Soul Survivor (24 page)

On Christmas 2001, James got another GI Joe from Aunt G. J. Billy was brown-haired, but this new one was blond, ripped, and
came with a black rubber life raft and small battery-powered outboard motor—great for the tub. James called him “Leon.”

“Wow!” exclaimed Andrea. “What a great name, buddy!” It was not an altogether understandable name, since neither Bruce nor
Andrea knew anyone named Leon. There were no Leons in the family, no friends, no neighbors. It didn’t seem to fit a blond
warriorlike plastic God.

However, Leon fit right in with Billy and James. Together, all three—Billy, Leon, and James—made a great military combat unit,
going on many successful backyard missions.

War
—
even make-believe backyard battle—can be hellish. During one contact with the enemy, Billy was badly wounded; he lost his
left leg from the knee down. James was traumatized, but Andrea, like a true battlefield mom medic, came to the rescue. She
was able to reattach the leg using improvised field surgery that involved a paper clip and Super Glue. Soon Billy was back
in action, fighting for democracy, taking on some hidden foe under the azalea bushes in the backyard.

For Christmas 2002, Santa recruited a third GI Joe. This one had red hair—and a lot of baggage. He had an entire footlocker
filled with uniforms and accessories. After all the sealed packages had been broken open and the wrappings taken out to the
garage, James took his new GI Joe to his room to introduce him to the old unit, Billy and Leon.

Bruce and Andrea stood in the doorway smiling and watching the successful Christmas gift come alive. James was on the bed,
outfitting Billy and Leon in fresh uniforms and putting them into their new gear.

“So what are you going to name your new GI Joe, James?” asked Bruce.

James turned and looked up. “Walter,” he said.

Bruce and Andrea looked at each other, puzzled but amused. They didn’t know any Walter. In fact, their son had a whole collection
of intriguingly colorless names: Billy, Leon, and Walter. No Buzz, or Todd, or Rocky.

They laughed, but Bruce was curious and asked, “Hey, how come you named your GI Joes Billy and Leon and Walter?”

“Because that’s who met me when I got to heaven.”

Then he turned and went back to play.

Once again Bruce and Andrea were faced with a chilling reminder that their son, little James, was operating on levels way
beyond their ability to understand. They did the only sensible thing: they retreated. They walked down the hall to the office,
closed the door, and stood there for a moment trying to collect their wits.

“That’s who met me when I got to
heaven
?” repeated Andrea softly, not wanting to alarm James.

Bruce went over to the desk and began riffling through some documents.

“What?” asked Andrea. “What are you looking for?”

Bruce snatched a piece of paper and read it. He read it again, but couldn’t bring himself to say what was on his mind.

He was holding the list of names of the men who were killed aboard
Natoma Bay.
He handed it to Andrea. On the list were James M. Huston Jr., Billie Peeler, Leon Conner, and Walter Devlin.

“Oh, my God!” she said. “They met him when he got to heaven. When were they killed?”

Bruce gave her a flat look, then started shuffling and tossing papers around again. He had files with dates and details and
could conjure up the records in a flash.

“They were all in the same squadron,” Bruce said. “VC-81.”

It was one of those revelations that took a moment to absorb. There was meaning in that detail.

“When were they killed?” asked Andrea, trying to sound casual.

But there was nothing casual about this stuff. Bruce looked at the papers, checked them again. Then he looked at his wife.
His voice was flat.

“Leon Conner was killed on October 25, 1944. Walter Devlin on October 26 of 1944. Billie Peeler was killed on November 17th
of 1944…”

“And James Huston was killed on March 3, 1945,” said Andrea. The point was clear. Leon and Walter and Billie were already
dead when James Huston was killed over Chichi-Jima.

They were waiting for him in heaven.

The Men of
Natoma Bay

A
NDREA WAS A PIANIST on the Internet. She could run Internet links like a jazz musician, improvising and finding her way through
the blind alleys and dead ends and false trails until she had her sweet narrative melody.

But she couldn’t find the right combination of notes to crack the story of James Huston. It had her stumped.

He was, of course, the first name on my list. If I was going to find out about anyone, I was going to find out about Huston.

But it wasn’t at all simple. James M. Huston Jr. was the lone male heir in his family. On her favorite Web site,
Ancestry.com
, Andrea discovered that his father was dead, his mother was dead, and the only possibly surviving siblings were two sisters.

It was relatively straightforward to trace surviving male heirs. Their surnames survived marriages, divorces, and remarriages.
But Andrea knew from all her years of cracking her own family’s genealogy that finding the female relatives was almost impossible.
Girls grew up and got married, and the family surname dried up with the marriage. During the 1940s the face of America was
blistered with young war widows.

But it was not impossible to track them down, provided you could get your hands on the right marriage certificate—which most
states would issue for a fee. But you had to know where exactly (the state and county) and when exactly the woman got married.
And even that didn’t always solve the problem. If the bride got divorced or the husband died, you had to start all over again,
looking for another married name.

It was like a Coney Island Fun House room of mirrors—you didn’t know where to start looking for the real image.

Usually, Andrea started with something easy. When she wrote out a to-do list, she put down three things she had already accomplished.
That way, she was ahead of the game. Still, when they decided they were going to do a book, she began with Huston. Not an
easy start, but that was who she was determined to find. If there was going to be a book
—
and very soon after the reunion they decided that there had to be a book.

In fact, it was Bruce who came to that conclusion first. It was to be his penitence. His white lie, along with the little
crystals of embellishment, had become a bone in his throat. He told himself that “the book” had been an essential tactic to
get into the reunion, but he hadn’t really expected to like these guys. He hadn’t anticipated their warm treatment and openhearted
help, nor had he expected to be so awed by the sheer grandeur of their achievements. He didn’t expect to
want
their respect so badly.

And the book was always in the air.

“When do you think we’ll see this book?” a veteran would ask.

“Oh, books take time,” Bruce would explain.

“How’s it coming?”

“It’s moving right along.”

“What can we do to help?”

“Can you send me the Aircraft Action Reports?”

It made him a little crazy. On top of it all, Bruce was also under financial, professional, and household pressure. He was
scheduled to start a new job in January 2003. He had won a consulting contract with Lafayette Steel Erectors, and it had a
promising long-term future. It would take countless hours to de-unionize the 250 employees and help the company improve its
competitiveness. He would also have to recruit new workers and provide benefit packages for everyone. After his long, barren
period of unemployment and tight budgets, he couldn’t afford to mess this up. The job wouldn’t leave him much time for research.

And so he came to the unavoidable conclusion that he needed help. He couldn’t tackle the book alone. He needed Andrea.

He had a name for the book. It would be called
One Lucky Ship.
He had worked out that much.
Natoma Bay
had been through nine major campaigns in the Pacific, from the invasion of the Marshall Islands to the assault on Okinawa.
It had earned nine battle stars and was awarded a rare Presidential Unit Citation. Bruce was reasonably sure that it was the
last aircraft carrier in the war hit by a kamikazi.

Through all that action, from October 1943 until the end of the war in August 1945, it had lost only twenty-one crewmen. By
any measure, it was a lucky ship.

Andrea was less than enthusiastic. “No one really needs another dull history book about one lone ship in World War Two,” she
said.

Why not a book about the men, not just the ship? This was something that had long been bothering her. She noticed it every
time she drove into a new little town. At its center, next to the courthouse, there was invariably a war memorial. Typically,
it was some form of marble slab covered with the names of fallen soldiers. Deserted, derelict, dreary
—
and, in time, as family members died off, all but forgotten.

The twenty-one
Natoma Bay
sailors and airmen killed in action in the Pacific were becoming part of that neglected patch of lawn that stretched across
the memory of America; if she and Bruce could bring them back to life, that would be worth a book.

One winter morning in early February of 2003, I got my second cup of coffee and planted myself in front of the computer with
a list of twenty-one names. I was into it before I even started. These men… I wanted to see their faces, find out who they
were, who they left behind… how they died.

It’s true that I had some experience with this business since I had put together the genealogy for our families. But in that
case I was working with known ancestors. I had learned how to track the family’s marriage records and death records and property
records. And I had the complete right to probe—I was family. In this case, all I had were the names of the
Natoma Bay
dead, the state that they had enlisted from and the date of their death. And I had a very dubious right to search—I was a
stranger.

The job seemed impossible.

Her confidence was shaken by her first awkward and futile attempts to find James Huston. But Andrea was not easily discouraged.
She violated her own rule about starting off simple, by impetuously going after James Huston. But there were too many dead
ends, too many problems—women survivors, no stable family roots. She would come back to it. It was better to be methodical,
first to pick the low-hanging fruit. It would, in the end, turn out for the best. She would sharpen her search skills. She
would find the other crewmen, and they would fill in the picture.

With a sigh, she began again, alphabetically. She began with the “B’s”: Eldon Bailey, Eddie Barron, William Bird, Donald Bullis…

She hit the name on the keyword on Google. Maybe there was a family member who listed the dead airman in a genealogical search.

Nothing.

Then she tried “World War II dead.” Nothing.

“World War II casualties.” Nothing.

“Navy casualties.”

There were relevant hits, that is, references to other military Web sites, but they were impossible to navigate or required
information (such as social security numbers) that she simply didn’t have.

On the third cup of coffee, she decided to find sites that were easier to work with. Friendly Web sites. But that, too, was
frustrating. Some of them went in and out of business. No longer available.

After a while, and with her gift for moving from link to link, she began to pick up important clues from her favorite Web
site,
Ancestry.com
. It was an expensive site—fifty dollars every three months (she couldn’t afford longer commitments)—but well worth it. It
led her to the useful military Web sites.

There was one military memorial site that listed all the dead from World War II—hundreds of pages of names. The casualties
were listed state by state. And with the state affiliation, they also listed a next of kin.