Ship of Ghosts - James D. Hornfischer [216]
My partner in this mission was Bantam Books senior editor Tracy Devine. As she did with our first collaboration, The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors, she invested innumerable days, nights, and weekends bearing down on several drafts of this manuscript, reading with a close eye and a well-tuned ear to craft the best possible reading experience. All surviving ambiguities, contradictions, non sequiturs, and overrenderings are mine. I am indebted to all the pros at Bantam who make publishing with that powerhouse imprint a pleasure, including Irwyn Applebaum, Nita Taublib, Chris Artis, Kerri Buckley, Loren Noveck, Glen Edelstein, Dina Katz, and Susan Hood. Thanks to Sue Warga for a keen copyediting performance, and to my friend and literary agent, Frank Weimann.
In capturing the wartime experiences of an inevitably thinning generation, I was saved more than once by the foresighted diligence of people—historians and loved ones alike—who years ago thought to document the ordeal of their elders. In taping their speeches, transcribing their reminiscences, and writing their own accounts of their lives, they enabled me to glimpse livelier incarnations of men who could give me only so much in person. The Oral History Program at the University of North Texas in Denton is a priceless repository of testimony from veterans of the Houston and the Lost Battalion, most of them long deceased by the time I began my research. This book grew from the dedicated work of Ronald E. Marcello and his colleagues, who have been doggedly gathering the witness of these men since about 1970. Julie Grob, the devoted keeper of the Cruiser Houston Collection at the University of Houston’s M. D. Anderson Library, was an expert guide to the magnificent archival riches in her custody.
The members of the USS Houston (CA-30) Survivors Association, as well as its offshoot organization and eventual successor, the USS Houston Next Generation Association, have been kind in welcoming me into their society and friendship. Each of the four annual reunions and memorial services that I attended prior to completing work on this book was a lesson in humility and grace. Their love of their brethren and fathers, here and gone, is powerfully inspiring, and I am proud to be an adjunct member of the family. I appreciate the help of Steve Barrett, Ron Bennett, Vic Campbell, Dana Charles, Lin and Ron Drees, Joe Kollmyer, Larry Krug, Dawn Lodge, Sharron Long, Diane McIntosh, JoAnn Wychopen, Sherry Sylvester Ramsey, and especially Val Roberts-Poss, the Next Generation Association’s force majeure. Otto C. Schwarz was a source of good sense and perspective throughout the project. He has been instrumental in sustaining the Houston survivors organization since he returned from the war.
Harold R. Rooks was most generous in sharing with me the vital materials in his personal collection, including his gallant father’s papers and the correspondence between Captain and Edith Rooks. And special thanks to USS Houston wives, who kept an important charge in anchoring the lives of their husbands well after the world had largely forgotten their pain: Sylvia Brooks, Marti Charles, Shirley Gee, Jane Harris, Mary Huffman, Betty Maher, Jimmie Pryor, and Trudy Schwarz.
My friend Don Kehn Jr. shared with me valuable information, insight, and an infectious passion for all things relating to the Houston. Richard B. Frank and Paul Stillwell reviewed the draft manuscript and each saved me from a variety of embarrassments. Rod Beattie, Gordon Birkett, Robert J. Cressman, Roger Mansell, James McDaniel, Arthur Nicholson, Jonathan Parshall, Col. Tom Sledge, Barrett Tillman, Anthony Tully, Donovan Webster, and John Wukovits offered support, information, and encouragement. I thank Patrick Osborne at the National Archives