Saturday 27th October.

45 days to go.

After breakfast I went to the markets to pick up my fruit, a couple of fresh pineapples, mangoes and a bunch of bananas. After returning to put them in the room it was off to work. From 0900 until about 1300 will do for today. I will have some lunch then it is back home for a swim and dinner. Reading, a bit of telly, then sleep.

There have been mixed reports of what happened to the former President of the USA, John F. Kennedy when he was in the Navy in the Solomons during WW2. He was a coward, a hero, his boat was torpedoed, hit by gunfire, sunk in a collision and most probably was saved by anything from locals, by himself or aliens.

This story is not included in the other stories as it was not in itself a significant factor of the Battle of Guadalcanal. In fact the loss of the PT109 is not listed with the vessels sunk listed at the War Memorial. Here is my version of what happenned.

On the 1st August 1942 a badly planned attack on the nightly “Tokyo Express” was carried out by about 15 PT boats. The Tokyo Express sailed by the trap. The PT boats fired their torpedos and all missed. The ones with none left returned to base. Several of the PT boats including PT109, commanded by Lt. Kennedy still had torpedos left. They stayed hoping to have a second shot at the Express on their return journey.

It was a dark starless night. Within a minute of being sighted by the crew of the PT boat, the Japanese Destroyer Amagiri sliced through it. Two men were lost in the collision. The others, 11 I think, including Kennedy were either in the water or on the remains of the boat.

Some suffered from smoke and fuel inhalation. Kennedy swam out to one of the injured men and dragged him back to the floating wreck. It was about 0230 on 2nd August 1942. The floating remains of the PT boat was taking water, the decision was made, most likely by Kennedy to swim to a small island about 3 miles away. Kennedy, a strong swimmer, dragged one of his crew, with a rope through his life jacket and held in Kennedys’ mouth. Some of the crew could not swim, so they were placed on some planks and pushed by the others. When they finally reached the island Kennedy was so exhausted he was helped up the beach by the man he had towed.

After a short rest, Kennedy swam out into the channel used by the PT boats to raise the alarm. No PT boat came, one of the other crew, Ross, repeated the swim to the channel, also to no avail.