Destroyermen

Now, captain and crew together had been tested in the cauldron of combat, and Matt's black-and-white concept of right and wrong had come under serious assault. They'd dodged air attacks and experienced the unexpected exultation of "victory" in the Makassar Strait. They'd seen the senseless waste of lives in the Badung Strait caused by confusion and miscommunication. They'd lived through the frustration and horror of the Battle of the Java Sea, while their comrades on other ships and in other navies died for a purpose that began to elude them. No one questioned the War; it came without warning or mercy. It was real, it was allconsuming, and it was here. Why they were fighting it here was the unfathomable question.

Leaving the Philippines was tough. A lot of the guys had Filipino wives and sweethearts, and to them it was home. Some pla

Shades of gray appeared when Walker and Des Ron 29 were redeployed south to defend the Dutch East Indies. It was clearly a hopeless cause. Air cover was still nonexistent, and there weren't enough ships to stop what was coming. The Dutch oil fields were the Japanese objective, but leaving a few old ships to try and slow them down would only provide them with target practice. If they had to make an Alamo-like stand, why couldn't they have done it in the Philippines? Their "home" waters, so to speak?

Java belonged to the Dutch, and it was understandable that they'd want to keep it, but it was impossible. Reinforcements weren't coming. It made more sense to Matt to pull everything out and save the men and ships until they had enough to knock the Japanese on their butts for a change. Of course, he wasn't an admiral or a politician, and the very condition of the Asiatic Fleet proved that its survival wasn't a priority to those who were. He admitted he might've felt differently if Java was his home. The Nazis had Holland, and Java was all that was left. He had felt differently when the Philippines were at stake, and he hadn't even liked it there. It was all a matter of perspective. He knew he was relatively young and inexperienced, but he couldn't shake the thought that if it was strategically wrong to defend the Philippines, it was wrong to defend Java too. Maybe he was just bitter. The same people who expected them to fight to the last in the Dutch East Indies hadn't lifted a finger to support the United States in the Philippines.

After the disaster in the Java Sea he thought even the Dutch would realize it made more sense to fight their way back in than be destroyed getting kicked out. As far as he knew, they hadn't sunk a single Japanese ship during the battle. Except for Exeter and the aged destroyers, ABDAFLOAT had ceased to exist. He was mistaken. Word was that Admiral Helfrich, the Dutchman who'd replaced Tommy Hart as ABDA's commander, still pla

He often reflected on the certainty he'd felt regarding an eventual war with Germany, and he admitted that before he got out here, he'd never given much thought to the Japanese. Evidently nobody had. Now his entire consciousness was devoted to preventing that underestimated foe from shredding his ship and her crew and sending them to the bottom of the Java Sea.

With a gauging glance at the stately Exeter off the port quarter to ensure that Walker was holding proper formation, he stepped into the pilothouse. The gu

The stocky, broad-shouldered form of Lieutenant James Ellis clomped metallically up the ladder from the main deck below, and Matt arched an eyebrow at him. He liked Jim Ellis, and they were as close to being friends as their rank difference allowed, but Jim was much farther from his battle station at the auxiliary co

"Yes, sir, I know," Ellis said, anticipating the reprimand as he maneuvered Matt out of hearing of the others in the pilothouse. "But those nurses and their flyboy chauffeurs want to know if there's anything they can do. That Army captain"—he tilted his nose up with unconscious disdain—"actually tried to come up here and bug you. Chief Gray said he'd have to wait your convenience." Ellis gri

Before they cleared Surabaya, they'd taken aboard a rather motley assortment of passengers. First to arrive was an unkempt and harried-looking Australian, a Mr. Bradford, a construction engineer for Royal Dutch Shell. He introduced himself as a "naturalist," but paid his passage by intervening on their behalf with the harbor officials, who didn't want to fill their bunkers. They'd argued that the fuel would be better used by Dutch ships, staying to defend Java. Courtney Bradford countered with the fact that there was only one Dutch ship left, a destroyer, and she was getting the hell out just as fast as she could. Perhaps it was their lingering respect for a corporate superior, or maybe just the final realization that everything really was falling apart. Whatever the motivation, Walker left Surabaya with her bunkers overflowing. Next to come limping aboard was a sergeant from Houston's Marine contingent. He'd been wounded by a bomb that had killed dozens and wrecked the old cruiser's aft turret. Left ashore in a hospital with a lacerated leg, he missed her final sortie. He didn't intend to become a guest of the Japanese. Upon his arrival, he was roundly scolded for bleeding on the deck and sent below to the surgeon.

Finally, motoring out to catch them in a "borrowed" boat just as they were preparing to get under way were six Navy nurses and two P-40 pilots who'd escaped the sinking of the old Langley the day before. Langley had been ferrying P-40 fighters in for the defense of Java, but she was caught fifty miles short. Bombed into a smoldering wreck, she was abandoned, and one of Walker's sisters, Edsall, was forced to finish her with two precious torpedoes. The majority of Langley's perso