Ship of Ghosts - James D. Hornfischer [208]
Red Huffman lives in Santee, California, outside San Diego, as this is being written, seldom venturing into the traumatic territory of memory that might have defined his life had he allowed it. Like John Wisecup and so many others, he stayed busy with challenging work. After the war he signed on for service in the Navy’s underwater demolition teams, seeing action in Korea. Like his Marine shipmate from New Orleans, he looked to the Orient to find a bride. Though his right arm is no good, his mind is sharp. Only recently, though, has he taken to sharing with his wife, Mary, the details of his war experience. They sit together and read out loud to each other what little has been written about the Houston and the ordeal of her crew. Huffman has little to do with the USS Houston Survivors Association anymore. Though it has held reunions faithfully since about 1948, Huffman has found it painful territory to tread, and if you don’t feel the need for the powerful bond of love and brotherhood available there, what’s the point? His partner in flight from Phet Buri, Lanson Harris, who is Huffman’s equal in independence of spirit, lives just up the highway from him, in Irvine. They haven’t seen each other in many a year and it seems they might never again.
The Association’s guiding light has been Otto Schwarz. Second only to the heavenly spirit of Captain Rooks in his stewardship of the Houston’s legacy, the retired chief boatswain’s mate and postal worker has organized most every significant event on behalf of the ship’s memory. Anything that has touched on the old cruiser, its history, its traditions, or its people has gone through Schwarz in Union, New Jersey. “I always had the philosophy that whenever I have the opportunity, no matter how I have the opportunity, either newspapers or television interviews or anywhere, one-to-one meeting with people, I don’t want the world to forget this. I don’t want them to forget the Houston, first of all, because it was an absolutely gallant ship with a courageous crew. I don’t want people to forget what men can do to men.”
Schwarz has run the reunions long enough, and published the Blue Bonnet newsletters regularly enough, that no gathering ever really takes place in his absence. Even when he’s not there, you sense his presence in things. He has donated his entire personal collection of artifacts to the University of Houston Libraries, whose Cruiser Houston Collection houses sixty-eight boxes of documents, artifacts, and memorabilia pertaining to the ship and grows with the passing of every survivor. With the actual survivors aging fast and traveling less, the survivors’ children, grandchildren, nieces, and nephews are taking over under the auspices of the USS Houston Next Generation Organization, under the energetic leadership of Val Roberts-Poss, daughter of survivor Valdon Roberts. The Lost Battalion Association holds its own events in Dallas every August, and the children are well in attendance there too. They’re animated by the spirit that drove their fathers, but so long as a half dozen veterans still show up at the reunions, they don’t need to look too far for a hero.
CHAPTER 63
On September 22, 1945, a field party of sixteen British and Australian troops from the War Graves Commission, accompanied by a Japanese interpreter named Takashi Nagase,