by Walter Lord
This was no longer a small band of castaways; this was a whole village—a village deep in enemy territory. To survive, Commander Chew realized they must have rules, assignments, lines of authority, and all the trappings of an organized community.
As senior officer, Chew automatically became the “mayor,” and it’s hard to imagine a better one. A thoroughly professional career officer, he nevertheless had an informal touch that came in handy in these weird surroundings that no naval manual ever anticipated. In the Annapolis world dominated by conservative “black shoe” officers, he belonged not only figuratively but literally to the more relaxed “brown shoe” minority. In fact, on the Helena his lucky brown shoes had been a trade mark.
His “chief of police” was, of course, Major Kelly. He would be in charge of defense, sanitation, and maintaining law and order. As a force, Kelly had five of his own Marines plus a number of petty officers and natives.
Weapons were a more difficult problem. At the start the survivors had only a .38 revolver and a .45 automatic. Then Chew discovered the shotgun in Sam Chung’s house, and Josselyn sent over seven very assorted rifles, including a Japanese model with exactly three bullets. Two men were assigned to each weapon—if one were hit, the other was to save the gun. The force inevitably became known as “Kelly’s Irregulars.”
With the Irregulars in the field, Kelly turned his attention to sanitation. Knowing that digging a latrine is not a sailor’s idea of fun, he set an example by helping dig it himself. This was no easy task, for their only implement was a steel helmet, unaccountably worn by the ship’s barber during the entire three days he was in the water.
They also needed better sleeping quarters. So far, the men were packed in Sam’s shack and a curious outbuilding that rather resembled a hen house. The Reverend Silvester said he thought he could remedy this problem, and a team of his mission boys appeared the next morning. Cutting poles and vines from the jungle, they quickly lashed together a framework, then covered the sides with palm leaves, and thatched a roof with grass. By the evening of the 10th they had finished a shed some 40 or 50 feet long. To dedicate it, the Reverend Silvester held a service, with survivors and natives joining together in “Onward, Christian Soldiers.”
Food posed another problem. The natives were short themselves, and the addition of scores of Helena survivors proved a serious drain. Once again the Reverend Silvester came to the rescue. He organized native foraging parties that systematically combed the area. Soon the camp was getting a steady flow of potatoes, tapioca, yams, pau pau, taro root and bananas. When ripe, the fruit was given to the injured. Everything else was dumped into a huge copper pot, also provided by Silvester’s natives. It reminded Jack Chew, a little uncomfortably, of the pots he had seen in cartoons of cannibals cooking missionaries.
The pot was kept boiling by two experienced cooks—Seaman 1/c J. L. Johnson and Marine Bert Adam, a massive bartender from Bourbon Street in New Orleans. Twice a day they ladled out a watery stew, laced with a few chunks of Spam scavenged from the beach. The men never ceased to marvel at the results. Sometimes it was rich purple, next time pink, then almost white, and again almost black. There were no complaints, although Coxswain Ted Blahnik later confessed that he tried to dodge the fish eyes.
On medicine too the Reverend Silvester proved invaluable. Pharmacist’s Mate Red Layton did a superb job with the injured, now bedded down in Sam’s shack, but his task was made easier by the sulfa drugs and pain killers that came from the mission stores.
Every evening Silvester dropped by to chat with Jack Chew—not just about the problems of the day, but about life in general. Gradually a close bond developed between them. Bern Kelly and the others felt it too, and they all agreed that this devoted man who did so much for them deserved far more than to be a mere “Reverend.” He should at least be a bishop, and so they made him one, unofficially. From this time on, they always called him “Bish.”
By July 12 life in “Mayor” Chew’s community almost bordered on the routine. In the morning the men got up with the sun—about 6:00. Washing up without soap was somewhat futile, but they learned that a lime peel was excellent for cleaning teeth.
Breakfast (stew, of course) came around 10:00, when Chief Cook Johnson would ceremoniously announce, “Chow is ready.” Finishing, the men washed the coconut shells that served as plates … then two laps around the camp for exercise … then clean-up. Nearly every one had some specific assignment; most sought-after duty was the canteen detail because it meant an opportunity to bathe in the crystal-clear stream at the bottom of the hill.
Lunch (more stew) came at two o’clock, and that was the last meal of the day. The rest of the afternoon most of the men relaxed, gradually regaining their strength, until evening prayers around 5:30. Not quite knowing how this mixed and involuntary congregation would react, Chew passed the word that no matter how they felt, he expected the men to show proper respect during the Reverend Silvester’s service.
He need not have worried. Perilous hardship had brought most of the men closer to God than they had ever been before. Survivors and natives joined together in singing the hymns, especially “Rock of Ages.” The natives sang in their language, the Helena’s crew in theirs, but the effect was strangely unifying. The common melody seemed to mean a common bond that many of the men found enormously reassuring. It was not unusual to see them in tears as the service ended.
And so the days passed, one pretty much like another—except for the big feast. This took place after a party of natives butchered one of the stray cattle that roamed the island. Lugging the beef back to the camp, the natives were held up by Japanese patrols, and by the time they reached Sam’s place, the meat was ripe indeed. Chew consulted Chief Cook Johnson; they reluctantly agreed that it was hopelessly spoiled, and they had it buried.
This was more than MM2/c R. G. Atkinson could stand. He was the oldest member of the Helena’s crew, and among other things in life, had been in the Klondike gold rush. He told Chew that in the Yukon no one would throw away beef like that. He knew how to salvage it and would like to try his skill.
The meat was hastily disinterred, and Atkinson went to work. No one ever knew what he really did. Obtaining an iron pot from the natives, he boiled the beef for three days, occasionally tossing in bits of fruit and herbs he found growing in the jungle. Finally he announced that his treat was ready, and to the astonishment of the other 103 men, it turned out to be delicious.
Despite Atkinson’s genius—and the continuing efforts of the more orthodox cooks—food was always short, and always on everyone’s mind. The men no longer talked about the girls in Sydney—it was the steaks back home. So it was not too surprising when Major Kelly stormed up to Chew one day, reporting that someone had stolen one of the few cans of Spam salvaged from the rafts. “If I find out who it is, will you sentence him to death?”
Chew said he thought this was a little drastic. The thief was probably some poor devil so hungry he really didn’t know what he was doing. Kelly was adamant, and the “Mayor” was caught between approving what he felt was a Draconian measure and undermining his “Chief of Police.” To his enormous relief, the culprit was never caught.
A graver crisis arose the day a four-man Japanese patrol came too close to the camp. The native scouts intercepted, and in the skirmish that followed, three of the enemy were killed. The fourth was taken alive, posing a serious dilemma. With his men hiding out deep in Japanese territory, and the enemy now on their heels, Chew felt it was too dangerous to have a prisoner on their hands, yet they certainly couldn’t turn him loose. In the end he reluctantly ordered the Japanese executed. Technically, perhaps, against the rules of the Geneva Convention, but surely that body never contemplated a situation like this. Nevertheless, it was a hard decision, and it was comforting to Chew that the Reverend Silvester understood and agreed.
The next Japanese thrust was no four-man affair. Twenty well-armed troops landed from a barge in Lambu Lambu Cove and started up the
trail toward Sam’s house. Warned by their native scouts, the Irregulars deployed to meet the threat, while the rest of Chew’s group prepared to move deeper into the interior.
Major Kelly hoped to ambush the Japanese as they climbed single file up the trail. He selected a spot that gave him both good observation and cover for his own men. The Irregulars moved into position with their grab bag of weapons and waited.
Soon they heard the Japanese coming, hobnailed boots clanging against the rocks, their voices casual and quite audible in the distance. Kelly wondered how they got their reputation as stealthy jungle fighters.
Still, they were plenty dangerous, and the outnumbered, outgunned Irregulars steeled themselves for a last-ditch fight. Then, just as the head of the enemy column came into view, several blue Corsair fighters streaked by overhead and began firing at the Japanese barge on the coast. Black smoke boiled up, and the patrol, voices babbling in excitement, hurried back to the beach.
Kelly never knew what triggered the attack—probably the fighters just happened by and saw the barge—but he did know that Corsairs were generally land-based. This must mean that the U.S. now had a field within fighter range of Vella Lavella. He was right: Bill Painter’s strip at Segi had begun paying off.
Twelve miles up the coast at Paraso Bay—but in touch by radio—Henry Josselyn wasn’t thinking about these small triumphs; he was thinking about all the other Japanese on Vella Lavella. Some 300-400 enemy troops were now on the island, and the number was growing. There were new outposts at Kundurumbangara Point and Baka Baka, both near Chew’s camp, and another at Marisi, about three miles west of Ensign Bausewine’s group at Paraso.
There was no time to lose, if the men were to be saved. COMSOPAC said they could provide a couple of destroyer-transports, so the problem boiled down to the mechanics of evacuation. A total of 165 Helena survivors were involved—104 with Chew, 50 with Bausewine, and another 11 a few miles to the northwest with CWO William Dupay. Even after adding Dupay’s men to Bausewine’s group, it was impossible to concentrate everybody in one place, so Josselyn planned two separate evacuations. He was already at Paraso Bay with Bausewine; so he would send this group off first. Then he would go down to Lambu Lambu and do the same for Chew’s group.
July 12, and Bausewine’s party received a surprise addition—a captured Zero pilot, brought in by native scouts. Here, too, arose the agonizing question of what to do with the prisoner. The general consensus was to kill him, but as Bausewine later recalled, “Nobody would go through with it; so he lived.” Happily, he seemed cowed and thoroughly docile, but to be on the safe side his hands were bound and he was kept blindfolded whenever the group moved. A final and far more welcome newcomer was Lieutenant Ciunguin, the downed P-38 pilot who had been helping Firth with the radio traffic.
By nightfall on the 12th all were assembled on the beach, waiting for the pickup at 2 A.M., but the Japanese Navy didn’t cooperate. The Tokyo Express came barreling down the Slot that night with 1200 more reinforcements for Kolombangara. Admiral Ainsworth rushed to intercept them, and the rescue operation was postponed first to the 13th, then to the 14th. But now it fell too close to the 15th, when Josselyn planned to get Chew’s group off. In the end he proposed to do the whole job on the night of the 15th: the ships would first pick up Bausewine’s party at Paraso Bay, then steam down the coast and get Chew’s group at Lambu Lambu.
COMSOPAC approved, and two tense days of waiting followed. Josselyn knew the Japanese were getting close to Chew, and his own group seemed to be living on borrowed time. He moved the camp every night. He shifted the teleradio after every message. He grew nervous, irritable, smoked incessantly. Bausewine’s men gladly smoked his butts, for they had the jitters too. Some jungle bird had a call just like the Helena general quarters alarm, and the men jumped every time it sounded off.
On the evening of the 15th the party once again went to the beach. Most of them still had on the shreds of oil-soaked dungarees they wore when they landed, but Bill Dupay was resplendent in the Japanese pilot’s uniform. The pilot, blindfolded and hands still tied behind his back, was guided along in his underdrawers—the fortunes of war.
Twelve miles down the coast Jack Chew’s group was on the move too. With the strongest serving as stretcher-bearers for the sick and wounded, they left the camp at 3 P.M.—a time nicely calculated to get them to Lambu Lambu Cove just before dark. They were in no shape to travel at night, and the coastal plain was too exposed to wait there in broad daylight. Now added to the party were sixteen of the local Chinese—mostly Sam Chung and his relatives.
Kelly’s Irregulars screened the movement, taking position between the line of march and the nearest Japanese outpost. Behind them the evacuees plodded along, reaching the coast at dusk, just as planned.
The spot selected for the rendezvous was not on the open sea, but at a former trading-post dock a mile or so up the Lambu Lambu River. This was a broad estuary with several tricky turns, and Chew assigned Warren Boles, the old Marblehead sailor, to go out in a native canoe and pilot the rescuers in.
It was a far cry from cruising the New England coast. The canoe was paddled by a single native who couldn’t speak English and didn’t understand any instructions. There was a moon, but the shadows of the jungle hid the shoreline. The only channel markers were natives literally planted in the water by “Bish” Silvester to mark each bend in the river. Boles longed for the days of neatly numbered red-nun buoys as he tried to meet the challenge of picking out a black man in a black river on a black night.
Now they were off the mouth of the river, bobbing in the waters of the Slot. Here they waited and waited for some sign of the rescue ships. Once they heard the whine of destroyer blowers and vessels going by at high speed … then a few flares and explosions. Japanese ships were apparently on the prowl, sniffing trouble. Then it was dark again, and the wait continued.
On shore Major Kelly also felt the strain of the long wait. Finally he slipped away from his defense line and consulted with Chew. If the ships didn’t come soon, it would be dawn, and they couldn’t risk staying here during the day. They began discussing the possibility of returning to camp.
Twelve miles up the coast at Paraso Bay it was a long night for Bausewine’s group too. The rescue was set for 2 A.M. on the 16th, and at midnight Josselyn pushed off in a large canoe to guide in the rescuers. With him went three natives and Gunner Bill Dupay, to help make contact. For the next two hours they bobbed up and down in the empty night a mile or so offshore.
Then, toward 2 A.M. they spotted the shadowy forms of several blacked-out ships approaching through the dark. There was no clue whether they were friend or foe, but Josselyn hopefully flashed a series of Rs—the recognition signal.
On shore George Bausewine and the others restlessly waited as the hours ticked by. He hoped for the best, but he had always been fatalistic about the group’s chances. That Admiral Kelly Turner would send 3000 men in ten destroyers to rescue them was a thought that never occurred to him.
From the start Kelly Turner was determined to rescue the Helena survivors on Vella Lavella. It was more than a matter of saving 165 good men; it was important to the whole Navy’s morale. As he explained, “It means a lot to know that if the worst happens and you get blown off your ship and washed ashore somewhere, the Navy isn’t going to forget you.”
But how to do the job? PBYs, submarines, PT-boats—all the usual ways were out. They just couldn’t hold enough men. Ships were clearly the answer, and the destroyer-transports Dent and Waters seemed the best bet. Painted a mottled jungle green, these APDs (as they were called) had the right size and speed, with crews specially trained in amphibious operations—and looking at it one way, this was just an amphibious operation in reverse.
Protecting the two APDs was the problem. They were lightly armed, and this would be the Navy’s deepest penetration yet into enemy-controlled waters. The Japanese not only held Vella Lavella, but had airstrips at Kahili and on Ballale plus their
anchorage in the Shortlands only 60 miles away.
Kelly Turner took no chances. As the Dent and Waters steamed toward Vella Lavella on the afternoon of July 15, they were escorted by four destroyers under Captain Thomas J. Ryan. Out of sight but very much in the picture were four more destroyers under Captain Francis X. McInerney. They would hover in the Slot during the pickup, ready to intercept any Japanese ships coming down from the Shortlands. McInerney was in overall charge of the operation.
Midnight, and Ryan’s six ships, coming up from the south, entered Vella Gulf. The moon was full, and it was hard to believe they hadn’t been sighted. At 1:12 a white flare went up from Vella off to port, and the crews braced for an attack. Nothing happened. Five minutes later, a red parachute flare shot up from Kolombangara on the starboard side. Again the men steeled themselves; again nothing happened.
At 1:30 they were off Paraso Bay. Now the destroyer Taylor turned inshore and, using both lead lines and sophisticated depth-finding equipment, guided the Dent and Waters into the bay toward the mouth of the Paraso River. The other three destroyers formed the inner screen, patrolling the bay’s entrance. Ten miles out, Captain McInerney’s four destroyers took their station as the outer screen. A Japanese patrol plane spotted them, dropped a bomb or two, but apparently did not call in support. Their luck was holding.
On the bridge of the Dent Commander John D. Sweeney peered into the darkness, trying to follow the movements of the Taylor just ahead. He was commodore of the two APDs and gloried in the code name PLUTO. The Taylor, with deeper draft, finally reached a point where she couldn’t go any farther. She backed away, signaling over the TBS radio, “PLUTO, you’re on your own. Good luck.”