Into the Storm Read Free Page A

“run off” even more. Maybe it was his Texas upbringing, or the “Spirit of the Alamo” or something like that, but he’d been perfectly willing to fight to the last even though the withdrawal made good sense.
    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, ABDA-FLOAT had ceased to exist. He was mistaken. Word was that Admiral Helfrich, the Dutchman who’d replaced Tommy Hart as ABDA’s commander, still planned offensive action even after Admirals Glassford and Palliser told him they had nothing left. The Dutch had no monopoly on stubbornness; the British hadn’t showed much more sense regarding Singapore, and thousands of Americans were trapped in the Philippines, cut off from any support. But it was past time to leave. ABDA had done its best with what it had. There’d been willing cooperation, but no coordination. Without air cover or reconnaissance, or even a common language, they’d been like blindfolded kids running around on tricycles with a steamroller bearing down. It was a disaster.
    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 gunnery officer, Lieutenant (j.g.) Greg Garrett, looked anxiously from the port bridgewing and Matt waved him back. The tall, lanky young officer nodded solemnly and resumed scanning the sea toward the dark smudge in the north that was Borneo. A good kid, Greg. He was conscientious and industrious, if just a bit intense. They were still at general quarters, as they’d been since the morning watch, and Garrett’s battle station was normally on the fire-control platform above the pilothouse. Matt had told him to rotate himself and his team out of the wind and sun periodically. The main battery was useless against air attack, and it would