Bentz Plagemann - The Steel Cocoon

For the Roman Catholic service, Sullivan explained, it was officially directed that in the absence of a priest the prayers of the Mass should be recited in unison, on the theory that, since somewhere in the world a Mass was being said at any given hour of the day or night, the communicants would have the privilege of sharing in this distant service. But this, as Sullivan pointed out, was impractical under the circumstances, since there were not enough missals to pass around, or even to share by twos. Ensign Webster was a Roman Catholic, as Sullivan was, and they would plan a service of familiar hymns and prayers. Williams could leave it in their hands.

For the Protestant service, Williams would take a Book of Common Prayer and mark certain prayers for Captain Thompson to read. From past experience Sullivan thought he knew those the captain would like —the prayers "For Our Country," "For Every Man in His Work," and "For the Navy." The Protestants could join in "Onward, Christian Soldiers," and close with "The Navy Hymn."

Sunday dawned bright and clear, with a cloudless sky and a deep blue, calm sea. McNulty sounded the call over the public-address system. His boatswain's pipe managed to have a Sunday sound, and his voice was solemn. "Now, hear this," he said, firmly. "Roman Catholic services are being held in the after crew's quarters. Protestant services are being held in the forward quarters. The smoking lamp is out throughout the ship while services are being held."

Williams found a place on the last bench of the crowded forward quarters. He was suddenly more moved than he realized he would be, and he wanted as much privacy as he could find. The voices boomed out in "Onward, Christian Soldiers," the volume covering up their uncertainty about the words. Afterward the silence seemed intense, and the creaking of the ship, the gentle sound of the sea against the plates made a kind of counterpoint behind the voices raised in the Lord's Prayer. Then Captain Thompson stood before the group, his neck straight, his chin held in, his shoulders square. In the prayer "For the Navy" his voice was firm and without sentiment as he read, ''Preserve them from the dangers of the sea, and from the violence of the enemy; that they may be a safeguard unto the United States of America, and a security for such as pass on the seas. ..." The little congregation stood to sing "The Navy Hymn," and as the young, full-blooded voices sounded out with ''Eternal Father, strong to save. Whose arm hath bound the restless wave," Williams bowed his head, his face wet with sudden tears. A prayer and an image formed in his mind, the image of a man forever engraved on his memory. He had not seen Bullitt again before they sailed. When he had gone to the hospital and stood at the barred door of the ward, he had been unable to bring himself to go in. He had been too disturbed even to follow very well the words of the diagnosis that the hospital corpsman on duty had read to him, from Bullitt's chart, through the bars. The technical words did not matter very much anyway; only the hopelessness of them mattered. It was fairly certain that Bullitt would never be free again. When his face had healed, when his teeth had been repaired, he would be taken to Washington, to St. Elizabeth's Hospital, that walled island of the living dead, "And oh, God, bring peace," Williams prayed, "to his stubborn, willful soul."

In later years, on those wakeful nights when he paced the college campus, Tyler Williams often reflected on the lamentable truth that the condition of war was agreeable to most men. It was a sorrowful conclusion. War was evil; it destroyed not only the innocent, it also, in time, destroyed the men who gave themselves to it, if they had chosen the condition of war as a way of life. It attracted certain men because the reward of wearing a uniform for a lifetime was not only a suspension of the obligation of living in the world on the same terms as other men; it was also a release from the troubling responsibility of being an individual. Only the role mattered, not the mind of the man inside. Bullitt, in his own way, was a casualty of war; not of any war, but of war itself; Williams had seen that for an instant; the abyss, the dark void behind his eyes as he lay, bound, on the deck of the Ajax.

But he had seen it in himself, too, that capacity, that involuntary willingness, which must exist in some degree in all men, to surrender his own identity in order to save himself from the difficult consequences of a free and independent life. The memory of Bullitt on the deck would take him beyond, to earlier in the same evening, when he had sat on the sea wall in the Navy Yard, unable to bring himself to go beyond its gates, as if, inside the closed world of the Navy, the tragedy in which he was involved might resolve itself in its own terms. He had felt anonymous sitting there, and that feeling had comforted him. Yet suddenly, that night, that anonymity had been frightening to him; he had felt his existence threatened, for he had seen that what was comforting about this obliteration of personality was the soul-destroying concept that only duty mattered, not responsibility for the deed.

He would never resolve in his mind his place in the tragedy of Bullitt, or what part of the responsibility he must assume for the deaths of Stud Clancy and Pawling and Palazzo. He would have to live with this for all his life, but it was his own life, his own identity. He would take it up willingly, with its burdens, because the alternative was untenable.

And yet it was true that war had always been the most exciting crucible in which the characters of young men were forged, and as long as this remained so, men like Bullitt would be needed, to guard the coals over the years in between. And who was to judge him? Who was there to judge Alexander Bullitt?

Certainly not Tyler Williams, as he told himself. For he was as guilty as any man, on these wakeful nights, when he took up his memories of the Navy with a secret pleasure, like an egg to warm in his hands. But they had all been young then, he would plead before the implacable tribunal of his conscience. They had passed through the fire together, and he possessed forever the memory of the men who had served with him, caught for an immortal moment in the vigor and the symmetry of their youth, like figures on a marble frieze.

When the clock chimed in the steeple he would go home again, back to the peace and the deep happiness of his life. He would go into his study, and, with the guilt of a man who is forever drawn back to some fateful scene of his past, with a pleasure which no rational argument could ever take from him, he would turn on the light, and stand, and read again the copy of a document which he had framed above his desk. In this final evidence, he could always see what those days of the shakedown cruise had meant.

THE SECRETARY OF THE NAVY

Washington

The President of the United States takes pleasure in presenting the Presidential Unit Citation to the USS AJAX for service as set forth in the following

Citation:

"For outstanding performance in action as a destroyer during operations against enemy aggressor forces in the North Sea and the North Atlantic at a crucial period in the turning point of World War II. The fortitude under great hardship, the superb teamwork, and the unrelenting determination of her gallant officers and men were contributing factors in the success of an operation of great magnitude, and reflect the highest credit upon the USS AJAX, and the United States Naval Service."