Neptune's Inferno_ The U.S. Navy at Guadalcanal - James D. Hornfischer [246]
The emotional truth of battle was a deeper, more complex matter. Robert Graff had years to think about it, and years not to talk. After serving in three warships he returned to New York to pursue a career in broadcast journalism at NBC. He put the “inhuman existence” of his experiences on the Atlanta out of his mind.
“War is unlike life,” he said. “It’s a denial of everything you learn life is. And that’s why when you get finished with it, you see that it offers no lessons that can’t be better learned in civilian life. You are exposed to horrors you would sooner forget. A disconnect needs to be made to get yourself cleansed.” His children were after him for thirty-five years to talk about it. “I refused. I said ‘Read it in the history books. I can’t do it justice.’ We were closed up tight as a clam.” He attended the reunions of the Atlanta, the Monterey, and the Flint, a sister ship to the Atlanta, only sparsely. Then the memberships aged, and their associations faded away.
Before Christmas in 1997, his son, age fifty-five, made him an offer that Graff wished on one level that he could have refused: a trip to Guadalcanal. They would fly there via Fiji and stay in a Japanese-owned hotel in Honaira about ten miles up the coast from Henderson Field. All the arrangements had been made for a five-day trip. Against his better judgment, and years of reflexive avoidance, he agreed to go. They flew out in November 1998.
“I couldn’t stop crying for most of the five days,” Graff said. “After that trip, it was like finally I’m back in life. Like so many people, I never opened my mouth for fifty years about all of this. Suddenly everything was open. Most people get to that stage only with the help of doctors.”
They spent the first few days visiting battle sites. There were rusted hulks of trucks and tanks and memorials to fallen Americans and Japanese. The drive out to Cape Esperance took them over twenty-five miles of rough island roads.
One morning they chartered a dive boat and took it out into Savo Sound armed with bouquets of flowers and leis and a big floating raft. The skipper gave a signal when they arrived over the wreck, 421 feet below. Using the sonor, backing down once or twice and pulling the helm as if he were parking a car, the captain positioned the boat over the wreck, then, on Graff’s request, cut the engines and shut down the air-conditioning system. “We’re right over the Atlanta,” the captain said. Graff wanted silence.
The Atlanta survivor went to the fantail with a Melanesian Episcopal padre who had helped them make the arrangements. The padre, Graff’s son Christopher, and his grandson Kenneth, who was in his twenties, each said a few words. The grandson talked about how far away the war seemed now, and how it was hard to understand what it was all about because its veterans didn’t like to talk. So far away, and so little to talk about, except the hulk of the ship right below them, lying on her side on a ridge in the mud, her remaining anchor still wedged in the bank to keep her from going aground.
Somebody read some Scripture, then, stepping onto a diving platform mounted just inches above the surface, Graff began his eulogy. He addressed it to his former shipmates, whom he could sense all around him. He said that he had come out with his family to honor them and that they were good people and would be always remembered. “From the waters surrounding us, millions of javelins, reflected rays of the sun, blind us with your memory and pierce our hearts.” He wondered whether life had turned out as they all had hoped it would, and said he feared there might not be much to show for everybody’s efforts. “We