Reiss DuPlessis
Mama combed my hair into submission, adjusted my tie and said, “OK, the cab is here. Let’s go.” The drive in the Yellow Cab was disappointingly short, and in minutes, we were at the funeral parlour on Elysian Fields Avenue. We were going to a wake for Daddy’s sister, Florence, who was known to the family as Nanteaux.

I had never been to a wake in a funeral parlor. Wakes were usually in a family parlor. This was also the first time I would see Mama with Daddy’s family. She and daddy were “separated,” which I understood to mean that Mama lived with us and Daddy lived someplace else and that he visited me on Saturday or Sundays. I was too young to understand the significance of what had gone before and there were unspoken things I was not yet allowed to know. There was no discussion of divorce as good Catholic ladies did not divorce, they simply, when their marriages ended, devoted the rest of their lives to the care of their children. Good Catholic men, however, were allowed another set of behavioral standards. Both Mama and Daddy took those roles seriously. Mama never considered another man in her life and devoted all of her energies to her children. Daddy, on the other hand, had a full life, but was never allowed to marry any of the other ladies with whom he spent the rest of his days. But, those are stories better left for when I grow up.

When we walked into the dimly lit building we were smacked by the odor of too many flowers in too small an area. My stomach did a flip flop. I didn’t like it. The hush that was a wake was suddenly enlivened when the mourners spotted Mama. Everyone, it seemed, rose and came forward to greet her. There were hugs, kisses on the cheek and words in French I could not understand. Mama, I guessed, was the long lost daughter-in-law who had attained some unexplained celebrity. Each family member, it seemed, had someone to whom they wanted Mama introduced. Warmly, and with deference due the tiny lady who was my Mother, they gently and slowly guided her from one person to another. The introduction seemed to be the same, but was sometimes in French and other times in something that vaguely resembled English. “This is Langlois’s wife. Isn’t she beautiful? " They too, I guess, like the rest of the world, were appreciative of Mama's delicate beauty.

This was the first time I experienced something very close to willful, sinful pride as I
watched my beautiful mother accept and return the greetings of her in-laws. She, in her simple, but perfectly coordinated “right thing to wear to a wake” ensemble, seemed to have come from a distant and foreign world compared to the assembly of Daddy’s small town relatives. She offered deeply felt condolences. She smiled graciously, accepting the fondness, attention and respect that were showered upon her. She shared warm hugs, kisses and greetings with people who offered love through eyes that were red with wake related anguish.

It suddenly occurred to me that even though Mama was so very different in carriage, attire and approach to life, she had deep affection and kinship for these people who had once been part of her life with Daddy.

When the appropriate offers of sympathy, the mandatory glance into the casket, and the expected mournful shakings of the head were done, Mama spotted and rushed over to a seat next to Anna, who like Mama, had once been an in-law in this family. Anna and her daughter, Grace, were obviously happy to have Mama sit with them. As I sat and watched Mama and Anna, bring their gloved hands together in silent greeting , I knew I was going to have to go to confession next Saturday and tell the priest about my, not too gentlemanly, thoughts at that moment, for now, I knew what Aunt Ruth meant when she said, “water seeks it’s own level.”

I saw familiar faces and unfamiliar faces. I did not know daddy’s relatives well because I did not see them very often. They were relatives. Mama’s side was family. The most striking face of all was the grief stricken face that was Zane. I heard Daddy say to him, ”It’s OK to cry son, you’ve lost your best friend.” And cry he did, like I had never seen a grown man cry before. Those were, indeed, the tears of an adoring son who had lost the most important person in his life.

There was a flurry at the front door of the funeral parlour when a young man and his mother made their entrance. He was Ralph Dupas, Louisiana’s great Cajun hope in the world of lightweight boxing. He was, I later learned, a rising contender for the world championship and was, somehow, part of this family. I immediately disliked him and the flash with which he entered the room. His celebrity, equaled and, possibly, overshadowed Mama’s. I should stick my foot out and trip him already, and add another bend to his broken nose! Bless me father for I have sinned....

I knew Grace was going to have to go to confession too. From the corner of my eye, I saw her valiant attempt to hide the smile and blush that, in spite of her, enhanced the prettiness of her oval face as she looked at a lady who had just joined the throng. The young woman, who was one of the nameless relatives, was dressed in her Sunday-go-to-funeral finery. I watched Grace who poked her mother in the side as she, ever so subtly, tipped her head toward the new mourner. She came very close to losing her composure, though, as she whispered to her mother, “Look at that poor soul, all dressed up in her fancy black dress, her little hat and veil, her new purse hanging from her arm and her high heeled shoes over her white turned down socks!”

I was sitting there contemplating how I was going to put all of these unkind thoughts and silent laughs into words for Father Quinn next Saturday, when I saw one of the women walk over and whisper something to Mama. I heard something about, “Catholic school.”

Mama looked over at me as she said, “I’m sure he can, but please ask him.” With that, she turned back to Anna and their conversation, that was evidently of earth shattering importance and heard by them alone.

The lady, now accompanied by a second lady, came to me, bent down, gently placed her hand on my shoulder and whispered something to me in, I think, French. Then she said, “You wanleadthabead?” I stared stupidly and blankly into her face and wished I was someplace else. I had no idea what she was asking. My mind raced, desperately trying to understand what had been asked of me.

Frustrated by my reaction, or lack of reaction, the lady did what she thought best to make me understand; she raised her voice to a Shakespearean stage whisper, “You wanleadthabead?”

From me, a weak and less than intelligent smile.

The whisper became booming stage delivery, “Mon fils, you wanleadthabead?”

Just when I thought I was going to be the next death, due to the suffocation of embarrassment, my inability to understand this foreign tongue and my downright stupidity, Mama, like everyone else, heard the question, looked over and immediately realized my dilemma. She reached into her purse, quietly put her rosary in my hand and whispered, “The priest has not shown up. They would like you to lead the rosary.”

The bolt of lightening! The inside-the-head clap of thunder! The flash of understanding. Leadthabead... Lead the bead... beads... rosary... lead the rosary. Aaahhhh.

Red faced, too embarrassed to suffer stage fright, and determined to do the right thing, I walked forward. I felt every eye in that room on my back as I knelt, looking into the motionless face of my Daddy’s dead sister. I was not exactly sure what was appropriate, but this had to be a good performance. My thoughts were not, at that moment, confined to the prayer I was about to lead. I was relishing the opportunity to take back the celebrity status from that prize fighter person. Oh boy, was Father Quinn in for an earful next Saturday!

Good Catholic School indoctrination and endless coaching from Sister Mary of The Opera, however, will prevail. With the solemnity, sincerity and dramatic religiosity expected of one of Sister Mary’s boys, I looked, for an extended and dramatic moment into the coffin, slowly lifted the rosary’s cross to my forehead, lowered it to my chest, then to my left and finally to my right shoulder as I, in my most dignified, creaky, school-boy voice prayed, “In the name of the Father, and of The Son and of The..............”

When a friend of my husband asked him for a copy of the poem “Little Irish Mother,” I offered to type it out for him. As I read it, I felt guilty for considering the poem to be pure corn:

…she’s lonesome when the evening shadows fall;
Near the fire she “do be thinkin’,” all the “childer” are away,
And their silent pictures watch her from the wall.
For the world has claimed them from her . . .

I wondered why I, who absolutely adored my mother, failed to be moved by the teary sentiment that drips from each line. Then memories came flooding back of my own mother, and I realized that she was never like the mother in the poem, and two generations later, most mothers are even less like that. They ski, play tennis, water raft, and sky dive. It is a rare mother today who sits in a rocking chair waiting for a phone call from a neglectful grown child. She is more likely to attend a writing class during the daytime, then phone a friend, dress up to the nines and go out to dinner, followed by a movie or a stage play. After that, she goes home to her computer to e-mail her 40-year-old child who complains that he never hears from her anymore.

Although my mother last gave birth in the ‘30’s, she was never part of the “shawl and rocking chair crowd” even after we grew up. While her children and grandchildren were always the center of her world, she never lost her enthusiasm for shopping, dining out, and traveling, and she especially enjoyed playing the slot machines at Las Vegas. Once I stepped away from my slot machine asking my mom to watch it for a minute; she dropped in a nickel and won $200! Unbelievably lucky, three of her cards were winners one night at Bingo and as an undercurrent of murmuring grew in the Hall, she said later that she was afraid of being tarred and feathered.

She was a better than average dancer and many nights when she and Dad closed their store at midnight, they stepped out to the local clubs. Though she hadn’t been able to fulfill her dream to dance professionally because of her father’s objections, when we were in junior high, she taught the three of us kids to dance to records played on our basement jukebox. We learned to do a dreamy two-step to Sinatra ballads, and a swinging jitterbug to Tommy Dorsey’s “In the Mood.”

My mother and father, though quite different from one another in many ways, did share an interest in all things political. Loyal Democrats for years, they voted three times for Franklin D. Roosevelt. By the time he ran for a fourth term, disillusionment had set in. When President Roosevelt made the wartime decision, aided and abetted by Congress, to confine hard-working, loyal Japanese-American citizens in internment camps, my parents temporarily switched parties.

After my father’s early death, this basically shy woman built a new liquor store and ran it for years, even doing her own complicated bookkeeping. This was highly unusual in our small town in the 1950s. She was not only a "mere" woman in a time when women were considered secondary to their men, but an uneducated one at that, having left school after the 6th grade.

As intelligent as she was, Mom could sometimes be Queen of the Cliché. She had a cliché for every occasion. For example, if my brothers and I were silly and giggly when we came to the breakfast table, she sternly warned us, “laugh before breakfast, cry before supper.” And if we were sad or worried, she reminded us that, “it’s always darkest before the dawn” and “when it rains, it pours.” Sometimes when she felt that she was not looking her best, she would gaze at her image in the mirror and sigh, “I look like the last rose of summer.” Of course, she had a cliché for her luck with slot machines and punchboards also: “Lucky in cards, unlucky in love!”

In my jumble of memories, I picture my mother as ever young, not childish, but childlike. Once she and her visiting sisters reminisced and giggled late into the night on the eve of a very important occasion in my life. Finally, I called out, “Hey, you guys. I’m getting married in the morning. How about a few hours of sleep?” I smiled in the darkness when I heard their voices descend into conspiratorial whispers as they attempted to stifle their laughter.

There was a bit of the Gracie Allen about her in her later years. Once when she was staying with us, I called Goodwill to pick up two boxes of used clothing I had set on the porch for them. When I came home from work, she informed me, “For some reason, a box of your clothes got left out on the front steps. But don’t worry, I carried them all back in for you.”

Twice in her life my mother faced a gun. She often told us the story about a frightening episode that happened one summer day, in an unlikely decade and in a neighborhood where you wouldn’t expect it because everyone was poor together. “I heard a noise on the front porch,” she said, “so I went to the door to see who it was. A man stood there pointing a gun at me through the screen door. I was terrified, so I let out a blood-curdling scream.”

“Everyone had their doors open because of the heat,” she continued, “and Mrs. Kautz in the house next door heard me, and she screamed out the door also. In the next house over from hers, Mrs. Miller heard Mrs. Kautz screech, so she screamed, too. I was told later that women shrieked all up and down the block. I guess the robber was stunned to hear screaming coming from everywhere in the neighborhood, because all at once he turned and ran away.”

Thirty years later, it happened to her again. A 1963 letter to me said: “Just a few words to let you know I’m in good health but still nervous from the ordeal I went through Saturday night. There isn’t another shock to compare with the one you get facing a gun pointed at you. It’s a wonder I didn’t drop dead for I was close to passing out, but I did have enough strength to hand him all the bills in the cash register. He wanted all the change but I was too scared to pick up a paper bag to put the silver in, so he grabbed the coin tray to remove it. When that failed, he ran out of the store. I locked the door and called police. So far they haven’t caught up with him.”

Throughout her life, my mother was in love with Love. She loved sad love songs, romantic stories, and sentimental poetry; she loved pathos and passion. And she found tears to be therapeutic! How often I remember her saying, "I had a good cry, and then I felt better!"

A rare difference between my mother and me involved our opinion of cats. I cherished them; she merely tolerated them. Her German mother had loved only white cats and the yard was filled with wild cats when Mom was growing up. “Every time I turned around,” she said, “there was another cat looking in the window at me!” Speaking for myself, it sounds like Paradise.

My mom never tired of eating out, and she dearly loved sweets. When her appetite lessened with the passing years, she would declare after half a sandwich that she was so full she just couldn’t eat another bite. My husband would tease her, saying, “Gee, that’s too bad, Bert. We were going to order pie for dessert.” She always played her role to the hilt. “Pie? Pie? Did someone mention pie? Well, I guess maybe I do have a little bit of room left for that!”

This was a woman who was miles ahead of her own children in accepting the changes wrought by the passing years. Sometimes she understood our offspring better than we, their parents, did. Long hair? Rock and Roll? Without pitting them against us, she won their undying affection with her quiet acceptance of the music and hairstyles of her teenaged grandchildren.

Seven years after my mother’s death, while searching through a box of important papers for a document I needed, I discovered that, thanks to my packrat tendencies, I possessed forty years of her letters to me. The first one was written in 1950 when I went away for my first semester at Valparaiso University in Indiana. It was the first time I had been away for that length of time, and her loving and newsy missives furnished me with a valuable lifeline to my home.

When I reread them, I discovered a soul even greater than I remembered, and a gift of words both simple and profound. The letters often follow the garden-variety letter-writing school of thought that we were taught as children: I am fine, how are you; current weather news; the state of everyone's health; political and financial ups and downs. But there is an underlying current of concern and caring in her simple utterances and her most prosaic words, as well as flashes of wit and profound insight.

No, she never sat knitting in a rocking chair, waiting for something or someone to brighten her life. Even when arthritis and osteoporosis ended her dancing and her travels and left her in constant pain, my beautiful mother still brightened our lives with the love she gave so freely, with her sense of the comical, and with her honesty and compassion. I miss her every day of my life.

At the dinner table recently, I said to Denis, “I’m so full, I can’t eat another bite.” Five minutes later I stood at the counter preparing a dessert intended for my immediate consumption. That’s when it hit me. I looked at him and said, “I’m turning into my mother.” I should be so lucky!

Autobio.7
Language

Feline Psycholinguistics
By Carolyn Cummings

Webster defines psycholinguistics as the study of psychological factors involved in the perception of and response to linguistic phenomena.

My three felines and I perceive and respond to linguistic phenomena everyday. I wonder if that’s what Webster had in mind.

We start our day with yoga. The felines engage in a bit of playful drama as they arch their backs to begin their morning stretching exercises. I become a copycat as I perform the human counterpart called ‘the cat- dog’ stretch. Next they sit on the floor extending one hind leg into the air burying their heads beneath their tails. I follow their lead with my own leg lifts. As they lick the fur on their backs I do my version of ‘the spinal twist.’
Stretching their front legs and paws far out in front with their back ends high in the air shows me it is time for me to relax into the ‘child’s pose’. We come up for air, yawn a few times, take another deep breath and exhale. Three feline voices purr in harmony. There is no better sound to start the day.

The next order of the day is when the felines strut down the hall to their feeding bowls. They practice patience, as they sit and watch me fill each bowl with practiced precision. If an unpopular flavor has been dished up, a frown will tense up between Ellie’s enormous blue eyes. Frowns speak volumes. I try again with another flavor. Ellie is a finicky, fussy eater. Emily Ann and Rocky will eat anything. I rescued all three of them when they were kittens. I think they remember that.

I pour Special K cereal into my bowl, not too unlike the cats’ bowls. I enjoy cereal and coffee as I open the morning paper across the table. Emily Ann and Ellie enjoy this exercise each morning. They take turns finding appropriate locations where they can sit on top of the newspaper. We mimic soft noises to each other as I comment on the depressing state of the world. They look into my face and blink their eyes, those gentle, but wise, blue eyes. I remind each of them how grateful I am. They show their own versions of gratefulness by pressing their heads against my cheeks accompanied with some cat chatter and sweet purring sounds. There is no better way to start the day.

Knowing that my daily routine and theirs will soon take different courses, they find their three favorite napping spots, sometimes in a strip of sunlight resting across the floor, sometimes in their wicker chairs in the atrium. Cat naps fill up their days.

In the late afternoon (the felines know the exact time of day), the window sill becomes their look-out station. As though they were sitting for a portrait, three feline siblings line up on the window sill, big Rocky in the middle, with sisters Emily Ann and Ellie on each side. They begin their patient watch. When they see me approach our house, they line up inside the door….my welcoming committee of three.

They know that I will tell them how glad I am to see them as I walk in the door.
They know my routine; that I like to sit in my recliner and read the mail before checking the telephone messages. With my dinner preparations begun, the felines wait at their bowls. They are experts at voicing their catty disapproval if there is an unnecessary delay in their evening meal.

After their meal is finished, paws are licked clean, and their coats are groomed to a luster, the felines pursue a playful game with feathers and balls, sometimes involving all four of us.

If, by some happy phenomenon, a Lakers game is on television, Rocky goes to his footstool in front of the screen. When I finally settle into my recliner to watch the game, Rocky settles into my lap. This seventeen pound, handsome Himalayan mix sits up like a human, resting the back of his head against my shoulder. He looks up at me, blinks his big blue eyes, purrs with contentment, and returns to his ballgame. His head turns from side to side catching the action of his favorite purple and gold players. Sometimes he touches my cheek ever so gently with one of his oversized front paws. We are Lakers fans, Rocky and I.

When they are ready to go to bed, the three cuddle together, one cat tumbled into the next like a continuous knot. They know that I will make all kinds of noises about how much I appreciate and love them. They hear it every night. They know they are extremely lucky. I know I am, too.

There is no better way to end our day.

Ophelia, who usually gets very agitated in the car, was docile as Julie petted her and talked to her in a soothing voice. It was a gray, rainy day. I parked the car, and we skirted a large puddle as we walked into the cat clinic. It seemed quieter than usual. There were few cats being boarded in the cages and only one other person, a man, in the waiting area.

One of the aides, a young woman with a nice smile, greeted us and took us into a room in the back with an examining table. She was very sympathetic toward Julie and patiently explained the procedure. Julie had tears in her eyes and I was more upset about how Julie was feeling that about the cat’s fate. I began to feel teary, too.

The aide went out and come back with a form and a bill. I had to sign the form attesting to the fact that Ophelia had not bitten anyone in the last five days. (To my knowledge she had not bitten anyone in the last twenty-one years.) The bill read: “Euthanasia $39.90.” I do not know how this strange figure was arrived at since there was no breakdown on the statement and no indication of a death tax. I remember my wife telling me that when the old Dayton’s department store had a sale all the sale items were priced to end in ninety cents. Maybe the vet was running a sale.

Dr. Thomas came in. He was a stocky man of about forty and wore glasses. He looked somber. I thought that it must be tough for a man trained to preserve life to take it away. He asked us some questions about how Ophelia had been acting. He then described the procedure, much in the same way as the aide had, except that he said Ophelia’s heart would stop within a minute rather than within seconds.

Julie had told me earlier that she did not want to witness the event, but she had apparently changed her mind and remained in the room. During this time Ophelia stayed on the floor. The aide came in with an old white towel with light blue vertical stripes. I then knew where the ninety cents charge came from—it was for the towel. Or maybe it was $9.90 for the towel.

The aide picked Ophelia up and put her on the towel on the table. Dr. Thomas came back in the room with a syringe filled with a colorless liquid. This was a tranquilizer they both explained, used to calm the cat before the fatal injection. The aide held Ophelia and the vet injected the fluid into her hind quarters. Julie took Ophelia on her lap, but the cat resisted at first.

“I thought this was supposed to calm her,” Julie said. Dr. Thomas and his assistant left the room for a few minutes. Julie and I petted Ophelia and we both began to cry.

The vet and the aide returned. He had an electric razor and she had a syringe containing a pink liquid. The assistant put Ophelia back on the table on the towel. We continued to pet her. Dr. Thomas shaved the fur off of her front right paw, exposing the vein. Ophelia instinctively licked it once. The doctor injected the liquid into her vein and after about two seconds said, “She’s gone.”

The aide asked if we wanted to be alone with the animal. Julie said no. Julie petted Ophelia a few more times and kissed her. The assistant took the body wrapped in the towel. We walked out to the front and in a few minutes the aide gave me Ophelia covered with the towel in a cardboard box without a lid. I put the box in the trunk of the car and we drove home.

When we got home Fran asked to see the body. I took out the box and showed it to her. Ophelia was curled up in a ball looking like she was resting comfortably. Fran touched her fur. “She feels smooth,” she said.

Julie and I grabbed a variety of garden implements from the garage and headed out to the evergreen tree, with the box in hand. I began to dig. After a minute or so, Julie excused herself and went into the house to watch Oprah. The ground was muddy and rocky. Fifteen minutes later Julie reappeared and helped me finish. We dug a hole about two feet square and two feet deep. It began to rain heavily and we heard thunder. Just like in a grade B horror movie, I thought. I wrapped Ophelia’s body in the towel and placed it in the hole. We frantically filled in the dirt and ran into the house, our clothes dripping with water.

That happened almost ten years ago and although it was upsetting, particularly to my daughter, it’s good to keep it in perspective. It may be that Ophelia is in cat heaven, chasing birds, playing with toy mice filled with catnip and eating human tuna, but I doubt it. She had a good life—better than a lot of cats and better than some humans. She always had food and shelter and even health care. She, like most cats, was able to manipulate her environment to get love and attention when she wanted it. My daughter loved her and through her was able to express her need to nurture. But as a society we often seem to care more for pets than for people. Humans may be harder or more dangerous to love. We spend billions on pets—they now have their own supermarkets—but seem reluctant to help the poor and the homeless.

I knew a man who once worked for Ralston Purina. He told me that whenever they changed the flavor of the pet food they received letters from customers complaining about the new taste.

Oh, my God, this is it!

The Japanese suicide plane is zeroing in on me as I stand transfixed on the deck of LST 605 just forward of the bridge. Seven kamikazes are attacking three LSTs waiting their turn to hit the Mindoro Island beach on December 15, 1944.

LST 472 is ahead of us. A suicide plane plunges into its deck, sets it ablaze and sinks it.

LST 738 is astern. Another suicide plane crashes into her. LST 738 sinks.

Now it’s our turn.

The veteran gunners of the 605 pour fire into the diving plane. The PT boats surrounding us send up a withering wall of forty- and twenty-millimeter and fifty-caliber machine gun shells.

The plane is about to hit. Knowing I am near death, I stand paralyzed with fear. Too numb to even pray.

At the last second, the sheer weight of the anti-aircraft barrage flips the plane over, and it plunges into the sea just off the port side with a tremendous explosion that almost lifts the 328-foot, 4,000-ton ship out of the water.

Know you are the luckiest person on earth, saved from a crushing, flaming death 10,000 miles away from your beloved wife and seven-month-old son.

Rewind.
The Mindoro invasion armada lands 10,000 army troops and supplies on the morning of December 15 and as rapidly as possible pulls off the beach and returns to the relative safety of Leyte Island, 300 miles to the southeast where the invasion begins. All the troop transports and protective cruisers and destroyers disappear over the horizon. All but one—LST 605.

The instant the 605 slides up on the beach after her narrow escape and opens her bow doors, its 150 Navy passengers making up the base force of Motor Torpedo Boat Task Unit 70.1.4 trample over each other in a mad dash ashore to get as far away from the beached ship as possible.

I must organize a crew to unload the ship and let it return to Leyte, but I have no one to organize. All day long the ship’s exhausted crew works to remove 2,100 tons of cargo. All night the crew labors on. The next morning, still not completely unloaded, LST 605 is a lonely, sitting duck.

I post two seamen to guard the supply dump on the beach, jump into a jeep and drive off to select a site for our base camp. Seconds later I hear the roar of an enemy aircraft, look back and see a twin-engine “Sally” try to fly into the 605’s bow doors. Under heavy fire from the ship, the bomber crashes about fifty yards short of its target into a pile of fifty-five-gallon aviation gasoline drums, sending a sheet of flame over the ship’s bow, incinerating several crewmen manning the twenty-millimeter cannons. Thirty seconds ago I was standing with the two seamen—-thirty seconds separate me from another appointment with death.

As the “Sally” roars in, both seamen flop onto their bellies in the sand. A sheet of steel flies out of the cauldron of fire and scoops out the underbelly of Seaman Fuellhart. When Seaman Genaro sees the mutilated corpse of his buddy, he flips. Physically unscathed, Genaro is traumatized. When I see him several days later his black hair is snow white. One reads about such events in fiction and scoffs, but Genaro's hair is snow white.

The 605 finally empties her belly, slides off the beach and gets underway. Her crew has little respect for the 150-man base force of MTB Task Unit 70.1.4.

Recently, I search the Internet in vain for a 605 survivor, so I can apologize to its seven officers and 200 enlisted men for the rotten, cowardly way we behave December 15, 1944.

LST 605’s crew was battle tested. I recall them screaming at the U.S.S Nashville to “for God’s sake shoot!” as a suicide plane smashes into the invasion fleet’s flagship on December 13 en route to Mindoro. The Nashville doesn’t fire a shot. The kamikaze and its two 500-pound bombs disable the light cruiser, killing 133 and wounding 199. The tragic event foreshadows daily kamikaze attacks—-the heaviest Japanese aerial counteroffensive of the war to that point. Not one ship in the second supply convoy to Mindoro gets through wave after wave of unremitting suicide plane attacks.

Our task unit of twenty-six PT boats suffers one-third casualties and wins a Navy Unit Commendation. I’ve got ribbons with battle stars and nightmares for several years after World War II. We lose one boat to a suicide plane and two boats to “friendly” fire from our destroyers who mistake seventy-eight-foot-long PT boats for twelve-foot Japanese suicide boats used to ram our ships at Luzon with TNT-loaded bows. My good friend Mike Haughian catches a “friendly” destroyer’s five-inch shell in the chest. We even the score by shooting down a Marine Corsair that makes the mistake of flying over Mangarin Bay immediately after a suicide plane lands on one of our boats. Our PTs shoot at anything that flies, including U. S. Navy PBY flying boats.

Even today I hate the sound of a loud, single-engine aircraft. It reminds me of the nightly visits of “Putt-putt Charley” and the eerie whooooshing sound of a “daisy-cutter” bomb dropping on a nearby random target and mowing down any object or person stupid enough to be standing up within two hundred yards.
As terrified as I am during daily attacks, nothing frightens me more during the Mindoro campaign than the certainty of death, as I stand petrified and trembling on the deck of LST 605 the morning of December 15, 1944.