Indianapolis Times, Indianapolis, Marion County, 11 December 1942 — Page 30

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FLIER TELLS OF 23 DAYS

AND PAL USE

L CHUTE FOR SAIL

Big Shark Rips Hole in Frail Craft; Lose Food When

_ It Upsets; Eat Raw Fish;

Make

Pet of Sea Gull. _

i It began with a routine patrol flight from the deck of the .U, 8. aircraft carrier Hornet one fine afternoon, and ended after 23 days in a pneumatic life raft, on the reefs of a tiny island in

5 mid-Pacific.

This was the amazing experience of Ensign Louis John Muery | : Jr, Houston, Tex. a 23-year-old naval flier who won his wings In August, 1941, at the Miami naval air training station. Ensign Muery’s story is a drama of courage and endurance "In keeping with the highest tradition of the American service. It . needs not a whit of elaboration and belongs with the great stories of personal bravery that have distinguished men in all ages who have followed the sea. Here it is as he tells it.

By ENSIGN LOUIS J. MUERY JR. J U. 8. Naval Reserve, (As told to Lieut. John O. Guenther, public-relations officer with an American

@verseas force).

WE WERE a long way from the Hornet, just skiming the surface of the ocean, when our engine stopped. ‘There we were, just the two of us, Aviation Radioman

Walter Max John Richter from Nebraska, and I. I crash-landed the plane and we

minutes it was over. managed to get out of our harness and on to the wing with our rubber lifeboat.

Then the plane sank. Fortunately, the sea was calm

and there was still an hour or

two of daylight left. The raft was automatically inflated by a ¢arbon-oxygen apparatus. Neither

0! us was particularly concerned

gibout our plight. We figured . we'd be picked up as soon as we were missed. But just in. case, we started checking over our gear #nd making things fast. - A quick inventory showed two ¢uart canteens of water, a 45-° ¢aliber pistol and 21 rounds of > ¢mmunition, - emergency rations formal for two days, two folding ¢ luminum paddles, an air pump for the raft, patching equipment for the raft, a first-aid kit, our rubber life-jackets, three pocket knives, two signal flags, a stainless steel mirror, a whistle, our | watches and my parachute, which

In two

I kept because I'd heard it was a damned good thing to hang onto in such a situation. And it turned out to be good advice. The rations consisted of our concentrated chocolate bars, four small bottles of malted milk tablets, and 12 cans of concentrated food (compressed coconuts, nuts, and raisins), This was all contained in our little seven-foot raft. We had no compass, no charts, no navigation equipment, but they would have been useless anyway.

# ” »

Took Long Chance

AFTER WE GOT things settled and shipshape we decided to make for an island we had noticed about 40 or 50 miles from the place the plane went down. Looking back it seems sort of useless now, because we had no idea of our bearings and only a chance in a million of making it, particularly

since the wing and current were sweeping us in what we thought

was roughly the opposite direction. |

But we tried it anyway, and paddled all night in relays. But by morning we realized we were getting nowhere, and took new stock of the situation. Still hopeful of rescue, we de-

cided we’d just sit and wait. The’

sea remained calm but now fish, becoming curious, commenced to swim around’'the raft. There were a few big sharks in the lot who swam so close they pushed the boat around, worrying us quite a bit. We fired a few shots near them to scare them off, but abandoned that to conserve our ammunition. Then we resorted to splashing the water with the paddles, and that seemed to keep them at a distance. By morning of the third day, we decided that fescue was unlikely

and that we'd have to try to make

land before it was too late. We

rigged up a sail from a piece of -

the parachute, using a paddle for the mast and the handle of one of the signal flags for a yard-arm. The makeshift sail was rigged sturdily enough, but it was too small to be effective. Subsequently we made too other sails, each larger than the first. The third, and last, proved a good one. Five by eight feet, with the remaining signal flag pole to lengthen the yard-arm and allowing a good belly to the wind, it pulled the boat along at nearly the speed of the wind. We often made six to eight knots, sometimes more when the wind was high. We steered with the remaining paddle, working in shifts which grew shorter and shorter as we became weaker, # # #

Three Foodless Days

NEXT WE, rationed our food, figuring a 40-day period. We had our “banquet” every afternoon and each of us was allowed a quarter can of concentrated food, or four or five malted milk tablets, or one square of chocolate. For the first three days we ate nothing and drank none of our water, holding it out until it became really necessary. When we did begin drinking our water, we tried the idea of just rinsing out our mouths and returning the water to our canteens on the theory that by doing so we'd keep the swelling of our tongues down and still conserve the water. This we did once a day for the first 10 days, but the idea wasn't very good. The water

rain water, but that was a failure,

the rain until it became watersoaked and then we'd wring it out into the box. By doing this

caught enough to fill

one of the canteens. 2

Don’t Even Talk

TIME PASSED without meaning. We kept track of the days since we crashed, but we had no

idea of what particular day it was. Days were a succession of winds that moved the ship, and calms that left it motionless in a glassy sea. Nothing else had much meaning to us. Either there was a wind and hope, or no wind and despair. We'd stopped talking to each other after the third day and communicated almost entirely by signals and grunts. Talking was tiring and dried our mouths. We both were seasick for a short while; Richter shortly after we took to the boat; I got mine about the fifteenth day.

The sun was cruelly hot and blistered poor Ric’s skin terribly. But he never complained. We had rigged a large piece of the parachute as a sort of awning over us against the heat, but he blistered in spite of that. My own skin, darker and tougher, just became more deeply burned.

The parachute was a godsend. It was a water reservoir, a sunshade, a sail and clothing. Our own clothes were going fast. We'd cut off the bottoms of the trousers because they were always wet and made ragged shorts of them. We wet our bodies with sea water constantly to cool them, and it helped. I don’t know if there's any truth to it, but the water we put over us seemed to help our thirst and to revive us. Maybe

If you travel over the Holidays,

YOu MAY HAVE JO STAND

leave, pethaps to have their last holiday.

In seasons past, it gave us pleasure to provide... plenty of trains... plenty of berths «.. plenty of seats. ,.sa that everyone could travel comfortably to family reunions. But this wartime Christmas it will be a different story. Much of out Pullman and coach equipment that served holiday travel is now busy catrying troops. What remains is not sufficient to accommodate in comfort the crowds that usually climb aboard.

Besides, the cars available must provide for large numbets of service men traveling on |

dinner with the family in a long time.

So, if you plan a trip over the holiday period, chances ate thete will be neither Pullman not coach accommodations available. Standing room may be all that is left.

We're genuinely sorry this is the outlook, but these ate wat days—and the demands of war must come first. To the best of our ability, we shall endeavor to serve those who must travel, with the equip-

ment at hand.

; of he dis sho bee, pens oy 0 tke & oie

NC.

3 ik EEN ’ it yk Lp bg i bo

Please travel Nght! If you take only one bag aboard there will be more room and comfort fot everyone!

- PENNSYLVANIA RAILROAD

NATION

Yoil i

[es Ace 98 Ap sone] AND DONT FORGET THe WAR BOND./ rm

it is absorbed in some way into the body. » ” tJ THE* DAYS PASSED without signs of a sail or of land. Our only companions were the tireless sharks who swam around the boat and nudged the bright aluminum paddle that seemed to excite their curiosity. In the intense heat of midday they usually went away, probably to the cooler, deeper water At night they were the worst We kept firing the pistol at them when they got too close, but its usefulness was coming to an end as it became rusted with salt wajer For a time we kept it going by using sunburn oil until we lost it on the 12th day. We'd been thinking about lightening the boat We got around to it about the 10th day. We threw away our shoes and socks, underwear and helmets, and the seat from the parachute. The boat seemed to sail faster after we'd lightened it. On the 12th day the boat overturned. All that day the wind had grown more and more brisk. We were skimming along at a fine clip, but swells were building up, and changing shifts for holding the paddle (which we were doing very frequently now) became pretty risky. It was just such a time, when I was turning the paddle over to Richter, that the boat went over and hauled us with it, tangled in the lines that held up the sail After a struggle we righted it again, but it was a very hafd job since the sail held it under like a keel. A quick check showed that the acident had cost us the pistol, the shells, one canteen of water, two of our three knives, and all our food except three bottles of malted milk tablets. The rest of the gear had been well tied down. The losses didn’t bother us much; we didn’t care much by that time. The loss of a gun, or a few shells, or even the food couldn’t look too significant. We were glad to be in the boat again, with another

chance to make shore. " ” w

Raw Fish Tasted Good THE ENDLESS round of days and nights began again. Occasionally we'd paddle ‘to where we'd see a cloud forming, so as

to get under it and catch some |

water. The temptation to drink salt water was very great at times, but we managed to resist it. Once I caught a small fish by using a piece of parachute cloth as a net. We ate him raw, and he tasted very good. Later a friendly seagull came along and perched on the mast. He seemed to like us and grew bold enough to sit on our arms. We could have killed him easily, but neither of us had the heart to do it, he was so friendly and he was the first friendly living thing we'd seen since the crash. Finally we had to drive him off—he was so careless about his habits and pretty generally messed our boat up. . . Later a school of porpoises playing around the boat, some coming so close they nudged it. These, too, we might have killed, but we didn’t because they were friends who kept the sharks away. After they left, a mother shark brought her family of little sharks to us and they followed us steadily hoping for a meal. On the 20th day a dark-brown shark, six or seven feet long, found us and remained with us all night, He persisted in bumping the paddle and finally lunged at the boat. He missed the airchamber, buf cut a six-inch elliptical hole in the canvas bottom of the boat, letting the sea in to a depth of about six inches. o ” tJ

Hope Almost Gone WE WERE disheartened. For

good reason we just about lost

hope. The boat was so waterlogged it scarcely made headway, and we felt that our chances of reaching land were about gone. Neither of us said anything, but we felt sick with discouragement.

;

ng myself to believe it. I and pointed shoreward.

‘Neither of us could comThen we

He Hy: 4] g te i. ie

» » »

Land—And Coral Reefs

Even natives, later learned, attempt such things only under certain conditions. But our single purpose was to get ashore, and shoreward we headed the clumsy, faithful boat. Caught in the “swells, it quickly overturned. and spilled us into a churning sea. We managed to hang on and to right it. Then we paddled out to ses’ and along the shore, seeking a better landing place. We headed in again. This time the boat was picked up as if by some giant’s hand, and hurled like a ship into the air. Both of us were thrown clear. We wore our inflated life-jackets, but they were not much good in such a tremendous surf. Richter and I clung to each other, each trying to help the other. I knew he was a very poor swimmer. The current dashed us onto the reef and forced us apart. I had no control over myself . ,. I was being carried toward the beach by the waves and rolled over the sharp coral. Finally we were washed into shallow water. I saw Richter lying just ahead. I tried to get up and fell back into the water, The waves kept washing me in. : Finally I got to my feet and ‘staggered out to Richter. He was white and limp. I felt no pulse. By some means or another I dragged him to the boat and tried artificial respiration. I must have worked on him half an hour and then I passed out. It must have been an hour or two before I revived. Ric was dead. I picked up the remaining gear and staggered ashore. When I reached the beach I collapsed again. It seems as though noth-

‘natives who saw me.

LIF

ing happened during these first hours except my efforts to move, to get Richter ashore. But it seemed to accomplish nothing; fainted after each exertion. It was pretty tough. : By later afternoon I came to my senses and went out for the boat. The tide was coming in now, and inch by inch I was

able to drag the boat as the

water rose.” With the paddle I

dug a grave for Ric on the beach.

There was nothing else to do. The land just beyond the beach was a tangled tropical jungle, too thick to penetrate. :

= » 2

Burying His Pal

I LOWERED Ric into his grave and had the best kind of funeral for him I could think of. Then I don’t remember what happened except that I awoke next morning and found that the sea had washed him out of his grave. So I dug another grave, this time deeper, and buried him again. A coconut tree nearby gave me my first food. I felt a little better and decided to spend the day exploring ‘the island. My progress down the beach was a series of stumbles and falls, Each time I'd rest a little and try to go on a little farther. It began to rain and I caught some water in the piece of parachute cloth I was wearing around my head. After the rain I found some kind of plant with leaves that seemed to hold water. I lapped on these until I had all the water I could find. I didnt know it, but natives were watching me. The island wasn't uninhabited, as I had thought. There were a couple of The only reason they hadn't seen me sooner was because we landed on Sunday and they did not work on that side of the island Sundays. They thought I was a Jap and that my shiny paddle was a rifle. I was adjusting my head-cloth, and looking out to sea, when a voice behind me asked, “Who are you, do you speak English?” This startled me so much that I nearly fainted again, and turned around saw a group of natives and a white man. I doubt if I was very coherent. I tried to shake his hand. He soon knew: I could speak English. The natives, when they saw I was a friend, were delighted, particularly with the handshake. Nothing would do but that I had gravely to shake hands with each of them. They brought me coconut milk and meat and carried me piggyback to their village. I was bundled up and put on a cot to rest, while they went down to find poor Ric. in I couldn’t get up to go myself,

but they told me they gave him a hero’s burial. They found him, washed out of his grave again, where I had left him, and brought him back to their church. He was accorded the finest funeral those simple people could give anyone, and they buried him in a plot reserved only for the greatest of

- their people.

I mended rapidly and before long was picked up by the navy. When I left the island the natives came to show me a fine headstone they were having cut for Richter.

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