Surrounded by lavish mansions, the old beach cottage looks small, forlorn and utterly out of place on its water-front lot.  A red estate sale sign is the only color in the withered front yard.  A middle-aged woman sits on a bench in the entryway holding a wad of cash in one hand, her cellphone in the other.  Lost in conversation, she smiles as I walk by on the sidewalk and waves me toward the front door.

It is mid-February and I’ve just escaped an Idaho winter for a short trip to Coronado Island, my Southern California home more than fifty years ago.  The sun is bright and warm, the soft breeze fragrant with flowers and fresh-cut grass.  During my morning stroll, I’m revisiting the neighborhood on the bay side of the island, near the navy base.  Only a few houses remain from that time, when Coronado was mostly middle-class families, navy officers and retired beach combers.  The boxy harbor-front mansions and their privacy walls now block much of the view of sailboats and battleships, and of the San Diego skyline across the bay. 

Irritated by these box-dwellers who have stolen my childhood vistas, I am about to turn around.  But instead, I take a second look at the cottage.  Its wood shingle siding is faded from sprinkler over-spray and its planters are filled with weeds.  One of the last of its era, it will be gone soon, and a new mansion will rise in its place.

I wave back to the woman in the entryway.  For no reason other than idle curiosity, I go inside.   

The dark entrance hallway smells of cigarettes and the walls are covered with nautical charts, yellow with age.  I can just make out the colonial-era names: British Solomon Islands, Dutch East Indies, German New Guinea. With the light from my phone, I look at the publication date on the first one: 1939. 

And then I find the faded pencil scratches.  They are course lines and position fixes, the handiwork of a navigator.  One of the lines runs close to an unremarkable-looking island near the center of the chart. 

I remember the name. Guadalcanal.  One of the bloodiest battles of World War II. 

I examine more charts.  I find more pencil lines near other islands: Iwo Jima, Saipan, Tarawa, Okinawa.  Each name a separate cataclysm.  Each chart bearing silent witness.  In the battle for Okinawa alone, more than two dozen warships and two thousand aircraft were lost. One hundred thousand combat fatalities.

The indentations and erasures of the pencil lines tell me the charts are originals.  And, at least in my imagination, the shaky handwriting, coffee stains and cigarette burns tell me more.  About dread and confusion and sleeplessness.  About life aboard a warship fated to join these horrific battles of the Second World War. 

The hallway is still and cool as a morgue, haunted by the wanderings of this nameless ship.  I feel a deep sadness as I think about all those lives lost.  But also, something more.  My curiosity about an old house has given way to fascination with this unexpected find, this hallway filled with someone’s first-hand experience of the deadliest war in history. 

As I study each chart, I wonder about the owner.  Was he the navigator who plotted these nightmare voyages?  The skipper who convinced himself to sail to the center of one firestorm after another? 

After examining the final chart, I open a side door and stumble into a time warp, a brightly lit kitchen whose décor is unchanged from the 1950s.  Faded green counters and cabinets, floral wallpaper, black and white linoleum floor tiles. The counters are cluttered with items for sale.  Pots and pans and cutlery, thirty dollars.  Record albums, mostly classical, a dollar apiece.  A dozen cans of soup, twenty dollars.

And, half-buried in more clutter, a folded American flag in a display case.  From a military funeral.  Fifteen dollars.  On the side of the case is a partially obscured steel plate engraved with the years of service, “1940-1982.” And a name:  “Rear Admiral Roy . . .”

Sunlight streams in through oversized windows looking out on the glittering bay.  But I am transfixed by the flag, by this new clue about the sailor.  And stunned by the thought that his family has offered it for sale.  At any price, let alone fifteen dollars.  That, to them, the funeral flag is worth less than the case of left-over soup. 

After a long moment, I finally turn away and take in the magnificent waterfront view.  The glass and steel high-rises of San Diego gleam in the sunshine on the far side of the bay.  A large freighter is steaming down the center of the channel, less than a quarter mile offshore.  A flock of sailboats flying brightly-colored spinnakers keeps pace.  Even closer, an aircraft carrier is docking at the navy base.  The six-story high bow is just a few hundred yards away.  I think about the man who lived here, who must have spent so much time on ships.  Did this constant parade of boats ease his shoreside stays?  Or just make him more restless to return to the sea?

Hungry for more clues about the Admiral, I wander into the adjoining dining room.  It is empty of furniture but there are stacks of books everywhere.  Spy novels, travel guides, literary classics. And hundreds of military histories.  Herodotus and Thucydides. Livy and Tacitus.  Ramsay and Churchill.  Endless volumes about endless wars. 

I’m surprised to find a copy of Rising Sun, John Toland’s history of World War II from the Japanese perspective. And Hiroshima, John Hersey’s wrenching account of Japanese survivors of the atomic bomb.

I hear bits of conversation from the woman in the entryway, talking to someone in an upspeak lilt.  “Yeah, my mom was only, like, five when granny died? . . . hard for him . . . never, like, remarried?” 

I strain to hear more as I make another discovery, The Pentagon Papers by Daniel Ellsberg, a whistle-blower who leaked top-secret documents revealing that America was losing the Vietnam war, and was being lied to by its military leaders.  As I flip through its dog-eared pages, I catch a few more fragments: “No, I don’t remember the name . . . like, an aircraft carrier?”

But it is enough. 

As I look and listen and read, I begin to tell myself a story.  About this man and his ship. And his granddaughter.

.                                   .                                   .

He was a career navy officer, spending months at sea during each deployment.  He was a long-time widower, unconcerned about an outdated kitchen and faded wood shingles.  After his wife died, his extended family must have helped raise his five-year-old.   

He progressed through the ranks and was given command of a number of warships.  Perhaps even the aircraft carrier outside his kitchen window.  

At the height of his career, as a flag officer, he commanded fleets of warships in dangerous waters.  He had immense power.  And immense responsibility.  This man who had read history and who had made history fully understood how quickly the fortunes of war could change.

And, based on his book collection, he also understood  that America’s leaders were fallible.  That her enemies were human.

How much harder, I wonder, did that make his job?

I picture the Admiral on the bridge of his flagship carrier at the center of an armada bristling with missiles and guns.  Fighter jets scream into the air, afterburners painting fire across a darkening sky.   He remains on the bridge late into the night, until the last of them returns. 

When he does finally come home, there is no wife waiting for him.  The house is dark and neglected.  He must try to reacquaint himself with his daughter. 

Decades later, his deeds and his sacrifice are forgotten.  His own granddaughter does not remember the name of his ship, let alone the world-changing battles he fought. 

She will sell his funeral flag.

.                                   .                                   .

I walk through an open doorway into his study.  The furniture is gone but, again, there are books everywhere, including a large collection dealing with homeopathic medicine. A few titles stand out: Natural Therapies for Emphysema, at least a dozen on quitting smoking.

There is a small alcove where his desk must have been.  On one side is a large window with another spell-binding view of bay and city and ships.  On the alcove wall are two more nautical charts.   They would have been in front of him, at eye level, as he worked. Oddly, the publication dates are decades apart. 

They are different from the other charts.  No pencil marks.  And, there is something else.

They both represent defeats.

The first is Pearl Harbor.  The lack of navigation plots makes sense.  America’s warships were caught by surprise.  Nearly all were destroyed in their slips.    

The second chart is dated more than twenty years later. Here, while supporting CIA operations in a small Asian country, an American warship and carrier-based aircraft chased off three patrol boats.  The “Gulf of Tonkin incident,” as it is known to history, became the pretext for a new war: Vietnam.

The war that America lost.

Again, the lack of pencil marks makes sense.  Navigation plots would only confirm the incursion into Vietnam’s territorial waters. They had been erased.

I spend a few moments trying to puzzle out why the Admiral had decorated his office with two of America’s most devastating mistakes, leaving the hard-won victories outside in the dark hallway. Were these charts intended as reminders, I wondered.  As warnings?  Against what?  Complacency? Arrogance?

.                                   .                                   .

There is one more room to explore.  This one has no grand view of ships and cityscapes. The windows look out onto a small patio and a dying garden.  There are no charts, no books.  Instead, I find the detritus of another battle. 

Another loss. 

Strewn across the bare mattress of a hospital bed are more items for sale: cannulas and plastic tubing, boxes of adult diapers, an IV pole, an oxygen concentrator.  I stand in the doorway for a long time looking at the boxes and bags and tubes.  

There’s a reminder and a warning here as well, I think.  From this man who had once commanded more firepower than most of the world’s navies.  Who had designed and executed battle plans and tactical strikes against America’s fiercest adversaries.  But who’d fought his final battle in a hospital bed.

.                                   .                                   .

As I leave, I give the woman fifteen dollars for the flag and two dollars for Pearl Harbor.  I tell her that her grandfather must have been an amazing man and that she must be so proud of his service. I tell her that, like her grandfather, I am a student of history and how impressed I am with his collection of charts and books.

“He was amazing,” she says, smiling. “After he retired, we spent a lot of time together. I was his only grandchild.”

I ask if he ever talked about his naval career, hoping she might share his stories about life at sea, his accounts of the great battles in the Pacific theater, his insights about lessons learned from America’s wars.

“No.  Not really.”  She pauses and looks away, misty-eyed.  “He . . . he used to come to my piano recitals.  He would write notes on the programs.  Afterward, we would eat ice cream and talk about the performances.  And how I was doing in school.  He was so encouraging, so sweet.”  She smiles again and holds up a folder.  “I found the programs on his filing cabinet.  He saved them.   All of them.  For me.”

.                                   .                                   .

When I return to Idaho, I hang Pearl Harbor above my desk.  It was published in 1935.  Before anyone had died.

I don’t know what to do with the Admiral’s flag.

– Paul Hilding