The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors

by James D. Hornfischer

  Someone reported seeing a green flare like the ones the Very pistols fired. Others reported lights that none of the others could see. With the weaker among them beginning to hallucinate from fatigue and ingesting salt water, possibly the vast majority of the lights they reported were phantasms. Copeland saw more lights: a red one, a green one, several more white ones. It was hard to tell what was real, and harder to determine how far away they were. Copeland and his officers later surmised that an ocean current had carried them into a harbor, and the lights they had seen were on channel buoys and docks. It seems, however, that what they really saw were flares fired by another group of Taffy 3 survivors.

  When they heard the growl of diesel engines approaching and spied the dark silhouette of a small patrol craft, perhaps half the size of the Roberts, Copeland began to suspect they were closer to land than he had thought before. Though they did not know it, they were probably a mere five hundred to a thousand yards from the beach. Some of Copeland’s men wanted to make a ruckus and hail the ship, but the skipper dissuaded them. The ship, blacked out, passed within a hundred feet of the men.

  About an hour before midnight, Copeland’s exhaustion overcame him. His thoughts became vague and befuddled. He lost physical control over his hands and his head. He couldn’t hold his head up out of the water, and he couldn’t hold on to the tailing rope dangling from the life raft.

  Copeland retained enough mental acuity to appreciate his uselessness to his men. He argued with Bob Roberts that they should just let him slip away into the deep. But the tough exec won that argument. He lifted his captain from the water, placed him on the side of the raft, and held him around the waist from midnight till dawn. Copeland quietly withdrew into himself, surrendering command of the group to his subordinate.

  With the exhaustion traveleds its darker twin, delirium. It was the product of fatigue and of the creeping effects of ingested salt water, a poison that tended to have a phantasmagoric effect on the brain. Though it did not seize hold of Copeland, it afflicted most of the men at one time or another during the second night.

  For two days the men had had nothing to drink save the brackish water in the five-gallon water breakers that the raft carried for just this purpose. But soon enough a far preferable alternative presented itself. Tom Stevenson was delighted now to discover a freshwater source that no one had seen before—why hadn’t anyone noticed it? The lieutenant became convinced that if only he could make it down to the first deck of the ship, a scuttlebutt full of cool freshwater was right there for his pleasure. Right below him: a fountain … Right below him: a cool, clear arch of water. Its bubbling gurgle echoed in his mind. If only he could get below, his thirst would be slaked. The ship was right down there, for chrissake, hovering there below him. There’s water down there, fellas. I’ll be back in a minute.

  Fortunately for Stevenson, he had the good manners to speak his plan aloud. Hearing the young officer’s suicidal brainstorm, Bob Roberts and Lloyd Gurnett grabbed hold of him and tied him fast to the floater net. As the night wore on, it was clear that the mentally sound were outnumbered and outlasted by the delirious. All of a sudden the night was filled with the siren songs of fresh drinking water, hot coffee, native girls, and warm home cooking. Bob Roberts himself was not immune. An officer swam up to the exec, saluted, and requested “permission to go below.” Roberts granted it and the officer swam off. As the currents propelled the survivors westward through the night, Roberts discerned a point of land that was dotted with fine homes. A gala dinner party was in progress, tuxedoed men and gloriously begowned women enjoying a high time by the sea. The delirium was not limited to the men on Copeland’s raft. Dick Rohde left Moore’s group and swam around looking for a hole in the sea through which he might crawl to gain access to the freshwater scuttlebutt. Charles Cronin, a yeoman second class, retrieved him, but at the first opportunity Rohde was swimming away, looking for a hole containing lemonade. After Cronin had saved him again, the radioman realized that the Philippines weren’t all that far from India. His older brother was over there, flying supplies over the famous “hump.” Surely his brother could help him.

  Through the night most of the men had dalliances with madness. On Copeland’s raft, Lloyd Gurnett removed his life jacket and said he was going down to the wardroom for a cup of coffee. Though alert shipmates snapped him momentarily to his senses, he did it again every fifteen minutes, until finally they restrained him for good with a well-knotted length of manila line. At one point the strong and able Frank Cantrell declared in full basso profundo, “Object ho!” Bob Copeland lifted his head with his hands. “What is it, Cantrell?” the captain asked.

  “I see a big white cottage on the beach with green shutters,” his chief quartermaster said. He took no small amount of umbrage to the derisive laughter that greeted his announcement.

  But there were just as many men whose derangement arrived without announcement. When they decided to leave the raft in the dark of night without any word to friends, no one knew to intervene, and they were never seen again.

  Tom Stevenson, having imagined himself swimming into a Japanese-held harbor to steal a small boat, found his way back to clarity and saw that discipline was eroding. It was evident in the glazed cast of his shipmates’ eyes. They reflected no visible recognition of the common predicament. The men seemed to shrink as they grew concerned with their own survival. Twelve hours before everyone had lined up in an orderly fashion and come before Captain Copeland to receive survivors’ communion: a few malted milk tablets, some Spam, and a swig of brackish water. Now the men were doing whatever the hell they wanted. They argued with phantoms, ranted at the night sky. When no one was looking, some of them slipped away in search of that scuttlebutt and its bubbling arch of freshwater.

  Fireman first class Eugene Wagner moaned miserably into the night, suffering mightily, possibly from ingesting seawater. As his pain and delirium escalated, Wagner went out of his head, cussing out Copeland—“Fucking captain’s no good. Fucking captain’s no good.” Lying in the floater net, he abruptly declared that he wanted to go home and, cursing his skipper all the way, attempted to climb into the water. Copeland ordered someone to hold his arms behind his back and someone else to knock some sense into the delirious sailor. The order was executed, and Bill Katsur, next to Wagner, heard the crunch of fist on jaw. The fireman was groggy but found it within himself to continue the blue streak of obscenity. “Hit him again,” Copeland ordered. Another blow fell. Wagner went silent. When morning came, he was gone from the raft.

  Fifty-two

  As the second day became the second night, the sea took its toll on the Johnston’s men, from within and without. Even those who had gone unwounded from shrapnel or sharks suffered: severe sunburn to the face, head, and shoulders, lips swollen from brine and sun, eyes bloodshot from exhaustion and exposure, skin softened by seawater and rubbed raw by wet clothing.

  Ken Bowers, the pharmacist’s mate, swam around doing what he could for the wounded. But a growing number of survivors were beyond the reach of his modest ministrations. What the sun had done to their skin, the salt water in their stomachs was doing to their minds. Even men who had come through the battle without a scratch surrendered to madness. Some of them gave up their struggles altogether, let go of the nets, and disappeared. Others lived rich fantasies, mingling with their shipmates as if they were back in San Francisco, guests at a cocktail party. Luther Libby, the chief machinist’s mate, left his group several times, saying he was going to get a drink. Charles Landreth, Dusty Rhodes, and others looked after him, several times stopping him from swimming to oblivion.

  Late during the second night Libby turned to Landreth and said, apropos of nothing, “I’ll buy you a beer.” Landreth said, “Chief, don’t talk like that. There isn’t any beer or anything else to drink except seawater, and that will kill you.” Libby’s eyes were glassy as he pushed off from the net. Landreth grabbed for him as he and others had done several times. But now his will to
wander exceeded their ability to keep him safe. Landreth did not have the strength to hold on. Libby slipped away and was never seen again.

  Machinist’s mate Don Starks, who had had two ships shot out from under him, including the battleship Arizona, before he came aboard the Johnston, saw visions of land and houses and people waving at him from a distance. He waved back and on one occasion swam in their direction for a time before he realized they existed only in his head. Natives paddling out to rescue them, riding canoes laden with fruits, vegetables, freshwater, and Filipino princesses. A whale-boat, towing them to shore—let’s just get this engine started. No, it’s not a whaleboat—it’s a destroyer. There: Cap’n Evans is up on that mountain over there. I’m going to go meet him. No, the captain just sailed by us on a ship. Said he’s going to come back to pick us all up.

  Most of these delirious declarations found at least a few credulous takers. “We believed it,” wrote John Mostowy. “Who cared anymore?”

  * * *

  BY NIGHT GEORGE BRAY and his Roberts shipmates paddled, guided by the brilliant field of stars, chasing them west in their flight over the horizon. Around midnight, on the darkened horizon, they finally saw the lights. From the way they moved, the men determined the lights to be on land, not sea. They seemed to be moving to and fro, like lazy fireflies. Suspecting they might be Japanese troops, the men ceased paddling. They floated motionless and considered their options. They decided that they preferred the certainty of the dangers they knew to the unknown terrors ashore. They could make their move toward land—if such a move had to be made—by daylight, when they could better sort through the risks and the opportunities.

  But after a night of fractured sleep and fragmentary dreams, the men of George Bray’s group awoke to a discouraging sight. The shore was gone. The currents had toyed with the sleeping men. At first, aided by the east-by-northeasterly wind, they had flowed west, supporting the men’s exhausted efforts to paddle for the beach. But then, as they slept, the currents seemed to shift, and the men drifted back out to sea so far that Bray didn’t know if they would ever reach land. All they could make out were Samar’s sharp mountain peaks poking up from below the horizon. Seeing no sign of rescue—no ships, no planes—the men on the raft resumed paddling.

  Their kapok life vests, good only for about twenty hours, were no longer much use. Soaked through with seawater, the flotation devices had less buoyancy than the humans they were meant to save. The men took them off and got rid of them. The floater net too had its best days behind it. Its hard rubber disks had sponged up too much water to float. As a result, the net hovered beneath the ocean’s surface, weighted down by its survivors. They decided to keep it, however. At least it held the group together.

  The weariest and weakest of them had resigned themselves to death now. Where delirium took hold, tired minds spun fantasies of rest, recreation, and rescue. Five of the healthiest among them, George Bray, Mel Dent, Chalmer Goheen, and two others, decided to take their chances swimming to shore. There was no great send-off; the others had retreated into their private miseries. So the five men just started swimming.

  They had gone west perhaps a mile or so, the rising sun behind them lighting their way, when they spotted a dark shape on the horizon. There was no gauging distance from sea level, but Bray thought the spot was getting bigger. If it was a ship, it seemed to be approaching them. And sure enough, it was a ship. It came closer and closer until the flag fluttering from its mainmast came into partial focus. It was red and white, streaked with bright red lines. The rising sun of Imperial Japan was headed their way.

  * * *

  WITH RESCUE SHIPS SEEMINGLY absent, the survivors contemplated their best alternative to rescue by American forces. Like the Japanese survivors drifting in Surigao Strait three nights before, Bob Copeland and his men would rather die than be picked up by their enemy. In view of what they had been through, a few of them—Bob Roberts, Howard Cayo, Rudy Skau, and John Kudelchuk—were in excellent shape. But for the most part, the survivors’ physical and mental condition was low enough to make the prospect of capture and internment in a poorly supplied Japanese prison camp seem less desirable than a clean, quick death.

  That night they had stayed quiet while a ship passed them in the dark. Now another vessel approached. Rudy Skau, the chief torpedo-man, had the sharpest eyesight in the bunch. “Skau, take a good look at that ship and tell me what she is,” Copeland said.

  “Captain, I don’t know what the hell she is. I think an American flag is flying from her. I can see red and white stripes.”

  Copeland pointed out that Japanese battle pennants had red and white stripes too. But after another few moments of scrutiny, Skau was convinced. “Captain, I know she’s an American ship. I see a little blue corner in the flag.”

  Copeland asked Bob Roberts to verify the sighting. The executive officer hoisted himself up on the side of the raft and peered through the morning light. “Well, Captain,” he said, “I can’t be sure, but I think there’s a blue corner in that flag.”

  They watched the ship approach them, about two miles off the coast of Samar. Some of them wanted to shout out and hail the ship. Copeland feared the worst should his trusted torpedoman prove wrong, but he also recognized the urgency to get his badly wounded men to safety. Jackson McCaskill, the deck force reject who had acquitted himself so heroically in the fireroom before the Roberts sank, lay helpless inside the raft, with the flesh burned from the bottom of his feet. Tullio Serafini, the old radio department chief, was in severe shock, with bones protruding through the skin of his torn legs and left shoulder.

  “Okay, Skau,” Copeland said, “are you dead certain?”

  “Yes, Captain, I’ll stake my life on it.”

  “All right, up you go.” Copeland found the strength to help Skau hop up onto the raft. Steadying himself on the foam doughnut, Skau removed his oil-soaked khaki shirt, tied it to the end of a paddle, and began waving it back and forth.

  “He hadn’t waved it more than four times when, suddenly, a great blast of antiaircraft fire went up from some twenty- or forty-millimeters, and we could see the ship paying around and heading toward us,” Copeland recalled.

  When the ship reached the raft—it was an LCI, a landing craft from MacArthur’s Navy—a crewman in green coveralls, concerned that these sailors in blackface might be Japanese, shouted down the challenge, “Who won the World Series?” Receiving the correct reply—“St. Louis, God damn it!”—the crew of the landing craft tossed a Jacob’s ladder over the side. The stronger survivors climbed its wooden steps on their own power, while a stretcher was thrown over to bring up the wounded.

  Tullio Serafini, delirious with pain, was too heavy for the light twenty-one-thread line they used to haul up the first three stretchers. When the ship reached him, Bob Copeland felt a wave of energy surge through his body—enough energy to wax indignant when a boatswain’s mate on the landing craft asked him if he needed any help tying a bowline with the three-inch manila line he tossed down to them to secure their wounded chief radioman.

  * * *

  GEORGE BRAY AND HIS four swimming buddies looked at the ship approaching them and decided that if they were going to die, they might as well go down with the rest of their shipmates. So they turned around and swam at their best speed back toward the raft.

  Back at the raft Jack Moore, watching the strange ship approach, turned to his shipmates and said, “Men, it looks as if we’re going to be picked up by the Japs. We’re covered with fuel oil, and they won’t be able to tell we’re Americans until they get right upon us. They may fire upon us. If they do, act as if you’ve been hit quickly.” The superstructures looked all wrong for an American ship; they sloped to the rear “like an airflow Chrysler.”

  By the time George Bray and his entourage finally returned to Moore’s group, the small ship nearly upon them, they were resigned to capture, torture, and death. Whipping smartly in the wind, the ship’s flag, they could now see, was partia
lly wrapped around its mast, its blue field of white stars invisible. Like the survivors from Copeland’s group, they did not trust their eyes. It had looked to them like an Imperial Navy battle pennant. But as the ship eased up, the Old Glory flying from its mast was plain to see. The vessel coming toward them was a patrol craft from the Seventh Fleet.

  From the deck of the PC, a strong voice called down the same challenge to establish their nationality that Copeland’s group had received, querying them on the recent outcome of the American national pastime’s championship series.

  Mel Dent, who followed the major leagues with near-religious fervor, replied without hesitation, “The St. Louis Cardinals.” Someone else added, “Now get me out of the water, you SOB!”

  Satisfied that the oil-fouled survivors were American, the crew of PC-623 dropped a Jacob’s ladder over the side and coaxed the survivors toward it. Crewmen descended to them and, arms stretched out below, hauled the survivors from the Samuel B. Roberts aboard its solid decks, which were already crowded with men from the Gambier Bay, the Hoel, and other weary heroes of Taffy 3.

  The “hilarious happiness” Jack Moore felt as his rescuers approached did not last long. Someone hollered, “I believe Osborne’s dead.” Moore went to him, felt for a pulse, and thought he detected a slight murmur. Then he swam for the PC. When he reached hailing distance, he hollered to the crew that his man needed emergency help. They threw Moore a line, and the ensign tied it to the stretcher that bore Osborne aboard. Moore swam to the ship, climbed the Jacob’s ladder, then went below for a shave. His skin proved to be far too raw for the task, so he sought out a place to rest. Before he could find a bunk, word reached him that barely five minutes after being hauled aboard the ship that had rescued him, Jerry Osborne had died on its deck from his wounds and exposure.