An Excerpt: Far From The Customary Skies A Novel of Men on a U.S. Destroyer

The vanguard of drops that precede a shower struck here and there on the Dreher and slowly the world shrank. Two drops pinned Ham's shirt against his chest, making heavy round spots like P-coat buttons. Ham would have been delighted, but one of the drops had struck too near his heart, and he was forced to pull the shirt away from the flesh to be able to forget.
Rain fell, matting Malone's blond hair against his skull. Dave watched the curls vanish one by one, watched the head take a new shape, hard, chiseled, squarish, watched, holding his arms straight down with the palms flat against his legs so that there was a warm spot on each side of his body, the rain stream down Malone's back and funnel beneath a thick leather belt into the hollow channel of the spine.
Ross looked through the raindrops as impersonally as he had looked through the air earlier. The pupils of his eyes never seemed to change size or intensity. Ham reloaded his pipe, screwing the tobacco in tight with his thumb. He turned the bowl upside down and blew smoke against the raindrops.
The destroyer passed beyond the cloud. Men wrung wate from their arms by making loops of their fingers and drawing the loops downward, then shaking the water from their fingers. They seemed more hairy than before- and less tan. Steam rose as high as their ankles.
The destroyers behind one by one shook free of the cloud and seven ships threaded their way down the channel. Sunlight, breaking down on the Dreher too suddenly, seemed to swirl between the men's legs. Behind them, to the south, the sky was tucked down along the horizon, loosely, baggily, as shirts in trousers are. Off starboard, the Tulagi beach had the abupt narrowness, the carved quality of having been whittled by a jack-knife. As the ships rounded a root of land and bore down on a small cove, a lithe L.C.I. scudded over their wake, forming a temporary cross on the water.
"Here's where we'll pitch anchor," said Malone. "Get on your details. You'll have years to see what the place looks like."
The destroyers were so close to land that the ripples shaken from their slim bows could be heard whispering as they crept up the sand. Clouds leaked rain that freckled and wrinkled the water, giving the illusion of mushrooms with stalks of solid water planted on the bay, and emphasizing with this faint rustle the vast stillness and isolation of the Pacific. The anchor fell and made a very tiny splach. Down inside the forecastle the chain thundered. The still bright signal flags slumped and scrolled themselves, except for one that seemed to have trapped a bit of wind.
This then was the Solomon Islands.

Excerpted From: Far From the Customary Skies A Novel of Men on a U.S. Destroyer by Warren Orndorff Eyster
One of the Finest Novels of Men at Sea In Time of War!

As startling as an alarm at night.......As vivid as a dream of home.......As real as the murderous sea........

Random House New York 1953

Some of the events and much of the background of this novel are taken from the exploits of Destroyer Squadron Twenty-three. No attempt was made to maintain exact historical authenticity, nor even strict naval code and conduct. The men in this book were never my shipmates. The sea and shipboard descriptive material is subject to the limitations of my own eyes and also the limitations of the kind of selection or pruning knife I used upon that material.

Contents

Part One The Training Cruise, 3

Part Two The Machine, 69

Part Three Going Stale, 215

Part Four The Quietus, 327