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 bos'ns 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, his rescue party saved 18* living skeletons—weak, waterlogged POW’s on the brink of going permanently MIA—among them Blood Bancroft.   

There’s more 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 60^th 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.”