A Story of a Couple
from the Greatest Generation
Jake's Final Fight . . . now a Guerrilla
|
CLICK BOOK FOR STORY EXPLANATION
|
But Jake raged too, reaching back with painful arms to try to find some support, some tree or stump from which to push himself toward and into the enemy that had killed and maimed so many of his friends. It was as if he wasn’t cognizant of the bayonet or ignored it and his own impending end . . . but then grabbed feebly at it to try and go on . . for her
. . . instant, flashing visions, mostly filled with her
CLICK IMAGE FOR BOOK ON AMAZON
|
After Interviewing the
|
As big as the USS Kings Mountain was, Sarah realized it was steaming faster. The big ship was maintaining a combat air patrol off to the northwest above Leyte, and it had to cruise to make launching easier. Sarah felt the slight pitch to port and the acceleration as the ship turned into the wind, and the big Wright Cyclone began to roar, vibrating the whole plane. She saw the lieutenant lean to look down, and, following his gaze, saw a crewman on the deck signal take off. The TBF rolled forward slowly, then ever faster, and finished with a roaring climb for altitude as she looked down to see the deck disappear from beneath her. Then she absorbed the visual experience that was the return flight across Leyte.
After the Unsuccessful PBY Catalina Mission in Search of
a TBF Crew Downed at Sea off of Luzon in the Night
The flight back was quiet at first, somber. Closer to the tender there was quiet talk without any levity of course, and the men weren’t totally silent as they deplaned from their mission. They had work to do to stand down from it anyway. But they felt it and she knew it. She wanted to say something but knew not what. It would have seemed arrogant anyway. Who was she after all? ‘It’s not like I’m Lana Turner or Betty Grable or someone,’ she thought to herself.
Hoping none blamed her, the bad luck of a woman in a man’s world, Sarah stepped with Gerald into the small launch by the hatch of the flying boat and turned to say goodbye to the crewman who helped her into it.
“Thank you, Petty Officer. And thank you for the experience. My husband flew Dumbos. This meant something to me. You are brave men.”
The sailor, a young petty officer third class, nodded and said, “You’re welcome ma’am.”
Somehow, saying it to just one of them privately seemed to mean more.
With a certain imaginative ability, the young woman reflected as she sat in the little launch as it pulled toward shore and the outline of the low setting water bird became more indistinct in the haze of early dawn as they pulled away from it.
There were the beginnings of the rose glow of morning off to the east across the water, just at the planet’s rim, and she remembered her husband joking on early morning walks that the sun was hull down over the horizon. She thought it such a quaint naval term. But then weren’t they all? ‘How did I become a part of this?’ the woman thought. ‘Thank God I am a part of this?’ Staring at the dull, yet beautiful yellow, rose, and gray sky slowly developing, Sarah wondered at all of them . . these young men and women, of which she was now one . . how their lives had changed, some just a year or so out of school, many off a farm they thought they would never leave . . now dying horrible sometimes lonely deaths, like drowning in the night somewhere between Cape Engaño and Polillo Island around the world from home in the Philippine Sea. But they were also winning the greatest war ever fought . . a bunch of teenagers and twenty something year olds, and the old guys and gals in their thirties: sinking expensive giant enemy aircraft carriers and destroying armies, and nurses stealing broken men from the gaping maw of death. Just kids . . doing that. And she had her small part, bureaucratic fieldwork, looking for the lost and almost forgotten.
PARADISE RIDGE DISPATCH May 19, 1945 LOCAL GIRL GOES TO WAR Paradise Ridge’s youth continue to serve our little community and our nation. The latest, Sarah Willowood Pierce, having left the grill and our stomachs in the good hands of Eloise Sanderson and gone off in marriage with one of our favorite sons, Chief Petty Officer Jake Pierce, has now dared to face this great conflagration as few young women in America can. She joins metaphorically the military and Red Cross nurses in a way. Concerned, as we all are, about the lack of news about her missing husband, the young Paradise Ridge woman we all remember as being so capable and resourceful has secured a job with the Navy and is off searching for missing men who may yet still be alive and still in harm’s way. According to her parents-in-law with whom she had been living, Sarah sought out help and discovered that others were ‘found’ yet somehow still missing, just like her Jake. It seems to be a complicated situation more confusing than a man just being missing on a mission or on a battlefield. By luck or the grace of God, the young woman and Jake’s parents encountered an officer on that exact mission and in need of a secretary. Well, a graduate of Mrs. Orinach’s business classes at Paradise Ridge High, Sarah was just what the situation called for. Pray for the best of Paradise Ridge youth as they face danger: Jake, missing now for many months but thought to be alive with the jungle guerrilla movement in the Philippine highlands; Darrell Robinson, just off to the Pacific as an aircraft mechanic aboard a carrier; Darrel’s older brother, David, killed in action flying in North Africa; and Sarah, going closer to the dangers of this war than any women save our nation’s brave combat nurses and a few journalists. Mr. and Mrs. Pierce ask your prayers for them all and for Sarah especially now, as they have learned through letters that she is near the combat. Only recently, according to Eric Pierce, his daughter-in-law, while being transported in a carrier-based Navy bomber from one island location to another to do her job, landed on a carrier [name withheld] just after a brave, wounded fighter pilot had crash landed on the deck. Our local beauty is within the grasp of the beast. Some local boys from the class of 1943 have finished advanced training and have joined the fleet, and two are soldiers. They are all listed below. |