'WHEN THE SEA SHALL GIVE UP HER DEAD. ."

The U.S. had taken another island in the Pacific. Aboard a destroyer a young Navy surgeon was actor and spectator in one of the thousands of throat-tightening epilogues that follow the thundering drama of battle. He described it in this letter to his sister:

WHAT THE DOCTOR SAW

The names aren't real, the rest is.

It was three days after the major part of the battle had ended and we were out a few miles from the island patrolling our little sector of ocean, swinging back and forth in huge figures of eight. The noise and colors of battle were gone. The bombing had ceased and the big guns on the ships were silent.

Now there was only a little smoke on the island and though we could see occasional puffs from the guns of the one destroyer which was still firing, the sound didn't carry to us. It was altogether quiet. The sun was shining; the sky was a clear blue and even the water was so still that there were only ripples, like it is on a lake at home on a quiet day.

Most of the men not on watch were sprawled around topside trying to relax and cool off in the little breeze the ship's movement made. A few of us were standing by the rail thinking our own thoughts when someone called attention to some objects in the water. We began to watch them.

There were three of them, a hundred yards or more apart, and as we came closer we could see that they were men and that they were dead. They were bobbing up and down in the water with their arms stretched out ridiculously straight and stiff. We could see a V of white undershirt at their necks and the ripples breaking over the toes of their brogans.

Lower Away. The order came down from the bridge to lower away the boat, go to them, determine their identity and, if they were ours, to bring them back to the ship.

They were so horribly bloated and discolored that even their race was indeterminate but the uniform was that of our own men. When we tried to take hold of their arms and legs and lift them up and over into the boat, the skin would slip away in our hands. One of our boys was sick from the odor.

As we got each one in the boat we'd empty his pockets and search for identification. One was named Thomas. He had a canteen on his belt and a map in his pocket, both with that name on it. John Thomas. Wilson, H.W., had an identification tag around his neck. He also had a billfold with a picture of a girl, some foreign coins, a wrist watch, and a bottle opener.

The third had a knife and some coins in his pocket but there was no name. If he ever had an identification tag around his neck, it would have been gone. He had no head or neck. He was and would continue to be an unknown--a nobody-at-all. We put them, one on the other, in the bottom of the boat, covered them with a canvas and started back. It was a long ride back.

The Cunning Brethren. Perhaps I should have felt more emotions than I did, riding back with them in that boat: a fierce anger at the "thing" which allows nations and peoples to do this to each other; an urgent personal desire for retaliation; bitterness because they had given their all and reaped this, while some of their more cunning but less conscientious brethren at home were giving nothing and reaping all; horror because of the added indignities they had suffered even after death; sorrow for their parents, for their girls, and for the many people who must grieve and forget as best they can.

If I did feel any one of these, I put it all aside as being relatively unimportant. These were brave men and they were dead. Bravery and death were linked together in a natural and inevitable sequence. It seemed as simple as that.

We brought them aboard and began preparing them for a proper burial at sea. The men were crowded around in close, curious bunches. They were quiet for once and there was a queer, hard look on their faces.

Each was wrapped in a heavy canvas (it was green, I remember) and weighted with heavy shells from our big guns so that they would stay decently buried. Then the Captain came down from the bridge and the ceremony began. . . .

What would you have said, Thomas or Wilson, or Nobody-at-all, had you the words? What reason for being here? What regrets? I think I know. I think the words were said for us long ago in a language simpler than you or I could choose. I will say them for you.

"Here dead lie we because we did not choose

To live and shame the land from which we sprung.

Life, to be sure, is nothing much to lose;

But young men think it is, and we were young."

A simple reason. A single profound regret. That's right, isn't it?

I heard the last words of the ritual . . . "We therefore commit these bodies to the deep, to be turned into corruption, looking for the resurrection of the body, when the sea shall give up her dead. . . ."

The stretchers tilted. The flags fell away. There were three dull splashes in the water.

WHAT THE DOCTOR FELT

To those of us who were not so unfortunate as Thomas or Wilson, the emotions I could not feel at the time later take on an added significance. Too often it is a bitter significance, because so many of the things we hear from home make all this seem so hopelessly fruitless, so terribly futile.

I wish there were words adequate enough to explain how deeply most of us feel about being out here; how much it means to us to win completely and unequivocally so that our sons and our sons' sons, and those of our enemy need not know this again; how much it hurts to be forced to the realization that so many of our hopes are empty.

I wish there were words adequate enough to explain the bitterness, the scorn, the unrest and the lack of faith most of us have for so many things at home:

For the ineffective, bumbling legislature; for all the political devices and stratagems which are so obviously for the gain and glory of a few politicians though clothed in the sanctity of the words, "For the men in the service."

How bitterly we resent the strikes. (How can we be 100% for something that they're only 75% behind at home?)

How we feel about the stupid racial prejudices that are fostered and festered by some of our "great democratic" Senators while many of the same races they so denounce are out here risking their necks to give those same Senators the right to go on fostering their hatred. What a sordid story!

How we feel to have even our right to vote fashioned into a political football.

How much we scorn the little crumbs that are thrown our way, such as the $300 mustering-out pay and all such meaningless tommyrot.

First Things. The thing that is important to us is first to win the war and then to set about rehabilitating not only ourselves but the people in India and China and Japan and Germany so that we can live together and call each other friends. It seems to me that that is what we set out to do. Even though few of us ever expected to attain that much, it is bitter knowledge indeed to see how infinitely little we are likely to attain at all.

The plain and simple truth is, I'm afraid, that we as a people have not yet grown big enough, tolerant enough, wise enough, nor just enough, to manage our own affairs with honor and justice, let alone those of the world. We are still trying to delude ourselves with the idea that we are a democracy instead of accepting the truth that we are not, and planning ways and means of becoming one some day.

Still, had Thomas or Wilson or I or any of us the same choice to make again, knowing all this, we would not change our decision. We may be denied and shamed by the things which happen at home but we cannot shame ourselves by denying the things we personally believe in.

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