East of Farewell

By Howard Hunt

East of Farewell, first published in 1942, is a realistic novel of life aboard a U.S. Navy destroyer in the North Atlantic during World War II. The book centers on the officers and crew, their interactions, their routine tasks aboard ship and as part of a larger convoy, the tensions between “regular navy” men and those serving for just the duration of the war, encounters with German U-boats, and the harsh weather and sea. Author Howard Hunt (1918-2007) served as an ensign aboard a destroyer in the North Atlantic during the early days of the Second World War.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Burtyrki Books
• Release date: Feb 25, 2020
• ISBN: 9781839742675

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Publisher’s Note

Although in most cases we have retained the Author’s original spelling and grammar to authentically reproduce the work of the Author and the original intent of such material, some additional notes and clarifications have been added for the modern reader’s benefit.

We have also made every effort to include all maps and illustrations of the original edition the limitations of formatting do not allow of including larger maps, we will upload as many of these maps as possible.

EAST OF FAREWELL

By

Howard Hunt

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Contents

TABLE OF CONTENTS 4

DEDICATION 6

CHAPTER ONE 7

CHAPTER TWO 13

CHAPTER THREE 20

CHAPTER FOUR 26

CHAPTER FIVE 31

CHAPTER SIX 38

CHAPTER SEVEN 47

CHAPTER EIGHT 54

CHAPTER NINE 62

CHAPTER TEN 70

CHAPTER ELEVEN 76

CHAPTER TWELVE 84

CHAPTER THIRTEEN 89

CHAPTER FOURTEEN 96

CHAPTER FIFTEEN 103

CHAPTER SIXTEEN 110

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN 116

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN 123

CHAPTER NINETEEN 130

CHAPTER TWENTY 137

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE 144

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO 151

REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER 155

DEDICATION

* * *

The characters in this work are wholly fictional and imaginary, and do not portray and are not intended to portray any actual persons or parties.

* * *

To

THE MEN OF THE NORTH ATLANTIC

CHAPTER ONE

Away from the sleeping city the stevedores work. Along the piers the cranes move and the booms jerk, and inside the holds of the gray ships the piles grow high. On deck the crates are lashed and bolted, the bombers secured against the weeks of sea to come, and in the navy yard in the steering-engine room of a destroyer three sailors shoot craps waiting for the convoy to start out. The same game has been going for a week.

As he stumbled down the ladder into the wardroom, the ship rolled heavily and threw him against the bulkhead. His feet left the steps and for a moment he was hanging by his arms from the safety cable. Then the ship rolled the other way, and when she was vertical, he jumped the last four steps and landed solidly on the smooth linoleum of the wardroom deck.

There were only two other officers there. O’Brien, the Chief Engineer, was sleeping on the starboard transom, lying on his belly, his left arm hooked rigidly around a stanchion. His mouth was open, and his jaws lolled with the roll and shudder of the ship. Maxon cursed him softly. Maxon looked across the wardroom and saw the other Ensign sitting in a lashed-down chair balancing and stirring a cup half filled with coffee....He grinned deliberately at Maxon.

You’re getting better, he said.

Maxon steadied himself against the coming roll. Press the buzzer, will you? he asked. He did not enjoy the motion of the ship.

Lousy coffee, Ensign Gaylord told him. He buzzed for the watchboy.

Maxon drew off his wool helmet and threw it on the vacant transom. Then he crossed to it, taking the exaggerated, leaning, groping steps of destroyer-men.

The watchboy pushed open the pantry door. Yessuh, he said.

Bring Ensign Maxon a cuppa joe, Gaylord said. Hot!

He watched Maxon pull off his overshoes, heavy with spray, and then his jungle-cloth jacket. The trousers with their built-in braces reminded him of overalls. Maxon got a grip on the stanchion and leaned back.

Feel bad? Gaylord asked him.

I feel like hell.

How about a sandwich?

I could use a sandwich.

The watchboy came back in. He handed Maxon the cup of coffee and went to the sideboard for cream and sugar.

Bring me a bacon and egg sandwich.

Cook’s off watch, suh.

Got any cold meat?

Jes’ some co’ned beef.

Christ! Maxon said loudly. He saw the Chief Engineer stir.

Gaylord lighted a cigarette. Have a cigarette, then, he said. Show the skipper you can get along without food, too.

Coffee and cigarettes, Maxon said. Jamoke and butts....I’ll be God-damned if I know how the Chief gets along on it. He sipped his coffee slowly, making an unpleasant face.

He’s got ulcers, Gaylord said. He can’t eat.

Did you ever notice how much he looks like Christ? Gaylord half-turned to look at O’Brien. You mean the beard?

No. I mean everything about his face, Maxon said. That half-starved look he always has...like an El Greco.

Christ on a destroyer, Gaylord said. What we could use is a doctor.

We don’t need one yet.

We will.

For the Chief?

Yeah...and for us, too.

The watchboy came in and gave Maxon a corned-beef sandwich. He ate it slowly. A big wave hit them, and they could feel it the whole length of the ship. The screws raced in the air and then buried themselves deep as the ship pitched upward.

This is a swell way to live, Maxon said. He started to pull off the heavy salt-stained trousers.

How about the skipper? Gaylord asked.

He gets sick, too.

Did you ever see him?

No...but one night on the bridge the quartermaster told me to keep away from the Captain’s chair, and all during that watch I could smell it and I knew the skipper got sick like the rest of us.

That’s good to know, Gaylord said. I’ll remember that the next time he rides me.

Maxon stretched out on the transom. He could feel the damp winter underwear clinging to him and he knew that he needed a shower. Gaylord looked at the cold dregs in his cup. From the pantry came the laughter of the watchboy and a sailor. Shooting craps, he thought. By God, that was why there was never any coffee when you wanted it...never any hot food to drive away the chill of the sea. He shivered a little...even in here you could feel it. He got up and turned up the thermostat. When it got hot, the Chief Engineer would wake up and swear and accuse the watchboys of fooling with the temperature; then he’d turn it down again and go to sleep. O’Brien woke and sat up. What time is it?

Thirteen thirty, Gaylord said, looking at the wardroom clock.

Anything new?

No.

O’Brien fished inside his pocket for a cigarette. He lighted it nervously.

Any coffee?

Gaylord rang for the boy. The laughter ceased and the boy came into the room. O’Brien exhaled quickly. Coffee, he said.

The boy withdrew. In the pantry the plates and cups kept up an endless chatter. Sixty per cent breakage, an officer told him once. Gaylord wondered why it wasn’t more.

How’s the convoy? Gaylord struggled to the magazine rack and took out last month’s Fortune.

They’re all right, Maxon said, unlacing his sheepskin inner boots. The tanker abeam had steering-engine trouble this morning and snapped at us a couple of times, but I got us the hell out of the way.

It woke me up, Gaylord said, out of the first good sleep in four days. He thumbed through the magazine. Here’s all about convoys, he said, affecting immense delight....Tells of the stout merchantmen who brave the U-boats for union pay plus bonuses plus extra pay for occupational hazards so that one of their third mates makes more than Admiral King."

You couldn’t save it if they gave it to you, Maxon said.

That’s right.

Did you pay last month’s mess bill?

No.

Maxon laughed. I hereby direct you to pay to the Wardroom Mess Treasurer any moneys in arrears, signed B. F. Clapper, Commanding.

Gaylord closed Fortune. I haven’t got that yet, he said, but I’m expecting it any time.

A sailor opened the door and passed through the wardroom.

Who’s he? Gaylord asked.

Picked him up last time in.

What’s he do?

Cleans the passageway outside your room.

I knew every man aboard this ship...until we started transferring them for clap and what not.

They’re no good out here with the clap.

Nobody’s any good out here.

Maxon looked at the other transom. He’s the only one, he said. The only one any good out here in this tin can is Christ over there. He closed his eyes.

The boy came in with coffee. The Chief drank it in two equal gulps. He looked at Maxon lying on the transom, his eyes closed. He could feel Gaylord watching him. He stubbed out his cigarette and lighted another. He was glad that he was awake and Maxon sleeping, because he always felt that Gaylord and Maxon talked about him when he slept on the transom. Educated bastards, he thought—Ivy Leaguers.

How about some crib, Chief?

Nope. I’ve got some dope to look over.

O’Brien eased his thin body off the transom and walked to the pantry window, balancing the empty cup in his hand. He pounded on the panel until it was raised and the watchboy took the cup. Then, bracing himself alternately between the table and the bulkhead, he left the wardroom for his own bunk.

Gaylord sat in the wardroom listening to the pound of the sea against the skin of the ship. Sometimes when he was drunk with weariness he told himself that Cyclops was beating his fist against the ship like a punching bag and some time they’d get back to Troy or wherever the hell they were going. Two hours until his watch, he told himself. The smart thing to do would be to turn in for ninety minutes.

When he started to get up, a radioman came down the ladder with a message in his hand.

Who’s it for? he asked.

It’s Ensign Maxon’s watch.

I’ll sign for it, he said. He scribbled his initials on the carbon copy. During the eight hours after your deck watch you had to decode and write up any messages that came in. In wartime you didn’t send, you just rolled around at four knots until Washington had some more bright ideas. Then, when you were dead tired from the pitch and the roll of the ship...from looking, listening...from waiting, a message came in and you sat with bloodshot eyes looking at the nonsense syllables until they meant something. He walked toward the ladder, heading for the decoding room. He looked behind. On the transom Ensign Maxon lay and snored. The watchboy came in and started to clear off the table.

While Maxon was sleeping on the transom, Gaylord decoded the message and relieved Lieutenant (j.g.) Walton of the deck. Walton passed through the wardroom on the way to his bunk and saw Maxon sleeping. He pulled off his helmet and face mask and turned on the light over his bunk. He lay there for a minute, getting warm, feeling the blood come into his toes and his fingers. Then he sat up and pulled off his heavy clothes and the wet overshoes that left marks on the deck of his severely straight room. He reached for the buzzer and pressed it. When he tried to stand up on his stockinged feet, he slid across the room and came to rest against the washbasin. He filled the basin and with one hand splashed the hot water over his face while he steadied himself with the other. There was a knock at the door.

Come in, Walton said. The watchboy came into the room. Walton pointed at the smeared footprints on the deck. Clean those up now, he told him. The watchboy closed the door behind him.

When he had methodically dried his face, he hung up the damp towel to dry and, lifting up the mattress of his bunk, stuffed three heavy blankets under the inboard side so that the mattress slanted toward the hull of the ship. Then he got into the V between the mattress and the bulkhead and started to read the Manual of Construction and Repair. Only the sudden heavy rolls moved him as he lay there reading, and after a while he fell asleep, not hearing the dismal clanking of his shoes inside the heavy iron wastepaper basket. The watchboy came in silently and dried the deck and for a while he stood looking down at Lieutenant (j.g.) Walton while the shoes banged somberly inside the wastepaper basket.

Ralph Walton

In the town where I lived the men always liked to talk about the Derby and every year when it was run they would go down there a week ahead of time so that they could get drunk and watch the horses in the early morning while the trainers were clocking them and then when the race came they’d all have a few dollars on a favorite horse and they’d whoop and holler and shout while it was running, but afterward they’d all come back to our town and sit around and smoke and spit tobacco juice and talk about the race and why their horse hadn’t won and read all about it in the papers and argue and cuss and think about it all the time until next year and all the men went except my father and the town doctor when he had to hang around for a baby, but it was my mother never let Father go to the Derby because she said it was a sin in the sight of the Lord and the men who went and smoked and drank and chewed tobacco were all damned but the Way of Salvation remained for the poor lost souls and then she’d take me off to her room and read to me from the Bible for a long time and when she stopped reading she’d bring me back in and make me tell Father what she’d been reading me and one time in the spring when the blacksmith gave Father some wine he’d made, Mother found it in the woodshed and poured it out on the trash pile and came back into the house and cried and told Father that he was damned for drinking the Mocker of Souls and Dad said for Christ’s sweet sake shut up, and Mother looked shocked but she stopped crying and went to her room and when I passed by I could hear her sitting in there reading the Bible aloud and it sounded so funny that it scared me and I knew I would never drink the Mocker of Souls because it made Mother cry to talk about it and I was afraid of going to hell the way Mother said it was with the fire and brimstone pouring over the damned souls like the fire and molten stone from a volcano and doing what the Lord had told me not to do with little girls would make me go to hell like the time she saw me walking home from school with Sophie Pianka, whose father ran the butcher shop and always drank at the saloon before he went home and every year went down to the Derby with the rest of the men, and she told me not ever to have anything to do with Sophie Pianka because she was Catholic and was just Confirmed and when I grew up she would tell me about the nuns and the priests and the old monastery that some missionaries from her church had discovered in Italy not far from where the Pope was and Catholic girls were not fit to be seen with boys who believed in God and read the Bible and were smart and loved their mother the way I did.

After Father died Mother cried for a while because he had never given testimony for God and she knew he had gone to hell with the rest of the sinners and the Catholics and the men who got drunk and bet on the horse races, and Aunt Laura came to live with us while I was going to high school and because she was chairman of the W.C.T.U. she knew our Congressman and wrote and asked him to appoint me to the Naval Academy because at Annapolis the Government taught young men to live right and not drink and smoke and stay away from the wrong kind of girls. When I was at the Academy Mother wrote that she and Aunt Laura had gone to St. Petersburg to live and I knew it was with Father’s insurance money and for me to live in the fear of God and give testimony so that I would not die a sinner like my father and she had told the Reverend Aimes how proud she was of me and the brothers and sisters of the church prayed for me at prayer meeting and she hoped that some time I would be able to visit her and Aunt Laura and the Bible Society was going to send me a nice Bible with my name on the cover in gold and I was to read it aloud and talk to my roommate about God so that I would have credit in heaven for saving a soul. But my roommate was Catholic and he went to Mass every Sunday morning before the regular church party formed and when I tried to talk to him about the nuns and the priests he got mad and said I must be crazy and so the next year we didn’t room together and I never got to be a company officer because some of the midshipmen smoked on the sly and when I tried to talk to them about it they got mad too. So finally I slowed up on reading the Bible and stopped trying to save my classmates from hell and they seemed to like me better and I never had bad dreams any more but once in a while I’d wake up at night and look out of the window at the Rotunda of Bancroft Hall and wish I knew some girl to ask to a hop and that when Mother made me stop seeing Sophie I’d gone ahead and walked home from school every afternoon with her anyway.

CHAPTER TWO

Workmen swarm over the thin, low, battered shapes of the escort destroyers—welding, riveting, aligning, renewing, testing, computing, altering, repairing, cleaning, replacing, scraping, painting, fueling. All night the work goes on. All night you hear the deadening rattle of the chippers and the sputter of the welding torches that fuse the glowing metal. You hear the hobnailed workmen clatter up and down the metal decks, avoiding pipes and hoses and lines laid there in spidery confusion, and then when they leave they take with them the dirt and steam and flying sparks and the hiss of torches, and late one night the seamen return—walking...stumbling...carried by shipmates...pushed aboard by cops...and when they have slept for a while the ship is ready to go back to the sea.

When it was dark the Old Man came down from the bridge to his cabin. He turned on the light over his desk and tried to read some of the confidential mail that sloshed around inside his Incoming basket. It was almost six o’clock and he started to think about dinner. He’d been belching ever since noon...spaghetti and meatballs eaten from a heavy crockery soup bowl. Now the mess