Edge of Valor Read Free Page A

his master’s license at the age of thirty. At the war’s outbreak, he immediately transferred to the U.S. Navy and a life on destroyers. He soon found himself in command, and it suited him well. A fearless and solid leader at sea, the unmarried Landa was flamboyant when ashore, doing more than his share of drinking. Often, junior officers were tasked with carrying their commanding officer back to the ship, where they pitched him into his bunk to sleep it off. Over the years Landa had acquired the nickname “Boom Boom,” presumably because when the party had shifted to third gear, he would stand on a chair—or whatever was convenient—and tell barroom jokes mimicking the sounds of human flatus. Oddly, Landa didn’t like to be called “Boom Boom,” although he enjoyed calling others by nicknames.
    Ingram, on the other hand, came from Echo, a small railroad and farming community in southeastern Oregon. Not muscle bound, Ingram still had an athlete’s frame and weighed an efficient 187 pounds. He had sandy hair, and his deep-set eyes were gray with a touch of crow’s feet in the corners, the result of lonely hot summer days in the endless wheat fields of eastern Oregon. A broad, disarming grin delivered from time to time was characterized by a chipped lower tooth, the result of a fall off a combine as an eleven-year-old. A graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy in 1937, he escaped the “Battleship Club” syndrome and went to small ships, initially minesweepers, where he rose to be the young skipper of the minesweeper USS Pelican (AM 49) by war’s outbreak in 1941.
    While others at home were still trying to overcome the shock of the Pearl Harbor attack and the devastating Japanese conquests in the Far East, Ingram was seeing the horrors up close. One of the worst was when the Pelican was bombed out from under him in Manila Bay in April 1942.
    As different as they were, Ingram, Landa, and White had at least one thing in common: utter exhaustion. They were dead tired. None had slept more than three or four hours at a time over the past three months. There were dark pouches under their eyes, especially Landa’s, and the skin on their faces had a grayish pallor and sagged. The corners of their mouths turned down and their eyes were more often than not bloodshot.
    But for now, Ingram forgot their predicament as White and Landa glared at one another for a moment, reliving a heated argument that began in the days on the Howell when Landa had been the skipper and Tubby White a lieutenant (jg). Ingram was sure both had forgotten what started the argument and now merely relished mutual efforts to antagonize each other. The rancor grew worse when Tubby White openly referred to CIC as the Chaos Information Center, a joke that Landa would have gladly told himself had it not come from White.
    White transferred off the Howell , but Ingram stayed on board as executive officer. He’d more or less followed in Landa’s footsteps—their personalities completely opposite, their thinking and actions beautifully synchronized. Now Landa was a full captain and commodore of Destroyer Squadron 77 (DESRON77) with tactical and administrative control of the eight destroyers now arranged around the modern fast battleship Iowa . It was Landa who had put the Maxwell in station seven, the position nearest the Japanese mainland.
    At length, Landa dropped his eyes and read the message. “Holy smokes. This has to be it.”
    â€œIt what?” asked Ingram.
    The corners of Landa’s mouth curled up. He looked at White, “You got this from radio central?”
    â€œYes, sir. Mr. Ross thought it was important enough for me to see it. He brought it down.”
    â€œAnd you read it?” asked Landa.
    â€œOf course, . . . Commodore.”
    Landa’s face glowed; his eyes glistened as if he were getting ready to tell one of his famous farting jokes. But he remained silent.
    Ingram