It’s July 1945, just after midnight. Our ship, the USS Indianapolis, is hit by torpedoes and sinks in 12 minutes. She’s two football-fields long. It’s hard to believe she’s gone down so quickly. She’s sunk in some of the deepest ocean on earth. We think that rescue will come soon. After all, how can naval command not know that one of its ships has been sunk? We were sailing in a standard route— surely when we don’t show up in the Philippines, our planned destination, someone will come looking for us.
Well, we’re not missed, and no one comes. Everything that could go wrong, has gone wrong. It seems that this ordeal will last forever. Dehydration, sun exposure, shark attack— we’re covered in oil and pitching up and down, trying to help each other stay alive.
At the same time, we come to believe that this ordeal will last forever. We begin to drink salt water. We begin to attack each other. We begin to give up.
This section from In Harm’s Way describes this moment, around the 3rd day of what would be, miraculously— as the men were eventually rescued— a five-day ordeal at sea. This is a turning point for these men, one of many that would shape the rest of their lives.
Dr. Lewis Haynes, 33, from the small town of Manistee, Michigan, is swimming around massed groups of swimmers in sinking life vests, propping up spirits, and burying the dead.
This scene raises for me several really important questions: Who did Lewis Haynes think was watching as he carried out his duties, when he was floating in an oceanic void? And why go on at all? What code was he following that did not allow him to give up?
***
[Pages 199-201, In Harm’s Way, hardcover edition]:
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…
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 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…
Yet none of them wanted to let go of their charges. They were clinging to… each other… as if saving themselves…
Time was critical— Haynes needed the dead boy’s life vest— and he moved quickly… He tried not to look into the boy’s eyes as he struggled to loosen the knotted straps… When he was done, he removed the boys' dog tags. He wrapped them around his own arm, where they clinked tinnily. Haynes then paddled behind the body, placed one hand on the vest’s collar, and gave a gentle pull, easing out first the shoulders and then the arms. It looked very much like someone removing a coat from a sleeping child. Finally, the corpse slid free from the vest.
Haynes quickly tossed the vest aside and then snatched the body before it cold sink… He was determined not to let any corpse sink without first praying over it.
He drew the cold, wet body close, grabbed it tight in a bear hug, and paused. Aboard a ship, the chaplain would do this duty, but Father Conway was close to death himself… With his cheek pressed to the dead boy’s cheek, he could smell the salt and sweat, and he began: Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed by thy name… Thy kingdom come, thy will be done…
Sometimes he made it to the end of the Lord’s Prayer, and sometimes he didn’t… Often he was so spent that he could do nothing more than hold the dead boy and pray in silence, feeling, in his addled state, that he’d been an utter failure as a doctor.
He opened his arms and watched the body fall. It dropped for a long time, twirling feet first, like a man falling down a crystalline elevator shaft, getting smaller and smaller, no bigger than a doll when it finally disappeared.
Why, oh why, Haynes wondered, can’t I do anything to save these boys?
***
I don’t know about you, but I’m not sure, had I been floating in that ocean, under those circumstances, that I would have been thinking about how I was failing to help those around me. I would’ve been thinking, “How can I get out of the place? How can I save myself?”
Some of the young men began untying their life vests and swim from the group. Maybe they weren’t injured— but they believed the situation would never end. On this fateful day, this turning point, survivor Ed Brown, from the Dakotas, looked over at his buddy. And his buddy said to him, “Ed, this is never gonna stop. I’m leaving.” And he swam away. Ed never saw him again. Some men drowned, others were attacked by sharks.
And Ed himself almost swam away. But then he stopped. And why? He stopped because heard a voice.
It belonged to his father, saying, “You’re Ed Brown, and you don’t quit.” And Ed Brown didn’t swim away. Dick Thelen, from Michigan, heard a similar kind of voice: “You’re Dick Thelen. You don’t give up.”
As I traveled around the country on the national book tour, I began to hear these stories of how certain men had heard these voices— not necessarily the voice of God, but often the voice of someone who had cared, and who had, at one time, given them an identity as someone who doesn’t quit.
At some point in the past, these voices had framed these men… in the universe… as real individuals with real responsibilities. They made them feel that they belonged somewhere in the world.
It was these voices that kept many of the young men from swimming away. These voices were a lifeline back to the world.
And here’s a key lesson in their story. When I was asked by a reporter why I had written In Harm’s Way, I paused; I was standing in the doorway of my tiny office, looking out at the backyard where are young kids were playing. My office was strewn with maps and with interviews with the men. Writing the book had been a profound privilege and experience. And then I told the reporter that I wondered if I’d ever said anything to anyone who, in a moment of their own crisis, might use as a lifeline to pull themselves back from their own abyss.
I said that I didn’t know the answer, but that I hoped I had.
That, I think, is what a single voice— a teacher’s, a parent’s, and a friend’s -- can do: It can change you.
It can make you feel like you belong in the world.
The question we all face every day is, “What will we say to someone today, or tomorrow, or the next day, that they might grab onto in a time of need?”
How will we be a lifeline for others?