out sick and submarines

Took two days off work to cough and loll on the couch, interrogate the cat about suspected activities, look for weapons of meow destruction, etc. Coughed successfully, but interrogation and weapons search turned up nothing. Also managed to read Tim Power's book Declare, and finish a book on WWII submarine experience called "Warfish" by George W. Grider.

Grider's book was an odd testament. Morose, vain, intemperate and ambitious, he was also evidently a very good captain of a submarine. Serving third or fourth officer under "Mush" Morton, he never managed to gain any glory or recognition however. A quick search of Amazon shows no Grider books in print. Morton's XO (executive officer) Dick O'Kane was given his own command just before Morton took the whole crew of the Wahoo to its death in the Sea of Japan. O'Kane wrote two books about his commands, and there are two other books about the Wahoo out there. It was a famous ship, and became a controversial story after the war when it was learned that Morton ordered gunfire on the men clinging to a troopship he had torpedoed...the men turned out to the Indian prisoners of war of the Japanese. What would be scandalously worried as an episode of shocking friendly fire deaths in "our" war was treated with a quick shrug and indifference in the world of 1942. C'est la guerre.

Submarines are fascinating to me now. It started with an idea for a science fiction story I am working on, and now I have about six books on the era and the technology and men of wwII submariner warfare. Nuclear subs aren't as interesting...there is something too doomsdayish, too eschatalogical about the whole nuke thing. WWII left room for individual character, and as Grider says in his postscript, sub warfare in WWII was actually a last vestige of 19th century warfare carried over into the 20th, when the gallantry and cowardice of leaders was clearly visible to their peers and subordinates. Character couldn't and wouldn't be hidden under a flurry of jargon or technology in those days, and character was the defining attribute of individuals, not systems. Grider finished his book with some ruefulness for the world his own son faced.