Luck of the Toss

The simple flip of a coin between two young naval officers in Motor Torpedo boats in the South Pacific could have produced very different results for both. I won. Had I lost, I’m convinced neither of us would have survived the events that ensued, and American history would have been very different.

One of us—John F. Kennedy—proceeded to a near-fatal collision with a Japanese destroyer. He was an excellent swimmer (far better than I) and led all but two of his crew to eventual rescue. The story of the loss of his boat, PT-109, is well known; my boat, PT-IlO, was blown up later in New Guinea with a heavy loss of life. Having been in combat areas months longer than Kennedy, I had been posted stateside when my boat was lost. Kennedy would have been aboard.

In the spring of 1943 Comdr. A. R Calvert, head of PT operations in the Solomon Islands, was ordered to detach six boats and send them to New Guinea, some two thousand miles away. All six were set to depart when a Japanese bomber made a direct hit on one at a fueling dock. As luck would have it, both Kennedy’s boat and mine had just been repaired in dry dock and were available for that arduous journey.

I’m often asked what Kennedy was like in his mid-twenties. There was an unspoken snobbery among officers in the PT Navy. We divided ourselves informally into the Ivy League (grads of prestigious Eastern universities, like Harvard) and the “Weed League” (schools like my own—Georgia Tech). To me Kennedy was, on the surface, another Ivy Leaguer. But to them he was an “upstart Irishman.” His rejection by the Ivy Leaguers meant he had to find his friends elsewhere, and it seems to me that his ability to do so reflected itself in his political life and doubtless explained his broad appeal to the United States populace.

Calvert invited Kennedy and me into his tent to ask which of us wanted to go to New Guinea. We both had friends in the departing group, and there was supposed to be more action in New Guinea. When we both said we’d like to be chosen for the assignment, Calvert said we should step outside and flip a coin. I won the toss.

Our boats departed with the PT tender USS Niagara on May 22. On the morning of our second day at sea, a Mitsubishi 97 twin-engine bomber appeared overhead and dropped several bombs on the Niagara—not a direct hit, but the attack left the ship with her rudder jammed, steaming in a circle.

Less than an hour later, several Japanese bombers appeared overhead and dropped more bombs on the stricken vessel, which began to burn. The Niagara’s modest antiaircraft gun was useless, and she was loaded with aviation gasoline; the skipper quickly gave the order to abandon ship. I well recall the Japanese pilots giving us a jubilant wave before they left. We had fired our small-arms ammunition into the air hopelessly out of range.

We sank our burning ship with torpedoes before running at rather high speed back to our base on the island of Tulagi, where we got a replacement for the Niagara. We finally arrived in New Guinea a week or two late and were still operating there when we heard that Kennedy and his crew had been lost. We held a memorial service.

Of course, we were mistaken. As it happened, the official Navy record on the loss of Kennedy’s 109 on August 1, 1943, was written by a young legal naval officer named Byron White, whom Kennedy later elevated to the U.S. Supreme Court. White tells the story: “The Japanese destroyer Amigiri knifed out of the darkness at 40 knots. First believed to be another PT, the Amigiri’s two raked stacks dispelled this notion. Kennedy turned starboard, preparatory to firing torpedoes. He had scarcely turned 30 degrees in the ten seconds when the destroyer rammed and split the boat apart.” Kennedy and the other officers swam to nearby islands and were eventually rescued when natives contacted their PT base.

I am often asked, “How did a fast PT like Kennedy’s manage to get overrun by a destroyer?” My answer: “You have to have been there to know.” In the first place, our boats in the tropics grew “beards"—a speed-killing green shag on rudder and bottom. Also, Kennedy’s boat had no operational radar, and the New Guinea nights were intensely black. Because the enemy had a trick of following the wake of a boat in the phosphorescent water, we often proceeded with only one of our three engines engaged—at idling speed of less than five knots.

A few weeks before the movie PT 109 was released, Kennedy invited several of us who had known him in World War II over to the White House to see it. One former crewman was Murray Preston, a local bank executive who had been a superb seaman: he was awarded the Medal of Honor as a PT skipper in the Philippines in 1944. As we strolled away from the White House, I asked Murray if, under the same circumstances as Kennedy, he would have lost his boat. Without hesitation he replied, “Damned right.” Enough said.

—Lt. Comdr. Patrick Munroe lives in Potomac, Maryland, and is a retired White House reporter.

Thank You, Mr. Waco

Fifty years ago the first GIs arrived in England. We’ve all read of the mighty doings of the bomber boys and their little friends in the P-47s and P-SIs, but no one as far as I know has made great mention of the transports, the C-47s and the Waco CG-4a gliders that they pulled. I was a teen-ager at grammar school in Newbury, and they were our heroes.

The aerodromes seemed to spring up in western Berkshire almost overnight: Aldermaston and Harwell, both now United Kingdom atomic-energy establishments; Membury, lost under the motorway to Wales and its service area; Hampstead Norris and Welford, reverted to the farmland they once were. Only Greenham Common survives there on its plateau just south of Newbury. They were all built to the World War II standard: two or three runways, depending on the available real estate, the longest going west into the prevailing winds; the control tower; the collection of little stove-heated huts that were offices, living quarters, and hospitals; and the sand-filled firing butts—repeated many times all over the U.K.

There seemed to be no security. At Greenham the main Basingstoke road ran between hangars and runways; we kids could and did get everywhere on our bikes, and classmates kept us informed of the state of the art at the other bases too. Just a mention of “there’s a Stirling at Welford” and off we’d shoot after school, to the detriment of homework. Harwell Hampstead always had the Royal Air Force, first Ops Training Units, later Halifaxes, Stirlings, and Albemarles that towed Hamilcar and Horsa gliders. The GIs and their C-47s concentrated on the remaining bases. Suddenly they all left; the next day we heard that Operation Torch had happened in North Africa. Then for some weeks Greenham was home to wings of P-47s and P-SIs, most exciting as they calibrated their 50 calibers in the butts—providing a ready source of cordite for our experimental explosions, much better than black powder. If my kids did the half of what we got up to …

Probably the fighter wings came in to give closer support to the raids on the Atlantic coast of France; with our long runway and no obstructions, Greenham was handy for the returning B-17s in trouble too. We spent many after-school hours watching bombers with bits (so many bits) missing, belly landings, howling ambulances, and fire engines. One is not very thoughtful at fifteen.

Then our C-47s started to come back: new ones from the States and the ones from Africa that had their olive-green paint sun-scorched to a sort of purple.

Newbury racecourse had been graveled over and laid with railway lines and was a major marshaling yard. From it now came scores of flatbed trucks loaded with packing cases. Cases were split open at the northern end of the hangars to expose the nose, main body, and tail section of the CG-4a. These were assembled in the first hangar, then pushed out to meet the pair of wings from their boxes between the hangars, and the final rigging in a second hangar. Compasses were swung, and off the gliders went, behind jeeps, some to stay at Greenham, the others to be distributed to the bases nearby—a wonderful example of mass production!

We of course knew all about D-day about a week before. Those black-andwhite recognition stripes, painted on the planes but only whitewashed on the gliders—well, they were only going one way! The evening before was unforgettable to all who saw it. Just after dusk the planes and their gliders took off from all the bases around Newbury and circled and circled to take up formation—seemed like hours—and they had their nav lights on, a huge Christmas-tree effect. Remember, we’d had a complete blackout for four years and had never seen nav lights before, let alone so many. Fantastic! The rest of World War II was an anticlimax.

The leftover crates, the ones that didn’t get burned as fuel, were much in demand. Many became hen houses and garden sheds; my pal Bob’s father used his influence as the village mayor to get one of the big (fuselage) ones, and he set it up on brick piers with a door and windows, electricity, an intercom to the house, a wireless, and a gramophone. It was gang base, study, workshop, model room. A belated thank you, Mr. Waco! Each base included a “graveyard” for wrecked planes, of course, another very happy hunting ground. Those nav lights brightened up our bikes, and cable and pulleys and plywood all were put to good use. Just about every farm trailer had wheels courtesy of the CG-4as, and the landing skids made the best sleds in winter.

Are there any CGs left in museums anywhere? Have you ever flown in one? I did, once: my first flight. I said there was no security, didn’t I?

Greenham Common’s main runway was extended in the fifties to take B-47s and B-52s and tankers. It has been home to yearly Air Days. Then it gained notoriety as a NATO missile base. There was much underground building, the road through was closed, and a new bypass built. A dreadful women’s protesting camp grew up at the main entry. Then with Mr. Gorbachev the C-5as took away the missiles, and the base is another scheduled to be bereft of GIs again.

But the next time you take off from Heathrow, over all those reservoirs, and with those white knuckles, just remember that a few minutes along the way there is this nice long runway—in case you do get into trouble.

—C. P. Davies lives in Provence, France.

Mistaken Identity

The political changes of Eastern Europe in 1989 enthralled me, and I was particularly interested in what was going on in Germany, for I would be making my first trip there the following summer. To me, Germany was the embodiment of European division, a division symbolized by the Berlin Wall.

Along with ten other students from Villanova University, I was to attend a language course in 1990 in Freiburg, West Germany. One weekend was set aside for a trip to Berlin, and all of us were excited about this because we would be there the day of the Roger Waters’s concert The Wall. We spent our first afternoon in the city sleeping off the fatigue of a fourteen-hour ride in a railroad baggage car (a lot of people wanted to see The Wall concert; the only “seats” we could find were the floor of the car). Later on that night we visited the Brandenburg Gate. The Berlin Wall, which had once barred the West’s access to the monument, was already dismantled in this area of the city, the only trace a scar on the ground where it once stood.

The next morning, walking from our hotel to the Alexanderplatz, where the concert would be, I kept an eye out for the remains of the wall so that we could come back later to chip off pieces for souvenirs. About ten minutes before we reached the Alexanderplatz, I saw a graffiti-covered wall crowned with barbed wire stretching out along the road. Here, I thought, was the infamous monument that had divided Berlin for the past twenty-nine years.

The next day I led the group back to it. Since we had no hammers, the large stones littering the ground had to serve as our tools. As we pummeled the wall to secure our tokens of Berlin, other students who were watching us photographed our attack. Then, a curious thing happened …

A German security guard on the far side of the adjoining fence connected to the wall strode over to us. I thought we were going to get into trouble for breaking off pieces of the wall without permission. But he grinned and said, “This is not the Berlin Wall. The Berlin Wall is over there.” And he pointed behind us, to where the real wall was embarrassingly visible. We thanked him shamefacedly and hurried away. As we approached our true target, I looked back and realized that we had been pounding away at a wall surrounding the small back yard of an office building.

—Anthony Giacchino is in Germany on a Fulbright grant to study German history.

The Man

Stan Musial, the great St. Louis Cardinals outfielder, was close to murderous with a bat in his hand. His fellow Hall of Famer and opposing pitcher Warren Spahn said, “When Musial came up to hit, your infielders were in jeopardy.” He was known as “the Man,” a name given him by groaning Brooklyn fans convinced that whenever the Cardinals took on the Bums, Musial appeared at the plate in every pressure situation. “Oh, no. Here comes that Man again.”

But I remember him as the Man for a different reason.

Nineteen forty-six. Wrigley Field, Chicago. August. Musial and his Cards were in town to play the Cubs. The Cubs had won the pennant the year before with World War Two rejects: youngsters and might-have-beens and old guys who soon went back to running their retirement gas stations. But now the big boys were back from the war, and the Cards were playing hard for big-league stakes, trying to catch the leading Brooklyn Dodgers.

My buddies and I were there early as usual, hanging over the low wall between home and first where we could watch batting practice, pepper games —and beg for autographs. The great Enos Slaughter was playing pepper close by. “Hey, Enos! Sign my scorecard!” No response. “C’mon, Enos! What’re you, stuck up?” No response. Slaughter was a big man. Muscular. Heavy legs. Not a young man. He wouldn’t look at us. He seemed like an old man in a boy’s game (Slaughter was thirty in 1946). He was there for the money, nothing else. Signing autographs wouldn’t get him a World Series check, and he wouldn’t even look around. We got on him with the razz. We started to rhyme Enos with the only rhyme we could think of. It became a chant. Eleven-year-old kids acting stupid. He never looked our way.

But one guy did. And he walked over to us. We knew who he was, and we shut up. It was Stan Musial. He wasn’t as big as Slaughter, but to me he was bigger than God. When he spoke, his voice was as quiet as a man come to pay his respects.

“You boys shouldn’t be yelling at Mr. Slaughter that way. Mr. Slaughter is fighting for a pennant. He’s very tired. We’re all very tired, and we have a lot of work to do. Mr. Slaughter is trying to play baseball. He doesn’t have time to sign for everybody. You boys are fans, you should be able to understand that. Now, if you want an autograph, maybe I could sign one for you. My name is Stan Musial, and I could put that on your scorecards for you, if that would be all right.” It was all right. It was more than all right. It was the Tabernacle. I had Billy Nicholson’s autograph. He led the league in homers in 1943-44. I had Phil Cavaretta’s autograph. He was batting champ in 1945.1 had a lot of names on a lot of pieces of paper. None came close to Stan Musial.

The Cardinals finally beat the Dodgers. Then they beat the Boston Red Sox in the World Series. Slaughter made a throw that’s still shown on film clips of “Great Moments,” and his heavy old legs beat Johnny Pesky’s throw to the plate in what should probably be called “Greater Moments.” Musial did well too. Musial always did well. But it isn’t his play I remember so much now. Now, forty-six years later, that’s reduced to statistics on a cold page. His generous gesture, though, his gesture and the warmth of his words, remain vivid.

—Tom Bohnen is trying to get a majorleague baseball franchise for his town, Mad River, California (pop. 35).

Breaking the Cycle

About one week after the rebellion and looting that took place in South-Central Los Angeles as a result of the Rodney King verdict, I was watching the news when a young man was handcuffed and placed in a police car. The announcer said, “The son of slain Black Panther leader Fred Hampton has been arrested on charges of looting in last week’s riots.” For a quick moment my mind rocked. The son of Fred Hampton living and looting in SouthCentral L.A. How could this be? How is it that of all the people rebelling, the police were instantly able to pick out the son of Fred Hampton? I relived the past anger that seems constantly to be at the forefront of black people’s lives. Will society ever wake up? Will racism and inequality ever be abandoned? In the brief moment the son of Fred Hampton appeared on my television screen, I saw him as a nice-looking, angry black man and I wondered was he like his charismatic father? Did he stand for revolution? Did he hope to help the people? What has he been doing all these years? Questions I might never have answers to, yet, 1 will always wonder …

On December 4, 1969, Fred Hampton and his associate Mark Clark were slain execution-style in Chicago in a police raid dispatched by Cook County State’s Attorney Edward Hanrahan. I was a sophomore in a high school near there at the time. I recall entering their West Side apartment where the door, walls, windows, and mattresses were riddled with bullets and soaked with blood. I can remember my outrage and the outrage of my peers. In this case, as in the Rodney King trial, the policemen were tried by a jury with no black members and to this day no one has been held responsible for the deaths of two African-American men.

Twenty months before the Fred Hampton and Mark Clark raid, on April 4, 1968, in Memphis, Tennessee, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was shot to death. At that time, because of all the same pressures and frustrations, reasons and excuses, involved in the rebellion in South-Central L.A., we too reacted. I recall a long line of my high school peers running, screaming, looting, damaging buildings down Eightyseventh Street on Chicago’s South Side. Many of those buildings stayed boarded up for years. I was among them and I too looted and destroyed and wanted badly to hurt anyone who dared to be white and in our path at that moment. Most of us from the 1968-69 era are now adults and parents. What legacy have we left for our children to follow? And what contribution could I make to end this perpetual cycle of negativity and destruction?

As I watched the rioting and looting from my safe home in Chicago, Illinois, during the week of April 29,1 felt numb, almost unconnected to the events. I understood why it was happening, but I felt too helpless and ineffective to do anything about it. In the weeks since, I have continued to read about those who were there and were hurt financially or physically, those who watched and ran to help clean up, offer food, friendship, whatever. I wanted to try to understand and learn because something was missing. Had I grown to be a working, struggling, credit-card-carrying adult whose passion and compassion were left behind in the sixties and seventies? I too needed to know “What can I do?” Yes, even from my home far removed from the immediate moment. But what can I offer that will have a lasting impact? What gesture will make a difference to the future so that this cycle is not repeated and 1 don’t have to turn on my television when I’m fifty or sixty and see my children looting, damaging property, being beaten? What small gesture?

The answer came as I talked with my two sons, ages thirteen and ten. We discussed the Rodney King verdict, the jurors, the rebellion in L.A. I was very proud of my sons’ responses, their ability to articulate what they saw and heard and how it made them feel and think. My thirteen-year-old at first thought the people accused of beating the white taxi driver should be acquitted just as the four policemen in the Rodney King beating were acquitted. But as we discussed right and wrong, fair and unfair, cause and effect, he began to realize that was not necessarily the answer either. I shared with them the experience of my own rebellion after the death of Martin Luther King and tried to help them see the cycle, the connection that must be broken. We discussed the responsibility of each human being to make the correct choices for his life. I told my sons that as human beings we are all responsible for what happens in our homes, our neighborhoods, our communities, our world until the day we die. And I asked them to think about ways they could have handled their anger and frustration at a society that always seems to look in the other direction when it comes to us—African-Americans. I recognized that I may not be able to fly to L.A. to help the cleanup crews, and I am unable to send cash. But I can educate my sons and my three-year-old daughter so they understand the necessity of making correct choices. So they are never left feeling hopeless or helpless. So they are capable people who contribute to our society and help others do the same through their example. Perhaps, in this way, I can correct my own past error and shape a more positive future.

—Penda Benson-Davis is a housewife, mother of three, and a freelance writer.