There is no hint in these navy medical records of any treatment for his colitis. It may be a.s.sumed that Jack and Joe agreed that he should continue to hide the severity of his intestinal problems and say nothing to the navy about any treatment he was receiving. According to the notation in the Chelsea Naval Hospital record, Jack"s "general health has always been good. Appendectomy in 1932. No serious illnesses." It is unlikely that any of Jack"s navy doctors would have picked up on the possibility that steroids might be causing the "arthritic changes" or deterioration of bone in his lower back. When Rose saw him in September, Jack"s stomach, colon, and back problems went unremarked. "You can"t believe how well he looks," she told Joe Jr. "You can really see that his face has filled out. Instead of it being lean, it has now become fat." (This was a likely consequence of steroid therapy.) By late June, Jack"s doctors declared him fit for duty.
At this time, Jack considered renouncing Catholicism as a kind of retaliation against his parents for their pressure on him to drop Inga. But Jack"s ties to Joe and Rose and the Church were stronger than his rebellious inclinations. His iconoclasm went no further than threats to teach a Bible cla.s.s, which he thought would be seen as "un-Catholic." "I have a feeling that dogma might say it was," he wrote his mother, "but don"t good works come under our obligations to the Catholic Church. We"re not a completely ritualistic, formalistic, hierarchical structure in which the Word, the truth, must only come down from the very top-a structure that allows for no individual interpretation-or are we?"
His impulse to challenge authority also extended to the medical experts, who seemed unable to solve his health problems. In the midst of the war, however, Jack deferred his inclination to defy conventional wisdom and instead applied for sea duty, which would allow him to get out of the United States and away from his parents and Inga. But, as he would quickly find, life on the front lines provided no escape from his tensions with authority. Instead of unpalatable parental and religious constraints, he found himself frustrated by military directives and actions that seemed to serve little purpose.
IN JULY 1942, the navy granted Jack"s request for sea duty and instructed him to attend midshipman"s school at a branch of Northwestern University in Chicago. There, he underwent the training that was producing the "sixty-day wonders," the junior naval officers slated for combat. Jack found the demands of the program tiresome and less than convincing as a training ground for sea duty. "This G.o.dd.a.m.n place is worse than Choate," he wrote Billings. "But as F.D.R. always says, this thing is bigger than you or I-it"s global-so I"ll string along."
Jack"s ambition was to command a motor torpedo boat, one of the PTs (for "patrol-torpedo"), as they were popularly known. The papers were full of stories about the heroic work of these small craft and their foremost spokesman, Lieutenant Commander John Bulkeley, who had won a Congressional Medal of Honor for transporting General Douglas MacArthur from the Philippines through five hundred miles of enemy-controlled waters to Australia. Bulkeley was a great promoter of these craft and had convinced President Roosevelt of their worth. In fact, in his drive to attract aggressive young officers to join his service, Bulkeley had vastly exaggerated the importance and success of the PTs. While Jack"s natural skepticism made him suspicious of Bulkeley"s claims about all the damage his boats were inflicting on the j.a.panese, the glamour of the PTs and, most of all, the chance to have his own command and escape the tedium of office work and navy bureaucracy made Bulkeley"s appeal compelling.
The compet.i.tion to become a PT commander was so keen and Jack"s back problems so p.r.o.nounced that he saw little likelihood of being accepted by Bulkeley. But against his better judgment, Joe intervened on Jack"s behalf. The positive publicity likely to be generated by having the former amba.s.sador"s son in his command and the very positive impression Jack made in an interview persuaded Bulkeley to give Jack one of 50 places applied for by 1,024 volunteers. Once accepted, though, Jack worried about surviving the physical training required for a.s.signment to a boat. Riding in a PT, one expert said, was like staying upright on a bucking bronco. At full speed it cut through the water at more than forty knots and gave its crew a tremendous pounding. In September, while on leave, Jack went to see Joe at the Cape. "Jack came home," Joe wrote his eldest son, "and between you and me is having terrific trouble with his back... . I don"t see how he can last a week in that tough grind of Torpedo Boats and what he wants to do of course, is to be operated on and then have me fix it so he can get back in that service when he gets better."
Since he wasn"t about to have an operation and since the navy was not objecting to his service in the PTs, he decided to test the limits of his endurance. The almost daily exercises at sea put additional strain on his back. "He was in pain," a bunkmate of Jack"s during training in Melville, Rhode Island, recalled, "he was in a lot of pain, he slept on that d.a.m.n plywood board all the time and I don"t remember when he wasn"t in pain." But he loved the training in gunnery and torpedoes, and particularly handling the boats, which his years of sailing off Cape Cod made familiar and even enjoyable work. "This job on these boats is really the great spot of the Navy," he wrote Billings, "you are your own boss, and it"s like sailing around as in the old days." Rose told her other children that Jack"s presence at Melville had changed "his whole att.i.tude about the war... . He is quite ready to die for the U.S.A. in order to keep the j.a.panese and the Germans from becoming the dominant people on their respective continents... . He also thinks it would be good for Joe [Jr.]"s political career if he [Jack] died for the grand old flag, although I don"t believe he feels that is absolutely necessary."
Rose and Joe were relieved that he didn"t think it "absolutely necessary" to give his life, but they found nothing funny in Jack"s flippant remark about sacrificing himself for his brother"s ambitions. Jack"s decision to enter combat in the PTs was "causing his mother and me plenty of anxiety," Joe told a priest. He was proud of his sons for entering the most hazardous branches of the service, but it was also causing their parents "quite a measure of grief."
Joe"s anxiety about seeing Jack enter combat as a PT commander may have been the determining influence behind a decision to keep Jack in Rhode Island for six months to a year as a torpedo boat instructor. A few of the best students in the program were routinely made instructors, Jack"s commander said later. But a fitness report on him, which described Jack as "conscientious, willing and dependable" and of "excellent personal and military character," also considered him "relatively inexperienced in PT boat operations" and in need of "more experience" to become "a highly capable officer." Why someone as inexperienced as Jack was made a training officer is difficult to understand unless some special pressure had been brought to bear.
Jack certainly saw behind-the-scenes manipulation at work, and he moved to alter his orders. He went directly to Lieutenant Commander John Harllee, the senior instructor at Melville. "Kennedy was extremely unhappy at being selected as a member of the training squadron," Harllee recalled, "because he yearned with great zeal to get out to the war zone... . As a matter of fact, he and I had some very hard words about this a.s.signment." But Harllee insisted that Jack stay.
It was not for long, however. Jack, distrusting his father"s willingness to help, went to his grandfather, Honey Fitz, who arranged a meeting with Ma.s.sachusetts senator David Walsh, the chairman of the Naval Affairs Committee. Walsh, who was very favorably impressed with Jack, wrote a letter to the Navy Department urging his transfer to a war zone. In January 1943, Jack was detached from his training duties and instructed to take four boats to Jacksonville, Florida, where he would be given rea.s.signment.
Though he thought he was on his "way to war," as he wrote his brother Bobby, who was finishing prep school, he was not there yet. During the thousand-mile voyage, he became ill with something doctors at the naval station in Morehead City, North Carolina, diagnosed as "gastro-enteritis." Since he recovered in two days and rejoined the squadron on its way to Jacksonville, he probably had an intestinal virus or food poisoning rather than a flare-up of his colitis. It was a signal nonetheless that his health remained precarious and that he was a wounded warrior heading into combat. "Re my gut and back," he soon wrote Billings, "it is still not hooray-but I think it will hold out." Upon his arrival in Jacksonville, his new orders a.s.signed him to patrol duty at the Panama Ca.n.a.l. Unwilling to "be stuck in Panama for the rest of the war," he immediately requested transfer to the South Pacific and prevailed upon Senator Walsh to arrange it. By the beginning of March, he was on his way to the Solomon Islands, where j.a.panese and U.S. naval forces were locked in fierce combat. After U.S. victories in the Coral Sea and at Midway in the spring of 1942, both sides had suffered thousands of casualties and lost dozens of ships in battles for control of New Guinea and the Solomons.
Jack"s eagerness to put himself at risk cries out for explanation. Was it because he felt invincible, as the young often do, especially the privileged? This seems doubtful. The reality of war casualties had already registered on him. "Your friend Jock Pitney," he wrote Lem on January 30, 1943, "I saw the other day is reported missing and a cla.s.s-mate of mine, Dunc Curtis ... was killed on Christmas day." Was Jack then hoping for a war record he could use later in politics? Almost certainly not. In 1943, Joe Jr. was the heir apparent to a political career, not his younger brother. Instead, his compelling impulse was similar to that of millions of other Americans who believed in the war as an essential crusade against evil, an apocalyptic struggle to preserve American values against totalitarianism. One wartime slogan said it best: "We can win; we must win; we will win." Small wonder, then, that Jack applauded Lem"s success in getting himself close to combat in North Africa by becoming an ambulance driver in the American Field Service. "You have seen more war than any of us as yet," he told Billings, who had failed his army physical, "and I certainly think it was an excellent idea to go." Jack also admired their friend Rip Horton for thinking about transferring from the Quartermaster Corps to the "Paratroopers-as he figured if my stomach could stand that [the PTs] he could stand the other. He"ll be alright if his gla.s.ses don"t fall off."
The seventeen months Jack would spend in the Pacific dramatically changed his outlook on war and the military. "I"m extremely glad I came," Jack wrote Inga, "I wouldn"t miss it for the world, but I will be extremely glad to get back... . A number of my illusions have been shattered."
Among them were a.s.sumptions about surviving the war. The combat he witnessed in March 1943, on his first day in the Solomons, quickly sobered him. As his transport ship approached Guadalca.n.a.l, a j.a.panese air raid killed the captain of his ship and brought the crew face to face with a downed j.a.panese pilot, who rather than be rescued by his enemy began firing a revolver at the bridge of the U.S. ship. "That slowed me a bit," Jack wrote Billings, "the thought of him sitting in the water-battling an entire ship." An "old soldier" standing next to Jack blew the top of the pilot"s head off after the rest of the ship"s crew, which was "too surprised to shoot straight," filled the water with machine-gun fire. "It brought home very strongly how long it"s going to take to finish the war."
It also made the perils of combat clearer to Jack. His Harvard friend Torbert Macdonald described a letter Jack wrote the next day, telling Macdonald "to watch out and really get trained, because I didn"t know as much about boats as he [Jack] did, and he said I should know what the h.e.l.l I was doing because it"s different out in the war zone." A visit to the grave of George Mead, a Cape Cod friend who had been killed in the Guadalca.n.a.l fighting, underscored the grim realities of the war for Jack. It was "among the gloomier events," he told Inga. "He is buried near the beach where they first landed." It was "a very simple grave" marked by "an aluminum plate, cut out of mess gear ... and on it crudely carved "Lt. George Mead USMC. Died Aug. 20. A great leader of men-G.o.d Bless Him." The whole thing was about the saddest experience I"ve ever had and enough to make you cry." When Rose told Jack that "all the nuns and priests along the Atlantic Coast" were "putting in a lot of praying time" on his behalf, he declared it comforting. But he hoped "it won"t be taken as a sign of lack of confidence in you all or the Church if I continue to duck."
What impressed Jack now was not the eagerness of the men in the war zone for heroic combat-that was romantic stuff dispelled by battlefield losses-but their focus on getting home alive. He told Inga that the "picture that I had in the back of my greatly illusioned mind about spending the war sitting on some cool Pacific Beach with a warm Pacific maiden stroking me gently" had disappeared. What "the boys at the front" talked about was "first and foremost ... exactly when they were going to get home." He wrote his parents: "When I was speaking about the people who would just as soon be home, I didn"t mean to use "They"-I meant "We."" He urged them to tell brother Joe not to rush to join him in the Pacific, as "he will want to be back the day after [he] arrives, if he runs true to the form of everyone else." When Billings told Jack that he was considering a transfer to Southeast Asia to fight with the British, Jack expressed delight that he was "still in one piece," noting that "you have certainly had your share of thrills," and advised him to "return safely to the U.S. and join the Quartermaster Corps + sit on your fat a.s.s for awhile... . I myself hope perhaps to get home by Christmas, as they have been good about relieving us-as the work is fairly tough out here."
Jack"s letters make clear that he was particularly cynical about commentators back home pontificating on the war from the safety and comfort of their offices and pleasure palaces. "It"s not bad here at all," Jack wrote Billings, "but everyone wants to get the h.e.l.l back home-the only people who want to be out here are the people back in the states-and particularly those in the Stork Club." He made a similar point to Inga: "It"s one of the interesting things about this war that everyone in the States, with the exception of that gallant armed guard on the good ship U.S.S. Stork Club-Lt. Commander Walter Winch.e.l.l-wants to be out here killing j.a.ps, while everyone out here wants to be back at the Stork Club. It seems to me that someone with enterprise could work out some sort of exchange, but as I hear you saying, I asked for it honey and I"m getting it." "I always like to check from where he [the columnist] is talking," he wrote his parents, "it"s seldom out here." All the talk about "billions of dollars and millions of soldiers" made "thousands of dead" sound "like drops in the bucket. But if those thousands want to live as much as the ten I saw [on my boat]-they should measure their words with great, great care."
Jack admired the courage and commitment to duty he saw among the officers and men serving on the PTs, but he also sympathized with their fear of dying and saw no virtue in false heroics. When one of the sailors under his command, a father of three children, became unnerved by an attack on their PT, Jack found his reaction understandable and tried to arrange sh.o.r.e duty for him. After the man was killed in another attack on Jack"s boat, he wrote his parents: "He never said anything about being put ash.o.r.e-he didn"t want to-but the next time we came down the line-I was going to let him work on the base force. When a fellow gets the feeling that he"s in for it-the only thing to do is to let him get off the boat-because strangely enough they always seem to be the ones that do get it."
Jack reserved his harshest criticism for the high military officers he saw "leading" the men in his war zone. General Douglas MacArthur, commander of all U.S. Army forces in the Pacific, was no hero to him. Jack thought MacArthur"s island-to-island strategy was a poor idea. "If they do that," he wrote his parents, "the motto out here "The Golden Gate by 48" won"t even come true." Jack reported that MacArthur enjoyed little or no support among the men he spoke to. The general "is in fact, very, very unpopular. His nick-name is "Dug-out-Doug,"" reflecting his refusal to send in army troops to relieve the marines fighting for Guadalca.n.a.l and to emerge from his "dug-out in Australia."
The commanders whom Jack saw up close impressed him as no better. "Have been ferrying quite a lot of generals around," he wrote Inga, "as the word has gotten around evidently since MacArthur"s escape that the place to be seen for swift and sure advancement if you"re a general is in a PT boat." His description to Inga of a visit to their base by an admiral is priceless. "Just had an inspection by an Admiral. He must have weighed over three hundred, and came bursting through our hut like a bull coming out of chute three... . "And what do we have here?"" he asked about a machine shop. When told what it was, he wanted to know what "you keep in it, harrumph ah ... MACHINERY?" Told yes, he wrote it "down on the special pad he kept for such special bits of information which can only be found "if you get right up to the front and see for yourself."" After additional inane remarks about building a dock in a distant bay, he "toddled off to stoke his furnace at the luncheon table... . That, Binga, is total war at its totalest."
Worse than the posturing of these officers was the damage Jack saw some of them inflicting on the war effort. As far as he was concerned, many of them were little more than inept bureaucrats. "A great hold-up seems to be the lackadaisical way they handle the unloading of ships," he wrote his parents a month after arriving in the Solomons. "They sit in ports out here weeks at a time while they try to get enough Higgins boats to unload them... . They"re losing ships, in effect, by what seems from the outside to be just inertia up high... . They have brought back a lot of old Captains and Commanders from retirement and stuck them in as heads of these ports and they give the impression of their brains being in their tails, as Honey Fitz would say. The ship I arrived on-no one in the port had the slightest idea it was coming. It had hundreds of men and it sat in the harbor for two weeks while signals were being exchanged." Jack was pleased to note, however, that everyone had confidence in the top man, Admiral William "Bull" Halsey. But he was especially doubtful about the academy officers he met. Now Rear Admiral John Harllee recalled Kennedy"s feeling in 1947 that "many Annapolis and West Point graduates were not as good material as the country could have selected... . He felt, for example, that some of the senior officers with whom he had had contact in the Navy left something to be desired in their leadership qualities." Somewhat ironically, given his own convoluted path into military service, Jack saw political influence on admitting candidates to the academies as the root of the problem. The resulting unqualified officers were a significant part of what he called "this heaving puffing war machine of ours." He lamented the "super-human ability of the Navy to screw up everything they touch."
Another difficulty Jack and others saw was the overestimation of the PTs" ability to make a substantial contribution to the fighting. Despite wartime claims that just one PT squadron alone had sunk a j.a.panese cruiser, six destroyers, and a number of other ships in the fighting around Guadalca.n.a.l, a later official history disclosed that in four months of combat in the Solomons, all the PT squadrons combined had sunk only one j.a.panese destroyer and one submarine. One PT commander later said, "Let me be honest. Motor torpedo boats were no good. You couldn"t get close to anything without being spotted... . Whether we sunk anything is questionable... . The PT bra.s.s were the greatest con artists of all times. They got everything they wanted-the cream of everything, especially personnel. But the only thing PTs were really effective at was raising War Bonds." Jack himself wrote to his sister Kathleen: "The glamor of PTs just isn"t except to the outsider. It"s just a matter of night after night patrols at low speed in rough water-two hours on-then sacking out and going on again for another two hours." The boats were poorly armed with inadequate guns and unreliable World War I torpedoes, had defective engines and highly imperfect VHF (very high frequency) radios that kept conking out, lacked armor plating, and turned into floating infernos when hit.
Jack"s doubts about local commanders and the PTs as an effective fighting force extended to the crews manning the boats. In May he told his parents, "When the showdown comes, I"d like to be confident they [his crew] knew the difference between firing a gun and winding their watch." By September, he declared that he "had become somewhat cynical about the American as a fighting man. I had seen too much bellyaching and laying off."
During his initial service in the Solomons in April and May 1943, Jack had seen limited action. The United States had won control of Guadalca.n.a.l by then, and Kennedy arrived during a lull in the fighting. Nevertheless, the island-hopping campaign against the j.a.panese was not close to being over. In antic.i.p.ation of another U.S. offensive and to reinforce garrisons southeast of their princ.i.p.al base at Rabaul on New Britain Island, the capital of the Australian-mandated territory of New Guinea, the j.a.panese launched continual air and naval raids. In June, when U.S. forces began a campaign to capture the New Georgia Islands and ultimately oust the j.a.panese from New Guinea, the PTs took on what U.S. military chiefs in the region called the "Tokyo Express": j.a.panese destroyers escorting reinforcements for New Georgia through "the Slot," the waters in New Georgia Sound southeast of Bougainville Strait and between Choiseul Island and the islands of Vella Lavella, Kolombangara, and New Georgia itself.
Jack"s boat was sent to the Russell Islands southeast of New Georgia in June and then in July to Lumbari Island in the heart of the combat zone west of New Georgia. On August 1, his boat-PT 109-was one of fifteen PTs sent to Blackett Strait southwest of Kolombangara to intercept a j.a.panese convoy that had escaped detection by six U.S. destroyers posted north of the island. The fifteen were the largest concentration of PTs to that point in the Solomons campaign. It also proved to be, in the words of the navy"s official history, "the most confused and least effective action the PT"s had been in." In a 1976 authoritative account, Joan and Clay Blair Jr. describe the results of the battle as "a personal and professional disaster" for PT commander Thomas G. Warfield. He blamed the defeat on the boats" captains: "There wasn"t much discipline in those boats," he said after the war. "There really wasn"t any way to control them very well... . Some of them stayed in position. Some of them got bugged and didn"t fire when they should have. One turned around and ran all the way out of the strait."
The attack by the boats against the superior j.a.panese force failed. Broken communications between the PTs produced uncoordinated, futile action; only half the boats fired torpedoes-thirty-two out of the sixty available-and did so without causing any damage. Worse yet, Jack"s boat was sliced in half by one of the j.a.panese destroyers, killing two of the crew members and casting the other eleven, including Jack, adrift.
Since the speedy PTs were fast enough to avoid being run over by a large destroyer and since Jack"s boat was the only PT ever rammed in the entire war, questions were raised about his performance in battle. "He [Kennedy] wasn"t a particularly good boat commander," Warfield said later. Other PT captains were critical of him for sitting in the middle of Blackett Strait with only one engine running, which reduced the amount of churning water that could be seen (and likelihood of being spotted and bombed by j.a.panese planes) but decreased the boat"s chances of making a quick escape from an onrushing destroyer.
In fact, the failure lay not with Jack but with the tactics followed by all PT boat captains and circ.u.mstances beyond Kennedy"s control. Since only four of the fifteen boats had radar and since it was a pitch-black night, it was impossible for the other eleven PTs to either follow the leaders with radar or spot the j.a.panese destroyers. After the radar-equipped boats fired their torpedoes, they returned to base and left the other PTs largely blind. "Abandoned by their leaders and enjoined to radio silence, the remaining PT boats had no real chance, in pitch dark, of ambushing the j.a.panese destroyers," one of the boat commanders said later.
The ramming of Jack"s PT was more a freak accident than a ""stupid mistake"" on Jack"s part, as Warfield"s successor described it. With no radar and only one of his three engines in gear, Jack could not turn the PT 109 PT 109 away from the onrushing destroyer in the ten to fifteen seconds between the time it was spotted and the collision. away from the onrushing destroyer in the ten to fifteen seconds between the time it was spotted and the collision.
With six crew members, including Jack, clinging to the hull of the boat, which had remained afloat, Kennedy and two other crewmen swam out to lead the other five survivors back to the floating wreck. One of the men in the water, the boat"s engineer, Pat "Pappy" McMahon, was seriously burned and Jack had to tow him against a powerful current. He then dove into the water again to bring two other men to the comparative safety of the listing hull. Two of the crew were missing, apparently killed instantly in the collision. They were never found, and Jack remembered their loss as a "terrible thing." One, who had feared that his number was up, had been part of Jack"s original crew; the other had just come aboard and was only nineteen years old.
At 2:00 P.M. P.M., after nine hours of clinging to the hull, which was now close to sinking, Kennedy organized the ten other survivors into two support groups for a swim to a seventy-yard-wide deserted speck of land, variously known as Bird or Plum Pudding Island. Jack, swimming on his stomach, towed his wounded crewman by clenching the ties of his life jacket in his mouth while "Pappy" McMahon floated on his back. The swim took five grueling hours. Because the island was south of Ferguson Pa.s.sage, a southern route into Blackett Strait normally traveled by the PTs, Kennedy decided to swim out into the pa.s.sage to flag a boat. Although he had not slept in thirty-six hours, was exhausted, and would face treacherous currents, he insisted on going at once. An hour"s swim brought him into position to signal a pa.s.sing PT with a lantern, but no boats showed up that night; believing that no one on the PT 109 PT 109 had survived the collision, the commanders had shifted their patrol to the northeast in the Vella Gulf. Bouts of unconsciousness marked Jack"s return swim to his crew, who had given him up for lost until he returned at noon. Too exhausted to try another swim to the pa.s.sage on the night of August 3, he sent another crew member, who returned on the fourth with no better result. had survived the collision, the commanders had shifted their patrol to the northeast in the Vella Gulf. Bouts of unconsciousness marked Jack"s return swim to his crew, who had given him up for lost until he returned at noon. Too exhausted to try another swim to the pa.s.sage on the night of August 3, he sent another crew member, who returned on the fourth with no better result.
That day, the party swam to the larger nearby Olasana Island, where they found no drinking water to relieve their increasing thirst except for some rain they caught in their mouths during a storm. On the fifth, Kennedy and Barney Ross, another officer who had come on the boat just for the August 1 patrol, swam to Cross Island, which was closer to Ferguson Pa.s.sage. There they found a one-man canoe, a fifty-five-gallon drum of fresh water, and some crackers and candy. Jack carried the water and food in the canoe back to Olasana, where the men, who had been surviving on coconuts, had been discovered and were being attended to by two native islanders. The next day, after Jack returned to Cross Island, where Ross had remained, he scratched a message on a coconut with a jackknife, which the natives agreed to take to Rendova, the PT"s main base. NATIVE KNOWS POSIT HE CAN PILOT 11 ALIVE NEED SMALL BOAT KENNEDY NATIVE KNOWS POSIT HE CAN PILOT 11 ALIVE NEED SMALL BOAT KENNEDY. The next day, four islanders appeared at Cross with a letter from a New Zealand infantry lieutenant operating in conjunction with U.S. Army troops on New Georgia: "I strongly advise that you come with these natives to me. Meanwhile, I shall be in radio communication with your authorities at Rendova and we can finalize plans to collect balance of your party." On the following day, Sat.u.r.day, the seventh day of the survivors" ordeal, the natives brought Jack to the New Zealander"s camp. Within twenty-four hours, all were aboard a PT, being transported back to Rendova for medical attention.
"In human affairs," President Franklin Roosevelt had told the uncooperative Free French leader Charles de Gaulle at the Casablanca Conference the previous January, "the public must be offered a drama." Particularly in time of war, he might have added.
Jack Kennedy was now to serve this purpose. Correspondents for the a.s.sociated Press and the United Press covering the Solomons campaign immediately saw front-page news in PT 109 PT 109"s ordeal and rescue. Journalists were already on one of the two PTs that went behind enemy lines to pick up the survivors. In their interviews with the crew and base commanders, they heard only praise for Jack"s courage and determination to ensure the survival and deliverance of his men. Consequently, when Navy Department censors cleared the story for publication, Jack became headline news: KENNEDY"S SON IS HERO IN PACIFIC AS DESTROYER SPLITS HIS PT BOAT KENNEDY"S SON IS HERO IN PACIFIC AS DESTROYER SPLITS HIS PT BOAT, the New York Times New York Times disclosed. disclosed. KENNEDY"S SON SAVES 10 IN PACIFIC; KENNEDY"S SON IS HERO IN THE PACIFIC KENNEDY"S SON SAVES 10 IN PACIFIC; KENNEDY"S SON IS HERO IN THE PACIFIC, the Boston Globe Boston Globe announced with local pride. announced with local pride.
Jack became the center of the journalists" accounts, though not simply because he was a hero-there were many other stories of individual heroism that did not resonate as strongly as Jack"s. Nor was his family"s prominence entirely responsible for the newspaper headlines. Instead, Jack"s heroism spoke to larger national mores: he was a unifying example of American egalitarianism. His presence in the war zone and behavior told the country that it was not only ordinary G.I.s from local byways risking their lives for national survival and values but also the privileged son of a wealthy, influential father who had voluntarily placed himself in harm"s way and did the country proud. Joe Kennedy, ever attentive to advancing the reputation of his family, began making the same point. "It certainly should occur to a great many people," he declared, "that although a boy is brought up in our present economic system with all the advantages that opportunity and wealth can give, the initiative that America instills in its people is always there. And to take that away from us means there is really nothing left to live for."
Jack himself viewed his emergence as an American hero with wry humor and becoming modesty. He never saw his behavior as extraordinary. "None of that hero stuff about me," he wrote Inga. "The real heroes are not the men who return, but those who stay out there, like plenty of them do, two of my men included." Asked later by a young skeptic how he became a hero, he said, "It was easy. They cut my PT boat in half." He understood that his heroism was, in a way, less about him than about the needs of others-individuals and the country as a whole. Later, during a political campaign, he told one of the officers who had rescued him, "Lieb, if I get all the votes from the people who claim to have been on your boat the night of the pickup, I"ll win easily!" When The New Yorker The New Yorker and and Reader"s Digest Reader"s Digest ran articles about him and ran articles about him and PT 109, PT 109, he enjoyed the renown but had no illusions about military heroes and worried about their influence on national affairs. "G.o.d save this country of ours from those patriots whose war cry is "what this country needs is to be run with military efficiency,"" he wrote a friend. When Hollywood later made a film about he enjoyed the renown but had no illusions about military heroes and worried about their influence on national affairs. "G.o.d save this country of ours from those patriots whose war cry is "what this country needs is to be run with military efficiency,"" he wrote a friend. When Hollywood later made a film about PT 109, PT 109, which served his political image and ambitions, he was happy to go along. But at a special White House showing, he made light of the occasion. "I"d like you to meet the lookout on which served his political image and ambitions, he was happy to go along. But at a special White House showing, he made light of the occasion. "I"d like you to meet the lookout on PT 109, PT 109," he jokingly introduced Barney Ross. In his chuckle was an acknowledgment of an absurdity that had lasted.
In fact, for all the accuracy of the popular accounts praising Jack"s undaunted valor, the full story of his courage was not being told. Everything he did in the normal course of commanding his boat and then his extraordinary physical exertion during the week after the sinking was never discussed in the context of his medical problems, particularly his back. Lennie Thom, Jack"s executive officer on PT 109, PT 109, was writing letters home at the time discussing Kennedy"s back problem and his refusal to "report to sick bay... . Jack feigned being was writing letters home at the time discussing Kennedy"s back problem and his refusal to "report to sick bay... . Jack feigned being well, well, but ... he knew he was always working under duress." Jack acknowledged to his parents that life on the boats was not "exactly what the Dr. (Jordan) ordered. If she could have put in the last week with me, she would have had that bed turned down for me at the [New England] Baptist [Hospital]." Yet Jack did not let on to his crew or commanding officer that he was ill or in pain. And except for his chronic back ailment, which he simply could not hide and which he seemed to take care of by wearing a "corset-type thing" and sleeping with a plywood board under his mattress, his men on but ... he knew he was always working under duress." Jack acknowledged to his parents that life on the boats was not "exactly what the Dr. (Jordan) ordered. If she could have put in the last week with me, she would have had that bed turned down for me at the [New England] Baptist [Hospital]." Yet Jack did not let on to his crew or commanding officer that he was ill or in pain. And except for his chronic back ailment, which he simply could not hide and which he seemed to take care of by wearing a "corset-type thing" and sleeping with a plywood board under his mattress, his men on PT 109 PT 109 saw no health problems. Joe Kennedy knew better, writing son Joe after news of Jack"s rescue that he was trying to arrange Jack"s return to the States, because "I imagine he"s pretty well shot to pieces by now." Joe Sr. told a friend, "I"m sure if he were John Doake"s son or Harry Hopkins" son he"d be home long before this." saw no health problems. Joe Kennedy knew better, writing son Joe after news of Jack"s rescue that he was trying to arrange Jack"s return to the States, because "I imagine he"s pretty well shot to pieces by now." Joe Sr. told a friend, "I"m sure if he were John Doake"s son or Harry Hopkins" son he"d be home long before this."
But even if the navy were willing to send him home, Jack was not ready to go. He wanted some measure of revenge for the losses he and his crew had suffered. He felt humiliated by the sinking of his boat. According to Inga: "It was a question of whether they were going to give him a medal or throw him out." Jack"s commanding officer remembered that "he wanted to pay the j.a.panese back. I think he wanted to recover his own self-esteem-he wanted to get over this feeling of guilt which you would have if you were sitting there and had a destroyer cut you in two." He took ten days to recuperate from the "symptoms of fatigue and many deep abrasions and lacerations of the entire body, especially the feet," noted by the medical officer attending him. On August 16, he returned to duty "very much improved."
The PTs were now in bad standing, but there were so many of them that the navy needed to put them to some good purpose. Consequently, the bra.s.s was receptive to converting some PTs into more heavily armed gunships. Jack"s boat-which he helped design-was the first of these to enter combat, in early October. And for the next six weeks he got in a lot of fighting and, to his satisfaction, inflicted some damage on the enemy.
By the late fall, however, he was weary of the war and ready to go home. He wrote Inga that the areas over which they were battling were "just G.o.d d.a.m.ned hot stinking corners of small islands in a group of islands in a part of the ocean we all hope never to see again." And the war itself now seemed "so stupid, that while it has a sickening fascination for some of us, myself included, I want to leave it far behind me when I go."
EVEN MORE IMPORTANT than the war-weariness stimulating Jack"s desire to go home were his continuing health problems. He now had almost constant back pain and stomachaches, which added to his normal fatigue from riding the boat at nights and struggling to sleep in the heat of the day. But unless he brought his medical difficulties to the attention of the navy doctors, he doubted that they would send him back to the States. "I just took the physical examination for promotion to full Looie," he wrote his brother Bobby. "I coughed hollowly, rolled my eyes, croaked a couple of times, but all to no avail. Out here, if you can breathe, you"re one A and "good for active duty anywhere" and by anywhere, they don"t mean the El Morocco or the Bath and Tennis Club, they mean right where you are." He wrote Billings: "I looked as bad as I could look, which is ne plus ultra, wheezed badly, peed on his [the doctor"s] hand when he checked me for a rupture to show I had no control, all to no avail. I pa.s.sed with flying colors, ready "for active duty ash.o.r.e or at sea" anywhere, and by anywhere they mean no place else but here... . Everyone is in such lousy shape here that the only way they can tell if he is fit to fight is to see if he can breathe. That"s about the only grounds on which I can pa.s.s these days." than the war-weariness stimulating Jack"s desire to go home were his continuing health problems. He now had almost constant back pain and stomachaches, which added to his normal fatigue from riding the boat at nights and struggling to sleep in the heat of the day. But unless he brought his medical difficulties to the attention of the navy doctors, he doubted that they would send him back to the States. "I just took the physical examination for promotion to full Looie," he wrote his brother Bobby. "I coughed hollowly, rolled my eyes, croaked a couple of times, but all to no avail. Out here, if you can breathe, you"re one A and "good for active duty anywhere" and by anywhere, they don"t mean the El Morocco or the Bath and Tennis Club, they mean right where you are." He wrote Billings: "I looked as bad as I could look, which is ne plus ultra, wheezed badly, peed on his [the doctor"s] hand when he checked me for a rupture to show I had no control, all to no avail. I pa.s.sed with flying colors, ready "for active duty ash.o.r.e or at sea" anywhere, and by anywhere they mean no place else but here... . Everyone is in such lousy shape here that the only way they can tell if he is fit to fight is to see if he can breathe. That"s about the only grounds on which I can pa.s.s these days."
By November 23, however, his stomach pain had become so severe that he had to go to the navy hospital at Tulagi in the Solomons for an examination. X rays showed "a definite ulcer crater," which indicated "an early duodenal ulcer." It was enough to compel Jack"s return to the States. On December 14, his commander detached him from the PT squadron and ordered his return to the Melville, Rhode Island, PT training center by the first available air transport. Once back in the States, where he didn"t arrive until January, he was ent.i.tled to thirty days" leave before reporting for duty.
He went first to Los Angeles to visit Inga, who saw him as "definitely not in good shape," and then to the Mayo Clinic for an examination. Joe Sr. joined Jack in Rochester and thought he was "in reasonably good shape, but the doctors at Mayo"s don"t entirely agree with me on this diagnosis." The doctors suggested that he consider having surgery to relieve the constant pain in his lower back, but, Joe wrote Rose, "Jack is insistent that he wants to get going again, so he left here Sat.u.r.day to go and see his brothers and sisters and then report for duty." Before heading to Rhode Island, however, he visited Palm Beach and New York for some R and R. "He is just the same," Rose wrote his siblings, "wears his oldest clothes, still late for meals, still no money. He has even overflowed the bathtub, as was his boyhood custom." The rest did not ease his ills, which now compelled him to take additional leave from duty for further medical evaluation in Boston"s New England Baptist Hospital. There, in February, the doctors also recommended back surgery.
But Jack was in no hurry to have an operation. He delayed, perhaps in the hope that the problem would let up or that it could wait until the war ended and he got out of the navy. His reluctance rested partly on the concern that it might raise questions about his failure to disclose his pre-service back, stomach, and colon problems and lead to a medical discharge under a cloud. In the meantime, the navy had rea.s.signed him to a PT base in Miami, Florida, where he did nothing of consequence. "Once you get your feet upon the desk in the morning," he told John Hersey, who was writing The New Yorker The New Yorker article on article on PT 109, PT 109, "the heavy work of the day is done." With no work of importance and his pain too great to delay further treatment, however, he agreed in May to have surgery. Occasional high fevers, coupled with a yellow-brown complexion-which was later diagnosed as malaria-underscored his need for medical attention. He joked that he would get through the war "with nothing more than a shattered const.i.tution." The navy now gave him permission for back surgery at New England Baptist by a Lahey Clinic doctor. "the heavy work of the day is done." With no work of importance and his pain too great to delay further treatment, however, he agreed in May to have surgery. Occasional high fevers, coupled with a yellow-brown complexion-which was later diagnosed as malaria-underscored his need for medical attention. He joked that he would get through the war "with nothing more than a shattered const.i.tution." The navy now gave him permission for back surgery at New England Baptist by a Lahey Clinic doctor.
He entered the Chelsea Naval Hospital on June 11 and was diagnosed as having a ruptured disk. On June 22, he was transferred to New England Baptist, where the following day a Lahey surgeon operated on him. The surgery disclosed not a herniated or ruptured disk but "abnormally soft" cartilage, which was removed. A subsequent "microscopic report showed fibrocartilage with degeneration."
Jack did well for the first two weeks after the operation, but when he began walking, he suffered severe muscle spasms in his lower back that "necessitated fairly large doses of narcotics to keep him comfortable." The surgeon noted that only nine other patients out of more than five hundred had exhibited similar symptoms. Jack continued to have considerable pain when standing, and the physician predicted that it would be at least six months before he could return to active duty.
It was an overly optimistic prognosis. When Jack transferred back to the Chelsea Naval Hospital in August, a neurosurgeon described the case as "an interesting complication of disc surgery where the surgeon at the Lahey Clinic may well have failed to get to the bottom of the situation... . The pathology seen at operation was not evidently a clear cut disc." Jack was "obviously incapacitated," and the navy physician had no answer to his problem, as he believed "there is some other cause for his neuritis."
Jack"s back difficulties were only one of several medical problems afflicting him. He was also described as having "a definite doudenal ulcer which recently was healed by x-ray, but he now has symptoms of an irritable colon." Sara Jordan, the leading gastroenterologist at Lahey, told the navy doctors that Jack had "diffuse duodenitis and severe spastic colitis." Though prior to entering the navy he had suffered "abdominal pain, sometimes of a dull nature and sometimes acute," he had been in "good condition for some time, having had no abdominal symptoms, but using considerable discretion in his diet and some times resorting to antispasmodic medication." He told Dr. Jordan that his current distress had begun after his ordeal in the Solomons. Jordan"s report said nothing about the extensive Mayo Clinic workup and treatment ten years earlier. By the middle of July, Jack had almost constant abdominal pain that only codeine could relieve.
During September and October, his back symptoms eased up, but the intestinal troubles continued. "The main difficulty," the navy doctors noted on November 6, "is now failure to gain weight and strength with continuation of spasmodic pain" in the left side of his abdomen. Since Jack"s recovery was going to take "an indefinite amount of time," his surgeon declared him "unfit for service." The doctors now changed his diagnosis from "hernia, intervertebral disc" to "colitis, chronic." By the end of November, the medical team at Chelsea Naval Hospital declared him permanently unfit for service and recommended that he appear before a retirement board.
Jack was now at the end of his patience with doctors and their treatments. In August, after eight weeks of hospitalization, he wrote a friend: "In regard to the fascinating subject of my operation, I ... will confine myself to saying that I think the doc should have read just one more book before picking up the saw." In November, he wrote Lem: "Am still in that G.o.d d.a.m.ned hospital-have had two ops. and Handsome Hensen, who is now in charge of my case, wants to get cutting again. He is the stupidest son of a b.i.t.c.h that ever drew breath... . He"s a mad man with a knife."
The chief of the navy"s medical bureau, a Dr. B. H. Adams, now also temporarily frustrated Jack by raising questions about the origins of his disability. Jack"s restricted diet before he entered the navy seemed to "clearly indicate that the subject officer suffered some type of gastro-intestinal disease prior to his appointment in the U.S. Naval Reserve." Adams disputed the conclusion that ""the background of his present physical status is an exhausting combat experience ... ." This opinion would appear to be not supported by the past history as set forth above." Prior to Jack"s appearance before a retiring board, Adams wanted "the history relating to the gastro-intestinal disease ... clarified." But other medical officers overruled Adams, declaring that Kennedy"s "present abdominal symptoms started" after "he spent over 50 hours in the water and went without food or drinking water for one week." They took at face value Jack"s statement that "his present abdominal discomfort is different than that noted previous to enlistment." After interviewing Jack on December 27, the retiring board concluded that his incapacity for naval service was permanent and was "the result of an incident of the service ... suffered in [the] line of duty." He was placed on the navy"s retirement list as of March 1, 1945.
Perhaps Jack experienced a different type of abdominal pain from what had plagued him before entering the navy, but his difficulties were all of one piece. The colitis had been afflicting him since at least 1934, when he was only seventeen, and his back problems had begun in 1938 and had been a constant source of difficulty since 1941. The steroid treatment for the colitis, which apparently began in 1937, may have been the princ.i.p.al contributor to his back trouble and ulcer without curing his "spastic colitis." Because they could not identify the origins of his back miseries, the doctors now called it an "unstable back."
The available evidence suggests that adrenal extracts in the form of implanted pellets used to control his colitis may have been the basis of his stomach ulceration and back difficulties. Jack apparently used these drugs episodically, relying on them when his colon disease flared up and stopping when he felt better. No doubt circ.u.mstances-the difficulty of consistently having so new a drug available during his nine months in the Pacific, for example-also made his use of them erratic. One expert on steroids says that regulating dosages was initially a serious problem, especially as DOCA was given intramuscularly or inserted under the skin with the expectation that it would be effective for a period of eight to ten months. Considerable uncertainty as to how much or how little was appropriate for a patient suggests that even under the best of circ.u.mstances Jack"s use of them was uneven.
What makes a.s.sertions that Jack"s stop-and-start use of steroids was a source of his stomach and lumbar diseases more convincing is the events in his medical history between 1945 and 1947. At the beginning of 1945, Jack went to Castle Hot Springs, Arizona, to recover his health. It was an elusive quest. Although Jack refused to complain to his father about his continuing maladies, Dr. Lahey saw him in Phoenix and reported to Joe that he was not "getting along well at all." His back remained a source of almost constant pain and he had trouble digesting his food. A companion in Arizona remembered that "he looked jaundiced-yellow as saffron and as thin as a rake." After a month in the desert, he told Billings that his back was "so bad that I am going to Mayo"s about the first of April unless it gets a little better."
It did not, and so in mid-April he went back to Rochester, Minnesota. Since his doctors had nothing new to recommend, he decided against additional medical workups. Instead, in May, as the war ended in Europe, he went to work as a correspondent for the Hearst newspapers covering the United Nations conference in San Francisco and then the British elections and the Potsdam Conference in Germany. When friends saw him in San Francisco, he looked sickly and spent a lot of time in bed resting his back. In July he was down with a fever in London, and then in August, after returning to London from Germany, he became terribly ill with a high fever, nausea, vomiting, "vague abdominal discomfort," and "loose stool." Doctors at the U.S. Navy Dispensary in London noted "a similar episode in 1942" and a previous history of malaria in 1944, but recorded his current illness as "gastro-enteritis, acute." In June 1946, after marching in a parade in Boston on a blistering hot day, he collapsed. One witness to the onset remembered that he "turned very yellow and blue" and looked like someone having a heart attack.
Dr. Elmer C. Bartels, an endocrinologist at the Lahey Clinic who subsequently treated him for his Addison"s, recalled that Jack was negligent about taking his medicine with him on trips. During his 1947 visit with Kathleen in Ireland, Jack became ill and cabled home asking that prescriptions be filled and sent with either his younger sister Patricia or a friend sailing to England. Before his sister or friend arrived with the medication, however, he became very ill in London. Seen at Claridge"s Hotel by Dr. Sir Daniel Davis, a prominent physician, Jack was immediately hospitalized at the London Clinic, where he was diagnosed with Addison"s. His nausea, vomiting, fever, fatigue, inability to gain weight, and brownish yellow color were all cla.s.sic symptoms of the disease. (Because malaria had similar symptoms and because Jack"s long history of stomach and colon problems suggested that his difficulties were related to an ulcer or colitis, his previous doctors had not diagnosed the Addison"s.) Jack"s failure to take his medicine probably triggered this Addisonian crisis.
Kennedy"s Addison"s disease, like the ulcer and osteoporosis and degeneration of his lumbar spine, was likely the result of the supplemental hormones he had apparently been taking on and off since the 1930s. It is now also understood that sustained treatment with steroids can cause the adrenal glands to shrivel and die. Doctors who had treated Jack"s Addison"s or read closely about his condition have concluded that he had a secondary form of the disease, or a "slow atrophy of the adrenal glands," rather than a rapid primary destruction. Because his sister Eunice also suffered from Addison"s, it is nevertheless possible that the disease had an inherited component.
Yet whatever the etiology of the problem, it was yet another potentially life-threatening disorder for Jack. An insufficient supply of cortisone reduces the body"s capacity to resist infection and makes people ill with Addison"s disease susceptible to medical crises from any sort of surgery, even the extraction of a tooth. By the time Jack was diagnosed with Addison"s, however, medical science had developed hormone replacements that, if given in proper doses, could ensure a normal life span. But it was hard, even given the Kennedy family confidence, not to fear that Jack"s days were numbered.
JACK"S MEDICAL ORDEAL paralleled family suffering that, added to his experience in the war, made him intensely conscious of the precariousness of life. In 1944, his brother Joe had been flying antisubmarine patrols in the English Channel. Although he had been ent.i.tled to return home after thirty missions, he insisted on remaining through at least the D-Day invasion to help guard the amphibious Allied forces against possible German U-boat attacks. But even after contributing to the success of the June 6 landing by providing air cover against submarines, Joe Jr. was not content to go home. Part of his eagerness to stay in the war zone was a compet.i.tive urge to outdo Jack. On August 10, Joe wrote him that he had read Hersey"s paralleled family suffering that, added to his experience in the war, made him intensely conscious of the precariousness of life. In 1944, his brother Joe had been flying antisubmarine patrols in the English Channel. Although he had been ent.i.tled to return home after thirty missions, he insisted on remaining through at least the D-Day invasion to help guard the amphibious Allied forces against possible German U-boat attacks. But even after contributing to the success of the June 6 landing by providing air cover against submarines, Joe Jr. was not content to go home. Part of his eagerness to stay in the war zone was a compet.i.tive urge to outdo Jack. On August 10, Joe wrote him that he had read Hersey"s New Yorker New Yorker article and was "much impressed with your intestinal fort.i.tude." But he could not resist asking: "Where the h.e.l.l were you when the destroyer hove into sight, and exactly what were your moves, and where the h.e.l.l was your radar." The underlying message was: Some hero to have let your boat been sunk. Joe was also intensely conscious of who got what awards. "My congrats on the [navy and marine] medal," he wrote Jack. "To get anything out of the Navy is deserving of a campaign medal in itself. It looks like I shall return home with the European campaign medal if I"m lucky." article and was "much impressed with your intestinal fort.i.tude." But he could not resist asking: "Where the h.e.l.l were you when the destroyer hove into sight, and exactly what were your moves, and where the h.e.l.l was your radar." The underlying message was: Some hero to have let your boat been sunk. Joe was also intensely conscious of who got what awards. "My congrats on the [navy and marine] medal," he wrote Jack. "To get anything out of the Navy is deserving of a campaign medal in itself. It looks like I shall return home with the European campaign medal if I"m lucky."
But it was not enough. In August, Joe volunteered for a terribly dangerous mission flying a navy PB4Y Liberator bomber loaded with 22,000 pounds of explosives, the highest concentration of dynamite packed into a plane up to that point in the war. The objective was for Joe and his copilot to fly the plane toward the princ.i.p.al German launch site on the Belgian coast of the V-1s, which were then terrifying London with their distinctive buzzing sound before impact and destruction of lives and property. The two pilots were to parachute out after activating remote-control guidance and arming systems, turning the plane into a drone controlled by a second trailing bomber. Although Joe a.s.sured Jack in his letter of August 10 that he was not "intending to risk my fine neck ... in any crazy venture," he knew that he had taken on what might well be a suicide mission. Several earlier attempts to strike the V-1s in this way had failed with casualties to the pilots, who had to bail out at dangerously high speeds and low alt.i.tudes. "If I don"t come back," Joe told a friend shortly before taking off, "tell my dad ... that I love him very much."
The mission on August 12 ended in disaster when Joe"s plane exploded in the air before reaching the English Channel coast. An American electronics officer had warned Joe before he took off that the remote-controlled arming system on the plane was faulty and that a number of things-"radio static, a jamming signal, excessive vibration, excessive turbulence, an enemy radio signal"-could prematurely trigger the explosives. Joe waved off the warning, a.s.sured by Headquarters Squadron that tests with 63,000 pounds of sand, subst.i.tuting for the cargo of explosives, had produced "excellent" flight results and a "perfect" performance by the equipment.
An air force report on August 14 a.s.sessing the causes of the explosion speculated that it could have resulted from any one of seven possibilities, including "static-electrical explosion" or "electric heating of Mark 143 electric fuse from unknown source." The a.n.a.lyst believed "a static electric explosion ... highly improbable." Because "the explosion was of a high order," he suspected "a possible electrical detonation ... by a friendly or enemy stray or freak radio frequency signal."
U.S. military authorities never established a clear cause of the premature explosion. In 2001, however, a veteran of the British Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers serving as a telecommunications mechanic in Suffolk, England, where the Kennedy plane exploded, came forward with an explanation. "The Americans, based all over the South [of England], had turned off their radars," he explained, "so as not to interfere with their flying armada. Unfortunately, they did not warn their British Allies of the exploit, so that it came under the scrutiny of a large number of powerful and less-powerful ground-based radars. Their pulses upset the delicate radio controls of the two Liberator bombers, leading to gigantic aerial explosions and the total destruction of the air armada." It was a crucial, and fatal, error of omission by the U.S. air command.
Joe"s death devastated his father, who told a friend, "You know how much I had tied my whole life up to his and what great things I saw in the future for him." To another friend, he explained that he needed to interest himself in something new, or he would go mad, "because all my plans for my own future were all tied up with young Joe and that has gone to smash." Joe"s death also confirmed his father"s worst fear that U.S. involvement in the war would cost his family dearly, deepening his antagonism to American involvements abroad for the rest of his life.
His brother"s death also evoked a terrible sense of loss in Jack. He eased his grief partly by conceiving the idea for a book of personal reminiscences about Joe by family and friends. As We Remember Joe As We Remember Joe was not only a tribute to him but a kind of lament for all the fine young men who had perished in the war and would never realize their promise. was not only a tribute to him but a kind of lament for all the fine young men who had perished in the war and would never realize their promise.
His heroic death left Jack with unresolved feelings toward his brother and father. His compet.i.tion with Joe had "defined his own ident.i.ty," he told Lem Billings. Now there was no elder brother to compete against, and Joe Jr."s death sealed his superiority "forever in his father"s heart." "I"m shadowboxing in a match the shadow is always going to win," Jack said.
Less than a month later, the family suffered another blow when Kathleen"s English husband, William Hartington, was also killed in combat by a German sniper in Belgium. "The pattern of life for me has been destroyed," Kathleen wrote Jack in October. "At the moment I don"t fit into any design." Four months later, in February 1945, when Kick, as the family affectionately called her, heard news of two other friends killed in the fighting, she wrote from England: "The news of Bill Coleman really upset me because I know how much he meant to Jack and how Jack always said that he would do better than anyone else he knew, and then Bob MacDonald lost in a submarine. Where will it all end?"
"Luckily I am a Kennedy," Kathleen told Lem Billings. "I have a very strong feeling that makes a big difference about how to take things. I saw Daddy and Mother about Joe and I know that we"ve all got the ability to not be got down. There are lots of years ahead and lots of happiness left in the world though sometimes nowadays that"s hard to believe."
Jack shared Kathleen"s resiliency. He also saw valuable lessons in human suffering and tragedy. As he later said of the poet Robert Frost, "His sense of the human tragedy fortified him against self-deception and easy consolation." Having been spared in the war, enjoying so much G.o.d-given talent, Jack was determined to make a mark on the world. But how? It was a question he had been struggling to answer for a number of years. Now, at long last, he would begin to answer it.
PART TWO
Public Service
They are wrong who think that politics is like an ocean voyage or a military campaign, something to be done with some particular end in view, something which leaves off as soon as that end is reached. It is not a public ch.o.r.e, to be got over with. It is a way of life.
- Plutarch.
There is no cause half so sacred as the cause of a people. There is no idea so uplifting as the idea of service to humanity.
- Woodrow Wilson, October 31, 1912
CHAPTER 4
Choosing Politics
I saw how ideally politics filled the Greek definition of happiness-"a full use of your powers along lines of excellence in a life-affording scope."
- John F. Kennedy (1960)
SIGMUND FREUD BELIEVED that a well-spent life rests on successful engagement with that a well-spent life rests on successful engagement with Arbeit Arbeit and and Liebe Liebe-work and love. Both require difficult choices, and neither is made easier by the ab