ADRIFT IN PACIFIC

Wairarapa Times-Age, 26 February 1943, Page 4

ADRIFT IN PACIFIC

N NAVAL AIRMEN ON OPEN RAFT D ' THIRTY-FOUR DAYS AT SEA. { STORY OF GREAT PRIVATION. The following is an account by the commander of the aeroplane of 34 ’ days spent on a rubber raft in the mid-Pacific by three United States i naval airmen, who were forced down t at sea when their aircraft, launched from a carrier, ran out of fuel. After f drifting and paddling for 500 miles, the men staggered ashore on a Pacific island. The story, which is told by Aviation Chief! Machinist's mate, Har- ’ old Dixon, aged 41, who was accompanied by Ordnanceman Anthony Pastula, aged 24, and Radioman Gene Aldrich, aged 22, appeared in the “British -American Co-operator.” The aeroplane sank almost immediately. We did manage to inflate our four-by-eight-foot rubber raft and crawl aboard. We were able to salvage virtually nothing. Our life-jack-ets, a pistol, a pocket-knife, a pair of pliers —that was all. No food. No water. To the west and north of us were Japanese islands. Our only ' hope seemed to be in manoeuvring ‘ our boat some 500 miles to the south i; and west where there were inhabited “ friendly islands. I knew our approximate position; ’ and from our speed, and from the I sun and moon and stars, I could tell pretty accurately where we were going. I made a map on one of the life ? jackets. Fortunately, I had a small I celluloid aerial navigator's scale, and was able to chart our progress. So we ‘ settled down to the business of living " at sea on a tiny raft. One of the first _ things we found out was that it was almost impossible to sleep. s SERIOUS LACK OF WATER. s 1 About the fifth day lack of water s bothered us seriously. The wind had 1 been blowing us along at a fast pace i in the general direction of the south, s but we had had no rain. We broiled i in the sun, watching showers apt proach, then fade away. There were 1 sharks playing round the boat and we r didn’t dare venture over the side, but - we kept our clothes soaked in salt o water to keep our bodies cool. a We knew that if we didn’t get rain r we wouldn’t last long. It was Gene s who suggested that we pray for help. - I had been thinking about that, too. g but had been ashamed to make the suggestion. g In the blazing sun, surrounded by o sharks and rolling waves, we held the e first of what became a daily prayer a service. Each of us mumbled his way f through a prayer, then asked God to a take care of our loved ones back - home if we should die, and also look I, after our shipmates at sea. We also asked for rain to drink. a Hardly had we stopped praying - than a tremendous black cloud ape peared, and rain poured from the <f heavens. The deluge lasted five mine utes and we had our first drink in five s days. 1 The next day Aldrich got a fish by c simply leaning over the side and ;. stabbing it. With one continuous ? movement, Gene swung his knife blade s through the fish and brought it into t the boat on top of Tony, who rolled 2 on the. fish and held it until it quit t struggling. None of us had ever eaten J raw fish, but we made a try. The - fish, who looked like a large perch, didn’t taste good, but it was food. 2 That afternoon we had another heavy s shower and more water to drink, r That afternoon, too, we shot an albaJ tross. f Some days later we ran into a 3 calm. I made paddles out of the J thick rubber soles of my shoes, and 3 the three of us took turns at them for 18 consecutive hours. VIVID MEMORIES. Sometimes as I look back on those ■ 34 days, rains and suns, heavy seas 1 and flat calms merge and nothing 1 comes out but a feeling of hunger and • thirst and sadness. Yet there are some ■ things that I remember well, like the ’ day Aldrich caught the four-foot > shark. He stabbed it in the gills and - yanked it out of the water. Its skin 1 was so tough that Tony had to hold the 1 tail and Gene the head while I slit ! open the stomach. We ate the liver I first. Next we explored the stomach, ■ finding two six-inch sardines. We gave ! Aldrich one as he caught the shark 1 and Tony and I shared the other. Never have I tasted anything better. We devoured the rest of the shark’s innards. Then we held up the head and tail, forming a pocket in the middle into which the blood poured. It had a strong flavour but we drank it. With each passing day we thought our chances of rescue were growing • better. But the sun was getting hotter as we worked southward, and unfortunately we worked further east than we had hoped and farther than I had indicated on my map. When we finally made land, I was some 100 miles i miles off in my dead reckoning. , The problem of food remained serious. We were beginning to lose weight fast, and I began to worry whether we would have the physical strength to sail the boat all the way south to inhabited islands. Aldrich sat continually on the edge of the raft * trying to stab fish. Finally he got ' another perch-like fish, and one night J I caught a young tern by the leg. It • was tender and delicious. The only other food we got was two coconuts • picked up as they drifted past. j By now I figured we were in the , neighbourhood of islands. All around £ us were hundreds of varieties of birds j and fish. Nearby, too, were plenty of j leopard sharks, vicious creatures that t often threatened to upset our boat, t One of them we had to fight away by punching him in the nose. Another c one we managed to kill with our pistol f before the weapon became too rusty r for use. s A HURRICANE. r By the twenty-ninth day there was e no longer much talk. Mostly we lay a in our cramped positions, not caring what happened. Wo were beginning 0 to resign ourselves to our fate. Then s on the thirty-third day we struck the s beginnings of a hurricane. Huge g combers poured into our little craft. We hardly had the strength or spirit v to bail, and to work more effectively [j we took off our clothes. The waves j< roared louder and louder and louder. s ] Suddenly the boat tipped over. All u we saved was the sole of one shoe. s j There we were, returned to the primeval, stark naked and alone, fighting b the howling storm. Afterwards the a sun came out. h The morning of the thirty-fourth a day was clear. Aldrich suddenly said: n “Chief, I see a field of corn.” Gene s is a farm boy and I thought, “Now he s ;

has gone completely crazy.” I waited until we rode the crest of a wave, and stood up, the other two helping me. My heart jumped with the purest joy it has ever known. The field of corn was a shore-line of waving palm trees. All that day we paddled with our one shoe sole towards that beautiful green patch of land. Towards afternoon the sky clouded over. A strange silence and an increasing wind, with rain, told me that we were at the edge of a hurricane. If we didn’t get ashore now, we never would. In the late afternoon we came in over the reef in a burst of crashing surf and were tossed headlong into shallow water. We could hardly stagger, but we marched ashore in military fashion. If any Japs were there, we did not want to be crawling. But there were no Japs. It was a friendly island. We spent the night in a little shack. Next morning a native found us and notified the Resident Commissioner. That night we slept in a bed, our bodies stretched as nearly full length as we could get them. Outside we heard the hurricane snapping trees and pounding up a terrible surf. One more day and it would have done what starvation, thirst, wind, sun, and sharks had failed to do.