[Granville-Hough] 9 Apr 2009 - Heroic Sea Rescue
Trustees and Executors for Granville W. Hough
gwhough at oakapple.net
Tue Jul 6 12:01:49 PDT 2010
Easter is a time of remembering and renewal. Our Easter
incorporates Passover, because Jesus told us, over and over, that he
came not to discard the law, but to fulfill it. So our Easter
celebrates the freedom from slavery in Egypt, but early America forgot
that fact. Our Easter celebrates the humility and bravery of Jesus and
his disciples, men who undertook the impossible, but sometimes we do not
see or understand what they are doing. I want to relate one instance of
such an action, one I never before recorded.
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After graduating from West Point in 1946, we had to go through the
Artillery School Officer Training Course, then we finally got orders to
go to our overseas assignments, mine to Korea. In May 1947, the Korea
group was ordered to report to Camp Stoneman, CA, nearest town
Pittsburg, way up the Bay from San Francisco. There we awaited the
first available transportation to Korea. After a few days, about 25 of
us were assigned to an Army Hospital Ship bound straight for Korea.
Another group of passengers were 19 pre-war missionaries, 17 Methodist
and 2 Presbyterian. We had several families of Army dependents, wives
and children of high-ranking officers already in Korea. I cannot recall
what other groups there were, except that there were regular mariners
who had been drafted into the Army and were assigned to hospital ship
duty because of their sea-going experience. I noted that the kitchen
police were a group of South Sea islanders who had their own language,
and their own chain of command to their chief, he being the only one who
could speak English and translate. They were small, muscular, slightly
dark people. Of course the hospital ship had its staff of doctors and
nurses. If I remember correctly, the Chief Surgeon was also de facto
Captain of the ship.
I found that the only group with whom I had any compatibility was
the missionaries. Having been associated with Missionary Baptists, for
whom Missionary Judson of Burma was a standard hero, I could talk to
them, join in their daily prayer meetings, and learn about the Korean
towns and people where they had worked. The two Presbyterians were a
doctor/nurse team who had had a hospital in North Korea. They hoped to
get back to their hospital but I never learned their fate. Nor did I
ever run across any of the other 17 Methodist missionaries in South
Korea. They were all fine people, dedicated to their work; and I hope
they survived the Korean War. The fact that there are so many Christian
South Koreans attests to the work of someone, possibly including the
people I met..
It being a hospital ship, there was a recreation/therapy room with
various equipments for casualties. I noted there was a small loom for
weaving, and I had never seen such a device. I learned to weave and
made several place mats, at least enough for a setting for six people.
I then designed a larger loom for making rugs, etc, about six feet by
three feet. I still have the scale drawing, but I never got back into
weaving. I loved to work patterns with different colors of strands. I
would say the strands were about the size of a shoe string and made in a
similar way, so strand may be the right term.
Hospital ships were designed to be slow and stable; however, a few
days out, we hit the remnants of a Pacific storm. We bobbed about like
a cork and made little headway for some time. We had plenty of sea
sickness. Finally, as things seem to settle down a little, we received
an SOS from a Polish freighter from the middle of the storm. The waves
had swept over the ship and they had lost a couple of mariners, and all
of the other crewmen on deck had been injured. One had been slammed
against the bulkhead and his skull was fractured, and he clearly had
brain damage. Could we help? In our inventory of emergency medical
supplies, we had one skull cap, made of Zirconium. It was a one-size,
fit all sort of cap, and our doctors thought they could replace the
mariner's shattered skull with it. So we changed course and notified
the freighter we were on the way. As I recall it took us a day and a
half to sight the freighter. And, my goodness, the waves were mean,
ugly, and high. How could we make a sea to sea rescue?
The normal procedure was to get fairly close, fire a cable over the
other ship, and then send supplies, or even move persons, one at the
time, over the taut cable. Each captain was afraid to get that close.
Even if we could, as the ships rolled, the cable would go under water
in the high waves. We would have to send a boat over to rescue the
injured. The Captain called for volunteers, and not a person stepped
up. Those waves were simply too ferocious for American mariners. Then
the Chief of the kitchen police said his people could do it. The word
soon passed around that the Kanakas were going to do the rescue by
boat. That was the first I had heard them called Kanakas. I later
learned that was a generic term for South Sea Islanders, and that even
Hawaiians were originally called Kanakas.
The Kanaka chieftain carefully explained to the ship captain how the
ships should be placed with respect to the waves and this was
transmitted by radio to the Polish captain. Then the Kanakas got into
the lifeboat along with one terrified American doctor who carried
emergency supplies. They hit the waves and immediately pushed away from
our ship into the waves and disappeared. Then they shot upwards in
sight and down again. It was this way all the way to the Polish
freighter, where they were pulled up and the doctor did his chores and
the injured were anchored to the bottom of the boat, but high enough not
to drown if the boat took on water. Then they came back in the same way
they had gone over. In the meanwhile, everyone on our ship had moved to
the starboard side to watch the action, and our captain got afraid we
would capsize the ship. So he had us move back over the deck so as to
distribute the weight.
The seaman with the fractured skull was rushed to the operating room
where his skull was skinned and sawed off and the zirconium cap
installed, then the skin sewn back in place.over the new skull cap. We
got daily reports on his condition and he was with us all the way to
Yong-dong-po, South Korea, where we debarked and each went our own way.
I often thought, in the depths of the Cold War, that somewhere on the
high seas there was a Polish mariner with a zirconium skull who should
forever give thanks to a fearless group of little Kanaka seamen. I wish
I could say the Kanakas were properly rewarded for their expertise and
selfless bravery, but I simply do not know.
So I would say belatedly, " May God bless all the Kanaka seamen, and
give them in Heaven just rewards for saving lives of strangers on
earth."
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