The petty officer nodded. “Aye aye, sir. Good crew here. Number one crew is whining about the number of drills, but my boys know the more they practice, the better they’ll get.”
“Maybe we should get some friendly competition going.”
“Yeah?” Udell’s sun-wizened face cracked in a grin. “We’ll show ’em numbertwogun is number one.”
Jim laughed, clapped the man on the back, and climbed the ladder onto the aft superstructure, about eight feet above the main deck. Standing on the platform for the machine guns, he’d have a good view but wouldn’t be in the way.
“Mr. Reinhardt! I’m ready.” Jim leaned his elbows on the rail and held his thumb over the stopwatch.
Below him, the crew took their positions around the practice loading machine. Lieutenant Reinhardt raised his hand high. “Ready, set, go!”
The men sprang into action. After the spade man opened the loading tray, the powder man placed a dummy powder case in the tray, and the projectile man hefted up a fifty-pound target practice shell filled with sand and laid it forward of the powder. Then the projectile man rammed them home. The case and shell dropped into a collecting tray, and the hot case man returned them to be used again.
Over and over they repeated the process, grunting with exertion. Jim cheered them on. He’d seen similar drills on the battleship, but this crew was slower. They kept getting in each other’s way. They fumbled a pass, and a projectile clanged to the deck. They placed the powder case backward and had to flip it.
Udell directed them with practical advice, but Reinhardt regarded them with granite silence.
Jim winced. This was the first time the crew had performed the drill. Slowness was to be expected. Over time they’d improve, but only with guidance and encouragement.
“Come on, men! You can do it,” he called.
“One hundred,” the projectile man shouted.
Jim clicked the stopwatch off.
The crew stepped back, leaned over, hands on knees, the backs of their shirts dark blue with sweat.
Lieutenant Reinhardt looked up at Jim. “Time?”
“Eighteen minutes, forty-two seconds.”
The gunnery officer’s mouth screwed up. “Eighteen...?”
Udell stepped forward. “Remember, sir. This is our first practice together.”
Icicles were warmer than Reinhardt’s glare. “That was the most pathetic drill I’ve ever had the indignity to witness. Mr. Avery, please tell me how many seconds they took to load each shell.”
He’d already done the math in his head, but he didn’t like the number. “Eleven seconds—eleven point two—”
“Eleven seconds? Eleven!” The gunnery officer paced in front of the offending crew. “That’s fewer than six shells a minute. Six. We need to fire at least fifteen. Four seconds per shell, you hear me? Four seconds. Do you realize the Nazi U-boats have been at war almost two years? In the time it takes you loafers to load one shell, they’ll sink us.”
“Aye aye, sir.” Udell stood tall, his hands behind his back. From above, Jim could see the petty officer’s hands ball up.
“And don’t think your lazy performance gets you fewer drills.” Reinhardt didn’t raise his voice, but he didn’t have to. “A good crew can do five drills in half an hour. So you’ll do five drills too—ten if you don’t speed it up.”
A single groan rose from below, quickly quenched.
If only Jim could help. At their current rate, the seamen had ninety minutes of hard physical labor before them. And to run through all four crews ... well, they’d be at work long past dark. “Udell,” he called down. “You’re an old hand at this. What did you see? How can we improve?”
Udell glanced up at him with a mixture of surprise and gratitude, then he turned to Reinhardt. “Permission to speak freely to my men, sir?”
“Granted.”
The gunner’s mate’s shoulders relaxed, and he gathered his crew around him, using lots of hand signals, his voice too low for Jim to hear.
“Mr. Avery!” Lt. Cdr. Calvin Durant stood off to the side, beckoning Jim to come down. When had he arrived on the scene?
Jim climbed down to the deck and found the commanding officer. “Yes, sir?”
