REFLECTIONS
A Literary Anthology
SPRING 2008

An online publication from Emeritus Institute at Saddleback College

Stories and poems selected by a panel of judges from hundreds posted on the Saddleback Emeritus Writing Program Blog

Mary Jane Roberts, editor
Website by Valerie Senior, Saddleback College

Copyright June, 2008
Saddleback College 28000 Marguerite Pkwy., Mission Viejo, CA 92692
To become a part of this writing community, enroll in one of the online classes offered by Saddleback College. You can retrieve an application online at
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Table of Contents

Stretchin’ the Rope Katleen Whitson
Encounter: The Boulder and The Coyote Karin Cordry
The End Cynthia Bahti
Werline’s Reiss DuPlessis
The Mourning Dove Carolyn Cummings
A Fine Line Diane Marcus
Courage Nancy Morse
Mindoro Invasion Dave Blodgett



Stretchin’ the Rope
by
Kathleen Whitson

Junior and John were admiring the job. Perfect, just perfect. The rope was dripping slightly along the taught length of it, from the corral post where it was tied on one end to where the other end was lashed, firmly, around the front bumper of the pickup truck.

Stretchin’ a rope just right was a tricky thing to do and it had taken nearly an hour, with one testing the rope and the other backing the truck up, inch at a time to get to that perfect point. A job well done.

Junior spoke, “Yep, that’s as good as I ever seen it done. Give it twenty-four hours to dry and that rope will be just right; strong enough to stop a bull and loose enough to make a good heelin’ loop. We’re gonna get us some headin’ and heelin’ money at the rodeo next weekend.”

John, always a man of few words, nodded. “Yep.”

Junior continued, “Boy, am I glad the boss went to Denver yesterday. I don’t know how the hell he does it, but he can find more work on Saturday than any other day of the week. I never could have done this rope, if he hadn’t taken off. This way I don’t have to move the pickup ‘til tomorrow.”

From John came a nod of understanding, as he took off his hat and slapped it against his leg, and then settled it back on his head. “Old Dick woulda found something that had to be done usin’ that truck, for sure.”

Just then, Junior’s wife, Mary, came out onto the porch of the Spring House, so named because of the small clear stream trickling out of the small hill to the south of it, and, shading her eyes with her hand, looked down toward the corral. “Junior,” she called, “where’s Jeff?”

“I thought he came back up to the house a good half-hour ago,” he called back.

“No, he’s with you.”

Both Junior and John automatically looked around. Nope. No kid here: just them, the pickup, and the rope.

“Hell, woman,” Jeff shouted, “don’t bother me with this crap. Get off your ass and look around the house. He’s prob’ly back in his room.”

Mary turned back into the house, as Jeff continued to complain bitterly, “Hell, I get one damned day a week that I can do what I want, and she sends the kid out here to bug me. You saw him go back to the house, didn’t you?”

John had to think back on that one for a minute, “Nooo, I don’t think so. He was out here when we tied to the post. Remember, you told him to stay out of the way. And, he was out here when we started stretchin’ the rope, ‘cause you told him to stay the hell out from behind the truck. But, I didn’t watch where he went from there.

Both of the men glanced around again, but they didn’t move.

Suddenly, Mary came bursting through the door of the house. She was walking like a hog goin’ to war, and both of the men backed up, nervously. Mary on a tear was definitely something to be avoided. She was talking before she reached them, and none of what was coming out of her mouth was complimentary. “Listen, you stupid bastards, you had a three year old kid out here with you. Wasn’t either of you watchin’ him?”

John looked at Junior, who looked back, pleadingly. John spoke up, “Well, now, Mary, we was kinda watchin’ him and stretchin’ this here rope, and, well....” His feet shuffled, nervously, in the dust. “We sort of got busy. We both thought he’d gone back to the house. Honest.”

She gave the two of them a look that would peel paint. “Well, now that you’ve lost him, you’d damned well better help find him.” She waved a hand toward the gathering of outbuildings, holding pens, and corrals, “Get your asses out there and look.”

They all moved away from the truck and the rope, each going in a different direction. Moments later, John and Junior heard Mary cry out. They ran back in the direction of the truck and reached it just as Mary came around the corner of the barn with a small body hanging, limply, in her arms. They all reached the truck at the same time.

“What happened?” This was Junior speaking, a look, both concerned and irritated, crossing his face.

Mary’s voice was shaking, slightly, “I think he tried to climb up on Old Dun. Jeff must have been standing by the fence and he probably thought he could slide from the top of the fence over onto his back. Old Dun was still standing there and Jeff was lying between him and the fence. Feel the back of his head,” she offered the small body in evidence, “and, look, his eyes are open a little and rolled back in his head. We’ve got to get him to a doctor.”

Saying this, she started to open the pickup door.

“Wait,” the two men said in unison.

“What the hell for?”

Junior gave her pained look, “We can’t move the pickup. I’m stretchin’ my rope. I told you I was gonna stretch my rope today. We can’t loosen it up for hours, yet, or it’ll be ruined.”

Mary’s angular face took on a red hue, as she moved up closer to the two men, and her voice had dropped to a feral snarl. “Listen to me, you miserable son-of-a-bitch, if anything happens to this kid, your rope ain’t gonna be the only thing around here that ‘s ruined. I’ll turn you from a bull into a steer, by god. Now get that rope off that damned truck, and let’s get movin’!”

Junior looked terrified, but determined to hold the line against this blatant disregard for a vital piece of a cowboy’s equipment.

John turned to Mary, and, in a flash of brilliance, said, “I think the doctors say you should keep him warm. Why don’t you take him up to the house and wrap him and, we’ll be right there.”

Mary looked down at the white face of the child in her arms and said, “You’re right. He’s as cold as ice. I’ll meet you at the door.” With that, she started for the house.

She had no more than turned away, when John slapped Junior on the shoulder and said, “The boss’ car.” Then he placed a hand on the top bar and leaped over the corral fence near them, and, running across the corral, did the same to the opposite fence. Two seconds later, he came around the corner of the barn on Old Dun, riding him bareback and guiding him with nothing but his hands in the horse’s mane. He took the straight route to the boss’ house, no more than a quarter of a mile away, going over a couple of irrigation ditches and a fence, and, as Mary walked out the door of the house, Junior could see John coming up the lane in the boss’ Caddy and turning into their yard.

Junior stood by the rope as she came down off the steps, and, transferring the boy, so she could hold him in one arm as she opened the car door, she looked across the distance between them. It was only a second, but it seemed like a year before she got into the seat beside John, closed the door, and settled the child in her arms. She turned her face away from Junior as the car moved toward him for a few yards, then made the wide swing that would take it out of the gate and on to the hospital.

Within the year Mary and Junior were expecting a second child and John's wife had divorced him, unwilling to live with a man who valued a fine rope more than a child's life.


Encounter:
The Boulder and The Coyote
by
Karin Cordry

Our tent is pitched in a clutch of giant boulders. It lays in their black coldness but the slowly lightening horizon lures me out of the tent. The morning world is pale—an expanse of bluish sky melding seamlessly with the desert plane. Here and there Joshua trees still sleep in silhouette and desert plants hunker low. My stocking feet only slightly disturb the gritty sand as I walk to a boulder that promises a perch and wider view. Atop, I hug knees to chest and match the boulder shape with mine. The quietness, the cool purity of light is strange and exciting, and my ears, eyes, nose all strain to become familiar. I gaze unfocused into the desert and abandon time. I feel myself melting into the rocks, the changing shapes of shadows, the imperceptible change of colors. I want to stay in this altered state forever but know immobility is not my nature.

A light, rhythmic sound intrudes the primal silence from the left. Being a boulder now, I do not turn. I hear motion and listen with focused concentration to the steady rhythmic tff, tff, tff of rubbing sand. I let only my eyes turn as the sound becomes more distinct. A desert-colored animal that must be a coyote calmly ambles along on its own trajectory, past my boulder. I am filled with happiness that by ignoring me, this prince of nature accepts me into this Garden of Eden just as he accepts the Joshua tree, the lizards, the boulders. I hear the tff, tff,tff, of paws on sand for a long time as it fades slowly back into barely audible and then into silence.

I sit there forever, so it seems, but of course it isn't very long before the sun turns up the heat and the stage set changes again. The children wake and are hungry, then want to go rock-climbing. As for me, my DNA is permanently changed; I am now part coyote and part boulder.





THE END
by
Cynthia Bahti

In my mind, I have died
more times than I can count:
I've been poisoned with arsenic,
disemboweled by machetes,
shot, suffocated, tarred and feathered;

I've had my limbs ripped apart
by rabid dogs, been eaten alive
by alligators and bears with
vultures feasting on my insides;
I've been drowned in a raging river.

I've been hanged from a tree,
set on fire with gasoline,
been choked to death,
my windpipe snapped in two;
and I've been whipped to a bloody pulp.

I've been thrown off a cliff
and thrown under a train,
trapped in a burning building
and left to freeze in the aftermath
of an avalanche.

I've been stripped naked
and left in the desert sun
for my bones to turn to dust,
and I've been ravaged by
every imaginable disease;

But I have never ever died
by such brutality or in such pain
as when you whispered
those two words to me,
"It's over."


Werline’s
by
Reiss DuPlessis

Daddy is not sure what to make of this walk through the large store with pianos lined up and down the long aisles. It’s one of our Saturdays when he comes to take me to visit his family on Decatur Street just east of the French Quarter. Today is different. I insist on a detour to Werline’s and here we are.

On our regular Saturday visits, Daddy often buys little things for me. It’s not important what he buys but, it is important that he does. A few weeks ago it was a watercolor set I spotted in the store on Esplanade Avenue. Last week, he bought a football I “had to have.” It is now routine, I expect something, anything, as long as Daddy buys it for me. I learned, very early on, he had a very difficult time saying no, especially if I was persistent enough. Most of the things he buys are inexpensive as he usually mumbles his favorite song, “Daddy’s broke. Money is tight right now.” That is not a song I understand or want to learn. He’s my daddy. He’s not home to buy the big things. Mama does that. I see no reason he can’t buy things for me when I spend time with him. Mama thinks it not very nice that I beg, pester and bribe him that way. She, you see, is resigned to making it on her own and is determined to give her kids the necessities without begging him. I, on the other hand, am old enough, aware enough and willing to get whatever I can from him. He’s my daddy and that’s the least he can do.

While hugging him when he arrives, I always look at his watch, a ring he might be wearing or his newest jacket and decide which one should be mine. In due time, they usually are. Mama says I have no shame. I agree. At eleven years old, I have his number.

“May I help you?” The Werline gentleman walks up smiling the smile salesmen the world over master if they are to be successful. Daddy, responds, “Non, Merci.”

“Yes, you may. This is my daddy and he’s going to buy that piano over there for me.”

“Ah, very nice. Great choice. Have you played it yet?”


“Yes, I have. yesterday.”

“Ah, yes. You were here with some other young people.”

“Un Hunnh.”

Daddy is not smiling. “Mais non, Book-a book, Daddy can’t buy that!”

“Yes, you can. Talk to this man.”

On cue, the salesman looks at Daddy and smiles, “Monsieur,” and ever so graciously, leads him toward the piano. More of that smile.

Great! This guy knows his stuff. He knows exactly how to approach Daddy.

Confident the fate of my piano is in perfect hands, I decide it’s best to disappear from the discussion. My part is done. I watch the Werline man put his arm around Daddy’s shoulder as he starts his pitch. Every metronome in the store is timed by his patter. Wow, that man can talk and he can talk to Daddy in French. My deal is on its way. I wander to the sheet music department where I can watch the drama. I look at new arrivals with one eye as I watch the struggle between Daddy and the salesman. Daddy wants, no, needs to get out of here. The salesman smells a sale. I envision that piano in my room. I see Daddy look, pleadingly, in my direction, but I can’t acknowledge seeing him. I’m busy studying a piece of music I’ve taken from the shelf. Poor Daddy. He’s trapped. The man is talking, Daddy is squirming. I’m singing, “I’m Looking Over a Four Leaf Clover….”

Ah ha! The man is leading Daddy to a desk at the rear of the store. Stay calm. Don’t barge in. Don’t ruin it. That salesman knows his job.
“....That I overlooked before.”
Daddy can’t seem to get away. The man is smiling. He’s pulled a chair out and Daddy is resisting but he’s sitting. He’s sitting!
“...One leaf is sunshine, the second is rain. Third is the roses that grow in the lane.”

He’s showing some papers to Daddy. Daddy looks stricken. His face is red. His eyes are darting all around. The man has the papers in front of Daddy and he’s going over them very carefully, line by line. Daddy is sagging into the chair.
“No need explaining, the one remaining is somebody I adore.”

The man has a pen in his hand. Daddy has taken it. He’s signing the paper.
“I'm looking over a four-leaf clover that I overlooked before.”

Mama’s expression is one I’ve never seen before when I announce as I walk into the kitchen, “The new piano Daddy bought for me will be delivered on Tuesday.”

The Mourning Dove
by
Carolyn Cummings

She was sitting less than five feet away from my open kitchen window. A speckled brown and grey mourning dove was eating the lemon basil plant in my window box. I spoke calmly to her. She stopped eating and looked in my direction, unafraid of my voice. I asked her about her family.

“Any eggs in the nest? Where’s your mate today? You like the flavor of basil?”

She bit off another leaf, her eyes focused on me as she chewed the tiny leaves. Was that her way of answering me with an affirmative? I imagined an egg-filled nest somewhere. Perhaps her mate was protectively watching us. It looked like she hesitated a moment before lifting her wings and flying away from the window. I wished her a good day, a life-long mate and a nest of healthy babies. And I said a quiet “Thank you.”

And I was reminded of my mother.

The entire time that the dove and I were conversing I felt my mother’s closeness. Mom loved birds. She knew about many species and their habits, what their eggs and nests looked like; she could even imitate their songs. Her favorite birds were cardinals and mourning doves.

Her favorite birds made their presence known on a May morning nine years ago, the day my mother died. First, my sister noticed them as she removed my mother’s earthly possessions from the Alzheimer’s wing of the nursing home, my mother’s last address on earth. As my sister carried each load to her car, a bright red cardinal sat near the door singing his song. After the cardinal sang, a mourning dove echoed from a distance. This was repeated with each load that she carried out the door. Almost as if they had rehearsed it.

My brother recalled hearing an unusually large chorus of mourning doves that morning, as he approached our Dad’s home, to tell him about Mother’s physical death.

I was two thousand miles from my family when I got the call in the pre-dawn hours. I began making flight arrangements. I spoke with every member of my immediate family that day several times. My sister and brother shared their stories with me. I felt strangely alone and far from my family. As I prepared to take my daily walk that day, I secretly hoped that God would give me a sign, too, something to help me feel close to family, and close to nature.

I had never seen or heard doves along my usual walking path. But that day was different. I could hardly believe my eyes and ears. From roof tops, in trees, and on the telephone lines, mourning doves serenaded me. I stopped. Still unbelieving, I listened to their soothing song and said a quiet, “Thank you.” I no longer felt alone.

After Mom’s funeral, my sister and I stayed with Dad for a couple of weeks. To continue our daily walking routine, we walked to the cemetery, about a mile away. As we made the journey, we noticed a bright red cardinal playfully darting from tree to tree along the route. Looking like a young bird who was trying out his wings for the first time, he accompanied us every day. Was he on a mission, to remind us of our mother’s protective presence, her new life free of disease, and God’s peace? Without a doubt.

I looked for the dove to return to my window box. She did not return that day. Perhaps she will come again to eat the basil. Perhaps her mission is finished. She took me back to a fragile time when God’s messages came to us in the form of birds, the doves that serenaded me that day on the walking path, nine years ago. Their mission was complete with that one performance. They sang just for me…….one time only.


A Fine Line
by
Diane Marcus

The Santa Monica pier was alive with parents and children. People, young and old, speaking in all languages; Chinese; Hebrew, Spanish, German and English were taking advantage of this bright and balmy day in June. The air was clear, the sky was blue and the sun reflected on the ocean like white crystal stars dancing on top of the surface. I breathed in the salty air and let the breeze play around my face, my neck and arms reaching beneath the sleeves of my blue cotton blouse cooling my skin. I was so mesmerized that I felt as though I had blended with the sea, wind and surf. The seagull’s wings flitted in the wind while, in the background, the sounds of music coming from the merry-go-round and children’s laughter spread and seemed to rise above the people and then settle itself on the waves as they licked the shore oblivious to the sand castles being built by future artists.

And then I saw him, a very sad and frightened boy perhaps twenty-one or two. He walked toe to heel, his arms crossed tightly in front of him as he spoke to no one. Occasionally one arm would flail out in front of his face chasing whatever demon was after him. His clothes looked fresh and fairly new and it seemed clear to me that he had someone to care for him. When I saw his face, his eyes squinted and his head fell forward resting his chin on his neck. I recognized in his profile the high cheek bones and straight nose with the same birthmark just above his nostril. He has shoulder length brown hair with auburn streaks running through the thick waves and even the cowlick on top of his head is the same.

Is it possible that when you want something to be true you can create that reality? Could it be that all these years he hadn’t died but lost his memory? I felt myself spiraling inward as the outside world began to blur and all I could feel was my need to touch him. I began to follow behind keeping my pace the same as his, not wanting to startle him. He sped up and so did I. When he stopped and paused, I followed. Nothing seemed to matter except for me to reach out to him to take his hand and tell him to come home. I felt that I was about to cross over a very fine line that separated me from sanity when suddenly he twirled about and with an expression of terror, he shouted “Stop it! Stop it! Why are you following me?”

“I’m so sorry,” I whispered. “I wanted you to be someone else.”




Courage
by
Nancy Morse

In the months following my husband’s death, several people commented that it took courage for me to have him removed from the respirator. I didn’t understand. It seemed to me to be the only decision I could have made.

The massive stroke that sent Joel to intensive care just seven days earlier had caused brain damage. Then, three days later, he had heart and respiratory failure. He was resuscitated and placed on the respirator. He was in a coma.

I knew this was not the way Joel wanted to live. He would be first in line for the wheel chair races if it had been a physical disability, but he wouldn’t want to live without his cognitive abilities. And he would not want to spend his life tied to a machine. Joel had no legal papers, no living will, to guide me. But we had discussed it, and neither of us wanted to live totally disabled and dependent upon others.

Joel never came out of the coma and his vital signs deteriorated. The machine became the only thing keeping him alive. I asked it to be removed. It seemed to me to be a kindness to him to allow him to die.

I then became the object of hostility from Joel’s brother and several of his friends. One expressed the thought that I had killed Joel as I’d made his death final by removing the respirator. I will confess that a couple of times in my grief I wished he were on the machine in my living room where I could hug his comatose body. But those feelings were fleeting.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
A year and a half after Joel’s death, a plane flew into the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. A friend and her husband lived and worked in Los Angeles, but he frequently visited the Pentagon on business. I called. He was home and safe, but one of his Pentagon contacts was killed in the crash. A few weeks later she sent an email message saying her husband was in Washington, D.C. visiting the remaining people he worked with at the Pentagon. I emailed back that it took courage for her to allow him to fly there.

The next day, sitting at my desk, I viewed the list of new emails. One was from her. As I opened it, my back uncurled and I found myself sitting straight in my chair, feet on the floor, hands in my lap. Dark crept into my peripheral vision until all I could see was her message. I felt myself zooming away from the desk as though there were a large void between me and the computer screen.

Her message read: “No, it didn’t take courage, but it has preyed on my mind more than I had anticipated.”

Almost before I finished reading the sentence a voice came from behind me and through my chest and spoke to the message, as if it were me speaking. “Yes, it did take courage. It is the same courage it took me to remove Joel from the respirator. It is the courage of letting go.”

Immediately my world snapped back to normal. I spun around in my chair looking for that voice. What was it? Those weren’t my words. What did they mean? Shaken, I turned off the computer, picked up my purse and keys and left the house. I was uneasy being there.

As the day passed, those words rolled around in my thoughts. I hadn’t thought of “letting go” and “courage” as being related. I reflected on times in my past when I had held on and times when I had let go. There was the disastrous relationship that I stayed in many years too long, just holding on. Letting go of it required changes: new home, new job, etc. Yes, it had taken courage to let go. I like guns about as much as some people like snakes and spiders, so when Joel told me he wanted to be a reserve police officer I panicked. After much stewing, I realized that if I could let go of that fear, then there would be room in my life to let in his joy of being an officer. That too had taken courage.

And as the day passed, I relived that week in the hospital. I came to recognize that I did have another choice. I had just quickly made the decision and dismissed the one I didn’t choose. By the end of the day I understood the voice. It doesn’t take courage to hold on and control. It takes courage to let go. It takes courage to trust that what will be will be. It takes courage to have faith that when one lets go, a safety net will be there. I also understood that I had two choices. I had the choice of the known, of holding onto my comatose husband through the life support machine, or I had the choice of the unknown, of life without him.

Then I understood. It had taken courage for me to have my husband removed from the respirator. It was the courage of letting go.



Mindoro Invasion
by
Dave Blodgett



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 behaved 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.

Copyright June, 2008
Saddleback College 28000 Marguerite Pkwy., Mission Viejo, CA 92692
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