Reader's Digest Soldier Stories

by Reader's Digest

  Night fell, and the clatter of the chipping guns continued. Fully expecting another Japanese attack, the workers could not use lights on the hull. Instead, they relied on the grisly illumination from the burning Arizona.

  Toward midnight, when Joe cut into the hull, water bubbled out. He tasted it: sweet. He had hit a freshwater tank. DeCastro found a pump, and after several agonizing hours, they had removed enough water so they could crawl into the tank.

  They drilled open its bottom, and a shout went up: inside was a dry, white shaft. A way in!

  As the others unreeled the hose of his pneumatic hammer, Joe cautiously slid into the shaft with only a cage lantern to light his way. Deeper and deeper he went past the ribs of the upside-down ship. He felt like Jonah in the belly of the whale.

  Suddenly the ship began to sway and groan. Joe’s stomach tightened in terror. If it starts to settle, I’m gone. Fighting the urge to turn back, he tried to catch his breath in the choking stench of oil and sewage.

  Then he heard the tapping. Faint. Steady. Joe tapped back with his chisel on the sweating metal bulkhead. Come on, he thought. Tell me where you are. Finally, answering taps. Joe slid down farther and cocked his head, listening hard. He called for help from DeCastro. The two lifted open a manhole cover, and Joe slipped into an empty compartment. He heard the sound once more. Tap tap tap. It was coming from the other side of the bulkhead.

  Joe tapped again. Suddenly voices were shouting: “Hurry! Water’s coming up!”

  Joe’s chipping gun dug into the steel with an angry clatter. When trapped air came out with a whoosh, the sailors tried to stop it with their fingers. “Don’t do that!” Joe yelled. “I’m going to cut it fast.” He was a good worker, but he’d never cut so rapidly in his life.

  Water was rising to Joe’s waist now. But he refused to be distracted from his work. Keep on going, he told himself. Get them out.

  After cutting three sides, Joe was able to pry open the steel. Immediately the sailors came out in a huge rush of water—kids smeared with oil, hardly able to move or breathe after being trapped for over 20 hours. None had the strength to get to the hatch. So Joe said, “Here, up on my back!”

  One by one they climbed on his broad back, and he lifted them to the hatch, where other workers pulled them to safety. By the time the last sailor got out, the water was up to Joe’s neck. He scrambled up his hose line, and DeCastro sealed the hatch behind him.

  Joe blinked in the sunlight, filling his lungs with fresh air. The sailors, wrapped in blankets, were already in the launch that was taking them to the hospital ship. Joe shouted and waved, but they were too far away to hear. He watched them disappear across the gray harbor.

  All told, more than 400 died in the sunken ship; but over four days and nights, Joe Bulgo and the rest of the chipping gang saved 32 men. Later that year, Navy citations “for heroic work with utter disregard of personal safety” were awarded to Joe Bulgo, Julio DeCastro and 18 others from Shop 11.

  • • •

  After the war, Joe married, had four children and joined the merchant marine. During the Vietnam war, he returned to work for the Navy on a chipping gang at the San Francisco Bay Naval Shipyard. When his family said he was working too hard, he’d reply, “Our boys are over there dying. They need these ships.”

  In 1971, he had his first heart attack. After a second attack, he retired.

  The most precious thing he owned, his citation, was lost when somebody stole his suitcase in a bus station. He wrote letter after letter to Washington. He finally got a copy of the citation, with a letter saying he might have a medal coming. He waited, wrote more letters. Nothing happened. It seemed the rescue was a forgotten episode about a forgotten ship.

  • • •

  That was the story Joe Bulgo told me in 1986 when I turned up at his door, 45 years after Pearl Harbor. I kept thinking to myself: This man deserves a medal. Well, if nothing else, the film will give him and his fellow shipyard workers the recognition they merit.

  But the film was never made, the idea shelved by the network. Discouraged, I put everything away—the script, my notes, the documents, the reminiscences of sailors—and I went on to something else.

  Almost a year later, I got a call from Al Ellis of the U.S.S. Oklahoma Association, an organization for everyone who had ever served on the ship. Would I speak at their next convention in San Jose?

  I was about to politely decline when I remembered something Joe had told me. At the end of the interview, he had said, “You know, I never seen any of those boys I saved. It was all in the dark and so quick. I wish I could have talked with them once.”

  • • •

  On May 16, 1987, I waited in the San Jose hotel, where 200 ex-sailors and their wives were meeting. I knew Joe was coming—his wife, Val, had told me how excited he was to have been invited—but I also knew he was ill. Bone cancer, she had said.

  Even so, when Val and their daughter, Linda, brought Joe into the big convention room, I was shocked. He was in a wheelchair. His once-powerful body had shrunk. His eyes were filled with pain. “How you doing, Joe?” I said. He pulled my head down and whispered, “Thinking about this night is what’s kept me alive.”

  They seated the Bulgo family in front of the head table. A Navy chaplain gave the invocation. We ate. The master of ceremonies told jokes. Then a band started to play, and everyone was laughing, drinking, dancing. Joe sat stiffly in his chair, his food untouched. I wondered, Will people actually want to listen to an old war story?

  Finally they introduced me, and I began to speak. I told them one sailor’s story from that dark December day at Pearl Harbor. How he and ten others had been trapped in a compartment slowly filling with water. How for 27 hours they’d banged frantically against the bulkhead, hoping—praying—that someone might save them. And how, finally, a young worker had cut through the bulkhead, releasing them all. I described how the rescuer, in the accent of the islands, had said to the sailors, “Here, on my back”—and then lifted each one to safety.

  The crowd was quiet as I read off the names of the sailors rescued that day. “I know three of those men are here tonight. And I also know you never got a chance to thank him. So if there’s something you’d like to say to the Hawaiian kid who risked his life to save yours 46 years ago—well, he’s right over there.”

  It is impossible to describe the emotions that swept the hall as I pointed to Joe, and 200 people rose to their feet, cheering. He covered his face with his napkin. He didn’t want them to see him crying. Then three elderly veterans embraced the man who could no longer stand, even to acknowledge the applause, but on whose broad, strong back they had once been carried.

  • • •

  Joe Bulgo died two months later. When the San Francisco Examiner called me, I told them what I knew. His obituary begins: “Joseph Bulgo, Jr., a neglected hero of Pearl Harbor . . .”

  Well, yes—there hadn’t been any medals for Joe. But, I thought to myself, in the end we made things right. We said thank you, at last, to an American hero.

  Hero of Sugar Loaf Hill

  BY MALCOLM McCONNELL

  In Kentfield, California, Mark Stebbins was sorting through his deceased uncle’s papers when he came upon a box marked “Jim Day.” He recognized the name of a Marine who had served with his uncle. Stebbins glanced quickly through the box. It was full of old, smeared copies of what seemed to be a report.

  The papers were a recommendation for the Medal of Honor, including vivid witness accounts of savage combat in the Pacific. But the report had never been acted upon—and a brave Marine had never received the honor due him. Was it too late?

  • • •

  By dawn of May 14, 1945, the Marines of Second Battalion, 22nd Regiment, had been pinned down on Okinawa for some 30 hours. The Japanese commanded a series of hills along a narrow section of the island, raining machine-gun and artillery fire down on the Americans.

  Cpl. Jim Day, 19, was ordered to try to hold the western slope of S
ugar Loaf Hill, a steep hummock of gravelly mud that looked like a huge overturned bathtub. If the height could be secured, the enemy’s cross fire would be disrupted, allowing the Americans to punch through.

  When the young man from Overland, Missouri, quit high school to join the Marines two years earlier, he was 17, five-foot-six and 130 pounds. Now, five months from his 20th birthday, he had grown to a full six feet—and was a survivor of bloody fighting on Eniwetak and Guam.

  Day and his men crunched up the hillside through heavy artillery fire. Finally they stumbled into a 30-foot crater almost five feet deep, dug by a bomb or a shell. They felt lucky to find cover, but almost instantly more than 20 Japanese soldiers attacked. As Day’s squad rose to defend their position, they were hit by bullets and shrapnel. Day felt searing metal tear across his arms.

  Rolling and bobbing, he jammed fresh clips into his rifle, then threw grenades, aiming short so they’d bounce down among the enemy before exploding. After a furious firefight, the attack was beaten back.

  His ears still ringing, Day heard moaning behind him. Of the eight men who’d made it with him to the crater, three were dead, three wounded. Another, Pfc. Dale Bertoli, was writhing in pain. “You hit, Bert?” Day asked.

  “It’s the fever,” Bertoli gasped. He had returned to the front lines only that morning after a debilitating bout of dengue fever. It had surged back, rendering the husky Marine almost powerless with spasms and a crippling headache.

  Minutes later Sgt. Narolian West and two stretcher-bearers slid into the crater. Immediately the Japanese launched a second assault. Day spun around and shot three enemy soldiers who had dashed unseen to the hole. Their bodies tumbled onto West.

  During the melee two of the wounded Marines died. “Come on back with us,” West now begged. Day refused. So did Bertoli and a badly wounded replacement named McDonald.

  Night fell. Japanese soldiers slid under the chalky light of flares. Day waited until he could hear them coming up the hill. Then he threw grenades at the shadows.

  With daylight the slope around the crater was pounded with mortar fire. When the barrage lifted, enemy soldiers surged up the slope. Day rose to fire and cut down the attackers.

  This lonely outpost ahead of the main American lines put Day and his two comrades in a critical position. To reinforce their hill strongholds, enemy troops would have to cross open lowlands exposed to Day’s fire. By holding off the Japanese, he gave the Americans time to find a way to push through. The Japanese knew it and were determined to drive them off Sugar Loaf Hill.

  Late in the afternoon of May 15 another attack began. Day and McDonald were perched on the edge of the crater, firing long bursts down the slope, when a Japanese anti-tank gun cracked. McDonald was killed instantly. Shrapnel riddled Day’s hands. Ignoring the pain, Day dragged a machine gun to the right lip of the crater and fired until the attackers retreated.

  That night they faced a new peril: American phosphorus mortar shells exploded around the hole like a Fourth of July fireworks display gone bad. Day smothered flaming chunks on Bertoli’s neck and arms with handfuls of mud. He felt stabbing heat in his right foot as a chunk of molten phosphorus burned through his shoe. Ripping it off, Day covered his foot with mud. The two men sprawled in the crater, floating on pain and exhaustion.

  At dawn, May 16, a cloying white mist rose from the valleys. Day heard the faint scrape of boots. By the time he could hoist his rifle, the enemy soldiers were only 40 feet away. He cut several down and drove the rest off.

  The day drifted by in bursts of noise and sudden, ringing silence. Flies swarmed in a hot stench of death. At nightfall Day fought to stay awake, firing at the enemy and taking out two machine-gun crews. Then it was morning, and a Marine lieutenant suddenly dropped into the crater, his feet crunching on hundreds of empty brass shell casings and tinkling steel grenade spoons. “Pull back, Corporal,” he ordered, shouting so the deafened Day could understand. An American battalion was now sweeping their way.

  Day and Bertoli staggered down the slope through the advancing column. The Marines who finally relieved them counted dozens of enemy dead.

  Day’s defense of Sugar Loaf Hill for three days and nights would prove to be key to smashing the enemy’s line across Okinawa. His battalion commander, Lt. Col. Horatio Woodhouse, immediately ordered witness statements to be taken from survivors in order to recommend the young man for the Medal of Honor. “Time is critical and events fleeting in our current situation,” Woodhouse noted. Witnesses who were alive one day could be killed the next.

  Seven statements were collected, and a citation was drafted. Then the war brutally intervened. Woodhouse and Bertoli were killed in battle, and Day was badly wounded. His Medal of Honor recommendation never moved up the chain of command.

  • • •

  After the war Day re-enlisted. Whenever new Marines would ask him about combat in the Pacific, Day would offer few details.

  In the Korean War, Lieutenant Day led a platoon in hand-to-hand fighting, earning two Silver Star Medals and two Purple Hearts. In Vietnam, Maj. Jim Day earned another Silver Star and his sixth Purple Heart. In 1974 Colonel Day took command of the Fourth Marine Corps District in Philadelphia.

  That year Owen Stebbins, who had been Day’s company commander on Okinawa, heard about the lost Medal of Honor recommendation. Stebbins had been wounded and evacuated from the battlefield just before Day’s heroic action. He had never seen the citation. Now he called Day and told him he wanted to resubmit the report.

  Day demurred. “Okinawa was a long time ago,” he said.

  Stebbins nevertheless worked doggedly over the years to secure medals for the forgotten Marines of Sugar Loaf Hill, including a posthumous Bronze Star Medal for Dale Bertoli and several other enlisted men. Finally, in September 1995, Stebbins wrote Day, who had retired from the Marines at the rank of major general and was running a home construction business in California. “I’m going ahead,” Stebbins said. “You’ll never do anything about it yourself.”

  Stebbins forwarded the recommendation to Marine Corps headquarters in Washington, D.C. But like many of his comrades, Stebbins did not get to see Day receive his award. He died in 1996.

  Soon afterward his nephew, Mark Stebbins, found the box of Day’s records among his uncle’s effects. He did not realize the import of the papers, but he tracked down Day and sent him the box.

  Meanwhile Marine Corps officials debated whether to proceed with Day’s medal. Most of the men who had signed the statements were dead, so there needed to be evidence of the documents’ authenticity.

  Finally, an Awards Branch investigator found the service records of each witness in the military archives of the National Personnel Records Center in St. Louis. And there, in each yellowing folder, lay a carbon copy identical to those in Day’s report, corroborating every word.

  • • •

  On January 20, 1998, Maj. Gen. James Day (Ret.) stood in the East Room of the White House. Among the Marines who had gathered to see him receive the Medal of Honor were his son Lt. Col. James A. Day, and his grandson Lance Cpl. Joshua Eustice.

  “General,” President Clinton said, “you are the embodiment of the motto ‘Semper Fidelis.’ You have been unerringly faithful to those who fought alongside you, to the Corps and to the United States.

  “We are profoundly fortunate to count you among our heroes.”

  On a Wing and a Prayer

  BY LAURA ELLIOTT

  Condensed from Washingtonian Magazine

  The morning of December 15, 1944, Martha Blanton Elliott sat at her kitchen table preparing a fruitcake for the holidays, just as she had done for dozens of years. Keeping to rituals comforted mothers whose boys were fighting and dying overseas.

  But for Martha, comfort came hard. Her only son, Jack, a co-pilot on a B-24 bomber, had been shot down over Germany nine months earlier and was reported missing in action. There were no details in the telegram from the War Department—no mention if parachutes had been se
en after Jack’s plane was crippled, nothing that could stop the terrible scenarios flickering through her head. She wondered how it was that she hadn’t felt him fall from the skies, how she could have been playing bridge on the day her son must have been so afraid.

  Martha prayed that a compassionate German mother had found her boy and helped him. Then she tried not to think about it. She helped her husband, “Big Jack,” collect eggs, feed the chickens and prepare to seed the fields on their 168-acre farm outside Richmond, Virginia. She continued volunteering for the Red Cross. Martha knew that was what her son would want her to do.

  • • •

  Second Lt. Jack Elliott was at 25,000 feet over northern France heading for armaments plants in Friedrichshafen, Germany, when his B-24 was hit. The left wing was ablaze as he moved as quickly as he could in his fleece-lined flight suit to the open bomb-bay doors, shimmied down among the 500-pound bombs and dropped into the clouds.

  His parachute opened and jerked his free fall into a float. Blown clear of the clouds, Jack looked down and saw a smooth landscape of snow. Snow? Maybe I’m in Switzerland.

  Pain ripped his left leg on impact. He limped to a bramble, stuffed his chute into its roots and covered it with snow. Pulling an escape kit from his pants pocket, he ate part of the C rations and, wincing, shot a syringe of morphine into his shin. Then, using a small compass, he began walking west, away from Germany.

  After a while, he saw an elderly figure approaching on a bicycle. Knowing he couldn’t move fast enough on his ankle to hide, he decided to ask for help. The old man dragged his foot on the gravel to stop but said nothing. Relying on his college French, Jack blurted, “J’aime America.”

  “Yank,” the man replied.

  Jack had fallen onto the edge of France, where it meets Germany and Switzerland. The Frenchman was a teacher, which explained his command of English. By pure luck, he was also an Allied sympathizer.

  He hid Jack in the loft of a village school and brought him bread, cheese and clothing. Jack’s ankle had ballooned to three times its normal size and was streaked purple and red. They had to cut off his boot.