by Peter Nelson
By Thursday, there were five men still alive on Gil McCoy’s broken raft. The only other survivor still conscious was Gunner’s Mate Bob Brundige, from Des Moines, Iowa. McCoy was glad of the company. He wasn’t telling himself he was going to make it anymore. He just wanted to make sure that when he died, he did it right. He’d almost died when a shark stuck his head through a hole in the bottom of the raft, but McCoy had managed to kick the shark in the eye and send it spiraling off in what he hoped was pain. There were other sharks, and he wouldn’t be able to fight them off forever.
“When I’m the last guy left,” McCoy told Brundige, “I just want you to know I’ll take care of you guys for as long as I can.”
“What makes you so sure you’re going to be the last guy alive?” Brundige asked.
“Because I’m a marine,” he joked. “I’m tougher than hell.”
“I’m an Iowa farmer,” Brundige replied. “That makes me a whole lot tougher than you.”
McCoy smiled.
Later that afternoon, he wasn’t sure if he was out of his head or not. If he were, he’d probably be the last to know, but suddenly it became important to him to scrub the oil from his body. When he’d served as Captain McVay’s orderly, he always made sure his shoes were shined and his uniform was clean and pressed. He’d always taken pride in his appearance, and if he was going to meet his maker in the near future, he certainly didn’t want to be standing at the gates of heaven looking like a rag somebody’d used to clean a jeep engine. The water around the raft was clear of oil by now, so he jumped in and started scrubbing, despite the fact that the sharks were still circling.
“What are you doing?” Brundige asked him.
“What’s it look like?” he replied. “I’m not going to heaven covered in oil.”
“Get back in the raft,” Brundige advised.
McCoy eventually did, but he’d reached the point where he knew dying would be a lot easier than living. He even cupped his hands and brought a small amount of salt water to his lips, tapped it with the tip of his tongue, tasted the brine and considered. Wasn’t he a marine? Weren’t marines tough? Tough enough to drink salt water? Now you’re nuts, he thought. You gotta stop thinking like that—that’s crazy. He thought again of his mother, how much he loved her, how sad she’d be if she lost him—he couldn’t let that happen to her. He thought as well of how proud he was to be a marine, and how he had to hang on for the sake of the corps, and he let the water trickle through his fingers.
Cozell Smith found himself at the center of the worst kind of madness, his own internal insanity matched to a perception that everyone around him was crazy too. He couldn’t trust anyone; many of the men around him had reverted to their basest natures. He watched as one man started screaming, “Jap! This guy’s a Jap—kill him!” Soon several others set upon the unfortunate sailor who’d been declared a Jap and together they managed to drown him, even though Smith knew the man was a shipmate and not a Jap. Smith felt helpless to stop any of it.
Then it got worse. He witnessed men committing acts of cannibalism. It all seemed like a series of hallucinations, but if that were true, he wasn’t the only one seeing things. Others saw things too. Smith saw a man use his knife to cut at the wrist of a dead body, apparently thinking nobody else was watching, but Smith could see everything. The ocean swells only partially obscured his view. The water rose and fell, like a curtain opening and closing. Smith tried to close his eyes, terrified at what he might see.
“Look,” someone else said. “He’s eating that arm.” Elsewhere, a sailor humped over the body of a dead man, drinking blood from a cut he’d made in the corpse’s throat. At least that was what it looked like. It didn’t matter if it really happened or if it was just another manifestation of collective delusion—Smith experienced it as real, the image burned forever into his memory.
Compared to the others, Captain McVay’s group was in good shape. Sharing four rafts among eleven men reduced the group’s exposure to hypothermia and dehydration by keeping them out of the water. The rafts also afforded them the opportunity to sleep. As a result, none suffered from psychotic episodes or hallucinations. In addition, where in other groupings ensigns and lieutenants were having trouble keeping order, no one in McVay’s group questioned their captain’s authority, and that provided stability and discipline. All the same, they felt hopeless, despairing that rescue would ever come. Their captain had told them SOSs had gone out. Why, then, hadn’t anybody come looking for them? It made no sense.
Chapter Eight
The Rescue
August 2 to 3, 1945
Are we men—grown men—salt sea men—men nursed upon dangers and cradled in storms—men made in the image of God and ready to do when He commands and die when He calls. . . . I don’t know where this ship is, but she’s in the hands of God, and that’s good enough for me. . . . If it is God’s will that we pull through, we pull through—otherwise not.
Mark Twain, The Great Dark
Rescue came somewhat by accident on Thursday when a pilot named Lieutenant Wilbur C. (“Chuck”) Gwinn thought he saw something in the water. He was flying at 3,000 feet in a Lockheed Ventura PV-1 bomber, on a routine patrol mission. They were out over the ocean when a newly repaired antenna broke again. Gwinn turned the controls over to his copilot and headed for the tail of the plane to see if he could fix it himself. There was an opening in the tail of the aircraft, a gunner’s hatch where Gwinn crouched to see the wire antenna whipping wildly in the wash behind the plane. He’d just ordered his machinist’s mate to reel in the antenna, figuring he’d tie a piece of rubber hose to the end to stabilize it, when he looked down and saw an oil slick spread out across the sea. An oil slick often meant a Japanese submarine below. He ordered his bomb bay doors opened, his depth charges armed, then took control of the airplane, diving to 150 feet. He was just about to drop his bombs when he saw tiny bumps in the slick and realized they were men, stranded in the middle of nowhere. He had no idea if they were Americans or perhaps Japanese submariners. He hadn’t been told of any ships sunk in the area, and agreed with the others who considered this part of the Pacific to be the backwaters of the war, far from any significant action.
He circled back, deciding that whoever they were, Americans or Japanese, he would help them, and dropped a life raft, kegs of water and a sonobuoy. This high-tech floating sound-detection device was meant to pick up enemy submarine sounds and radio them back to the airplane, but it was possible to send voice messages over it. The sonobuoy didn’t work, and the kegs of water ruptured when they hit the surface of the ocean. Gwinn sent an urgent message to squadron headquarters at 11:25 A.M. that read: SIGHTED 30 SURVIVORS 011–30 NORTH 133–30 EAST. DROPPED TRANSMITTER AND LIFEBOAT EMERGENCY IFF ON 133–30. Turning to the northeast, he followed the oil slick and saw more bumps in the sea, a total of 150. From this he knew they weren’t Japanese submariners, because Japanese subs didn’t carry that many men. They had to be Americans, but where had they come from? He dropped all the supplies he had, then hurried back to the tail of the plane to reel in the antenna. He tied the piece of rubber hose to the end and let it back out, hoping it would work properly now, and ordered his radioman to send a revised message. SEND RESCUE SHIP 11–15N 133–47E 150 SURVIVORS IN LIFEBOATS AND JACKETS. . . .
For a pilot to see a human head in the water, he has to be looking straight down, and unless a pilot is banking sharply, he’s usually looking down at about a thirty-degree angle. Seeing a man in the water would be as difficult as seeing the dot at the end of this sentence projected onto a movie screen in a theater from the back row. In the end, it was the oil slick that saved them.
Gwinn’s message got through to his base on the island of Peleliu. Gwinn’s superior, Lieutenant Commander George Atteberry, heard the first message and immediately drove over to squadron VPB-23, which flew PBY-5A Catalina seaplanes, squat, chunky, amphibious aircraft that commonly went by the nickname of Dumbo, named after a popular cartoon elephant. Dumbos w
ere used primarily to drop rescue gear to downed pilots or shipwrecked sailors. Two of the three Catalinas in the squadron were already flying missions, but one, code-named Playmate 2, was on standby. The pilot was Lieutenant Robert Adrian Marks, 28, who’d become a navy flyer in 1942. His crew loaded their aircraft with 1,250 gallons of fuel (enough to stay airborne for twelve hours), flares, life rafts, dye markers and shipwreck kits and headed out at 12:40 P.M. for what would be about a three-hour flight at the Dumbo’s top speed of 100 knots.
Atteberry took off right behind Marks in a second Ventura, a much faster plane than the Catalina, hoping to reach the scene ahead of the Dumbo to relieve Gwinn, who would be running out of fuel soon. Atteberry reached the scene at 2:15 and was shocked to find so many men in the water, radioing back to Peleliu to confirm that there were at least 150. Marks overheard Atteberry’s report. At 2:30, still on his way north, Marks flew over a destroyer escort, the USS Cecil J. Doyle, whose captain, Lieutenant Commander W. Graham Claytor, called Marks up on the radio and asked him where he was going. Marks told him. Claytor turned the Doyle around and steamed north at flank speed before receiving orders to do so, a violation of protocol and a potentially punishable offense. But if there were men in the water, Claytor knew that wasted minutes could cost lives, and there was no telling how long it would take for the orders to divert to come through.
Other ships were soon ordered to the scene, including the Dufilho, the Bassett, the Ringness, the Register, the Ralph Talbot and the Madison, all within 200 miles of the disaster. Lieutenant Marks arrived on site at 3:50 P.M. and flew low over the area where men were strewn in the sea on a roughly north-south axis. He dropped rafts, dye markers, emergency rations and shipwreck kits. He radioed back to base at 4:25, without even bothering to put his message in coded form: BETWEEN 100 AND 200 SURVIVORS AT POSITION REPORTED. NEED ALL SURVIVAL EQUIPMENT AVAILABLE WHILE DAYLIGHT HOLDS. MANY SURVIVORS WITHOUT RAFTS. At 4:30, he added to his previous message, saying, WILL ATTEMPT OPEN SEA LANDING.
He was informing, not asking permission. Marks made his decision to land because as he circled low, he’d actually seen sharks taking men in the water, and the sight horrified him. There was a standing order in the squadron that nobody was allowed to land PBY-5As in open water. Unlike the standard PBYs, PBY-5As had three large wheels, which, though retractable, put extra weight in the nose and made the aircraft less seaworthy. Other attempts to land 5As in the open water had met with disaster, but Marks decided it was worth the risk, and when he polled his crew to ask them what they thought, they agreed. He’d established a reputation for fearlessness in prior rescues, and his men admired him for that. The wind was eight knots, blowing from the north, but the seas contained twelve-foot swells running from the northwest, promising a roller-coaster landing at best. At worst, Playmate 2 could break up if it hit the sea wrong. Insofar as he was putting his crew in danger, Marks was aware that he could be court-martialed later, but right now, men were being ripped to pieces by sharks.
The plane bounced fifteen feet in the air the first time it hit the water, bounced twice more and settled in. It had popped some rivets and cracked at the seams, slowly taking on water, but for the most part, it had held. Marks taxied, looking for men to pull out of the water. He steered clear of men in larger groups, calculating that the loners and the single swimmers needed him more, though it was heartbreaking to pass anyone by. One of his crewmen was an ensign named Morgan Hensley who’d been an amateur wrestler and possessed great upper-body strength. Hensley leaned out the portside blister and plucked men from the sea like they were soggy rag dolls. The plane was carrying eighteen gallons of fresh water in four breakers. The crew gave each man they hauled aboard half a cup of water, waited a few minutes and then administered half a cup more. When the fuselage of the PBY-5A was filled to capacity, Marks’s crew began putting men on the wings, tying them in place with parachute shrouds so that they wouldn’t fall back into the rolling sea. By the time darkness came, Marks had rescued fifty-six men—fifty-six skeletons, smelling of oil and vomit and urine, crying softly in pain but alive.
Another PBY landed. More planes arrived, circling overhead, dropping gear. Surface ships closed in from all directions. The first to arrive was the Doyle. Captain Claytor had been in radio contact with Marks, knew how desperate the situation was and sailed at flank speed, reaching the scene shortly after dark. He immediately ordered his crew to sweep the sea with one of two 24-inch searchlights. Around 9:00 P.M., he made a decision and ordered his other searchlight pointed straight up in the sky, casting a beam that was visible for 60 miles and throwing a pale pinkish glow on the clouds 2,000 feet overhead. His beam would also have been visible to any Japanese submarine, ship or airplane within 60 miles, and he was therefore putting his own crew at risk and himself in jeopardy of court-martial. In Claytor’s judgment, it was more important that the men still in the sea, however many there were, wherever they were, be given a signal that help was at hand. As other surface ships arrived, they turned on their searchlights as well, sending out whaleboats and landing craft to collect the men in the water without further delay.
For McGuiggan, rescue began when a B-17 flew over in the late afternoon and dropped a life raft. He’d lost track of time and thought it was still the second day. McGuiggan summoned the last of his strength and swam for the raft. At the raft, he met a shipmate from Indiana, a man named Hamer Campbell who’d come from another group. Picking Campbell out of the water, McGuiggan looked down for the first time and saw sharks, layers of them. Only when they paddled back to McGuiggan’s original group did he realize that what had started out to be 150 men was now down to about 15. Everyone got into the raft. It was cold. McGuiggan passed out. Finally they saw a searchlight in the distance illuminating the clouds. They paddled toward it. He passed out again, or slept—what was the difference? He awoke early in the morning, and had to prop his eyelids open with his fingers because they’d crusted over with ulcers. He saw a ship coming closer. Men on the ship started shooting at him. What was this? More Japs? In fact the rescue ship had sent a swimmer to the raft with a lifeline to tie to it. The men on the ship weren’t shooting at the men in the raft—they were shooting at the sharks surrounding the swimmer. McGuiggan was brought aboard the USS Talbot and later transferred to the USS Register.
Mike Kuryla never saw Chuck Gwinn’s airplane or the subsequent landing of Adrian Marks. Later he saw planes dropping survival gear into the water, but he was too spent to care. His roller-skating buddy Paul saw it too and left the group to swim for a package that splashed down a few hundred yards off. It was the last Kuryla ever saw of his friend. Kuryla was finally rescued when the USS Register sent a Higgins boat, a flat-bottomed plywood landing craft manned by sailors with rifles, which they fired at the sharks in the water to drive them off. When the sailors hauled Kuryla aboard, all he could say was, “What took you so long?”
Jack Miner saw a seaplane land in the distance on Thursday afternoon. It was too far away to swim to, but it was good that somebody had arrived, finally, at last. Maybe there were other guys still alive. He rode the waves, scanning the horizon when he was at the crest of a wave, but he couldn’t see very far. He got angry when he realized how long it had taken the navy to send somebody. He saw the seaplane again—maybe that was all they were going to send, one little plane. They were making a mess of it. He waited. Night came. He thought they were never going to find him. He got on a raft. There were a few other guys on the raft with him. In the wee hours of the morning, he saw a searchlight, a small craft, coming toward him.
“Japs,” he shouted. “They’re coming for us—everybody get out! Kick!”
He was trying to swim away when he felt a hand on his arm and a sailor lifted him out of the sea. He was brought aboard the USS Bassett.
Morgan Moseley saw the lights of the Doyle illuminating the sky. The ship was far away, little more than a shape on the horizon, but the distance wasn’t enough to deter several of his shipmates who decided the
y were going to swim to the ship. They got about fifty feet and started yelling for help, but no one had the strength to go to them. Their calls for help soon ceased. Moseley waited. Around four in the morning, he saw a searchlight approaching, sweeping the water. A ship. A cargo net was lowered over the side. He grabbed on and was hauled on board. He couldn’t stand up. Someone cut his clothes off him. He’d weighed 205 pounds when he went into the water and 160 when he came out. Someone gave him orange juice. Someone said, “You must be feeling awfully good about now.”
“It would have been nicer,” he wanted to say, “if you’d come a little sooner.”
Harlan Twible saw the airplanes circling, though he was beginning to doubt his own sanity. One dropped a lifeboat, which Twible swam to. The boat contained cans of water and cigarettes, which he passed around. A short time later, Adrian Marks landed his PBY a few hundred yards off. Several of the men from the group decided they would swim to the plane. Twible tried to order them to stop, arguing that it was safer to stay put and wait, but they wouldn’t listen. Among those swimming for the plane was yet another officer who’d chosen to conceal his rank, an ensign named Tom Brophy who came from a wealthy family. Brophy drowned in the attempt, one of the last to die in the water.
When a whaleboat from the USS Bassett finally pulled Harlan Twible out of the water, the fit 154-pound Annapolis graduate had been reduced to a 129-pound invalid. One sailor on the boat held him while the other cut him out of his life jacket. When the whaleboat reached the Bassett, the two sailors carried Twible up the ladder with great tenderness. Twible wobbled on his feet, held by a man on each side, as he saluted the officer of the deck and reported in, “We are the crew of the USS Indianapolis, sir.” He’d taken some shrapnel in his side when the torpedo hit, so his wounds were bandaged, and he was given a transfusion as well as water. He thanked God that he was safe and alive. Of the 325 men who had been in his group the first morning, only 171 remained.