Today is St. Patrick’s Day, wherein we celebrate our Gaelic heritage by doing nothing productive, eating bad food, drinking heavily and insulting people who have the temerity not to wear green clothing. Today is also marks the first week of the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament which we Americans celebrate by doing nothing productive, eating bad food, drinking heavily and insulting people who went to a different college than we did. All in all, it is a “perfect storm” of indigestion, alcoholism and general misbehavior. Before all of that starts, however, let us pause to think back seventy years to this day in 1945. Let us transport ourselves to Kodiak Island, Alaska, specifically to the Aleut village of Karluk, sitting on the west shore of the island. It is foggy. Visibility is nil. The sun has set. The temperature is barely above freezing. Fortunately, it is unusually calm with mere five foot swells. A Baptist missionary is in the village. He teaches school. He is standing outside his house when he hears the drone of an airplane overhead. This is not unusual as planes constantly traverse the island between Seattle and the outlying Aleutian Islands, where they are stationed and from which they fly to drop bombs on the Empire of Japan. Nonetheless, there is something strange about the sound of the plane. It doesn’t fade away but continues circling above the village, out of sight in the dark and fog. The missionary wonders if there is a problem. Fade to the interior of the plane. There are six crew members and a passenger. They are on their way home after many months stationed on the island of Attu. They are happy to have survived and anxious to see their wives and sweethearts in Seattle. Against better judgment, they have left Umnak Naval Air Station late in the day and are trying to get a few hundred more miles behind them. Now, they are lost. They cannot find the commercial landing strip on Kodiak, which is on the other side of the island. They are running out of gas and are running out of options. They are preparing to ditch the plane in the frigid waters below.

Zoom to the back of the fuselage. There, sitting on the luggage is the passenger. He is a 27 year old Lieutenant in the Navy Reserve, the squadron’s electronics officer. If one could see the name tag sewn onto his flight suit underneath all the foul weather gear, one would see it reads “Shermlaw’s Future Father.” He had been assigned to ride on this plane when the squadron transferred back to the States. He is not a warrior. He is a technician. But he is an officer and therefore, he is in charge of a life raft. The Lieutenant is scared; scared that he will die; scared that he will not do what he is supposed to do; scared he will make some blunder which will cost someone his life. As the plane descends toward the ocean, the Lieutenant grips the duffel bag holding the raft and stares straight ahead. He marvels that so many things can be going through his mind at one time with a clarity that comes only in dire circumstances. He rehearses what he will do when the plane touches the water. He thinks about his family and friends in Missouri. He searches his soul for each and every imperfection and beseeches God to forgive him. Most of all, he prays that he won’t screw up. In the midst of these thoughts and prayers, the Lieutenant hears the pilot order “Brace for impact” and immediately, he feels the first bump of waves against the underside of the aircraft. Then there is another, stronger this time; and a third, stronger still. Finally there is a fourth which throws the occupants of the plane against the bulkhead and causes the Lieutenant to lose his grip on the raft. He watches it slide out the hatch that had been braced open while the plane is still moving. He panics because he sees failure in front of him and dives out the hatch after the raft into the water.

It is dark, but the Lieutenant catches a glimpse of the raft in the water. He inflates his Mae West and dog paddles over to where the raft is. He takes the bundle and pushes it under the water and lies on top of it, pulling the inflation lanyard at the same time. He hears the reassuring “hiss” of CO2 and the raft inflates, lifting him out of the water. He looks toward where the plane is to see its empennage disappearing into the black water. It is silent. The Lieutenant wonders if he is alone. The Lieutenant finds the raft’s paddle and begins searching for his shipmates. He begins to hear voices in the darkness and following them he finds first one, then another and another until all seven who were on board are accounted for. The seven are huddled in a four-man raft. They fire flares, but they wonder if anyone can see them. One of the men, the co-pilot, decides to try to swim the mile or so to shore to see if he can find help. He does so against orders and eventually they lose sight of him.

They think he’s lost. Then they hear voices in the distance. They have one more usable flare and as they attempt to load it into the Very pistol, it misfires, shooting out horizontally a few feet above the ocean.

Fade back to the village of Karluk. The missionary listens intently and realizes that the plane is in distress and that it will ditch offshore. He summons the villagers and they launch a boat to begin a search in the dark for any survivors. They see flares and row in their direction. Finally, they see one last flare shooting out directly at them. It explodes a few hundred feet in front of them and in its glow they see a body in the water. They row to the body and pull it into their boat. It is the co-pilot. He is alive. The villagers then row in the direction of the flight of the last flare until they see the raft with the other six crewmen. The officers and crew are rescued, rowed to shore, given hot food and drink, dry clothes and have the run of the village until a Navy ship picks them up two days later. The officers and sailors go on their lives. One transfers to another squadron and is killed later in the war. The rest go back to the States, marry, have children and grandchildren.

Some pass away.

Ultimately, forty years later, the remaining three survivors of that night meet again at a reunion in Seattle. They are the co-pilot, the navigator and the passenger. They begin to call each other on St. Patrick’s Day and on one such day, they learn that the navigator has located the Baptist missionary. A year later, the four, together with their wives meet for a weekend. They talk about the twists and turns their lives have taken since they all shared an experience many years before. Within a few years after that reunion in New Jersey, three of the four are gone. Only the navigator remains. For years, he picks up the phone in his home in Maryland and calls my mother in Missouri to check on her. They talk for a while and she listens to him recount the events of that night.

And then he is gone, too.

So, now, it is up to the rest of us to remember that cold St. Patrick’s Day, 1945. It was nothing really in the great scheme of things. Just regular American men doing what they were taught to do: Serving their country. Cheers.

Supplement: For those who enjoy reading military reports, the original report of the above in the Navy archives may be found [link coming soon]

As for the photos [coming soon], the first is an official US Navy photo of a USN PB-1 Ventura patrol bomber over the Aleutians. The second is Dad as a freshly minted Ensign in the United States Navy Reserve. The third is the crew, taken the morning after the rescue on the beach at Karluk. Front row, left to right: Radioman Fred Beurskens, gunner Bill Glennon, Plane Chief Harry Moran. Back Row, left to right: VPB-136 Electronics Officer Shermlaw’s Dad, Co-Pilot Lt. (jg) Patrick Tierney, Pilot Lt. A. F. “Jim” Moorehead, Third Pilot/Navigator Ens. Charles Fitzpatrick, all of Squadron VPB-136. (A big bundle of Irishmen for a St. Patrick’s Day rescue.)??The fourth is a posed Official Navy Photo taken in Seattle upon the crew’s return to the states. I believe it may have been published originally in the Seattle daily newspaper. From left to right: Pilot, Lt. Jim Moorehead; Gunner, Bill Glennon; VPB (Patrol Bomber) Squadron 136 Electronics Officer, Lt.(jg) Shermlaw’s Dad; Co-Pilot, Lt.(jg) Pat Tierney; Radio Man, Fred “Rollo” Buerskens; Chief Mechanic, John “Harry” Moran; Third Pilot/Navigator, Ens. Charles Fitzpatrick. The last image is a scan of the local newspaper article in New Jersey when the three survivors of the ditching met with the Baptist missionary who rescued them. From left to right, Stephen Zdepski, the missionary; Shermlaw’s Dad; Charles Fitzpatrick, the third pilot/navigator; Patrick Tierney, the Co-Pilot. Finally, I’ve yet to find any official commendation or thanks to the villagers of Karluk for what they did that night. My letters to the Department of the Navy have been ignored. I hope this essay corrects that oversight in part.