When I look back at the sinking of the Bismarck Sea aircraft carrier CVE-95 now, some
55 years later, and try to recall my personal involvement in that now-historical incident at Iwo
Jima, I find myself pondering some surprising recollections and reflections:
1. I never heard a command abandon ship . . or any other command . . while aboard the
carrier. There was simply too much chaos and noise.
2. From the time I left the ready room until the time I was aboard the USS Dickens, I never saw
anyone I knew or recognized.
3. I never once, while in the water, thought about sharks, although I saw them every day while
flying, and wondered every day just what I would do (or be able to do) if forced down in their
midst. Incidentally, some 20 years after WW2, it was discovered that the "shark repellent"
pilots and flight crews were given actually attracted sharks! I beleive God erased the
conciousness of their presence from my mind until days later (we know they were present,
with injured man and blood in the water).
4. I never realized we were being strafed by Japanese planes while we were in the water.
5. Whether I had been rescued or not, .nothing could seperate me from God's love. I will one day
be in Jesus' face to face presence forever!
6. After that quarter-hour orso in the water, I absolutely knew I would be picked up, and just
wondered when.
7. Once the carrier had sunk, and with it the extinguishing light generated by the
explosions, I experienced a sense of almost overwhelming "aloneness" during those nearly six
hours in complete blackness, without visual contact with anybody or anything except the ocean
itself. Only the even greater loneliness when my wife, Mary, went to the Lord about
2 1/2 years ago, can even be compared to that experience.
8. I possessed far more endurance than I ever would have thought possible, although I don't
know how much I might have had without God's "right hand" holding me up!
9. The reason I had enlisted in the Navy Air Corps: namely, that I thought that there I would have
the most control over what happened to me, became somewhat jaded.
10. My desire to know, and to apply to my life, and to share with others, God's incomparable
Word increased tremendously.
