by Lynn Vincent
Late Wednesday, Umenhoffer heard a voice from the main body of the Haynes group. “Hey! Does anybody over there know how to pray?” He looked over and saw a sailor waving his arms and hollering. He repeated the question: “Is there anybody over there who knows how to pray?”
Umenhoffer traded looks with the man next to him. Those who knew it had been praying the Lord’s Prayer for three days. It had gotten so that Umenhoffer was pretty sure that any man who was an atheist when the ocean closed over Indianapolis wasn’t one now.
“Well,” he said, “I’ve prayed before in my life, but not really. I don’t know what kind of prayer they want.”
“Me, neither,” the other man said.
“Well, let’s swim over there and see what they want.”
When they arrived, it became clear. Doc Haynes was struggling to hold Father Conway in his arms. The priest was delirious, blessing the doctor while hitting him on the chest and forehead. Unhinged by saltwater poisoning and exhaustion, Conway had been seen raving the sacrament of the last rites over men who weren’t yet dying—a last, loving, irrational attempt to seal them against damnation. Haynes, to whom Conway had loaned money at Mare Island so that he could go home to his family, was the last in this chain.
Umenhoffer could see that the priest was close to death. It would not be long before his life was stolen away like those of so many other good men. The sailor who had called them over wanted to know if either of them knew how to pray Catholic last rites. Umenhoffer said he’d try. With his buddy now holding Conway, Umenhoffer was whispering a beginner’s benediction when the priest jettisoned the sailor with a final thrust of his arms. Before anyone could stop him, Indy’s beloved shepherd slipped beneath the surface and disappeared.
9
* * *
AUGUST 1, 1945, WEDNESDAY—AFTERNOON
Philippine Sea
BY WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON, the men had been floating in the ocean for sixty-four hours, but they remained just as oily and dirty as when their awful journey began. The castaway groups were spread out on the water, still connected by the long, winding streak of fuel oil. Those unlucky enough to be without rafts, like the Haynes group of swimmers, drifted steadily along, powered only by currents. These men formed the northeastern end of the line. Groups like Redmayne’s, with a loosely assembled paddy of rafts and floater nets, made up the center. Groups composed mainly of rafts, like McVay’s five-raft flotilla, were now about sixty miles from the sinking site and migrating southwest, pushed by the wind about thirty miles ahead of their slowest-moving shipmates.
In the Redmayne group, Donald Blum listened to men around him waxing ecstatic over gleaming rescue ships they saw on the horizon and the cool, fresh drinks available just below the surface. In his own impaired state, Blum had to think long and hard to separate these delusions from reality. There were only about forty left in his group—down from two hundred—and four rafts. Many had died while others simply drifted away as the shape and composition of all the survivor groups continued to shift with winds and currents.
Blum decided that most of the men in his group were out of their minds. Fights erupted, some of them fatal to one or more combatants. Earlier that morning, word had filtered back that men on a raft some distance away were holding down another man and trying to have their way with him. It was not the only such incident. A man in charge of one of the rafts called over to Lieutenant Redmayne that things were getting pretty bad in his group. In a rare lucid moment, Redmayne sent Ensign Eames to deal with the problem. Returning shortly, Eames reported that some men were making advances on an injured radarman. Redmayne asked everyone around him to pray.
His plan now firm, Blum prepared to put it into action. He began questioning men around him, measuring their mental fitness, and soon had gathered a small group of reasonably sane sailors. Then Blum convinced Redmayne that he and his little crew needed to break off from the larger group and head toward Ulithi or Palau to get help. Of course, he would need a significant portion of the rations and supplies to succeed on such an important mission.
Twible overheard this conversation and thought the plan ill-advised. It didn’t seem smart to spread the men out further. It was an especially bad idea, he thought, to give so small a group such a large share of the supplies. But Twible didn’t want to overstep Redmayne’s authority, even if the lieutenant was barely rational. That night, with his crew and provisions rounded up, Blum separated a raft from the group. With a paddle as a makeshift mast and a tarpaulin as a crude sail, the vessel got under way and sailed out of Twible’s and Redmayne’s sight.
Several wave crests and less than a mile away, Blum brought the voyage to a halt. His objective had never been to make land, but to separate himself from a group whose hallucinations had grown dangerous. Blum himself had been shoved underwater once and also received a sock on the jaw. Both incidents scared the hell out of him.
Blum and the men in his new group came to an agreement: If any of them began to hallucinate, they would be shoved off the raft. Seeing or talking of imagined things would not be tolerated. To Blum, this seemed only prudent. It was a raw case of survival of the fittest.
• • •
Buck Gibson noticed that the sharks preferred the dead. A battle of size raged around him. Small fish of all kinds would swarm a corpse until a shark swooped in, scattering the school-fish in colorful explosions as it tore the body in half. The schools then darted in again, coalescing around leftover pieces, nibbling the flesh from dismembered bones.
Before the Navy, Gibson had lived in the country his whole life. Those fish chewing on bodies reminded him of hogs eating ears of corn. But he had no reference point for what he saw next.
Insane with thirst, a man in his division used a knife to cut the throat of another sailor and drink his blood. Then Gibson saw another man cut someone’s wrist.
“Look!” someone yelled. “He’s eating his arm!”
As this cannibalism unfolded, heaving swells rose and fell, blocking Gibson’s vision at intervals. Between them, in the troughs, he saw one man eating another, the glimpses between swells like a stop-frame film from hell.
• • •
Not far from Gibson, a well-respected coxswain took on a task that few others could stomach. Earlier that day, after watching delusional men commit unspeakable acts of violence, he made a pact with those around him. These men, who had served in his division and were his closest friends on the ship, agreed to end the life of any man who became dangerous to others. This agreement would include themselves, the ones who made the pact. Should they fall victim to hallucinations and become a threat, they, too, would be taken out. There were innocent men dying, victims of others who had lost their minds. They agreed something had to be done, or none of them would make it.
A few of the men carried five-inch utility knives. They agreed that head-locking a man and inserting the knife into the flesh under his armpit would be the most humane way to kill a friend.
After making the pact, this small group of men agonized as they played judge, jury, and executioner for shipmates who descended into delirium. When a man cried out “Dirty Jap!” or “Shark!” and launched himself at another, the respected coxswain or another man took his knife and performed the coup de grâce.
Prayers broke out in the group after these bloody judgments, among both the protected and the protectors. Silently, men were thankful their shipmates had been stopped from killing others. But each death tortured the man doing the killing, stealing a piece of his soul.
Leyte Gulf Naval Operations Base
Tacloban, Philippines
As dusk fell on the Philippines on August 1, Lieutenant Stuart Gibson noticed that Indianapolis had not arrived as scheduled. He had first noticed Indy’s absence at sundown the day before. But he did not report this to his superior, Lieutenant Commander Jules Sancho, the port director, because he did not feel that the nonarrival of a combatant ship sailing independently was his concern. Of course, he had begun to have
doubts about what was and wasn’t his concern. Recently, his rating officer, Commander Forrest Tucker, had written him a scathing performance evaluation.
“This officer performs his duties willingly, but is indecisive, frequently becomes bewildered and ‘rattle brained,’ ” Tucker wrote. “He has been a Port Director Watch Officer, a duty requiring qualifications which he does not possess to a degree necessary. It is believed he would do better in a position requiring less originality and responsibility.”
That had been eight weeks ago. Gibson was so shocked by the evaluation that he wrote a rebuttal and sent it to the Bureau of Naval Personnel. He didn’t know what had gotten into Tucker.
Working for the port director, Gibson’s job was to track merchant shipping, not combatants, who were thought to be able to take care of themselves. So much so that CincPac Advance had in January issued Confidential Letter 10CL-45, which stated explicitly: “Arrival reports shall not be made for combatant ships.”
The purpose of that directive was to reduce the flow of routine message traffic during a time period when preparations for the invasion of Japan were anything but routine. Officers were expected to be able to distinguish between what was and was not routine as a matter of common sense. Gibson thought about that with respect to Indianapolis and concluded this: If he wasn’t supposed to report the arrival of combatant ships, he supposed that meant nonarrivals, too.
10
* * *
AUGUST 1, 1945, WEDNESDAY—AFTERNOON
AFTER THE HARRELL GROUP’S desperate prayers produced the seeming miracle of a makeshift raft, they found that the raft men were on a mission: They were going to swim to the Philippines. These men, none of whom Harrell recognized, were adamant that the Navy wasn’t looking for Indianapolis. If anyone was looking for them, these sailors argued, they would already have been found.
Harrell didn’t want to admit it, but he suspected they were right. The raft crew’s logic was this: The closer they got to the Philippines, the better the chance they’d be rescued.
“Do any of you want to go with us?” one of the raft men said.
Harrell looked at their little vessel. It was really a pair of 40 mm ammo cans and four produce crates lashed together with strips of torn cloth—not at all seaworthy. But what was on top of the raft had already caught his attention: a pile of kapok life vests, some with wear still left in them. The raft crew had removed the vests from dead men and pulled them aboard to dry out. Harrell’s kapok was so waterlogged that it was barely keeping his head out of the water. Designed to last forty-eight hours, it had lasted more than sixty and was almost spent. The fresher ones aboard the raft seemed another answer to prayer.
“I’m going to join them,” Harrell told Spooner.
“If you go, Harrell, I’m going with you,” Spooner said.
Harrell and Spooner did their part to get closer to the Philippines. Towing or pushing the makeshift raft, all the travelers kicked and paddled west, buoyed less by actual progress on their impossible quest than by the vigor men feel when they take hold of their own destinies.
During the journey, Harrell bumped into a crate of potatoes. The brown orbs oozed rot almost to their cores, but the men were able to peel away the putrid flesh to reveal edible centers. They ate their fill, and Harrell stuffed the leftovers in his pockets.
Night fell, blade-swift. The sun’s residual warmth bled quickly away. Later, near midnight, Harrell heard voices in the distance. The whole group commenced kicking, steering their raft toward these new sounds shooting out of the night. Soon, they met another knot of survivors, and Harrell’s heart swelled when he saw someone he knew. It was Lieutenant McKissick. Harrell had gotten to know the jovial Texan while serving on the bridge as Captain McVay’s orderly. Unlike some officers who lorded it over the enlisted, McKissick was helpful, making sure Harrell had all the tools he needed to do a standout job for the captain.
It didn’t take long for Harrell to see that McKissick had taken charge of his own small group, and that the men had willingly let him. Harrell handed over some of the leftover potatoes. After a bit of reasoning with McKissick, the two groups joined forces in the westward press.
For Harrell, it seemed God was blessing his group’s three-hour prayer vigil. That is, until he passed out in exhaustion and awoke to find himself floating in a debris field of human parts—and Spooner gone.
Harrell removed his life jacket, which was too waterlogged to hold his head out of the water, and now sat on it, riding low in the water amid carnage so putrid he could taste the rotting stench on the air. Somehow, he and Spooner had become separated in the dark. In fact, the entirety of the two recently linked survivor groups had vanished except for McKissick and a dead sailor who floated facedown in the chum.
Harrell berated himself. Why hadn’t he held on to his friend tighter? They were Marines! he’d told Spooner. He remembered his promise: If Spooner agreed not to give up, they’d both make it through. Now he was gone. Harrell thought about trying to find him, but knew he was too weak to make a serious effort. And Spooner’s eyes had puffed up into such blazing scarlet sores that he’d never be able to find Harrell.
Spooner’s dead anyway, Harrell reasoned. And soon I will be, too.
Harrell rode his precarious perch up and down the swells with McKissick nearby. Blood swirled in the water and human debris stretched as far as they could see. The dead sailor tagged along, facedown and cruciform, brushing against them occasionally as if to remind Harrell and McKissick that he was part of their group, too.
• • •
Lieutenant Redmayne had begun hallucinating the previous night and had only worsened. He commenced taking small, furtive sips of ocean water, and shortly after, screaming maniacally. He tried several times to leap from his raft, often shouting his favorite refrain: “I have to get to the engine room!”
Finally, Ensign Twible grabbed him and stabbed him with a morphine syrette. Then, to ensure Redmayne’s safety, Twible tied him to his own vest so he couldn’t jump again. Now, on Thursday, the lieutenant remained unresponsive, and Twible believed himself to be the last officer still in control of his faculties. Still, he didn’t have the energy to do much of anything. The best he could do was wait for help to come and try to keep Redmayne alive.
• • •
Richard Stephens and Florian Stamm had both served on Indy for more than a year. Now they watched as their once large and close-knit floater net group came undone. Around them men drowned or were eaten—or sometimes one and then the other. Stamm, whose mind was unraveling as quickly as the group, had his friend Louis DeBernardi to thank for his survival. DeBernardi, who had helped crane Major Furman’s crate aboard at Mare Island, was also Stamm’s supervisor. Now, any time Stamm started acting crazy, DeBernardi would slap the hell out of him, bringing him back to his senses. Stephens, on the other hand, turned inward in order to hang on. He thought of his family and their farm back in Alabama, and dreamed of toiling at the livestock chores he once loathed. It was a simple life, but he’d do anything to get back there.
• • •
On the periphery of the Haynes group, John Woolston saw glimpses of a swimmer approaching from the far distance, just the top of a head and some splashing every few seconds. As with all the other swimmers around him, his life jacket floated lower and lower, and he had trouble seeing more than a few feet in any direction. The troughs and crests of the passing swells opened and closed the sight line. In rare intervals, he could tell the swimmer was definitely approaching. Finally, he could make the man out. It was his roommate, Ensign Eames.
After breaking up the lewd behavior in the Redmayne group, Eames had had enough. He caught a break when a high swell lifted him and he saw another survivor group several hundred yards away. It turned out to be the Haynes group, and when Eames made it over, he related the debaucheries taking place in the group he’d left behind. Then Eames swam away. It would be the last time anyone reported seeing him.
That nigh
t, a gurgling scream ripped Woolston from a light doze. He jerked his head up to see two sailors tangled and fighting. “There’s a Jap here, and he’s trying to kill me!” one was shouting.
A bright moon frosted the sea, and Woolston could pick out the men as clearly as if someone had switched on a light. He yanked his legs horizontal and swam toward the men to break it up. But the violence spread like a virus to the next man and the next, and suddenly it was a melee, water churning, men shrieking and thrashing and growling curses. Woolston saw men clubbing each other, pushing other men’s heads under the waves and holding them down.
Dr. Haynes also found himself in the middle of this all-out combat. Parke had been a restraining force, a governor on the idling engine of man’s basest instincts. But his death had thrown the throttle wide open. Around Haynes, the free-for-all gained intensity, fueled by hallucinations and insanity. He untied himself from the hundred-foot line and pushed away from the man next to him. He urged others to do the same.
When Woolston reached the edge of the brawl, he broke two men apart. Wrapping his arms tight around the aggressor, Woolston yelled fiercely in his ear, “Hey, calm down! Calm down! He’s your buddy. Look at him! He’s not a Jap, he’s your buddy!”
Gradually, the sailor went slack in his arms. Then Woolston heard another scream, swam toward it, and repeated the process. He could not say how long the chaos lasted or how many fights he broke up, but he knew he had not been able to reach them all in time. The storm died gradually, cycling down until an eerie quiet spread across the group. Men who had formerly hung together now backed away from each other, tense and wary.
• • •
Atrocities ravaged most of the groups that Wednesday night, a brief season of madness from which many would not emerge alive. In Cozell Smith’s group, the water was littered with bodies, including those whose friends had executed them under the pact. Already nearing his own breaking point, the respected coxswain in the group, who perhaps shouldered the greatest burden and stepped up when others couldn’t, found himself in an unbearable position. One of his closest friends, Curtis Pace, was losing his grip on reality. Pace was the man who had seen sharks early on but fibbed about it to a kid nearby because he didn’t want to scare him. Now, the coxswain swam over and found Pace exhausted and rambling.