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“Yes, sir.”

The DCNO looked at his aide.

“Charley, I think we have just been given a late Christmas present,” he said. “Would you agree with that?”

“Yes, sir, Admiral, it certainly looks that way.”

“Commander, get some of that coffee for Charley and yourself, and then sit down.”

Bitter left the room, quickly returned with two mugs of coffee, and sat down, somewhat stiffly, beside the DCNO’s aide-de-camp.

“We came here, Enoch,” the DCNO said, “more or less directly, from a meeting of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The CNO was tied up, and so was Colonel William J. Donovan. A Navy captain named Douglass was sitting in for Donovan.”

The DCNO took a swallow of his coffee and then looked at Bitter.

“Are you familiar with either of the gentlemen I just mentioned, Commander? ”

“Yes, sir.”

“How?”

“Captain Douglass’s son was in the AVG, sir,” Bitter said. “I had occasion to meet the captain here in Washington. I met Colonel Donovan before I went to China.”

“You know what they do now?” the DCNO asked.

“Yes, sir.”

“Charley,” the DCNO said, “I think we just climbed out of you-know-where smelling like a goddamned rose.”

“It’s really beginning to look that way, sir,” the DCNO’s aide said.

“One of the items, actually several of the items, on the agenda, Enoch,” the DCNO said, “was the German submarine pens at Saint-Lazare. First, there was a rather disturbing report about what hell those subs are raising with shipping, both in terms of shipping per se—they’re sinking ships almost as fast as we can build them—and in terms of matériel that is not reaching England.

“Then the subject turned to what’s being done to take the submarines out. That was not a bit more encouraging. At that point, I got egg on my face.”

“Sir?” Admiral Hawley asked.

“Another proof, if I needed one, that, unless you know what you’re talking about, you keep your mouth shut,” the DCNO said. “I opened my mouth and announced before God and the JCS that the last information I had on the Navy project to take out the pens with torpedo bombers based in England looked very promising, and that I would fire off cables exhorting them to even greater effort.”

The DCNO looked around the room, then shrugged.

“At that point, rather tactfully I must admit, Captain Douglass told me that the torpedo-bombing idea hadn’t worked out—you can’t get enough explosive into a torpedo to take on that much concrete—and then he let me know that the OSS had been given the responsibility for taking the pens out. I had the definite feeling that there were senior officers at that table who felt that the DCNO should know something like that. And, of course, I should have.”

“Sir,” Hawley said,“there was a message on that…”

“I’m sure there was, and I’m sure that I should have seen it, but I didn’t, so there I was with my ass hanging out. But I learned a long time ago that once part of your ass is hanging out, no further harm can be done, so you might as well let it all hang out. So I asked how come the job had been taken away from the Navy and why it was thought the OSS could do something the Navy and the Air Corps couldn’t.”

"Admiral,” Admiral Hawley said,"it was my decision to recall the torpedo planes. We needed them in the Pacific. They were in Europe only because of the high priority of the submarine pens project…”

The DCNO interrupted him by holding up his hand.

“No criticism was intended about that. What bothered me was that we were just as much as hanging up a banner saying,‘The Navy Can’t Handle Its Own Problems.’”

"Sir,” said Admiral Hawley, "if I may say so, it wasn’t considered a Navy problem. It was considered a Theater problem. And I have been led to believe that it was given to the OSS to make that point.”

“Don’t hand me that crap, Enoch,” the DCNO said. “Protecting the sea-lanes is the Navy’s business. Submarines, friendly or hostile, are Navy vessels. Enemy submarine pens are the Navy’s business. Bombardment of enemy shore bases, either by naval gunfire or aircraft, is the Navy’s business.”

“Yes, sir,” Hawley said.