Must Be Presumed...

Around the Sub Base at Pearl Harbor, "Mush" Morton and the Wahoo were a legend. Mush, Kentucky-born, was a solid man with a shock of blond hair, a wrestler's shoulders and a jaw like a boulder. The Wahoo was a lean, sinister submarine.

Both were heroes. Swashbuckling Commander Dudley Walker Morton had won three Navy Crosses and the Army D.S.C.; the Wahoo, a Presidential unit citation. In two historic patrols Mush and the Wahoo had sunk 69,000 tons of the Emperor's shipping. Among the U.S. submarine fleet, which has sunk altogether some 355 Jap ships, Wahoo was a high scorer. Sticking his jaw out, Mush would say modestly: "We were lucky enough to see a lot of Jap ships and when you see a lot you're apt to sink a lot."

After his latest triumphant patrol, Mush had two months' visit on "homeside" (Los Angeles), with his wife and his children, Douglas, 4, and Edwina, 2. Early this fall he returned to the Pacific and the perilous hunting grounds which U.S. submariners call the Empire.

This week 36-year-old Mush Morton and the Wahoo were safe in history. The Sub Base had given up looking for them over the grey waters of Pearl Harbor. Under the Wahoo's name the Navy wrote the submariner's grim epitaph: "Overdue, must be presumed to be lost."

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