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Day to Remember, Rejoice and Give Thanks By JD Wetterling On September 17, 2004—POW/MIA Recognition Day—my dear friend Jack Bennett, a highly decorated Navy veteran of a non-controversial war in the age of giants—WW II—and a born-again Christian at age 79, emailed me the story of a thank-you call he received that day from a former Australian POW and life-long friend.
Sixty
years ago, to the day, Jack, a submariner on the
USS Queenfish on its first, and
highly successful, war patrol, met Arthur “Blood” Bancroft,
an Aussie POW, in the raging seas of a South Pacific typhoon.
Both were swimming—more accurately Jack was swimming and Blood was
hanging on for dear life, with rapidly waning strength, to a piece of flotsam.
Blood had been a unwilling guest of the Japanese for two-and-a-half years when an American
submarine sank a Japanese transport with POW's stuffed in its hold, though the
ship was not marked as such as the Geneva Convention required, 6 nights earlier in the South
China Sea. The POW's were bound for the Honshu coal mines in Japan.
When daylight broke
emaciated humans black from fuel oil in the water amongst the floating debris
were calling out to the surfaced submarine, USS Pampanito, in what sounded
like a strange tongue: “Sive us.
Sive us.” Then the lookout
realized it was Australians shouting “Save us.”
There were more of them than the Pampanito had room for in a crowed sub,
so Jack’s submarine, the Queenfish
and her sister sub, Barb, hunting 400 miles away, were called to quickly come assist in the rescue.
The Queenfish arrived at the desperate scene as a typhoon approached. Lt. Jack Bennett, just four years out of Annapolis but still in superior physical condition, was put in charge of a small rescue party to go topside on the storm-tossed sub and gather as many survivors as he could. From the violently bouncing deck of the Queenfish Jack hurled a line to the men in the water, but they were so weak from two-and-a-half years of maltreatment and malnourishment and 6 days in a violent ocean that they could not grasp the line, even though it lay across them. Only a high-risk option remained. Jack and botswain's mate Bob Reed each dove into the water wearing a life jacket with one end of the rope tied around him. Jack swam through the churning seas to each man and held him in a bear hug while the men on deck pulled them back to the sub. Jack’s body served as the bumper between the sub hull and the pounding sea to protect the weakened POW till he could be pulled up on deck, then swam out after another survivor. Fighting off exhaustion, ingested sea water, and doubts of his own survival till darkness and heavy seas forced them to stop, Jack's rescue party saved 18* living skeletons—weak, waterlogged POW’s on the brink of going permanently MIA, among them Blood Bancroft. There’s more
"coincidence" to the story. Blood had become
a POW on March 1, 1942, when the Japanese destroyer, Fubuki, among others,
firing torpedoes in the Battle
of Sunda Strait (Java Sea), sank his light cruiser, the HMAS
Perth. While Blood was a starving POW building the Rangoon-Bangkok
railroad and its bridge over the River Kwai, Jack
was an officer on the heavy cruiser
USS
San Francisco. In The
Battle of Cape Esperance on October 11, 1942, seven months after Blood was
captured, Jack was Officer of the Deck when two salvoes of the San Francisco’s
main batteries (8 inch guns) sank—you guessed it—the Japanese destroyer
Fubuki. Jack avenged Blood’s
capture by the Japanese before he knew him, returned to the States to
successfully complete the demanding rigors of submarine school, returned to the
South Pacific as a submariner, then saved Blood’s life in a typhoon while
making him a free man again. Blood
was one of only four men from the HMAS Perth’s 328 initial POW’s to be
recovered while a captive—353 men went down with the ship, 4 died on a nearby
island before being captured and 106 died in captivity. It’s
not hard to understand why an eternally grateful Blood Bancroft, famous
Australian football star, and his wife, Mirla, called Jack in southern
California from Perth, Australia on this POW/MIA day, the 60th
anniversary of his rescue from drowning and dreadful detention as a
prisoner-of-war. They’d been
expressing their gratitude to Jack in various ways for over a half-century—how
they found one another after the war is another story.
By
God’s grace my brother in Christ, Jack Bennett, made it all possible.
I can’t praise our providential God any more eloquently than an
enlightened Jack already has. He
ended his email to me relating this momentous phone call with this: “At a rather large garden party Arthur threw for me in Perth a few years ago I looked over the festive crowd and suddenly realized that if I hadn't saved Arthur's life the only guests who would have existed were Arthur's wife and sister. His 6 children, his assorted grandchildren and great grandchildren would never even have had lives. A sobering thought of the decisive role Providence plays in our lives…. I was lucky to have survived myself—or should I say blessed. I guess God used me again, this time to allow Blood Bancroft to live and raise a fine family. So many details strangely tied in together in those desperate days while we were still losing the war in the Pacific. My life has been exciting and satisfying and still is [at 86]. I enjoy every hour of each day while I marvel at the astounding complexity of God's plan for us. PTL.” This writer marvels too, and can only add a humble, “Amen.”
* The following are the surviving POW's from the sunken
Japanese transport, Rakuyo Maru, rescued from the South China Sea by US Submarine Queenfish
SS-393:
Carter, Frederick, Driver, #8l2905 159 Butterthwaite Rd, Shiregreen, R.A.S.C. l96 Field Ambulance Sheffield, Yorkshire, England Grice, Cyril, Gunner, 88th Field Doncaster, Yorkshire,England Regiment, R.A. ń Deceased Harrison, William, Gunner #977758 Cator House Farm, Farmwell, Gatemoor 9th Coast Regiment, R.A. Durham, England Hudson, Roy Ambrose, Bombardier, Edensor, Bakewell, Derbyshire, #l092740, 85th Anti-tank Regiment, R.A. England Jones, Herbert, Private, #7648536 10 Little Moor Lane, Oldham, 14th Section, R.A.O.C. Lancashire, England Winters, Harry, Private, ěCî Co., Fulham, London, England 5th Battalion, Bedford and Hartford Regiment, R.A. ń Deceased Bancroft, Wm. Arthur, Able Seaman 192 Subiaco Rd., Subiaco, Perth, F-3259, H.M.A.S. Perth W.Australia Beilby, Philip James, Private, WX 45 Rockton Road, Claremont, 12765m 2/4th Machine Battalion, A.I.F. W.Australia Bowhay, Stanley Bede, Private, NX 120 McLachlan St., Orange, N.S.W. 52537, 2/l9th Btn. (Machine Gun) Australia A.I.F. Bunker, Harold Thomas, Private, WX 17 Parade St., Albany, W.Australia 9223, 2/4th Machine Gun Btn.,A.I.F. Cross, Frederick Victor, Private, WX No.6, Alice St., Geralton, W.Australia 7268m 2/4th Machine Gunners,A.I.F. Hinchy, George Frederick(?), Driver 38 Darghan St., Cisbe(?), Sydney,N.S., NX3l357,Btn.Division Headqtrs(?),A.I.F. W. Australia Lihou, Eric John, Gunner, QX937l Royal Terrace Hamilton, Brisbane, 2/l0th Field Artillery, A.I.F. Australia Mills, Frederick Charles, Gunner 34 Nelson St., Fairfield, N.S.W. NX3263l, 2/l5th Field Regiment,A.I.F. Australia Nunan, Lindsay Valentine, Private c/o Albemarle Hotel, Menindee, N.S.W. NX55450, 22nd Aus.Inf.Brig. Australia Headquarters, A.I.F. Pearson, Ernest Alexander, Driver No.9 Flat, Carlyle House, No.2 Kellett NXl208, 2/3rd Res.M.T. Co. A.I.F. Australia Smith, William George, Private c/o Solleys, Longreach, Queensland, QX4556, 2/l0th Field Artillery, A.I.F. Australia Wheeler, Raymond William, Private 9 William St., Balaclava, S2, VX6l409, 2/l0th Ordnance Field Melbourne, Australia Workshops, A.I.F.
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