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Authors: Doug Stanton

In Harm's Way: The Sinking of the U.S.S. Indianapolis and the Extraordinary Story of Its Survivors (18 page)

BOOK: In Harm's Way: The Sinking of the U.S.S. Indianapolis and the Extraordinary Story of Its Survivors
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As he and his boys chewed and stared into a blinding horizon, peace—or something approximating it—gradually returned to the rafts. To while away the long afternoon, McVay started questioning the boys about their personal lives. He wanted to know about their wives and girlfriends. He himself fell into a reverie about his comfortable life in D.C. with his wife, Louise.
Spinelli, who had served under the
Indy
’s previous captain,
the hard-nosed Johnny “General Quarters” Johnson, knew that few captains would ever get this personal with their crew, not even when everything was “FUBAR”—“Fucked-up Beyond All Recognition,” like things were now. He admired McVay’s soft-spoken calm. The old man, in his opinion, had been getting the job done—hey, at least they hadn’t died yet. Spinelli realized he was learning something essential, something he couldn’t yet put into words. He and the boys listened raptly as the stoic, gray-haired captain confessed, “I’m going to have some explaining to do.” McVay didn’t know what he might tell the families of the dead—if he survived. He knew there was little he could say that would help.
On board the
Indy,
McVay had sometimes talked of becoming an admiral. But now he said, “I should have gone down with the ship.” The boys on the raft disagreed.
It was as if, in his candor, McVay was discovering what it meant to be a captain and a leader. He had commanded ships, but until now, relying on the barest of resources—some crackers, pieces of fishing line—he’d never felt the pull of the lives he held in his hands, or the full measure of what it meant to be placed in harm’s way. He assured the boys they would be rescued by the next day. And they believed him.
 
 
In McCoy’s raft, Ed Payne had taken to drinking his urine. He was kneeling—or trying to—on the edge of the raft, his hand cupped at his zipper while he peed into a ration tin. And then he brought his hand to his mouth. McCoy was amazed Payne even had anything left. The boy was becoming a real problem, but McCoy didn’t blame him. As the afternoon sun pressed down, McCoy was so thirsty he was thinking of taking a pee himself. But he couldn’t bring himself
to do it, figuring it might make him even crazier. He reached over the raft and cradled a cool palmful of water. He burned for a sip.
Who am I? Where am I?
he wondered.
I’m Giles Mc Coy from St. Louis, Missourah, and I’m one tough sonofabitch.
Brundige was hanging tight, actually calm. “You look funny,” he said out of the blue.
McCoy looked up. “What do you mean?”
“You look like hell.”
“Well, you oughta see yourself. You’re not so pretty.” Brundige wasn’t. His face was blackened by oil; around his eyes was a faint white stripe where he’d tried wiping it away. His tongue protruded slightly from his mouth.
McCoy’s own tongue felt hard and dry, like a root. His skin was cracked and sore, bleeding in places. If he looked like Brundige, he was sure glad he couldn’t see himself. He thought about his mother and her laugh when she beat him at Ping-Pong. He thought of his father, about the night he knocked him across the front yard, and the way he’d cried at the train station.
After McCoy made it off Peleliu alive, he’d sat down in the barracks and written a letter to his father apologizing for disobeying him the night he went to his good-bye party. He was no longer a boy, and yet not a man—he knew that. But, hell, he was going to war—he was going to kill people. He thought he deserved a send-off.
His whole life, McCoy had hated bullies, but he’d loved to fight. The Marine Corps had taught him how to lie in a stream for hours breathing through a straw, how to shoot to kill, how to
survive.
He’d always had the firm conviction of his own toughness.
Now he realized he hadn’t even known what strength was.
 
 
In Dr. Haynes’s group, the hallucinations were reaching full boil. One boy got in his car and was ready to drive home, but then lost his keys. Another saw an island overflowing with ice-cold coconut milk and dancing girls. One delirious sailor was seen starting an imaginary outboard motor with furious yanks at a rope and then puttering away.
By midafternoon, passenger trains were pounding along imaginary rails ringing the horizon, and hotels were springing up on city blocks floating atop the water. Some of the boys checked into the hotels and drowned, while others started swimming to catch the trains and vanished beneath the waves.
At one point, even Dr. Haynes succumbed. Spotting a shark, a five-footer—his first time seeing one at close range—he was seized with the desire to kill it with his bare hands and drink its blood. But no matter how hard he splashed at the creature, no matter how loudly he swore at it, it would not attack. It seemed to be mocking his rage. He couldn’t believe it. The shark didn’t want to eat him! Chuckling, the doctor paddled away, somehow feeling better.
He then came upon a group of boys. They looked odd—something was wrong with the picture. They were floating in single file, dog-paddling in place. Haynes asked one of them, “What’s up, son?”
“Shhh, Doc,” one guy said. “There’s a small hotel on the island there, and they got one room and you can get fifteen minutes’ sleep. You get in line—you’ll get a turn.”
Haynes craned his head and, for a moment, dammit, he believed he could see the hotel wavering atop the water. Nearby, other odd things were going on. Another twenty-five boys had queued up, as if preparing to set out on a journey. They told Haynes matter of factly that they were going to swim to Leyte, and that they figured it would take them about two days. They said their good-byes, promising to meet up again on land. Then they kicked out over the glass of the sea. They made it only 200 or 300 yards before sinking.
What struck Haynes as the grandest hallucination of all, however, was the moment, about midday, when the
Indianapolis
herself ghosted over the horizon and sailed back into the boys’ lives. At times, they yelled that the ship was steaming toward them. At others, it was drifting peacefully below them in the clear, green water, all her flags flying smartly, her portholes relit and gleaming. Some of the boys dove down to the ship and began swimming through her long passageways, back to their bunks, to the mess halls, and to the water fountains, where they drank deeply. “I found it,” they screamed in heartbreaking relief, breaking back to the surface. “There’s fresh water aboard! Come on fellas, let’s go! She ain’t sunk!”
More boys took deep breaths and dove to the ship, and in the aqua light of their dreams they sat at tables eating ice cream and drinking tall glasses of water. “Don’t drink!
Don’t do it!”
Haynes shouted, his throat raw, his voice breaking, as he watched their dreams turn to nightmares.
 
 
By late afternoon, the men on McCoy’s raft were trying to kill him. At least, he thought they were. Ed Payne swore he was going to jump off the raft. McCoy was certain he wanted to commit suicide. Gray looked like he wanted to jump, too.
Everybody, thought McCoy, was going crazy. Everybody, that is, except Brundige. He was glad Brundige wasn’t going insane. He just wished he’d say something.
“Goddammit,” McCoy told Payne and Gray, “you’ve got families, relatives—you’ve got things to live for.”
One of them—Willis Gray—looked up and said, “Live for? Shit.”
“We’re going through this day after day,” said Payne, “and nobody is looking for us. To hell with it! It’s easier to
die than to live.” Payne looked like he really was going to jump.
McCoy felt that he and Brundige were in a kind of unspoken contest, each trying to prove who was the tougher sonofabitch. It would be a last hurrah before the lights went out, before McCoy slumped over and drowned and the sharks started eating him.
“Don’t you worry, guys,” he announced, speaking particularly to Payne. “I’ll take care of you. I’ll make sure the sharks don’t get you.” When he had been fighting on Peleliu, McCoy had felt scared, alone, and he’d been certain he was going to die. During the worst of it, a marine captain had told him, “You stick with me, Private, and I’ll get you through this.” And the man had kept his word. McCoy had never forgotten this.
Payne began moaning, and then he jumped and began to swim. McCoy studied the water; it was so clear, like a glass floor he might walk across. As usual, he could see sharks down there, circling. He dove and started swimming.
He swam about fifty feet and caught the sailor, grabbed hold of his vest, and dragged the blubbering kid back to the raft. He yelled up to Brundige, “Come on, give me a damn hand here!” And Brundige, tall and strong, reached down and lifted Payne into the raft. McCoy swam up through the hole in the busted bow. He pulled himself onto the suspended lattice floor. And then Payne got up on the side of the raft, looked around, and jumped over again.
McCoy looked at Brundige, thinking,
I saved his ass once, do I gotta do it again?
He looked at the sharks and jumped. He swam out over them and stroked up behind Payne, jerked him hard, and brought him back to the raft. Now McCoy was mad—and dead tired. It was as if all the blood had drained from his arms and legs. He was so thirsty it was a struggle not to sip some salt water as he splashed back aboard. He slammed Payne against the rail of the raft. Payne was crying, and McCoy looked at him and whacked
him on the face, screaming, “Now, dammit, cut that out, cuz you’re going to kill yourself!”
Payne’s eyes widened, and his head rolled back and forth on the rail. “Why’d you hit me?” he asked. “Don’t hit me no more!” He was crying, but no tears were coming; Payne was too dehydrated for tears.
McCoy turned around, and there was Willis Gray on the raft’s edge, jumping. The sonofabitch He’d walked off the raft like he was stepping off a street comer. This time, McCoy just sat there and watched. He thought Gray was dumb for jumping. He said it out loud: “You know, you are a real turd.”
“Hell, we just can’t leave him out there,” announced Brundige.
McCoy looked at him. “I just don’t have no more fire.” Then Brundige hit the water. Batting and kicking at the sharks, he towed the boy back to the raft, and McCoy started lecturing: “What in hell do you think you’re doing, son? Tell me, what’s going on?” But there was no answer—Gray didn’t understand. His eyes were blank spots on an empty map. Looking at him, McCoy felt suddenly certain that his own death was out there waiting, too.
“You know what?” he said. “They’re not comin’. Nobody’s going to rescue us.” He turned to the rest of them: “We are going to die,” he said. “We are all going to die.”
It felt good to say it. His stomach felt queasy, as if he had butterflies. In fact, all day he’d felt nauseated. And it wasn’t from swallowing fuel oil. It was a sickness that came from lying to himself.
“We are going to die,” he said again. He was feeling better by the minute.
 
 
The sun was like a hammer in the sky. As the day wore on, the bodies piled on the surface of the sea in ragged heaps
that swirled as the sharks tugged them from below. Carrying on with the grim ritual he’d been dutifully executing the past three days, Dr. Haynes set out to bury the newly dead. He was no longer a doctor, it seemed; he was now a coroner. So be it. The realization wrenched him back to reality, but this was a blessing he had mixed feelings about.
As he paddled by, some of the boys stirred, lifting their oil-caked heads to stare bleary-eyed at the sun. “Hey, Doc, take a look at this guy, will ya!” a few of the more lucid called out. “Hey, Doc, is this guy alive?”
Stroking up to one boy, Haynes gently lifted him by the hair and peered into his eyes. “Are you alive, son?” he asked.
“Yes, Doctor, I’m alive,” the man croaked.
“Good. That’s real good.” He moved on to the next candidate.
“Son?” He lifted the head. “Are you with us?” There was no reply. “Son?” Haynes tapped on the cold, opened eyeball. When he found a reflex, he felt an immense sense of relief.
Then he moved quickly to the next boy. He tapped again; this eye was bloodshot and swollen—a sign, Haynes knew, of edema caused by the ingestion of salt water. There was no reflex. It was like touching the blank and glassy eye of a stuffed animal. Haynes had to declare the boy dead.
“This man is dead,” he said aloud. It was strange, but saying it made it seem more real. It made him feel like he wasn’t alone. At the sound of Haynes’s voice, several boys turned to watch. More than a few of them didn’t have life vests. They were half dog-paddling and half drowning, heroically supported by comrades who themselves were close to giving up. The boys supporting these swimmers had enormous sores on their hips from the chafing of their heavy loads. Yet none of them wanted to let go of their charges. They were clinging to them as if saving themselves. The boys without vests had either untied them in their delirium
or had voluntarily taken them off because they were losing buoyancy. Either way, they needed relief.
Time was critical—Haynes needed the dead boy’s life vest—and he moved quickly. It was not easy work because his burned hands were badly swollen, practically unusable. He tried not to look into the boy’s eyes as he struggled to loosen the knotted straps. They were soaked with fuel oil, which made them impossibly tight. Untying them was painful, methodical work.
BOOK: In Harm's Way: The Sinking of the U.S.S. Indianapolis and the Extraordinary Story of Its Survivors
4.77Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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