Soul Survivor: The Reincarnation of a World War II Fighter Pilot

by Andrea Leininger

  The account was now complete. No one from Natoma Bay had seen Huston go into the water, because they were flying away from the scene. Huston was the last plane of the fighter escort group to attack the ships anchored there. He was the “tail-end Charlie” of the attack. When he ran into the anti-aircraft fire, the other fighter planes—including his wingmen, Jack Larsen, Bob Greenwalt, and William Mathson Jr.—were already forming up for the next attack. No one looked back. Only the bombers from another squadron off another ship witnessed Huston’s death.

  Durham’s story about the mission was vivid. Bruce put down the phone and ran into his office and plucked out the combat records, the war diary from Sargent Bay, and read them back to Durham. It verified everything he said. Huston’s plane was hit in the engine, and the front exploded in a ball of flames and instantly crashed into the harbor. No one saw any survivors.

  The official versions all corresponded, but more than that—on an even more thrilling level—it matched perfectly the nightmare account given by little James back in 2000.

  For a moment, Bruce was speechless. Andrea stood next to him holding her hands over her mouth.

  There were other witnesses, said Durham. Fliers on the TBMs had seen Huston’s plane get hit and crash.

  Durham gave him the names: Ralph Clarbour, Bob Skelton, and John Richardson. They were also on the mission; they also saw Huston’s plane hit and crash in flames.

  Over the next few weeks, Bruce spoke to the other witnesses, and, with minor variations, all the accounts supported what Durham said. It was a kind of Rashomon of the battle of Futami-ko Harbor off Chichi-Jima.

  As was his habit, Bruce wanted to visit the veterans, speak to them face-to-face, prove to himself that he was getting the real thing from reliable sources.

  John Richardson lived in Nacogdoches, Texas. He was suffering from Parkinson’s disease, but he was eager to see Bruce. He asked Bruce to bring a photograph of the dead pilot.

  Bruce drove three hundred miles to see him. John Richardson was old and weak, but he had things to get off his chest.

  The chitchat was brief. Richardson said he wanted to tell Bruce something before he got too tired. He seemed to struggle with his emotions as they sat down in the living room.

  “This mission turned out to be a real hairy one. We had gotten the word about Chichi-Jima and just how dangerous a place it was. But we were full of piss and vinegar in those days. When you’re nineteen years old, nothing scares you. I felt different after that day.

  “As we started to form up for our bombing run, we saw the fighters going in ahead of us. Being a gunner on a TBM was a great spot, a real box seat. All hell was breaking loose. We could see shells falling into the sea below us. It looked like rain.

  “The Japs began firing at us when we were well out of range. We formed up for the attack, and, of course, I could not really see where I was going, because my job was to cover our rear in case of attack. But very quickly I began to see hundreds of puffs of ugly black smoke all around me as my plane and another plane in my section to my left and behind us were smothered in flak.

  “A fourth plane startled me. It was a fighter. It was just off our left wing. He was firing his machine guns, strafing what was below us. We were no more than thirty yards apart when the pilot deliberately turned his head and looked at me.

  “I caught his eyes and we connected with each other. No sooner had we connected than his plane was hit in the engine by what seemed to be a fairly large shell.

  “There was an instantaneous flash of flames that engulfed the plane. It did not disintegrate but almost immediately disappeared below me.”

  At this point, John Richardson began to sob. Slowly he regained his composure.

  “Mr. Leininger, I have lived with that pilot’s face as his eyes fixed on me every day since it happened. I never knew who he was. I was the last guy who saw him alive.”

  He began to stammer, then finished, his voice drenched in emotion. “I was the last person he saw before he was killed. His face has haunted me my whole life.”

  He looked down at the photo in his trembling hands.

  “I recognize his face in this photo. I could never forget it. Now I know who he was.”

  He spoke again, softly. “As we retired from the harbor, I could see where Huston went in. The splash from the impact was rippling across the harbor. He hit near a large rock right near the opening.”

  Later, Bruce showed him a diagram of Futami-ko Harbor and the spot marked by the after-action report. He nodded. “That’s where he went in.”

  Later, he and Bruce hung James Huston’s photo in his den.

  John Richardson called Anne Barron, James Huston’s sister, a few weeks later and told her what he had seen. She was grateful for the call. “I’m relieved to know Jimmy didn’t suffer,” she told Bruce, “and a little sad that my father died before he learned what happened.”

  Richardson died soon afterward.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  The operating theory—that I was mainly working on a book about Natoma Bay—was now lying on the bottom of Futami-ko Harbor. It was about James after all.

  Not that I was completely unprepared for this conclusion. There had been the slow, relentless drip of proof—one challenge falling after another—until only an idiot would hold out anymore. I was prepared to admit that my son, James, was living a past life. Whatever the hell that meant.

  One thing it did not mean was reincarnation. I am very uncomfortable with that word.

  There was one more moment of bizarre “doubt,” requiring one more loony proof before Bruce was willing to toss in the towel completely.

  Why not go down to the sunken plane and examine it? It was his conclusion, after getting the stories of Durham and Richardson, that Huston’s plane could be easily located at the bottom of Futami-ko Harbor. He had the spot pinpointed on the map; from all of the eyewitness accounts, it was at the entrance to the harbor, near the big rock. Why couldn’t a diver go into the water and confirm that the cockpit was jammed shut, as James insisted it was? He had the aircraft ID number—74037—which could be seen without opening the cockpit. It seemed like a very straightforward test.

  It was at that point that Andrea put her foot down.

  If I had been at the mall when I was fifteen and was approached by someone doing a random poll on reincarnation—do you believe or not believe—I would have said, “I believe.” I have no reason. It wasn’t a thought-out conclusion. It was a gut belief.

  Reincarnation was not the initial conclusion I came to with James. It was just nightmares. It took about eight months for me to come to the reincarnation theory. It took Bruce… well, he never did really come around.

  “But that will seal the whole deal,” he argued. “Skeptics will have to end their skepticism.”

  If he could, Bruce would take the DNA off the bones inside that cockpit and see if there was a match with the Huston family.

  Bruce was becoming convinced about the past life thing, sort of, but if he couldn’t go down and look at the cockpit, he still wanted to check out a few loose ends. Talk to a few more guys.

  The reunion of Sargent Bay’s VC-83 squadron was scheduled for September 12 through 15, 2003, in San Diego. Jack Durham asked Bruce to attend. A lot of pilots and crewmen would be there—men who had seen James Huston’s plane go in.

  It was too good a chance to pass up.

  Once again Bruce found himself on a ghostly airplane on September 11—this time it was 2003—heading for California. It was a time for him to reflect. Over the past few years, he had spent thousands of dollars, traveled thousands of miles, met and won over complete strangers, developed an affection for a forgotten old ship, read dozens of books about World War II, accumulated thousands of pages of documents, and come to feel at home among these unsung veterans. The wives, and even some of the children and grandchildren, were always there at the reunions, standing in the background, smiling gamely as these old fliers folded back into their wartim
e families, reviving all the old stories, eyes sparkling with distant, urgent memories, stirring old bonds that time would eventually erase.

  The reunions were always arranged for convenience—there were so many seniors who couldn’t get around too well. It was not a large group in 2003 (every year the reunions shrank as veterans died or got sick), and it was only the one squadron, VC-83, not like the reunions of Natoma Bay, when the whole ship’s crew and air groups came together.

  Bruce checked into the hotel and found the ready room. About twenty men and their spouses were checking in, sniffing around, seeing who was there, who was still alive. Bruce met John Provost, who had been Jack Durham’s pilot, and Bob “SBD” Skelton. They had both seen Huston’s plane crash, although they did not get the full close-up view that John Richardson had had of the plane hitting the water. Skelton was in a wheelchair, and Bruce bent down a little to hear better.

  They saw the plane get hit, dive, then disappear. It was unusual. Air combat is usually a solitary, clinically distant event, sanitized by space. But Huston had been no more than thirty yards away from the attacking TBMs when his plane blew up.

  The description answered another question. The shell that hit Huston’s plane took off the propeller. It explained why James’s toy aircraft were always left without propellers.

  By now, Bruce knew the standard business of reunions: reading of minutes, visits to the Escort Carrier Memorial, speeches, and reminders about the year’s triumphs and losses. Sargent Bay and Natoma Bay were part of the same task force. One night, Bruce made a PowerPoint presentation showing how the escort carriers had fought together in the war. It was a photographer aboard Sargent Bay who had captured the kamikaze strike against Natoma Bay in the last months of the war.

  But it was at a small breakfast meeting on the first day of the reunion that Bruce had his true epiphany.

  He had gone to meet Jack Durham in the restaurant at the Holiday Inn on the Bay. It was one of those coffee shop–style places where the waitresses come around filling your cup even before you’ve had a chance to taste it.

  A nice old man came over to bring Bruce to the booth. “Hi, I’m Jack Durham. Are you Bruce?”

  A “nice” old man, Bruce reminded himself, who once flew dangerous combat missions and bombed enemy positions.

  At the table sat Ralph Clarbour and his wife, Mary. Ralph, once a gunner on a TBM, was the president of the VC-83 Association. There were the usual introductions and the usual small talk, and the men found their common threads. In civilian life, Ralph had been the president of the American Institute of Steel Erection Contractors and, as coincidence would have it, was familiar with one of Bruce’s chief clients, Lafayette Steel Erector.

  “Do you mind telling me how come you wanted to come to the reunion?” asked Ralph.

  “Well, I’m trying to find as many eyewitnesses as possible to the death of James Huston on March third, 1945.…”

  Ralph nodded. “I was there that day. I saw what happened.”

  “Really? What did you see?”

  The answer was not mechanical, but it was clinical. “I saw him getting hit. Huston’s plane was hit right in the engine. There was an instantaneous flash of fire, and the plane immediately dove at a steeper angle and crashed into the harbor.”

  The waitress was there with breakfast dishes crawling up her arm: eggs, grits, bacon. The interview would have to wait.

  But Ralph was curious. “Why are you so interested in learning about men like Huston?” His fork was in midair.

  By now I should have been prepared for this question. Veterans and their families always wanted to know why I was so interested in James Huston. My answer had always been the same: I was doing research for a book. However, now, at this moment, I had a large chunk of egg stuck in my throat, and I literally couldn’t swallow. I guess I choked on the idea of repeating that same old lie. I gulped, then told them the truth.

  I’m not entirely certain why I picked this moment. Maybe it was the fact that James’s story had become undeniable. Maybe it was my shame at having wormed my way into their midst under false colors. Maybe it was simply the fact that I couldn’t start out with another group of veterans without being completely honest. I wanted their acceptance, their approval. The truth is that I wanted to do a book about them, but I wanted them to know how it all really got started.

  We were in a booth. Jack was to my left, with Mary opposite. Ralph was directly opposite me. I pushed my plate of eggs away.

  “Three years ago my son began to have nightmares…”

  There was silence at the table. All three listened to Bruce’s story: the specific details that emerged from James’s nightmares, the intimate knowledge about Natoma Bay and its pilots, the names that came out of thin air, the facts that had been checked and verified, the two-year-old who showed his father on a map the place where James M. Huston’s plane had been shot down.

  By this time, Ralph and Mary and Jack had also pushed away their breakfast plates. Bruce leaned in and told them that James had explained that his plane—James Huston’s plane—had been hit directly in the engine, just as Ralph had described a moment ago.

  Ralph’s eyebrows lifted.

  Bruce told about tracking down the families of the dead fliers, about finding Anne Barron, Huston’s sister; he described the fiery drawings of screaming air battles signed by “James 3,” his son.

  The people at the breakfast table were frozen. Finally, Mary interrupted. “How is James doing?”

  “The nightmares have virtually stopped; now he’s just a normal five-year-old.”

  Bruce had been speaking for almost an hour. The first to respond was Jack Durham.

  “Well, let me tell you something…”

  Bruce flinched, expecting to be attacked, or at least denounced for his deceit.

  But he wasn’t. Jack had his own dramatic story. He had been shot down shortly after Huston was killed. On the same mission. His shoulder was dislocated, and his teeth were knocked out in the crash. And he had close relatives who would swear that on that day, at the hour of his great peril and anguish, they heard him cry out.

  They all had their own little paranormal markers. Mary said her son was killed in Vietnam. When the Army reported his death, she already suspected that he was gone. She had had premonitions about him being wounded or killed. Such things were not uncommon among the veterans and their families.

  “We believe your story; we know these things happen,” said Mary.

  The others nodded.

  They wanted Bruce to go on an excursion to San Diego Harbor and then tell his story the next night at a squadron dinner, but Bruce was reluctant. This was still tender material—things he himself did not completely understand.

  He needed some time alone to think about it. To talk about it in a large group seemed a little like preaching, maybe even presumptuous.

  Bruce didn’t even understand why he had fought against it so hard, resisting for so long. It had to be more than just showing up “the panel.” Somehow, he would have to come to terms with the twin phenomena of fact and faith.

  Alone in his hotel room, Bruce picked up a Gideons Bible. He leafed through the Old Testament book of Ecclesiastes.

  “There is an appointed time for everything… A time to be silent, and a time to speak…”

  And I had a kind of revelation. James’s experience was not contrary to my belief. God, I thought, gives us a spirit. It lives forever. James Huston’s spirit had come back to us. Why? I’ll never know. But it had. There are things that are unexplainable and unknowable.

  I was overcome. I did not owe anyone an explanation of why. All I needed to do was tell people what happened.

  My torturous journey provided facts. The secular culture demanded facts and proof, and I had done that heavy lifting.

  I had made a leap of faith. I believed—truly believed—in the story. I did not need a reason.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  ON SEPTEMBER 15, Bruce Leininger
flew home to Louisiana in a cloud of newfound satisfaction. He had cracked the case, and, more important, broken free of his own annihilating doubts. And his story had been accepted by the only constituency that counted: the veterans themselves.

  All that research—all those documents, all those dry airline meals—all of it was now just so much historical detail. Technical experience. The whole thing had tipped him from the undecided to the yes column. He was as content and happy as he could get.

  Of course, it would not last. First he would have to undergo the usual rough debriefing by the Scoggin panel, which was okay now that he was with them. Nevertheless, they were the Scoggin girls, and they had a taste for I-told-you-so’s and demanded a slice of his flesh—and Bruce was compelled to be a good sport.

  “Yes, yes,” he said, “you got it right. What more can I say? James had a past life. You were right and I was wrong.”

  “Okay,” said Andrea, “but you’re not going to go diving down to that plane and try to crack open that cockpit, right?”

  “No, no, no. Although, I don’t see the harm…”

  And then the phone rang, and Andrea picked it up and heard a familiar voice.

  It was Friday, September nineteenth—the fall, which in Louisiana is still hot and muggy. James had started kindergarten at Ascension, and I was puttering around the kitchen with all this extra time on my hands.

  “Hi, Andrea, this is Shalini Sharma from ABC Studios in New York.”

  “Shalini! Oh, my gosh, how are you?”

  She was the young field producer who had worked on the 20/20 story that never aired.

  “How are things? How’s James? Anything new? Did you ever locate Jack Larsen?” Shalini asked in a breathless rush.

  Was anything new? Hold on to your hat!