the GI can across the deck to the hatchway. He struggled to lift the can over the high sill. I wasn’t going to stay in the galley with Culver so I helped him. But I didn’t help him dump it into our wake.

I ate my dinner that night in the truck cab, hardtack and candy I’d traded for my C-ration cigarettes. I watched weather rolling in over us, the waves building from another storm. Because we headed toward the setting sun, I figured we were steaming west through the Inland Sea. By the time I left my perch, it was full night, the wind had picked up, and the LST seemed to be wallowing through the heavy sea.

I woke after midnight, stiff because in my sleep I’d braced myself against the rack’s frame so I wouldn’t roll out. The ship’s motion was more violent, like the most extreme carnival ride ever. Rising up, up, up, then smashing down, the LST’s flat bottom crashing into the sea. Too rough to sleep. I needed to get outside. Tense, I dressed in the feeble night lights and, hanging on to stanchions and the companionway rail, worked my way up to the deckhouse. The hatch had been dogged shut, but opened with a clang, and I went gasping into the open air.

It was a tumult of wind and spray, a howling roar. But I was no longer trapped in a steel box. I gripped ship’s handholds and hung onto truck edges to work my way forward. The bow rose and fell and we rolled. As we pitched to port, I braced myself against a truck fender until we were almost on our side. We were going to capsize. But no. The ship shuddered, recovered, and rolled to starboard.

I reached my truck, scrambled into the cab, and clung shaking to the steering wheel. The LST’s bow reared up higher and higher, then fell into the sea with an incredible crash of spray and foam. A great gush of spray lashed the windshield and I felt cold water drip onto my left leg. I thought of riding through a car wash with my dad.

I’d never experienced such violence and such utter helplessness. I thought we had to break apart. As the water sluiced away, fatalism replaced terror. If we were going to die, we were going to die. I held the steering wheel in a death grip and waited.

We began to roll. As we tilted over, over . . . over, the records cases abruptly shifted on the truck bed. They slid six inches to ram the wall of the cargo box. The truck gave a hop toward the rail and the raging waves just beyond. I jerked as if scalded. The chains had to snap under the strain. The truck was going into the sea. It would sink like a steel bar and I was trapped in it. I wasn’t ready to die like that. As we began to roll starboard, I allowed the motion to carry me across the front seat and swing the passenger door wide.

After that jolt of fear, I became resigned and focused. Don’t think. Do what you have to do at this moment. Decide which truck fender, door handle, tie-down to grip next. Look where to place your boot on the slick steel deck. Listen to the wind’s howl, the creak and rattle of loose cargo, the boom as the ship drops onto another massive wave. It did not seem possible that old LST 742 could survive such a beating. As I picked my way between the vehicles I understood I had to do something.

At the deck house, I undogged the door to leave the roaring night behind. After the outside dark, the dim emergency lights were bright. At Culver’s bunk I squatted and shook him. “Culver! Wake up! The ship’s in trouble!”

He was muzzy with sleep. I smelled alcohol. “What? Whassit?” Another shuddering boom as we fell on a wave. I clutched the rack above to keep from falling onto him.

“The ship! Here! Take this!” I pushed his boots at him. “Come!” He was sleeping in his fatigue pants and shirt. “Don’t tie your boots!” I hustled him through the compartment, up the companionway ahead of me. “Undog the door!”

I pushed him into tumult of wind and rain and spray. “What?” Culver was dazed. “What?”

I clung to the storm rail welded to the deckhouse wall, waited for seconds until the ship began rolling as if to capsize, and gave Culver a solid shove. I could only imagine the look of surprise and terror as he fell backward, pitched over the cable railing, and disappeared into the foaming black water. If he screamed, it was lost in the storm’s din.

Or:

I ate my dinner that night in the truck cab. I watched weather rolling in over us, the waves building from another storm. By the time I left my perch behind the wheel of the records truck, it was full night, the wind had picked up, and the LST seemed to be wallowing through the heavy sea. I wedged myself into my bunk and fell into restless, rocking sleep.

“Sarge, sarge! Wake up!” Culver, squatting beside me was shaking me.

“What? Whassit?” I felt the ship fall on wave with a shuddering boom.

“The ship! We’ve got to get out!” I could smell liquor on his breath.

Muzzy with sleep, I found my boots and slipped them on, Culver tugging at my shirt. We stumbled through the compartment, the deck rocking like an amusement park fun house, and climbed the companionway to the main deck. He undogged the door and we went out into the tumult of wind and rain and spray.

I hung on to the storm rail. Culver wanted to tell me something but it was lost in the tempest. He seemed to stand uncertain for a moment, then the ship’s motion took him. He staggered backward pitched over the cable rail, and disappeared.

By the next morning, the storm had passed. It had driven a Japanese coastal freighter aground and sunk at least two fishing boats. We could see land in the distance on both sides of the ship. The sea was not calm, but the wind had died.

I was as mystified as everyone when Culver did not appear for the ten o’clock engine warming duty. No one had missed him because he, like others, liked to sleep late. Ogren reported to Lt. Perkins that Culver was missing and we took the morning to search the ship, every vehicle, every compartment. No Culver.

The captain told Perkins his crew could not find the corporal in the crew quarters or engine room. All the lieutenant could imagine, he told us over coffee, was that Culver had gone on deck for some reason during the storm and was swept overboard. “Why would he go up on deck?” I asked, my eyes on my coffee.

“Claustrophobia?” suggested Ogren. “A man could get shook down there in a storm like last night—no portholes, no view.”

I glanced at Evarts. He was as pale as the medic and looked away when he caught my eye.

We reached Inchon late the next afternoon. The Army held us for a cursory inquiry. No one had seen Culver leave his berth. No reason to suspect foul play. Two days later, the inquiry satisfied, we formed a convoy and drove forty-five miles north to the brigade’s new camp. Williams told me the other drivers thought Culver had been cheating at cards. “He had a system with Evarts.”

In the new camp’s personnel office, I pulled Culver’s file and sent it to headquarters for final disposal.

****

Wally Wood is an editor and writer. He has independently published three novels and worked with a number of authors to publish 23 non-fiction business books. Wally earned his MA in creative writing in 2002 from the City College of New York and has a BA in philosophy from Columbia University. He spent 25 years as a trade magazine reporter and editor and has been a volunteer teacher in state and federal prisons for more than 20 years.