Jack Kennedy - Chris Matthews [23]
Plum Pudding Island, named for its shape, was the length of a football field and two thirds as wide at the middle. It had a few palm trees on it, like an island in a New Yorker cartoon. When he finally made it, Jack could only lie panting on the sand. And when he went to stand, he vomited from swallowing so much seawater. Soon his crew also reached the beach, all clutching the plank.
Back at base, a very sad Red Fay was writing his sister: “George Ross has lost his life for a cause that he believed in stronger than any one of us, because he was an idealist in the purest sense. Jack Kennedy, the Ambassador’s son, was on the same boat. The man who said that the cream of a nation is lost in war can never be accused of making an overstatement of a very cruel fact.”
Jim Reed would recall: “The next morning we heard that PT 109 hadn’t returned and they’d seen an explosion and a fire. I was very sad. I couldn’t believe it.” Of Kennedy, he said, “He had many friends here, almost everybody knew him. He was very well liked.”
Meanwhile, on Plum Pudding Island, Kennedy was conferring with Thom and Ross. “How are we going to get out of here?” he wanted to know. But, in fact, he already had a plan. What he intended to do, Jack told them, was to swim out on his own into Ferguson Passage that night to try to signal a ship.
Hanging his .38 pistol on a lanyard around his neck, he wrapped a flashlight in a life jacket to keep it afloat and headed off at sundown, knowing the PT boats went out on patrol then. Since no one had yet come to get them, he was thinking aggressively and taking matters into his own hands.
There was little point in just camping out there on that island, waiting for the Japanese to butcher them. If and when he spotted a PT boat, he’d try to draw attention by firing three shots in the air and signaling with the flashlight. There was no other choice.
Kennedy reached his destination at eight o’clock and stayed in place four hours. When no PT boats had appeared, he began the long swim back to the island. Unfortunately, he was caught in a powerful current that swept him past Plum Pudding. Drifting south, and after passing out several times, he stopped to sleep on a sandbar. The next morning he awoke and found his way back to his men. He arrived at noontime, looking scrawny and exhausted, with yellow skin and bloodshot eyes. He vomited again, and passed out.
Opening his eyes, he saw Barney Ross. He managed to say only, “Barney, you try it tonight,” before, a second later, conking out.
The next day, Kennedy decided they needed to move to a nearby, larger island. Again, he assembled his men on that eight-foot plank. Again, he swam on, dragging the badly burned Pappy by the strap held in his teeth. Still there was no sign of rescue, and all they had to drink was the rainfall they captured in their mouths as they lay in a storm. The day after that, Kennedy and Ross swam to yet another island, Nauru.
There, they came upon some very welcome surprises—a dugout canoe, a fifty-five-gallon drum filled with freshwater, and a crate of crackers and candy. Exhausted, Ross fell asleep for the night, while Kennedy took the dugout back in the dark with the water and candy, supplies presumably left by the Japanese, to his crew.
This time he was greeted not just by his men but by two islanders who’d unexpectedly arrived and had gotten a fire going. They were helping the Americans. Jack used his pocketknife to scratch a message on a coconut shell: NAURO ISL NATIVE KNOWS POSIT HE CAN PILOT 11 ALIVE NEED SMALL BOAT KENNEDY. Handing it to them, he told the islanders where they must take it. “Rendova . . . Rendova,” he repeated.
When the PT 109 crewmen awoke the next morning, a large canoe