(Eddie Layton’s Captain picture. He appears this morning because of something special that happened last night. Bear with me- and photo thanks to Bill)
All right- this is one of those mornings. It is better than yesterday- that one started with Don-the-Builder’s guys Tom and Jose showing up with the new back door at nine sharp at Refuge Farm, me on a conference call, and spiraled downhill, or uphill, from there.
There were such a dizzying number of things to consider: Burma and Gaza, one OK and the other not; Maryland and Rutgers joining the Big Ten, bringing the count to 14 teams, which doesn’t make any sense, but what the hell. Maybe they will add another six teams and we can have the Big Ten Squared.
I was thinking about Mac as I drove back up north, crunching out of the driveway with two large men ripping the door frame out of the back of the house, and as far as I know, intending to seal it up again before they left. Michigan played Iowa, always a tough game regardless of who was having a decent season, and that was the only time that Mac took a certain pleasure in poking me. He was the complete gentleman, of course, but when his Hawkeyes kicked our butts he was not shy about letting me know.
Anyway, for about the hundredth time I thought I needed to call him up, and the realization that I cannot still leaves me disoriented.
Mac’s family was in town to do the estate sale for the unit he had at The Madison, and I got a kind invitation to go to dinner with them at Willow. I wandered over there after work, where things were at high PRF- pulse repetition frequency- for the big contract kick-off and the uncertainty that is swirling around the Government customer who does not have any more of a clue than the rest of us what is going to happen come this January.
I am sure everything is going to be fine, you know? I was working with Boats on further analysis of the oil-and-gas boom that is going to make everything fine, and will be quite useful as the global temperature cools over the next few decades. It will nice to be warm.
But anyway, Willow was welcoming in the growing dusk and the wine and stories flowed as they always do when Mac’s family is together.
(The selection of wine was fine. Liquor might be quicker, but this was very nice indeed. Photo Socotra).
The table buzzed with conversation, and laughter as always. Mac’s daughter was having the same dis-association issue that I was- thinking I ought to talk to him about something or other, and her habit in that is life-long. Clearing things out from Mac’s apartment and the attic at the house surfaced some interesting things. Between the salad and the entrée, she pulled out an ivory-colored box and handed it to me. There was an object of similarly colored material, and a note yellowed with time along with a card.
(Scrimshaw, a traditional mariner’s art form. This one was one of four carved by RADM Eddie Layton, and given to Mac by his widow Miriam.)
Reading her note aloud made me blush, and I am not going to inflict it on you. But the square type-written provenance of the object brings us around to Eddie Layton, Mac’s boss at PACFLT HQ during the war, and one of those historical figures who actually was in a position to change the world, and did.
Here is what his wife Miriam wrote to Mac and his wife Billie long ago, after Eddie passed on and Mac managed to get the Distinguished Service Medal presented to Joe Rochefort, the man responsible for providing the intelligence that stopped the Japanese cold at Midway:
Dear Mac and Billie –
My pleasure and gratitude to you for making it possible for me to be present at the Rochefort ceremony overflows! It was such a great thing to have accomplished.
For all your wonderful help and support I’ve looked around for something of Edwin’s to send you. I know he would applaud this offering, I want it to represent my gratitude and affection for all you have done for me.
A bit of background – the first year Jack Kennedy was in the White House the media announced that Jackie was giving her husband a piece of scrimshaw for Christmas. Not to be outdone, I wrote to a jeweler in New Bedford who made scrimshaw about sending cufflinks for Edwin’s Christmas, He sent me two pairs on approval. Edwin was so delighted with them that we kept them both.
Several years later when we went to New England, we visited the whaling museum in New Bedford where he bought several rough ugly looking whale’s teeth, learned the technique from the Jeweler and a new hobby was launched,
He polished the tooth, drew his picture on thin paper and using a dentist’s scribe incised his design on the tooth and rubbed India Ink into the scratch marks. I feel it would please Edwin to know you have one of the four teeth he decorated with scrimshaw. He had great respect and affection for you too. I enjoyed seeing you and Billie so much.
My only regret was that the time was so brief. Thank you so much for your support and helpfulness over the last two years.
With love,
Miriam Layton
June 8, 1986
Mac typed the following note across the bottom of Miriam’s letter:
(This letter accompanied the Layton-made scrimshaw received on 11 June 1986.)
I was stunned. And that is how Eddie Layton, the fiery intelligence officer that Mac had described to me so many times. I remembered the story he told about the end of the Pacific War- the Japanese had given up, and the victorious Allies were converging on the Sagamai-wan to cement the victory with the signing of the treaty.
Eddie was there, along with the others who had guided the long struggle from Pearl Harbor to Tokyo Bay.
(“Terrible” Turner, a hero and mule-headed naval officer.)
We were at Willow, of course, and I don’t need to remember what Mac said, since I still have the notes on my collection of bar napkins. “Eddie was playing acey-duecy in the wardroom of South Dakota when Admiral Richmond Kelly Turner strode into the space. “Terrible” Turner was in a state of high excitement. He was another of Admiral Nimitz’ personal guests. He executed all the amphibious landings in the Pacific, from Guadalcanal to Iwo Jima, after all. But he was a son-of-a-bitch to his staff, and liked the bottle. Eddie told me he was pretty fired up that evening. He started to shoot his mouth off and the wardroom hushed at the sound of the drunk four star’s booming voice.”
“What was he saying?” I asked.
“He was going off on Admiral Kimmel, of all things, the guy who was left holding the bag for the disaster that Terrible Turner caused by not passing critical radio intelligence to the commanders in Hawaii. According to Eddie, Turner was saying something to the effect that “Goddamned Kimmel had all the information and he didn’t do anything about it. The court of inquiry said so, and they ought to hang him up higher than a kite!”
“But it was Turner himself who did not allow the critical Bomb Plot messages go to Pearl Harbor!” I exclaimed. “He must have known that. The court of inquiry was a white-wash to scapegoat Kimmel.”
“You bet. Eddie sat there, stunned at what he was hearing. He had been there at the beginning before the attack, and then here at the end, the architect of the disaster was shouting that Kimmel ought to be hung up by his fingernails.”
“I guess you can’t do anything against four stars,” I said thoughtfully, trying to imagine the scene in the wardroom of a big gray boat.
“Well, Eddie was pretty fired up, too. He corrected Turner in mid-rant. He told the Admiral that he had been there as Kimmel’s intelligence officer, and he had been there in person.”
“So what happened?”
“Eddie said the Admiral charged across the deck and grabbed him by the throat. Eddie was putting his dukes up to pummel the Admiral when the skipper of South Dakota, Emmet Forrestal, got in between them and broke it up.”
I looked at Mac with amazement. The idea of decking a four-star Admiral made me admire Eddie Layton even more.
Looking over at the white tooth on my table, I have a little piece of something very special, created by the same hands that almost duked out a four-star hero. What an amazing day.
We can talk about that oil-and-gas thing tomorrow. It is going to mean a lot.
Copyright 2012 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com