More Fight On!
Stories
By Sam Gipp
Smashwords Edition Copyright ©2010 by Sam Gipp
No part of this book may be reproduced either in printed form, electronically or by any other means without the express written permission of the author. Said letter of permission must be displayed at the front of any electronically reproduced file.
(Think about it! You spend years writing a book and thousands of dollars to have it printed. You then rent warehouse space for them until they’re sold. Then somebody puts it on the Internet and it gets copied free of charge. It’s not a question of getting rich! If the books don’t turn a profit, no more books can be written and all the books are rotting in some warehouse.)
Original Copyright © 2008 Samuel C. Gipp
ISBN—978-1-890120-82-5
Check out: http://www.daystarpublishing.com
Books by this Author
* Fight On!
* The Answer Book
* An Understandable History of the Bible
* A Practical and Theological Study of The Gospel of John
* A Practical and Theological Study of The Book of Acts
* Living With Pain
* Answers To the Ravings of a Mad Plunger
* Job
* Reading and Understanding the Variations Between the Critical Apparatuses of Nestle’s 25th and 26th Editions of the Novum Testamentum-Graece
* How To Minister To Youth
* Selected Sermons (Vol. 1—10)
* Life After Y2K
* For His Pleasure
* Character Studies in the Old Testament
* How To Get Your Book Published
* The Geneva Bible, The Trojan Horse
* The Reintroduction of Textus Receptus Readings in the 26th edition & Beyond of the Nestle/Aland Novum Testamentum—Graece
* Valiant For the Truth (Christian School materials)
Table of Contents
Taking Care of the One He Loved
“Let’s Get Out There and Save Her!”
Fire, Poison Gas and High Seas
“I Didn’t Have Time to Feel Sorry for Myself.”
The Ultimate Emergency Locator Transmitter
Five Years Stranded on an Island
Savage Attack on Savage Attackers
Fifty-four Days on the Mountain
You’re Only Hopeless When You’re Hopeless
Five Months Adrift in the Arctic
A Tea Kettle, a Pistol and a Good Man
Lost His Glasses But Not His Head
“We’ve Got To Get To Those Men!”
The Cannon That Changed History
Because She Didn’t Have Her Purse
Pushing Himself Beyond His Fear
Only One Hundred and Thirty-Two
We All Appreciate Johnnie Frye’s Friend
“Dear companions, every hope has vanished…”
Sometimes You’ve Just Got to Laugh
The Old Preacher’s Famous Night
“Time and again during the course of that day…”
DEDICATED to anyone who has been overwhelmed by the circumstances of life and is looking for something to keep them going. With all my heart I hope this book will be a help to you.
As stated earlier in Fight On!, there are a few parameters to stories that appear in this book.
I have no desire to trumpet the brave feats of our enemies. I will leave that to the News Media.
I do not wish to dwell on the Civil War. There were brave men on both sides of that conflict. Whenever it is referred to in this volume it will be to testify to generic bravery, (such as the first story in this book), rather than brother-against-brother.
I never cease to be impressed with the bravery of some men, in general, and Americans, in particular.
I hope these stories will be as inspiring to you as they were to me.
In August of 1973 I broke my neck in a fall. Unfortunately, my doctor never looked at my X-rays so I was dismissed from the hospital just four days after the accident. The fracture wasn’t discovered until November. At that time I had C6 and C7, the bottom two vertebra in my neck, fused together.
It wasn’t long before I realized something was wrong. Having waited almost three months to have the fusion had apparently caused permanent problems in my neck, constant pain was my life’s companion. The neck continued to deteriorate over the years resulting in the collapse of C4 and C5. My hands felt like the bones were crushed and my arms felt like they had been skinned. Headaches and neck pain were the norm.
I cannot tell you how sad it is that the Bible has been shouldered out of American society. In years gone by even nonChristians appreciated and benefitted from its wisdom and inspiration. Today our country needs both of those attributes desperately. I read my Bible daily. Also, over the years I have drifted away from fiction (i.e. the evil villain is going to destroy the world and the lone, brave hero will stop him…with one second left!) The situations of real life are beyond fiction. I confess I have been greatly encouraged by the perseverance of ordinary people who have been thrust into extraordinary circumstances.
I put out a semi-monthly newsletter and took to sharing a brief story with my readers under the byline, “Fight On!” But, I was puzzled when I encountered stories a bit too long to put in my letter. Thus, the first book, Fight On!, was born.
Countless people have contacted me to tell me that Fight On! was a blessing and encouragement to them. Since I am always reading, a second volume of stories was a natural result. I hope this volume will be a help to you.
By the way, in July of 2008, I had surgery that fused C4 -C7. My arms and hands are pain-free!
The LORD is a man of war: the LORD is his name.
—Exodus 15:3
DURING a Civil War naval engagement, the Union gunboat, Valley City, was hit and a fire ignited near the powder magazine. Seaman John Davis, quarter gunner on the vessel, saw an open barrel of gun powder with sparks and embers falling nearer and nearer to it. An explosion was imminent. But no explosion came. The fast thinking Davis ran over and sat on the open top of the barrel. Sparks and burning cinders rained down on the unmoving sailor as he stubbornly remained in place. Smoke rose from numerous spots on his shirt and trousers where embers burned through the material and into Davis’ flesh. Exposed flesh blackened and curled, but the resolute seaman refuse to budge. Finally, the fire was extinguished and Davis, severely burned, was taken away and cared for. His quick thinking and selfless determination had saved the ship. He was awarded the Medal of Honor. Fight on!
CAPTAIN Miles McTernan was on his 121st mission on January 28,1973, when the B-52 he was navigator on was rocked by a SAM missile over Vietnam. Two engines were knocked out as well as the hydraulic and electrical systems being badly damaged. The ship was going down. At 10,000 feet over the South China Sea, the aircraft commander set the controls for a gradual descent and ordered the crew to eject. Capt. McTernan, along with the others, did so. The pilot checked the aircraft to see if everyone had ejected. All stations were empty so he himself bailed out. But the airplane wasn’t empty. Capt. McTernan’s seat, which ejected downward, had misfired and only dropped several feet below the flight deck. His position appeared empty but he was now trapped in the bowels of the dying airplane.
Although alone, and jammed in his damaged ejection seat Capt. McTernan was determined not to go down with the ship. For minutes that seemed like hours, McTernan struggled to free himself as the plane continued its descent to the sea. Finally, forced to abandon his survival pack, he managed to climb back up to the flight deck and dive out through an open hatch into the night air before the B-52 impacted the water.
Capt. McTernan and the rest of the crew were rescued the following day. Fight on!
ON April 16, 1947, when the Grandcamp exploded in the Texas City, Texas harbor, it blew the 438 foot long High Flyer, which was loaded with 961 tons of ammonium nitrate, sideways against another Liberty ship, the Wilson B. Keene. The High Flyer caught fire but there were no firemen to fight the blaze, many having died in the initial explosion. Now the High Flyer was in danger of exploding at any moment and had to be pulled from the harbor before that happened.
Employees of the Bay Towing Company volunteered to go in and tow the burning ship out to sea. The tugs Guyton, Albatross, Clark and Miraflores were sent in to tow the damaged ship out into the gulf. It was almost 12 hours after the original explosion that the four tugs cruised slowly into a harbor filled with chemical sludge, burning wreckage and dead bodies. By now embers were rising from the broken holds of the HighFlyer and raining down on the men on the decks of the tugs. It was clear that the ship could go at any time. Men from the Albatross boarded the burning ship, cut away the anchor chain and attached a tow line to the tugs. Engines roared and the ship slowly began to move. The ship slid silently for about 50 feet and then slammed to a halt and refused to budge. All efforts to dislodge the ship failed. There were still men aboard the Flyer. There was no time to waste getting them off. The captain of the Guyton, refusing to leave them, rammed the bow of his tug against the burning ship so the men could jump onto its deck. Then all the tugs opened their throttles wide and made for the channel. It was about 1 AM.
At 1:10 AM, April 17, the High Flyer exploded. The column of flame reached over 3,000 feet into the sky. The explosion ignited four 80,000 barrel oil tanks at the Humble Refinery and sent debris raining down on the already torn town of Texas City.
Five hundred and eighty-one people died that day due to the explosion of these two ships. But, because of the selfless courage of the captain of a lowly tug boat none of the men put aboard the High Flyer were among them. Fight on!
TODAY the sons of the wealthy are famous for their extravagance, party life-style and irreverence, but certainly not for their military prowess or patriotism. Not so for a group of elite young men from Yale University during the First World War.
The Yale aeronautical club of the early Twentieth Century was a Who’s Who of the sons of the rich and famous. Outlandish, exuberant, dashing, these sons of the richest of American industrialists lived a gaudy life-style full of laughter and flash. But none of them considered himself above the patriotic duty: That a man should be willing to fight and die for his country.
David Ingalls, the Yale hockey star, became the Navy’s only ace of WWI and eventually ended up Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Air during the Hoover Administration.
Robert Lovett flew missions with British bombers. Under Franklin D. Roosevelt he was Assistant Secretary of the Army for Air and master-minded the American strategic bombing of Germany during WWII.
Yale’s dashing football star, Artemis “Di” Gates, was recommended for the Medal of Honor for landing his flying boat to rescue two downed squadron personnel. As enemy ships fired at his aircraft, he fearlessly taxied to the two men, had them plucked from the waves and then gunned his engines and took off. He was later shot down and captured. He made three failed attempts to escape. He later became Assistant Secretary of the Navy under FDR. Fight on!
HIS father didn’t love him. He joined the Army Air Corps in 1917. He got his wings March 5, 1918, but was too late to fight in World War I. He crashed his first plane in 1919. He wrecked almost a dozen more times but always managed to walk away from them. He finally left the Army Air Corps having never flown a combat mission, but he was called to active duty when World War II began. Finally, on April 18, 1942, at age 45, after twenty-five years of waiting, he flew his first combat mission for the Army Air Corps…from an aircraft carrier! That mission was a bombing raid over Tokyo, Japan. His name was Jimmy Doolittle. He later commanded the 12th Air Force in England. Fight on!
WHENEVER man makes an “absolute” statement, God always seems ready to rise to the challenge. The Iroquois Theater was called “Absolutely Fireproof,” yet on December 30, 1903, it burned, with the loss of 602 people.
The then new City Hall building of San Francisco was proclaimed “Indestructible,” but, after the earthquake of April 18, 1906, only its dome remained standing and that soon came down.
As the above, the Titanic was called “Unsinkable.” It is said that someone claimed, “Even God couldn’t sink it.” God was up to the challenge and 1,500 people paid with their lives on April, 15, 1912.
Although the California, 10 miles away, was in sight of the Titanic and watching her distress flares, the captain thought they were fireworks and never responded. It was up to another ship to play the hero that night.
When the Carpathia, 60 miles away, received the Titanic’s distress call, her captain, a Christian, told his engineers to give him “everything that they had.” To increase power to the turbines, he diverted the steam from the heating system. Then, at breakneck speed, he plunged into the night and directly into the same ice field that had claimed the Titanic. The Carpathia’s decks vibrated with the intensity of its overworked engines as its captain scanned the dark waters ahead for icebergs. Finally, four hours later, she arrived and took on all of the Titanic’s survivors. Fight on!
Taking Care of the One He Loved
ON April 3, 1974, a devastating tornado struck Xenia, Ohio, killing 33 people, injuring 1,600 others and destroying1,300 buildings. Because of the stubborn efforts of Ken Shields, the death toll was not 34.
The twister slammed into the Shield house and totally destroyed it. Slowly Ken dug his way out of the wreckage and then began a methodical search that one-by-one freed his basically uninjured children. When he discovered his wife, Pam, the news was not as good.
Ken found his wife lying helplessly in a pool of her own blood with a piece of wood driven into her neck. Tenderly he picked her up and carried her to the family car to take her to the hospital. But when he got to the car he found that, due to the low air pressure within the tornado, all four tires had exploded. Since this was the woman he loved, he would not be stopped. He gently laid Pam in the car and started out over the debris-laden streets on four flat tires. As the car bucked and bumped along, the tires tore off the rims one-by-one. Desperately trying to keep the car moving, while restraining Pam from removing the wood from her neck, Ken bumped on until a police car stopped him to see why he was driving without tires. Pam was quickly loaded into the cruiser and rushed to the hospital. Her life was saved by the man who loved her too much to be stopped by four flats tires. Fight on!
THERE were only 12 Army Special Forces soldiers in the Vietnamese village of Nam Dong on the night of July 5, 1964, when it was attacked by an overwhelming number of Viet Cong guerillas. The A-Team leader was 30 year old Captain Roger Donlon. His team sergeant was 45 year old Gabriel “Pop” Alamo, a veteran of World War II. The camp was training about 300 irregular Vietnamese troops. At about 2:30 AM a Viet Cong force of about 900 men, aided by over 100 spies among the camp’s 300 trainees, struck the Special Forces camp. As Capt. Donlon headed for a mortar pit, he was wounded by an enemy mortar round that blew off one of his shoes. As he prepared to help the crew, another round hit, wounding him in the left arm, ripping his stomach open and blowing away his other shoe. Nevertheless, Donlon crawled to another mortar pit in which all the men had been wounded. He provided covering fire as they pulled back. He had to leave the body of Sgt. Alamo. Capt. Donlon then tore up his shirt to bandage two wounded men and stuffed the rest in his abdomen to help hold in his intestines. He then reestablished the mortar, crawled back to the abandoned pit for ammunition while being wounded again in the leg by a grenade. In spite of his wounds, Donlon directed the camp’s defense for five hours, being further wounded in the face, leg and his entire body. Finally, dawn, and reinforcements came; the camp had held. Capt. Donlon lived to finish his tour and to ultimately retire from the Army as a colonel. But first he received the first Medal of Honor awarded in Vietnam. Fight on!
I love the man who dares to face defeat And risks a conflict with heroic heart; I love the man who bravely does his part Where right and wrong in bloody battle meet.
When bugles blown by cowards sound retreat, I love the man who grasps his sword again And sets himself to lead his fellow-men Far forward through battle's din and heat.
For he who joins the issue of life's field Must fully know the hazard of the fray, And dare to venture ere he hope to win; Must choose the risk and then refuse to yield Until the sunset's light shall close the day And God's great city lets the victor in.
—Ozora S. Davis
HOW gallant can one man be? Sgt. William Jasper was definitely a unique individual. He retrieved the fallen flag at Fort Moultrie, helped free a dozen colonial prisoners and then repeated his courageous action with the flag at the battle for Savannah, Georgia, where, due to the poor leadership of a French commanding officer, 1,200 French and American soldiers were killed before retreat was sounded.
Three times the American flagstaff was shot down by British fire. Three times Sgt. Jasper rushed to the fallen colors and raised them defiantly. But when retreat was sounded, the flag was abandoned. It was now closer to the advancing British than to the American lines. Sgt. Jasper could not bear the thought of his flag falling to the enemy. “They shall never fall into British hands, not while I am alive!” he proclaimed and then charged to their rescue. Bullets kicked up dirt clouds at his feet as he darted across the battlefield. Untouched, he reached the flag and, as his hands tore it from the staff, he was shot through the lungs. Bleeding terribly he clutched the flag to his chest, staggered back to his retreating lines and passed it to his commanding officer, stating, “I believe I have got my furlough.” Confused, the officer asked to where he was being furloughed.
“To go hometo Heaven.”
The dying man asked his commander to give his sword to his father. “Tell him I have never dishonored it…”
That evening Sgt. Jasper got his furlough. Fight on!
SAO PAULO is Brazil’s largest city. In 1974, the 25 story Joelma Building was one of its newest buildings. On February 1, 1974, it became the site of one of Brazil’s greatest tragedies.
Six hundred and fifty people were in the building that day when a fire broke out on the eleventh floor. Those below the fire quickly escaped. But 350 people were cut off above the blaze as it traveled up the structure. Many tried dashing down the stairwells through the flames only to be overcome and die. Others huddled on the roof, begging circling helicopters to rescue them though the heat was so intense that they could not land. While spectators looked on in horror, many victims, trapped by the flames, chose to leap to their deaths rather than burn. All told, 227 people were to die in the conflagration.
Worst of all was the discovery that the fire department was ill-prepared to fight a blaze in a modern skyscraper. Their ladders weren’t long enough nor their hoses powerful enough to reach the upper floors. They were reduced to holding up signs that assured the victims, “Courage, we are with you.”
But not all firemen were thwarted. Some entered adjoining buildings and shot lines over to the burning structure. Then they crossed the thin strand and with hanging on to their backs, hauled individuals to safety,.
Fireman Jose' Rufino was just making a return trip with a man desperately gripping his back when, many floors above him, a hopeless victim cast himself out into eternity to avoid being incinerated. The falling man plummeted right into Rufino and his package and then bounced off and continued his fall. The grip of the man on Rufino’s back was broken and he too fell to his death. Rufino clung desperately to the tiny rope trying to keep from becoming the third victim of the incident. Finally, he steadied himself and made his way to safety. After he was checked over, he was back on the rope, bringing helpless passengers to safety. Eighteen times Jose' Rufino made that trip successfully. Fight on!
KELLOGG, Idaho, was the site of a tragic fire in one of its silver mines in 1972. The mine descended almost a mile underground and was a sprawling entity that had been likened to a huge underground apartment house.
On May 2, 700 feet below the surface, a fire started by spontaneous combustion filled the mine shafts with deadly smoke. While the fire raged, rescue teams descended into the depths of the mine looking for survivors but returning only with bodies. All told, 91 men died in the accident; 93 were missing.
When the smoke first filled the shafts, Tom Wilkenson and Tom Flory and seven other miners tried to get out but were trapped below due to inoperable elevators. They knew they had only one hope—to go deeper into the mine. They had been told that, in the event of a fire, fresh air would be pumped into the lowest portions. It was.
The nine men struggled through the heat, smoke and deadly carbon monoxide, racing downward, hoping to reach good air before they were asphyxiated.
One Tom fell and the other dragged him to the safety of a lower shaft 4,800 feet below the surface. Having secured his co-worker, he then stumbled back for the others. But, one-byone, he found only seven bodies. He then returned to his partner and waited. A day passed. Then two. Three. Then four. The lights on their helmets finally faded and died. The men groped in the darkness and found other miners’ lunch pails and fed themselves in the inky blackness. Five days, then six. After a week, the two tired, desperate men heard the voices of a search party looking for the last two bodies of the 93 miners who had been trapped by the fire. To their shock and joy they found them alive! The men were sent to the surface in a rescue capsule to the delight of their families and fellow workers. They were the only two survivors. Refusing to give up, they had struggled on through smoke, heat and darkness as their lungs cried for air until they had finally made it to a safe haven deep beneath the surface of the earth. Fight on!
ROBLEY D. Evans lied. He was only 13 years old but said he was older and thus secured an appointment to the Naval Academy. Due to the Civil War, he graduated early and was commissioned an acting ensign in 1863.
On January15, 1865, while leading a U.S. Marine assault on Fort Fisher, Evans was shot and wounded four times in one foot and in both legs. These were the days when the standard rule for men wounded by the huge 58 caliber bullets of that era was, “If it’s in an arm or leg, cut it off. If it’s in the body, let him alone, he’s gonna die.”
Miraculously, young Evans did not lose his legs. But due to these wounds, he was medically discharged from the Navy. Since serving in the Navy was all Evans loved, all he lived for, he appealed his discharge to Congress and, amazingly, was reinstated.
The Civil War was over but the tenacious young Evans’ naval career was not. July of 1898 found him in the harbor of Santiago, Cuba, commanding the battleship, Iowa, as it fired the first shots at the Spanish fleet in the battle for that harbor.
Robley Evans still wasn’t finished. In 1906 he commanded the historic ‘round—the—world cruise of the “Great White Fleet.”
He saw all this action because years earlier he had refused to accept the turn of events from wounds received in battle. Fight on!
Stubborn Defender
AL Schmid was with a three man machine gun crew guarding against a Japanese counterattack as the Marines tried to consolidate their foothold on Guadalcanal in 1942. His position faced the most likely approach across the Tenaru River. He had contracted blood poisoning and had been ordered out of the area to a hospital for treatment. But when the Japanese attack was imminent he begged to return to his outfit for one more night. That night over 800 Japanese soldiers swarmed across the river. One of his fellow machine gunners was killed. The other was wounded. For hours through the night, Schmid loaded and fired the gun alone. Shrapnel punctured the water jacket on his gun but Schmid kept fighting with the barrel glowing. Suddenly, a grenade exploded and dropped him. Taken for dead he was laid with other bodies to be buried. He managed to feebly wiggle his hand and was taken to a hospital ship. He lost an eye but recovered from his wounds. Fight on!
IT was a rainy April morning in 1951 when Melvin J. Shadduck’s observation plane entered a narrow North Korean valley, never to leave it. The little plane was rocked by small arms fire and, try to save it as he might, Shadduck was forced to crash land, injuring an arm. He was immediately surrounded by Chinese Communist soldiers and taken prisoner. But Shadduck had no intention of remaining a guest of the Chinese Communists. He quickly attempted an escape and was just as quickly recaptured. He was then placed with five other POW’s and marched north. They were headed for China. One of the wounded soldiers died on the way. Shadduck knew they might never be released if they crossed into China. (Korean War prisoners who were taken to China were never released when the war ended.) Shadduck was the ranking officer and planned another escape. He promised the other sickly prisoners that if he succeeded he would organize a mission to rescue them. One night he silently slipped out of the camp and moved south, eventually arriving at the Imjin River. Wide and turbulent, it presented quite an obstacle. He followed the northern bank looking for a way to cross and almost walked into a North Korean outpost. He cautiously skirted this and continued on. He found a small boat and attempted a crossing but the wild river drove him back to the northern shore. Suddenly he happened upon a small Korean boy whose family graciously fed him and helped him plan his move south. On the set day, Shadduck and the lad started out and, evading North Korean patrols, finally ran into United Nations’ troops on patrol.
Back at the UN camp, Shadduck informed them of the remaining prisoners and urged an immediate rescue mission. An Army colonel jumped at the idea and soon thereafter an armored assault force moved out with Shadduck as their guide. They crossed enemy lines and assaulted the prison camp, scattering its defenders. Then they called in helicopters to remove those too weak to travel, turned around and headed home with the rest. Melvin Shadduck had kept his word. Fight on!
ON May 8, 1902, Mt. Pelee, on the Caribbean island of Martinique, exploded. The coastal town of St. Pierre lay in its path. Rather than lava, Mt. Pelee engulfed the town of 30,000 people with a searing cloud of ash with a temperature of over 2000 degrees. Those who were not burned to death died from breathing the super-heated air. The town was wiped off the map.
Leon Compere-Leandre, a 28 year old shoemaker, was sitting on his porch when the blast hit. Feeling his flesh sizzling, he fought his way up the steps, into the house and fell onto a table. Others, horribly burned, staggered in, fell on the floor around him and died. Leandre felt the urge to fall to the floor and let death take him, but instead he staggered into his room and threw himself onto his bed, buried his face in his pillow and waited for death as the ground shook the house violently. Apparently that action prevented his lungs from being fatally seared and he survived. He was one of the only two survivors out of the town’s 30,000 inhabitants. Fight on!
FRED West was with a crew that was blasting rightof-ways through Sequoia National Park in August, 1930. A few days into that month, a rock thrown by a dynamite blast struck him in the hip. It appeared that no damage had been done to him.
On August 7, West lit a fuse that would ignite twelve huge explosive charges. Then, as he was about to run to safety, he was suddenly struck with paralysis and fell helpless, directly in the path of the explosions. The next few seconds would be his last. But from a distance, one of West’s co-workers, Marvin Murphy, couldn’t stand by and watch him die. With the fuse burned beyond reach, Murphy left the safety of his position and sprinted to the helpless man. As the fire reached the charges, Murphy dragged West to the safety of some nearby abutments as 12 blasts resounded. Rocks and rubble pelted the area but West and his rescuer were safe. West recovered from the illness. Fight on!
In God have I put my trust: I will not be afraid what man can do unto me.
—Psalm 56:11
ON September 11, 2001, as Flight 93 winged its way toward a diabolical appointment with the Capitol Building in Washington, D.C., various passengers manned their cell phones and called those they loved. Jeremy Glick called his wife, Lyz. They discussed
Jeremy’s plight and its probable outcome. As they were speaking, Todd Beamer and other passengers began to formulate a plan to rush the highjackers. They decided to take a vote. “What do you think we should do?” Jeremy quizzed his wife, realizing the most likely outcome was for the airplane to crash. The mother of their three month old baby daughter never hesitated. “Go for it!”
They did. They foiled the highjackers at the cost of their own lives, and the brave widow knows her man had a part in defending their country. Fight on!
“Let’s Get Out There and Save Her!”
THE keel for the U S S Benjamin Franklin was laid December 7, 1942, one year after the Japanese sneak attack on Pearl Harbor. She was launched October 14, 1943, and sent to the Pacific to avenge that attack. She carried a crew of 2,500 men.
On October 29, 1944, while in the Leyte Gulf after the big Japanese attack on the landing fleet there, the Franklin was subject to the first Kamikaze attack of the war. A Japanese Zeke dove out of the clouds and right into the flight deck. The explosion killed 54 sailors and tore a thirty foot hole in the deck. Fires raged below, and on, the flight deck. Twenty minutes after the attack gasoline fumes exploded below deck causing more even damage. Water from the fire fighting efforts was two feet deep on the lower decks causing the Franklin to list dangerously to starboard.
Finally the fires were extinguished, but damage was too extensive to be repaired in the South Pacific, so “Big Ben” had to sail to Bremerton, Washington, for repairs. She arrived in late November, 1944, was overhauled and sailed again on January 31, 1945. She arrived at Pearl Harbor on February 12 ans returned to action March 3, 1945.
Franklin was made the flagship of Task Force 58-2 which was conducting air operation off the very shores of Japan. At 7:05AM March 19, 1945, as she was in the process of launching her planes just sixty miles off the Japanese coast, a twin engine Japanese bomber suddenly dove from the clouds and dropped two 500 lb. bombs directly onto the flight deck. The first blew the forward aircraft elevator high into the sky and dropped it askew back into its opening in the flight deck. Burning aviation gas below and on deck set aircraft to exploding. Next, the ready ammunition lockers blew up. Soon 40,000 gallons of gas were burning all over the ship. The burning fuel formed a fiery “water fall” cascading from within the ship into the sea. Men were incinerated. In the midst of this floating “Hell”, Fire Marshall Stan Graham, called his desperate men together, “Boys, we got pressure on the lines, we got hoses, let’s get out there and save her!”
At 7:25, just 20 minutes after the attack, damage was so bad and fires so out of control that Admiral Ralph Davison advised the ship’s captain, Leslie Gehres, to abandon ship. As shells exploded and smoke rose a mile into the sky, Captain Gehres chose to try to save his grievously wounded ship. He knew if he abandoned ship the Franklin would then be sunk by torpedoes from U. S. ships. He feared there were men trapped below who would go down with it. (He was proven right. Five men were cut off in the aft of the ship and weren’t rescued until 17 hours after the attack. They would have gone down with it had it been abandoned.)
Below deck, hundreds of men were trapped by the flames. They dogged-down hatches and prayed for rescue as the ship was rocked by the explosion of live bombs cooking off. Once again in her short life, the Franklin found herself listing hazardously to starboard. Number One Fireroom went offline. Fires raged the entire length of the ship. The ship’s speed dropped to 8 knots as the engine room had to be abandoned. Finally she lay dead in the water. It seemed the end was near for Big Ben.
But due to the valiant efforts of the crew, the hanger deck fires were almost under control by noon and men fought their way back toward the engineering spaces to try to relight the boilers and get the ship underway. While these efforts were going on another Japanese bomber suddenly dropped from the clouds and turned towards the Franklin. Every ship in the area fired at the invader. Aboard the Franklin, the only functioning quad 40mm gun hammered away pitifully at the incoming bomber. Just before the plane was shot from the sky it released a lone 500 lb. bomb toward the embattled ship. Every eye watched as the bomb descended. Every man held his breath—praying. They watched as the bomb plunged into the water just 200 yards from the Franklin.
By 2 PM the Franklin was under tow, but her speed was only 3½ knots. At that rate the big ship would take over a week to escape Japanese waters. Long before that happened Japanese planes would hurt her down and sink her.
While firemen gained the upper hand on the flames above deck, engineers were having some success of their own below. Lights flickered back on and by midnight steam was up in Fireroom Number 3. By 10 AM on the 20th Big Ben was making 15 knots on her own.
All day long Japanese planes searched for the ship in hopes of finishing her off. Then at 2:30 PM they found her. Enemy planes dove toward the Franklin as the guns of the accompanying warships swatted them down. Then one lone plane got through. As he lined up on his bomb run, the ship’s lone quad 40 and a few 20mm guns literally exploded into action. So startled was the enemy pilot that he hauled back on the stick just as he released his bomb and it missed the ship by less than 100 feet.
All day long the Japanese swarmed above the stricken ship while U.S. Navy Hellcats fought them off. Meanwhile, engineers coaxed enough power out of her two (of four) firerooms to push her up to 20 knots.
On March 25,1945, the U S S Franklin, her hull blackened by flames, dropped anchor in Ultihi harbor for a very temporary respite. The next morning she departed for Pearl Harbor, arriving there on April 3, just one short but brutal month after she had left. Her journey was not over. After five days of temporary repair, she departed Pearl, transited the Panama Canal and headed up the East Coast for the repair facility at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Twenty-seven days later, on April 30 she, with all hands at salute, passed the Statue of Liberty. Her decks were a shambles. Her hull was rusty-red where the paint had been burned off. She had lost 724 sailors from her near fatal attack. But “Big Ben” was home at last.
She was repaired. But it was too late for the gallant ship to reenter the war, so, Big Ben was retired. In her short career she had sunk 160 ships, downed 338 enemy aircraft and launched 3,971 air sorties. The U S S Franklin was in service less than two years but in that short period of time she became the most decorated ship in U.S. Naval history. Fight on!
“Gold is good in its place; but, loving, brave, patriotic men are better than gold.”
—Abraham Lincoln
Outnumbered One to Three
IN 1891 Mexico was experiencing the Garza rebellion, an attempt to overthrow the government of Mexican President Diaz. Mexican revolutionaries, while running from their own authorities, often crossed into Texas to evade capture.
On December 31, 1891, Private Allen Walker of the 3rd U.S. Cavalry was delivering dispatches between two posts when he happened upon three armed Mexicans, also on horseback. Knowing they were defying the laws of both countries, and not caring that he was outnumbered, Pvt. Walker said to himself, “These fellows may trifle with the laws of their own country, but by God they won’t do it with mine!” The enraged trooper dashed up to the three and demanded their surrender. In an instant the shooting commenced and soon one Mexican was captured and another wounded, while the third had fled. The three had been outnumbered by the one.
But that’s not the end of the story. Pvt. Walker’s prisoners had papers on them that detailed plans for an invasion of the United States, an invasion which his courageous action had prevented. Fight on!
REVOLUTIONS were plentiful in Honduras in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. On April 14, 1897, revolutionaries had commandeered a train on a 40 mile long railroad that served the banana plantations. They gave the engineer a choice: He was free to remain on the train and operate it for them or he was free to be shot. He chose the former.
Soon the train was halted at a trestle by a force of federal troops. As the two forces battled from opposite ends of the trestle, the federales launched an assault across it. Just as the rebels were about to be overrun, the newly appointed rebel train engineer dashed from the engine, picked up a rifle and blazed away at the Honduran army troops with such hot and accurate fire that the attack was broken and the federales fled. Thus, the Battle of Laguna Trestle ended, but the bizarre military career of Leon “Lee” Christmas began.
Lee Christmas, born in New Orleans, had been an engineer in the United States. His career ended when he failed a newly instituted color blindness test. He heard railroading jobs were available in Central America and landed in Honduras in November of 1894. If it were not for the episode at Laguna trestle three years later, he may have finished his life as an anonymous railroad engineer, carrying bananas across Honduras. But due to his performance in that battle, in 1902 Honduran President, Terrencio Sierra, appointed Christmas, who had become somewhat of a legend for the Laguna trestle affair and for having survived a shotgun blast to the chest two years later, as a colonel and chief of police in the capital city of Tegucigalpa. Unfortunately, Sierra treacherously backed out on an agreement to turn the presidency over to Manuel Bonilla. So Christmas and his entire 185 man police force joined Bonilla and the Revolution of 1903 was on!
During an attack on the capital city, Col. Christmas flanked and ambushed a force of federale troops and killed or captured over 100 men. Sierra fled, Bonillo became president and the engineer, turned military commander, became a brigadier general.
In 1906, the Nicaraguan army invaded Honduras and Christmas had a leg shattered by a bullet in an ensuing battle. Bonilla’s government collapsed and the new president, Miguel Davila had no use for Christmasbut Bonillo did. The 1910 edition of the seemingly endless Honduran revolution began with Christmas commanding Bonilla’s army of fifteen men armed with 100 rifles. But as the force sailed on Bonilla’s navy, a 30 foot sloop, they met up with a Honduran navy ironclad. Thus ended the fleeting Revolution of 1910.
Not to worry; another year, another revolution. Bonilla and Christmas managed to make it back to New Orleans where Christmas soon sailed off in Bonilla’s new navy, an 80 foot steam-powered yacht which soon rendezvoused with Bonilla’s new army of thirty men. Things were looking up. The Revolution of 1911 was definitely on.
After capturing a small island, the little army sailed into Trujillo harbor where General Christmas’ brilliant placement of his machines guns routed the Honduran defenders. He now owned the port along with 400 rifles, 20,000 rounds of ammunition, a 37mm cannon and a rapidly growing army.
Sailing east, he next captured the port of Ironia and then, leaving the navy behind defeated a federal army of 800 men at the city of La Ceiba, again, due to his masterful placement of his machine guns. Now, with Bonilla and Christmas masters of the north coast, Davila’s forces surrendered. Bonilla once again became president and General Christmas became Commander-in-Chief of the Honduran army, commandante of Puerto Cortes and inspector general of the entire north coast.
Amazingly, Christmas’ tactical successes not only made him famous, but his use of machine guns influenced military thinkers around the world and influenced their use during World War I.
Following his political career in Honduras and lacking any fresh revolutions to fight, Christmas returned to New Orleans, where he died in 1924.
Who could have predicted all that would happen when a railroad engineer stepped down from his locomotive and picked up a rifle? Fight on!
ON May 12, 1975, Cambodian Communist forces boarded and captured the SS Mayaguez while it was 60 miles out to sea, in international waters.
The ship and its crew were taken to the island of Koh Tang 35 miles off the coast of Cambodia.
On the morning of May 15, U.S. Marines assaulted the island to free the prisoners. With the lumbering CH-53 helicopters in plain view for almost ten minutes on their approach to the island, the communists had ample time to prepare for their arrival. As the first helicopter discharged its troops, it met a fusillade of small arms fire. The big bird was mortally wounded by rocket-propelled grenades and machine gun fire. After landing its Marines, the pilot nursed the wounded bird a mile offshore before ditching. As the helicopter rolled over and began to sink, the pilot and two flight mechanics escaped, but co-pilot Lt. Karl Poulsen was trapped in the sinking aircraft by a faulty seat belt. Seeing that Poulsen hadn’t gotten out, SSgt. Elwood Rumbaugh, by no means a strong swimmer, dove into the sinking craft, released his co-pilot, pushed him to the surface and then promptly sank beneath the waves and drowned.
Sometimes there’s someone more important than yourself. Fight on!
FOR four days in May of 1943, over 1,200 searchers had combed the Shenandoah hills of Virginia futilely looking for four year old Doris Dean. Four days earlier the girl had followed her two brothers out to milk cows. Shooed home by them, she turned and left but never arrived home, and the search was on. Police, forest rangers, Boy Scouts and hundreds of others had combed the hills as cold nights and chilling thunderstorms destroyed all hope of finding the girl alive.
Trying to be realistic, the chief ranger advised Superintendent Dixon Freeland that it was time to call off the effort. But against all advice, Freeland instructed searchers to go to the highest point and search downward one more time. On the fifth day, the little girl was found alive and returned to her family. She told her rescuers she had, “drinked the water from the leaves.” Her feeble little efforts and the tenaciousness of Supt. Freeland had saved her life.
As the following poem illustrates, some saw a Greater Hand in all of this. Fight on!
But Doris still is living she is happy now again
The God who watched above her, took away her pain
And we will all remember as the future years go by
That it was only by the will of God, that
Doris did not die. No man will ever follow the trail this baby made.
Only the God in Heaven saw where
Doris laid Her life will have some pleasure, a part of it will be sad
But little Doris will always need, the faith her mother had.
—(Ode to little Doris Dean)
Fire, Poison Gas and High Seas
ON December 21, 1942, the U. S. Navy’s World War I vintage submarine S-35, commanded by Lt. H. S. Monroe, was running on the surface in a winter gale with hatches open to supply fresh air to the crew below. It was about 45 miles from the Japanese held island of Kiska, Alaska, in the Aleutian Islands. Suddenly, a 25 foot wave smashed the vessel, slamming Monroe into the side of the conning tower while tons of seawater poured down the hatch like a bathtub drain. Within minutes the salt water shorted electrical wiring in the control room and a fire erupted.
The crew exhausted their extinguishers to no avail. The fire found its way to the forward battery compartment and began to fill the bow with deadly chloride gas. Soon the bow was abandoned. Then fumes crept into the control room. It was then sealed as the crew retreated aft in the doomed boat. Power to control steering and the bow and stern plates failed as the fire spread through the wiring. Dead in the water in the storm-tossed sea, firemen donned smoke lungs and went forward to fight the blaze, but they couldn’t get it out. Finally, Monroe and the entire crew went topside and sealed the hatches to smother the flames.
Waves and wind battered the crew as they clung desperately to lines to keep from being swept overboard. Finally, after two long, cold hours, they returned below, managed to get the engines restarted and headed for home.
Later that day the stubborn fire re-ignited, filling the boat again with deadly fumes. Again they went topside and sealed the hatches, then back down into the smoke-filled corridors to renew their journey.
Three more times they found themselves perched on the storm-tossed hull waiting for the fires to die. Finally, on Christmas Eve, S-35 limped into port in Adak with no loss of life. Fight on!
DURING the Nez Perce Indian War, Sergeant Michael McCarthy of the 1 U.S. Cavalry,st proved his toughness during a raging battle on June 17, 1877.
In his haste to catch an Indian raiding party, Captain David Perry’s 90 men left Fort Lapwai without an ample supply of ammunition. In White Bird Canyon, the tiny force encoutnered over 700 Indians who were well entrenched. Retreat was impossible. Capt. J. G. Trimble, who commanded Troop H, spied some high ground to his right that would command the battlefield. He sent Sgt. McCarthy with six men to hold the point.
The mass of Indians swarmed down on the troopers. Capt. Perry, in overall command, ordered a general retreat. Capt. Trimble, realizing this action would abandon McCarthy and his men, urged a renewed attack. Perry consented and the cavalrymen turned and charged into the Indians. When Sgt. McCarthy, whose men had been pouring hot fire down on the Indians, saw the renewed cavalry attack faltering, he leaped on his horse and rode down into the fray to steady the line. That done, he galloped back to his hilltop position and rejoined his small band of men.
Soon, the overwhelming number of Indians began to drive the troopers back and once again they had to retreat. They fled to a stronger position about a mile away. This left McCarthy and his men to face the wrath of over 700 Indians. The Indians quickly surrounded the tiny band of men and rushed the hill. The men shot, clubbed and fought the attacking Indians bare-handed until the men disappeared from the view of their comrades on the distant hill. Suddenly, the men saw the blue blouses of the U.S. Cavalry as they saw Sgt. McCarthy again hacking his way through the sea of red bodies, trying to lead his men to safety.
A detachment was sent to help the brave group and all but two of the seven men made it to them. But the Indians surrounded this new group and closed in for the kill. The desperate men began fighting their way back to their lines.
They say Sgt. McCarthy was everywhere. He was seen fighting Indians. He was seen steadying his men. He was seen helping a dismounted soldier. His horse was shot out from under him. He mounted another and continued leading his men back to safety. Then his second horse was shot and his men saw him disappear among the mass of Indians.
Cut off from his men, McCarthy kept his head. He dashed for a small clump of bushes along the bank of a nearby creek and crawled in as far as possible. But his boots were still visible. Nearby was a slain trooper and some squaws approached the man’s body and began to mutilate it. One woman spied McCarthy’s boots and headed his way. Ever so carefully the sergeant slipped out of his boots and crawled deeper into the foliage. The woman, assuming the boots were somehow abandoned in the heat of battle, took them and returned to her grisly task.
The cavalry regained their lines and departed for their fort, leaving the gallant sergeant in the midst of the Indians, not knowing he was alive.
McCarthy waited quietly for hours until he was able to crawl along the streambed. Without boots or ammunition he began his journey back, hiding by day, traveling by night, he made his way through the tall timber until, to the surprise and delight of his fellow cavalrymen, he arrived at Fort Lapwai. Fight on!
“Americans are like a match box. If you strike one they all go off!”
—(The sultan of Sulu, 1900, watching his Moro warriors in the Philippines consistently defeated by American troopers.)
“I Didn’t Have Time to Feel Sorry for Myself.”
ON September 11, 2001, Muslim terrorists attacked America. Soon thereafter their compatriots in Afghanistan were scurrying from cave to cave trying to avoid the wrath of the U.S. Military under Operation Enduring Freedom. While taking part in that operation on December 16, 2001, Marine Sgt. Christopher Chandler stepped on a land mine near Kandahar. He lost his left leg below the knee from the explosion. Such an injury spells the end of a military career, but Sgt. Chandler, known to his friends as a “can do” type individual, didn’t want out of the Marines. He fought to remain on active duty and won. But that wasn’t enough for Chandler. He enrolled in airborne jump school, finishing at the top of his class. On November 10, 2003, less than two years after his injury and on the birthday of the Marine Corps, he became the only service member ever to become jump-qualified with a prosthetic leg.
Sgt. Chandler took the accomplishment in stride. “I figured I had an advantage. After all, I have one less ankle to break.” Fight on!
ON May 17, 1960, two teams of climbers had just left Mt. McKinley’s 20,320 foot peak and were starting back down. In the first team was 31 year old Helga Bading, who was suffering from lack of oxygen and deteriorating with dangerous quickness.