The men have been trained to follow orders, not discuss strategy. They argue, and yet Kennedy still won"t play the role of commander. The men have been waiting for a ship to come looking for them, or a search plane. As morning turns to noon, and PT-109 sinks lower and lower into the water, remaining with the wreckage means either certain capture by j.a.panese troops or death by shark attack.
Finally, John F. Kennedy takes charge.
"We"ll swim," he orders the men, pointing to a cl.u.s.ter of green islands three miles to the southeast. He explains that while these specks of land might be more distant than the island of Gizo, which appears close enough almost to touch, they"re less likely to be inhabited by j.a.panese soldiers.
The men hang on to a piece of timber, using it as a flotation device as they kick their way to the distant islands. Kennedy, a member of the swim team at Harvard, tows a badly burned crew member by placing a strap from the man"s life jacket between his own teeth and pulling him. During the five long hours it takes to reach the island, Kennedy swallows mouthful after mouthful of salt.w.a.ter, yet his strength as a swimmer allows him to reach the beach before the rest of the crew. He leaves the burned crewman in the shallows and staggers ash.o.r.e to explore their new home. The island is not much: sand, a few palm trees, and the reef that surrounds it. From one side to another, it"s just a hundred yards. But it"s land. After more than fifteen hours in the ocean, there"s no better place to be.
The rest of the crew finally arrives. They hide in the shallows as a j.a.panese barge pa.s.ses within a few hundred yards. Kennedy is collapsed in the shade of nearby bushes, exhausted from the swim and nauseated from swallowing all that seawater. Yet, despite his weakened condition, something is different about him. The man who once shied away from leadership has realized that only he can save his crew.
Kennedy looks toward the beach. The sand is off-white and slopes into the water. The men have sought shelter under low-hanging trees. With a sense of relief, he sees that nearby lies a large bundle wrapped in a kapok life vest, something the men salvaged from PT-109. Kennedy needs that package for what he is about to do next.
Inside the bundle is a ship"s lantern. Kennedy staggers to his men and outlines a plan: he will swim to another nearby island, which is closer to a channel known as the Ferguson Pa.s.sage, a popular route for the patrol torpedoes, and will use the lantern to signal any pa.s.sing PT boats that might venture their way in the night. If Kennedy makes contact, he will signal to his crew with the lantern.
Kennedy prepares for the swim. He is still on the verge of vomiting, and is now also light-headed from dehydration and lack of food. He peels off his shirt and pants to save weight, and ties a .38-caliber pistol to a lanyard around his neck. He had stripped off his shoes and tied them around his neck before the long swim from PT-109, but now puts them back on to save his feet from being cut on the sharp reef. Finally, Kennedy hugs the kapok vest tightly around his naked body, knowing that the lantern wrapped inside it is the key to their rescue.
Kennedy steps back into the sea. He thinks of the giant barracuda that live in these waters, which are rumored to swim up out of the blackness and bite off the genitals of pa.s.sing swimmers. Without pants, he is surely an inviting target.
Kennedy swims alone into the night until his shoes sc.r.a.pe against a reef. He makes his way along the sharpened surface, searching for that inevitable moment when the reef ends and the sandy beach begins. But the reef is endless. Even worse, the coral slices his hands and his legs time and again. Whenever Kennedy takes a misstep and plunges underwater into some unseen hole, his mind immediately races to thoughts of barracuda.
Kennedy never finds that sandy beach. So, tying his shoes to his life belt, he undertakes a courageous and slightly foolhardy alternate course of action: he swims out into open water, lantern held aloft, hoping to signal a pa.s.sing PT.
But on this night, of all nights, the U.S. Navy is not sending patrol torpedo boats through the Ferguson Pa.s.sage. Kennedy treads water in the utter blackness, waiting in vain for the sound of m.u.f.fled propellers.
He finally gives up. But when he tries swimming back to his men, the currents work against him. He is swept far out into the Blackett Strait, frantically lighting the lamp to signal his men as he drifts past. They argue among themselves as to whether the lights they"re seeing are an illusion brought on by hunger and dehydration, even as their skipper slips farther and farther into the utter blackness.
John Kennedy pries off his heavy shoes and lets them fall to the sea bottom, thinking that the reduced drag will allow him to swim more easily. It doesn"t. He drifts farther and farther out into the Pacific. No matter how hard he swims, the currents push him in the other direction. Finally, he stops fighting. Alone in the dark, his body now cold and his mind a jumble of conflicting thoughts, Kennedy bobs lifelessly. He is an enigmatic man. Despite his reputation for bedding as many girls as possible, he was raised in a Roman Catholic household. His faith has faltered in recent months, but it now serves him well. Even though his situation seems impossible, Kennedy has hope.
And he never lets go of his lamp.
Kennedy floats, as alone and powerless as a man can be, all night long. The skin of his fingers wrinkles, and his body grows even colder.
But it is not his time to die. Not yet. As the sun comes up, Kennedy is stunned to realize that the same currents once pulling him out to sea have now spun around and deposited him right back where he started. He swims back safely to his men. After hours as a beacon in the darkness, the lamp finally extinguishes itself once and for all.
Days pa.s.s. Kennedy and his men survive by choking down live snails and licking moisture off leaves. They name their home Bird Island because of the abundance of guano coating the tree leaves. Sometimes they see aircraft dogfighting in the skies, but they never spot a rescue plane. Indeed, even as they struggle to survive, their PT brethren hold a memorial service in their honor.
After four days, Kennedy persuades George Ross of Highland Park, Illinois, to attempt a swim with him. This time they head for an island named Naru, where it is very possible they will run into j.a.panese soldiers. At this point in their ordeal, with the men"s bodies racked by hunger and excruciating thirst, capture is becoming preferable to certain death.
The swim lasts an hour. At Naru, they come upon an abandoned enemy barge and see two j.a.panese men hurriedly paddling away in a canoe. Kennedy and Ross search the barge for supplies and find water and hardtack biscuits. They also discover a small canoe. After spending the day in hiding, Kennedy leaves Ross on Naru and paddles the one-man canoe out into the Ferguson Pa.s.sage. No longer in possession of a lantern or other means of signaling a pa.s.sing PT, JFK is now desperate, taking crazy gambles. And yet, despite long odds, he once again makes it through the night, paddling the canoe back to his men.
Finally, he receives a bit of good news. The men he mistook for j.a.panese soldiers were actually local islanders. They had spotted Kennedy and Ross, and then paddled to PT-109"s crew to warn them about j.a.panese forces in the area.
Kennedy meets these islanders in person the next morning, when his canoe founders on the way back to Naru. These highly experienced men of the sea come out of nowhere to pluck him from the Pacific and paddle him safely to George Ross. Before the islanders depart, Kennedy carves a note into the sh.e.l.l of a fallen coconut: "NAURO ISL ... COMMANDER ... NATIVE KNOWS POS"IT ... HE CAN PILOT ... 11 ALIVE ... NEED SMALL BOAT ... KENNEDY."
With that cryptic message in their possession, the natives paddle away.
Night falls. Rain pours down. Kennedy and Ross sleep under a bush. Their arms and legs are swollen from bug bites and reef scratches. The islanders have shown them where yet another canoe is hidden on Naru, and Kennedy insists to Ross that they paddle back into the open sea one more time in search of a PT.
Only now the Pacific isn"t placid. The rain turns torrential. The seas are six feet high. Kennedy gives the order to turn back, only to have the canoe capsize. The two men cling to their overturned boat, kicking as hard as they can to guide it toward land. Giant waves now pound against the reef. Kennedy is torn from the canoe. The sea"s force holds him under and spins him around. Yet again he believes he is near death. But just when it seems all is lost, he comes up for air. He battles his way onto the reef. Ross is nearby, alive. As the rain pours down, they pick their way across the sharp coral and onto the beach, once again slicing open their feet and legs. This time there are no thoughts of barracuda, only survival. Too exhausted to care about being seen by the j.a.panese, they collapse onto the sand and sleep.
John Kennedy is out of solutions. He has done all he can to save his men. There is nothing more he can do.
As if in a mirage, Kennedy wakes up to see four natives standing over him. The sun is rising. Ross"s limbs are horribly disfigured from his coral wounds, with one arm swollen to the size of a football. Kennedy"s own body is beginning to suffer from infection.
"I have a letter for you, sir," one of the natives says in perfect English.
An incredulous Kennedy sits up and reads the note. The natives have taken his coconut to a New Zealand infantry detachment hidden nearby. The note is from the officer in charge. Kennedy, it says, should allow the islanders to paddle him to safety.
So it is that John F. Kennedy is placed in the bottom of a canoe, covered in palm fronds to hide him from j.a.panese aircraft, and paddled to a hidden location on New Georgia Island. When the canoe arrives at the water"s edge, a young New Zealander steps from the jungle. Kennedy comes out from under his hiding place and climbs out of the canoe. "How do you do?" the New Zealander asks formally. "I"m Lieutenant Wincote." He p.r.o.nounces his rank the British way: LEFF-tenant.
"h.e.l.lo. I"m Kennedy." The two men shake hands. Wincote nods toward the jungle. "Come up to my tent and have a cup of tea."
Kennedy and his men are soon rescued by the U.S. Navy. And thus the saga of PT-109 comes to an end, even as the legend of PT-109 is born.
There is another incident that influences John Kennedy"s journey to the Oval Office. Kennedy"s older brother, Joe, is not as lucky about cheating death. The experimental Liberator bomber in which he is flying explodes over England on August 12, 1944. There is no body to bury and no memento of the tragedy to place on JFK"s desk. But that explosion marked the moment when John F. Kennedy became a politician and began the journey into the powerful office in which he now sits.
Less than six months after the war ends, John Fitzgerald Kennedy is one of ten candidates running in the Democratic primary of Boston"s Eleventh Congressional District. The veteran politicians and ward bosses of the deeply partisan city don"t give him a chance of winning. But JFK studies each ward in the district, reveling in his role as the underdog. He recruits a well-connected fellow World War II veteran named Dave Powers to help run his campaign. Powers, a rising political star in his own right, is at first reluctant to help the skinny young man who introduces himself by saying, "My name is Jack Kennedy. I"m a candidate for Congress."
But then Powers watches in awe as Kennedy stands before a packed Legion hall on a cold Sat.u.r.day night in January 1946 and gives a dazzling campaign speech. The occasion is a meeting of Gold Star Mothers, women who have lost sons in World War II. Kennedy speaks for only ten minutes, telling the a.s.sembled ladies why he wants to run for office. The audience cannot see that his hands shake anxiously. But they hear his well-chosen words as he reminds them of his own war record and explains why their sons" sacrifice was so meaningful, speaking in an honest, sincere voice about their bravery.
Then Kennedy pauses before softly referring to his fallen brother, Joe: "I think I know how all you mothers feel. You see, my mother is a Gold Star Mother, too."
Women surge forth as the speech concludes. Tears in their eyes, they reach out to touch this young man who reminds each of them of the sons they lost, telling him that he has their support. In that instant, Dave Powers is convinced. He goes to work for "Jack" Kennedy right then and there, forming the core of what will become known as Kennedy"s "Irish Mafia." It is Dave Powers who seizes on PT-109 as a vital aspect of the campaign, mailing voters a reprint of a story about that August night in 1943 to show the selfless bravery of a wealthy young man for whom some might otherwise not be inclined to vote.
Thanks to Dave Powers"s insistence on making the most of PT-109, John F. Kennedy is elected to Congress.
During his first months as president, the coconut on which Kennedy carved the rescue note is a reminder of the incident that started him on his path to the White House.
The coconut is also a daily reminder that JFK owes the presidency, in part, to the sharp political intuition of Dave Powers. The tall Boston native, five years JFK"s senior, has been on the Kennedy payroll since that January night in 1946. As special a.s.sistant to the president, he is not a cabinet member, or even an official adviser-just a very close friend who always seems to antic.i.p.ate the president"s needs and whose company the always-loyal JFK enjoys immensely. Powers has been described as the president"s "jester in residence," and it"s true: his official capacity in the White House is largely social. Dave Powers is willing to do anything for John Kennedy.
But even Dave Powers, with his remarkable powers of intuition, cannot possibly know what "anything" means-nor can he predict that even as he witnessed John Kennedy"s first-ever political speech, he will also witness his last.
FEBRUARY 1961 THE WHITE HOUSE.
1:00 P.M.