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Merry Christmas, Corporal

This story begins on December 10, 1944, Corporal Lawrence Cook Hunt was a tail gunner in a B-29 bomber fighting in the Pacific. It was their 130th mission and their aircraft had sustained heavy damage from ground fire and had fallen behind the rest of the squadron. Japanese fighter planes began to swarm the B-29 in an effort to bring it down. When things seemed the darkest, two other aircraft dropped out of formation and flew cover for the crippled plane. They flew with her until the bomber was out of fighter range, but the plane was too badly damaged to make it back to base. They were going to have to ditch in the open ocean. The Captain came over the intercom and gave the crew a choice—they could bail out or stay with the ship, as the captain tried to set her down on the sea.

“Captain, we’ll have a better chance of being found if we stay with you and our ship,” was the reply from each member of the crew. With skill far beyond the captain’s ability the bomber gently landed on a wave-less sea. Quickly life rafts, food, and water were taken from there storage compartments and all crew members abandoned the ship that had served them so well.”

Corporal Hunt later said, “It was as if someone was holding her up and giving us the time to get the things that we would need to survive the ordeal that we were about to go through.”

And thus began a terrible ordeal. Corporal Hunt said,

“Day after day our bombers would fly over us, and day after day we would do our best to try and get their attention with no results. Day after day we were burned by the sun, and at night we endured the bitter cold. For two of our crew members the ordeal was too much and they lost their lives. We said our good-byes and said prayers in their behalf, The Captain removed their dog tags, and their bodies were slipped over the side of the raft.”

Then one day a US military bomber flew over and saw them. The men’s hopes were renewed that rescue would come the next day, but it did not happen. One day became four days. Their food was gone. Water was very hard to get. Where was rescue?

Then on the 14th day adrift, the crew was near death. Corporal Hunt lay sleeping when something grabbed his arm. Thinking a shark had him, he began to fight, until he turned and looked into the face of a navy frogman who nodded to him and then disappeared. Just then, about 100 yards off, the conning tower of a U.S. Navy submarine broke the surface. They were saved.

The men were taken aboard and tended to. One sailor took charge of Corporal Hunt, gave him some clothes and his bunk. Corporal Hunt said,

He sat next to me, and spoon fed me chicken soup. Never had anything tasted so good. The seaman then said to me, “Merry Christmas, Corporal” and I began to cry.

It was Christmas—a fitting day to be saved from misery and certain death. Corporal Lawrence Cook Hunt concluded,

“I am grateful to the bomber crew that saw us. I am grateful to the crew of the submarine that came and plucked us from the sea…Most of all, always remember, God the Father of all mankind hears, and answers prayers.”

Source: Submitted by Debi Hunt on behalf of her father.