<<

CONVERSATION WITH PT BOAT VETERANS 6.27.05 PAGE 1

DEBORAH LEFF: I’m Deborah Leff. I’m Director of the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, where I know many of you have been enjoying our special exhibit on JFK and World War II. On behalf of myself and John Shattuck, the CEO of the Kennedy Library Foundation, we’re really pleased to have you. And I would like to thank our Forum sponsors: Bank of America, Boston Capital, Lowell Institute and Corcoran Jennison. And our media sponsors, the Boston Globe , boston.com, and WBUR.

This is really the most amazing forum today. When I told people that we were going to have a forum featuring men who served with John F. Kennedy in the in World War II, they couldn’t believe it. But we have four remarkable such men with today and we are deeply honored.

[Applause]

I want to begin by introducing you to the crew of PT 109, the famous boat which JFK captained. None of the men on the boat that evening that it was rammed and destroyed is with us. But in the early 1960s, television host Jack Parr did a documentary on PT109 and the survivors of that fateful evening in were in his audience. I thought you might like to see .

[Video Clip]

A CONVERSATION WITH PT BOAT VETERANS 6.27.05 PAGE 2

That last name you heard, Maurice Kowal of Grafton, Massachusetts: you know, we publicize this forum and one of the people who heard about it was Maurice Kowal, of South Dennis, Massachusetts. He called us up, and we asked him to join us this evening. And Mr. Kowal, it’s a terrific to have you here. He served on PT 109 until three evenings before the fateful night, at which time he was hit with shrapnel.

What is so special about tonight is that we will hear firsthand from those who knew well and served with John F. Kennedy in World War II. Listen, for example, to these words from an oral history in the Kennedy Library archives describing JFK in the Solomon Islands. And I’m quoting here. “Well, he was a young, lanky officer, bright, active, highly idealist, obviously intent on making the greatest possible contribution that he could. Always concerned about the welfare of his crew, this was one of his outstanding traits. And always concerned with the same, intense drive of perfection that he exhibited in his own self-discipline and his own administration. We all ate together, of course, when we were on the beach. And we all participated in whatever recreation there was, softball or anything that resembled sports. He was a very active participant. He was a vigorous swimmer. And he was quite an intellectual, too. He was always reading and involving himself in political discussions, historical discussions, any type of discussion that would develop his mind. As early as that he was intently training his mind for whatever lay ahead.”

A CONVERSATION WITH PT BOAT VETERANS 6.27.05 PAGE 3

Those words come from William C. Battle, the commanding officer of another PT boat and later the US ambassador to Australia during the Kennedy administration. We are honored to have Mr. Battle with us tonight.

[Applause]

As I mentioned before, on the very left, Maurice Kowal is with us. Mr. Kowal worked for the federal government during the Kennedy administration. Then later worked at the Minuteman National Park and was superintendent of the Kennedy in Brookline.

[Applause]

We are also delighted to welcome back to this library Richard Keresey, who was captain of PT 105 and in the same battle the night that PT 109 was struck. He wrote a wonderful book entitled, PT 105 . And tonight’s forum he will be good enough to sign copies of that book in our museum store. It is wonderful to have you here Mr. Keresey.

[Applause]

And I can’t imagine anybody who was here a while ago for our fabulous forum with Paul B. Fay, Jr., known to most people as Red Fey, not coming back. He is such a delight. Looking out at the audience I see a great many family members and it is terrific to have all of you here. Mr. Fey, too, served with John F. Kennedy in World War II. And those of you who saw A CONVERSATION WITH PT BOAT VETERANS 6.27.05 PAGE 4 our special exhibit and that picture in the very front lobby may have noticed that JFK.’s scrapbook features photographs with Red during that time.

Mr. Fey went on to serve as Undersecretary of the Navy in the Kennedy administration and he authored a book about his close friendship with President Kennedy, The Pleasure of His Company . Mr. Fay, it is great to have you here.

[Applause]

And moderating tonight’s conversation, we are delighted to have with us David Greenway, foreign affairs columnist with the Boston Globe . Mr. Greenway served in the US Navy from 1958 to 1960. And before joining the Globe , he worked here and abroad for Time-Life and the Washington Post . He has also held positions of foreign editor, national editor and editorial page editor. So,now, please join me in welcoming these marvelous guests for this evening.

[Applause]

DAVID GREENWAY: Thank you very much. I thought we might begin this evening by setting the scene a little bit. And I’d like to ask Mr. Battle, what were we doing in the Solomon Islands? What was the Solomon Islands campaign all about?

A CONVERSATION WITH PT BOAT VETERANS 6.27.05 PAGE 5

WILLIAM BATTLE: Well, David, you remember -- I don’t recommend that people do remember but the fact that after Pearl Harbor, it was mighty bleak days. The Japanese were engulfing and all of Southeast Asia down to New Guinea and the Solomon Islands, heading toward Australia. And, indeed, they were firing on Australia from Fort Morebee(?) across the sound there. And so it looked pretty bleak out there. And we had no Navy after Pearl Harbor that we could risk, just leaving them out in the South Pacific.

We had the Battle of the Coral Sea, which probably prevented, or they think prevented, the invasion of Australia by the Japanese from either the Solomons or New Guinea. The PT boat was the one instrument that had been developed quite rapidly after Commander Bulkeley and Kelly made such a record with it, fighting, holding action against the Japanese after Pearl Harbor in the Philippine Islands, and thoughtfully convinced the powers that be in Washington that the PT boat was valuable. And so the squadrons were developed, the boats were made at the Elco Boatworks in Bayonne, New Jersey and at Higgins down in .

They were the only navy available. And I think that’s the way it was when we first got to , which was right across the straight from . I don’t think any of us here were there in the beginning of Guadalcanal, but we did get there before the campaign was closed. And was to stop the Japanese there and in New Guinea. We had an equal number of folks in New Guinea. And, unfortunately, none of those gentlemen are here tonight. A CONVERSATION WITH PT BOAT VETERANS 6.27.05 PAGE 6

But it was all we had. And the job was to do what you can to stop the Japanese.

GREENWAY: Mr. Keresey, what was a PT boat? I’ve heard all these stories. They were just made of wood. It must have been … Tell us a little bit about the boat itself.

DICK KERESEY: I saw the first of Elco, 80-foot Elco boats being built in Bayonne, New Jersey. As a matter of fact, I took the first 80-foot PT boat, the 103 from the Elco boatworks, took it as part of the US Navy. It was one of the most humiliating experiences I ever had in my life. Because they sent me over there to take away the PT boat. I hadn’t gone through the first school at Millville. And I hadn’t the foggiest notion how to take a PT boat away from the dock. [Laughter]

There were 40 people in my class, 40 officers. And the best I could do was watch over ’s shoulder as he took the PT boat away from the dock and put it in the dock. But that’s all I knew. They sent me over there. I expected some guy to come along and show me. I got over there. There was red and white bunting on the whole building. That should have given me a clue. I’d come from the Brooklyn Navy Yard and just told to go over there. The next thing, I walked into the big building where they were built. There was an admiral and a lot of other people like that, on a stand. And there was a Navy band. And they out in “Anchors Away” or some such. And I listened and the admiral gave a speech. And at the end of it he said -- I remember well -- He said, “Take it away, Navy.” [Laughter] And A CONVERSATION WITH PT BOAT VETERANS 6.27.05 PAGE 7 someone tapped me on the shoulder, and I realized they meant me. [Laughter]

It was like a nightmare. I got on the boat. I saw the guy going down in the engine room to start up the engines. I looked at the throttles. I knew that you had to handle a PT boat only with engines. You didn’t do it with the tiny rudders. The rudders were for high speed. But at low speed you had to maneuver with the engines. And I’m standing there trying to remember. And I thought, “Well, I’ll this.” I put one engine ahead. The boat scraped along the dock, didn’t move, just scraped along the dock. So I put it in the other way. It not only scraped backwards but a huge splinter came out the front.

And I thought, “My God! I’ve got damaged goods already.” [laughter] Finally, finally, one of the Elco pilots came aboard and very jauntily got me away from the dock and ran down the length of the boat and jumped on the dock. Never liked that guy. [Laughter] And off I went to the Brooklyn Navy Yard. I’m establishing my credentials, which as I say started off rather poorly.

Now, where was I?

GREENWAY: You were describing what the boat was like. It was made of mahogany, wasn’t it? Or parts of the boat?

A CONVERSATION WITH PT BOAT VETERANS 6.27.05 PAGE 8

KERESEY: The Elco boat was, I think, the greatest wooden boat ever built. It was not made of . It was made of two, one-inch planks of mahogany, glued together like this. Best … think of an old wooden ski and you’ve got the same principles. It had strength, but it had flexibility. They were so strong; they weighed 50 tons. They had three , 12-cylinder engines in them that could generate 36 hundred horsepower.

One indication of their strength … I know of one boat that went over a wake, a battleship wake. It was in maneuvers. A battleship wake tends to be like a comber. And it went up one side of this comber and at high speed just flew out, all of it, 80 feet into the air, landed, the over speed cut-outs came in and the engine stopped. Had no damage to the boat whatsoever. It broke the executive officer’s ankles and stunned half the crew. The boat was strictly stronger than the men.

I want to emphasize this because you will read in some books that PT boats were flimsy and made of plywood. They weren’t. You will also read in some books that they were militarily ineffective. I won’t go into that at length. That would take me all evening. I assure you they were not. They were militarily ineffective, unfortunately in the battle of , when the 109 was lost.

But in the entire history of the war, that was the worst conceived, worst executed, worst run battle with PT boats that there ever was. That was one night. They went out every night. They were like the trench raiding parties in World War I or the ones who went out every night. They were more like A CONVERSATION WITH PT BOAT VETERANS 6.27.05 PAGE 9 that. And over time, they did tremendous damage. They did tremendous damage with the torpedoes in the Mediterranean and we did more as than as boats.

But overall, they’ve been known to have sunk at least 200 thousand tons of military shipping. This is a kind of shipping where they were bringing in these that we thought were bringing in immediate supplies, immediate ammunition. And the PT boats took them out and in some areas very effectively. As I say, you can get the wrong idea from the Blackett Strait.

GREENWAY: Thanks. I would like to ask Mr. Fay, a/k/a, Redhead I believe the President called you, a/k/a Old Lovable was another expression he called you. What was your first impression when you first met President Kennedy. So what was your first impression of him?

PAUL FAY: Well, number one, I was supposed to go out on his PT boat one night. I semaphored down to him, and he couldn’t read my semaphore. As a result of it, why, I went out on another boat. And as a result of that, why I was called up to his Quonset hut after I came back. And he said, “If everybody did what you did today, Red Fay, the Japs would be marching in Times Square at Christmas time.”

GREENWAY: Mr. Kowal, what was it like to serve on the same PT boat with the President? What was your first impression of him as he came aboard? A CONVERSATION WITH PT BOAT VETERANS 6.27.05 PAGE 10

MAURICE KOWAL: Well, I should start a little earlier.

GREENWAY: All right.

KOWAL: I went to Newport training in the Navy. I was there for three weeks. Then I was sent to Millville PT base for training on the PT boats for eight weeks. And I was sent immediately overseas. When I go over there, at Tulagi, across from Guadalcanal, they assigned me to Sasappi(?), where all they had there were torpedoes and ammunition and . While I was doing my job a boat pulled up, and it was President Kennedy. He said, “Are you Kowal?” I said, “Yeah.” He said, “You’re assigned to this boat.” That was the first time I was away from home, so I didn’t argue with anybody.

GREENWAY: How old were you?

KOWAL: Nineteen. And I got on the boat and we went over to Sasappi, right across from Mocombo(?), the main base. And we started cleaning guns. So, anyway, I’m there cocking my gun and Kennedy was in front of me in the cockpit. And I cocked it, and the gun went off, and just ruffled his hair. [laughter] And he was a little upset about that. I don't know why. [Laughter] But I never seen a gun before. So he said, “You’re a third class gunners mate.” I said, “I am? I thought I was a seaman first.” So, anyway, about three weeks later I knew how to take the gun apart and clean it and all of that. So he promoted me to second class gunners mate. So in nine A CONVERSATION WITH PT BOAT VETERANS 6.27.05 PAGE 11 months, I was a first class gunners mate and I knew how to clean the gun and so forth.

GREENWAY: What was he like as a skipper?

KOWAL: He was terrific. He was a good man. He took care of us all the time. He would go over to Guadalcanal and bum supplies, particularly ice cream. He was crazy for ice cream. He got mad when we ate his ice cream. But he always took care of us. And he worked with us almost … Just in shorts, we were scraping bottoms and painting and all of that and he was there all the time.

GREENWAY: Was he very strict?

KOWAL: Not really. Just as long as you did your job.

GREENWAY: For somebody like old redhead, he might be strict but he wasn’t too strict to you.

KOWAL: No. Definitely. Especially when I almost killed him.

GREENWAY: Well, now we have two incidents where he might have been killed there and the Japanese might be in Times Square. So Mr. Battle, what was your impression when you first met him? What was your first impression?

A CONVERSATION WITH PT BOAT VETERANS 6.27.05 PAGE 12

BATTLE: Well, I don’t think it was anything in particular. We were all just a bunch of guys. Every one of us was a volunteer. I met Jack in Tulagi the first time I met him. And he was very cordial. Really, there were no special guys. We were all one, all volunteers. And as I told people previously this afternoon, I think that Jack Kennedy … I have to go back a little bit. We prided ourselves. The PT boat service was something special. It was all volunteer. And we liked to think it was romantic and dangerous and helpful. And Jack Kennedy and my knowledge of him as it grew, impressed me as almost being right out of central casting for a job as skipper of a PT boat. He was exciting. He was smart, quick, great sense of humor. He could laugh at himself. Just a wonderful companion. Not like, as the old wag said at the end of the movie PT 109 , all they should have had was him walking off into the sunset and the old chief saying, “One day that boy will be president.” [Laughter] We didn’t know that then.

GREENWAY: I don't know who the perfect person would be to play JFK, but I do know that Van Johnson should have played Mr. Fay. If you look at those photographs out there you will see. But once you got over this unfortunate incident where you nearly let the Japanese into New York, how did you get to know him after that? How did you become friends that really lasted all his life? How did that happen?

FAY: Well, it was fascinating for me because Jack Kennedy was one of the great human beings that came into my life. But he also, not only was he a great guy but he also … I went down and campaigned for him down in West Virginia. And I remember I used to … I never saw him down in West A CONVERSATION WITH PT BOAT VETERANS 6.27.05 PAGE 13

Virginia, because I would always be arranging the meetings ahead of time. And Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Jr. came down to speak at one of the cities down in West Virginia.

And as a result of that, why he came out of … We went over to the area where he was going to speak and he said, “You know, everybody here remembers my father.” And young Franklin spoke an awful lot like his father. So, I mean, he had the same atmosphere, the same charm and everything that his father had. But I loved him when he finished his speech, nobody said a word. And then, finally, everybody realized that he had finished his speech. And as a result of that he went down in the crowd and everybody was crying and weeping and it was unbelievable the charm that this young fellow had. He’s been a friend of mine for many, many years.

KERESEY: One thing I would like to say I’m certain is something people ought to really focus on. That these people, all of us, would be saying the same thing about Jack Kennedy if he had never gone into politics. Because I don’t think any of these attitudes were because he was president. It’s the guy we knew during the war and PT boats when relationships are unusually close.

GREENWAY: Mr. Keresey, did you have a first impression of John Kennedy you could share with us?

KERESEY: Yes, I did. This comes up in another context that is rather embarrassing. But the first time -- more than rather embarrassing -- the first A CONVERSATION WITH PT BOAT VETERANS 6.27.05 PAGE 14 time I met Jack Kennedy was when he pulled my boat off a reef. There were five thousand or more unmarked reefs in the Solomon Islands. I ran on to the one marked. [laughter] But you are talking about my impressions of Jack.

He towed me in and he towed the 105 right alongside the 109. Well, that most PT boat captains can do with no trouble. But I had to go into a dry dock to get my -- my propellers were gone, my shafts were gone -- and get them changed. Now getting into a dry dock is a delicate maneuver at best for a PT boat. Jack Kennedy pointed the 105 at the cradle in the dry dock and at a certain moment, probably about ten yards from where the cradle was, he had his crew release the lines, the tow lines, and the 105 slid quietly into the cradle with out a knock on either side.

And this is the first time I had seen him. And I thought to myself, “This guy is a veteran boat handler.” Actually, he had been out about two months, out of school no more than two months. So my first impression of Kennedy was, “Here is a great boat handler. After that I had two impressions of him. One, we lived on conversation at night because we didn’t have movies. We didn’t have any entertainment. When the movies came, that was the signal to the PT boats to move up the line. So we sat around on the base in tents. When it got dark, it got dark. No lights. So you couldn’t read. So you talked. And I remember him as one of the interesting talkers. Not profound, amusing. I don’t remember too many profound conversations. I remember amusing ones. And he was one of the amusing people. He was also something else, which I learned over a period of time knowing him. A CONVERSATION WITH PT BOAT VETERANS 6.27.05 PAGE 15

Bill has said how many wonderful people there were in PT boats. But I had a list of PT boat captains I would not go out with. I was a division leader shortly after this so I took out two or three or four boats. And the division leader’s boat always was first. And the division leader’s boat would be the one that ran aground. And when you ran aground up there, you were in enemy land, totally. And you wanted people to stay with you. And Kennedy was on my list of people. There are some others here who I knew would stay with me if I went on a reef. And he would stay to the death. And these were the kind of people that you looked for and you valued. Another one is this guy right here, Bill Battle. He and I fought it out in one of the worst actions I was ever in.

GREENWAY: Mr. Kowal, did you have the same impression that John F. Kennedy was a very good boat handler? That he had a sense of …

KOWAL: Definitely. He always went ahead, scouting the areas before. It’s hard to describe for me. But he was a great leader and a good boat handler. We went along more and around more circles. Fighting barges was one of our main functions in the middle of the war. And we would go right up to -- He’d go right up to them and start strafing them. We rescued two boatloads of Marines that were stranded on Choiselle. And we ran out of gas. We were on patrol. We went into the base. We didn’t have time to refuel and they called us to rescue them. We went and we rescued one boat broken down. So we started hauling it. And one Marine died on the fan tail. Then we ran out of gas and we had to get towed in. But he was A CONVERSATION WITH PT BOAT VETERANS 6.27.05 PAGE 16 always in command and respected and treated his crew like he’d want to be treated.

There was never any friction between the captain and his crew. And everybody that I knew wanted to get on our boat. Especially when there was lots and we got the 59 boat. We needed a big crew, 20 men or something. And everybody wanted to volunteer to get on there.

GREENWAY: Were you on the PT 59 as well?

KOWAL: Yes, I was senior gunners mate on the 59.

GREENWAY: Can you tell us a little bit about the action? I believe you were wounded in an action.

KOWAL: That was on the 109.

GREENWAY: Just before it was sunk.

KOWAL: Yes.

GREENWAY: And therefore … So could you tell us a little bit about that action?

KOWAL: When I got wounded?

A CONVERSATION WITH PT BOAT VETERANS 6.27.05 PAGE 17

GREENWAY: Yeah.

KOWAL: Well, we were on patrol and when we were on patrol, we would just go down wherever we were and idle speed so we wouldn’t have a big wake. And all of a sudden we heard the roar of an engine and it was a float plane coming down. And he dropped the bomb.

GREENWAY: A Japanese floatplane?

KOWAL: A Japanese floatplane. And he dropped the bomb, and it got me and a piece about this big just missed Kennedy. It hit right in front of him in the cockpit. Well, I didn’t know I was … I thought I was hit in the head. But what it was, my hair was standing up I was so scared. [Laughter] I didn’t know I was hit until after the action, my shoe was filled with blood. But I was scared. I never left home before that time. Then you’ve got these Japs shooting at you.

Well, when we were in Choiselle, we ate pancakes for three weeks. We had nothing else, just pancakes. I’m just starting to eat them again. [Laughter]

GREENWAY: My father was in the navy in Guadalcanal, not as heroic a job as yours, but he came back and said he would never eat Spam again for the rest of his life and he couldn’t stand to hear “White Christmas” played.

KOWAL: But I love Spam. [Laughter]

A CONVERSATION WITH PT BOAT VETERANS 6.27.05 PAGE 18

GREENWAY: You do.

KOWAL: And I ate plenty of it.

GREENWAY: Let’s go back to the conversation. We’ve heard about how amusing Jack Kennedy was in this conversation that you would have. But Mr. Fay, I remember in your book you wrote that he was very interested in current events and said if we don’t get interested in politics, our children will have to come back and fight another war out here. Did you find him quite a little more serious then?

FAY: Well, you know, I met Jack Kennedy playing touch football in Millville, Rhode Island. And he wanted to get in the game. And I said, “Well, get another player.” And no sooner did he get another player than he starts playing with us. And the next thing he says, “Why don’t we play razzle dazzle?” Razzle dazzle is a much more enjoyable touch football game. The quarterback gets the center and then you can’t cross the line until … And then after that you can throw the pass to any member of your teammates.

Now, he was an unbelievable guy. I was so privileged. And then I can tell you one other thing that happened when I was in the back of the reviewing stand after his inauguration. A secret service man came up to me and said, “Are you Paul Fay?” And I said, “Yes, I am.” And he said, “Well, the President wants you to come down to the front row.” And so he introduced me to Lyndon Johnson, and Lyndon and I had been at three parties in a row. A CONVERSATION WITH PT BOAT VETERANS 6.27.05 PAGE 19

Unfortunately, my darling wife was in Europe at the time so I had to take Angie Dickinson to the three parties in a row. [Laughter] It was a very big burden on me but, anyway, I lived through it. And, anyway, when I came down to the front of the reviewing stand, why Jack Kennedy had told Lyndon Johnson that he could have the Secretary of the Navy, Undersecretary of the Navy. And so Jack turned to me and he said, “Redhead, I’m going to give you the position of Undersecretary of the Navy.” And I loved it when he said, “If you get by the FBI.”

GREENWAY: Did everyone have nicknames? Did you all have nicknames? And if so, tell us what they were. Let’s go right down the line. Mr. Battle, did you have a nickname?

BATTLE: I’m afraid I did.

GREENWAY: And it was?

BATTLE: Bitter Bill.

GREENWAY: Bitter Bill. Do you want to tell us about that?

BATTLE: My wife can probably tell you better than I can.

GREENWAY: Well, during question time we will call on her. And, of course, you were … How did you get the name of “Old Lovable?” A CONVERSATION WITH PT BOAT VETERANS 6.27.05 PAGE 20

BATTLE: The same way I got Bitter Bill. Nothing to it. [Laughter]

FAY: Jack Kennedy kept calling me Old Lovable. And, you know, it just carries on today. I mean my children, you know, they never use it for me. It was great to be part of that whole thing, thanks to Jack Kennedy.

GREENWAY: Mr. Keresey, did you have a nickname?

KERESEY: Yes. Incidentally, Jack Kennedy was a guy who gave nicknames. I remember one “Horizontal Ben” for a guy who spent most of the time out there asleep. [Laughter]

GREENWAY: Horizontal Ben.

KERESEY: My nickname was “Gunga Dick.” [Laughter]

GREENWAY: Gunga Dick. [Laughter]

KERESEY: And it came out of one Christmas. A guy who had some poetic ability wrote a poem to that Kipling thing, “Gunga Dick.” And he wrote this poem and that was the entertainment for Christmas. So I got Gunga Dick.

A CONVERSATION WITH PT BOAT VETERANS 6.27.05 PAGE 21

GREENWAY: Well, you’re a better man than I am Gunga Dick. Mr. Kowal, you were 19 years old. Were you called “The Kid?” Or did you have a nickname?

KOWAL: No, I didn’t.

GREENWAY: You didn’t have a nickname? Well, good for you. The only one who escaped.

KOWAL: Right.

GREENWAY: Did Captain Kennedy try to give you a nickname?

KOWAL: Not that I recall.

GREENWAY: I read that his own nickname was Shafty.

MULTIPLE VOICES: Shafty?

BATTLE: Shafty. Shofty. [multiple voices]

GREENWAY: Where did that come from, Shafty?

BATTLE: Well, he was so bloody thin at that time that that’s why he got the nickname Shafty.

A CONVERSATION WITH PT BOAT VETERANS 6.27.05 PAGE 22

KERESEY: Well, I had another version. He used to come in when he got a bad assignment or we got a bad assignment. He would say, “Shafted again.” He said it different than the way I said it. How did he say it Bill?

BATTLE: Shofted.

KERESEY: Shofted. Shofted again.

GREENWAY: Is that your version of the story?

BATTLE: Yeah.

GREENWAY: And Mr. Kowal, did you hear that? I’m sure you weren’t allowed to call him that, but was that his nickname behind his back?

KOWAL: No. We never called him that too much. We didn’t have the informal conversation. And I thought of something just a minute ago, and I forgot it. [Laughter] What the heck was it?

BATTLE: I will tell you a story about the guys, Kennedy and Fay. We had a wonderful, big Irishman as our Chaplain Webster.

FAY: Webster.

BATTLE: Father Webster.

A CONVERSATION WITH PT BOAT VETERANS 6.27.05 PAGE 23

FAY: Charles Webster, right.

BATTLE: Princeton. Big football. Great Catholic priest. Everybody loved him. He was a good guy. And I, being a Baptist from Virginia, didn’t know much about what these guys talked about because I knew they did a lot of talking.

FAY: In Latin. [Laughter]

BATTLE: Yes. Every afternoon I would see Fay and Kennedy, Jim Reed, traipse over to Father Webster’s tent, just the Catholic boys. And I thought, “Well, that’s nice. Really they are keeping up their religion, having their confessions. I don’t know what they confess to out here but they get along fine.” And that was it. One afternoon I had to have somebody ask me to go and get Fay. There was something on his boat that needed his attention. I go over there and I go in Father Webster’s tent, and they are having a damn cocktail party [laughter] out of the Father’s private stock. And he could get it. And, needless to say, after that my silence was quite pricey. I had to go to every cocktail party.

KERESEY: I was part of that.

GREENWAY: Were you?

KERESEY: Yes, because I was a Roman Catholic. I was invited.

A CONVERSATION WITH PT BOAT VETERANS 6.27.05 PAGE 24

GREENWAY: Invited for drinks?

KERESEY: Father Charles Webster was a Franciscan. He never touched a drop himself. But he would bring over from that airstrip, Munda, he would bring over a canteen filled with medical alcohol. And he would serve as the bartender. And he did a good job serving as the bartender. He looked like a big, burly Boston bartender.

FAY: He was a wonderful guy.

GREENWAY: That’s what you learn at Princeton.

FAY: Huh?

GREENWAY: That’s what you learn at Princeton, I’m sure.

FAY: Yes.

GREENWAY: Mr. Kowal, could you tell us a little? Every one has heard about PT Boat 109, but much less about PT Boat 59. You served on both. Can you tell us a little bit about what happened on 59?

KOWAL: Well, they took off all the torpedo tubes and they put four twin- 50s on each side of the boat and a 40-millimeter on the bow and on the stern. And we’d go along the coast looking for barges; sometimes we would see the campfires of the Japs because we bypassed them. He would go close and A CONVERSATION WITH PT BOAT VETERANS 6.27.05 PAGE 25 we would fire all our guns at him. And they would shoot at us but I don’t think they were reaching us. But that’s what we did.

GREENWAY: To intercept the barges.

KOWAL: Yes.

GREENWAY: Would the barges have munitions or soldiers as well?

KOWAL: Well, it was mostly soldiers.

GREENWAY: Mostly soldiers.

KOWAL: Because we by-passed quite a few islands there near the end. Like we went up the Green Island. That was after Boganville (?). And that was an island that they were planning to invade and so forth. So we had … Three boats went up there. We had to take depth measurements for the ships to come in. Well, we went up there and it was such a rough sea, boats would just tip this way. And on the way back, one boat broke in half.

GREENWAY: A PT boat?

KOWAL: A PT boat, right in half.

BATTLE: I don’t remember that.

A CONVERSATION WITH PT BOAT VETERANS 6.27.05 PAGE 26

KERESEY: I don’t either.

KOWAL: Green Island.

GREENWAY: Mr. Keresey, you want to comment on the PT boat that broke in half?

KERESEY: I didn’t know about that until tonight. But there are a lot of things I’m finding out. It is very entertaining. [Laughter]

GREENWAY: Mr. Keresey, were most of these actions when President Kennedy was in the Solomon Islands, were most of these actions at night?

KERESEY: They were all at night.

GREENWAY: All at night. So give the sort of routine. What time would you leave and what time would you come back? What would you do during the day, then? Talk a little bit about the routine.

KERESEY: Me?

GREENWAY: Yes, please.

KERESEY: During the day we hid out. This is certainly during Guadalcanal. We hid out because the Japanese, they didn’t have control of the air but they had enough control so if we were sitting out there we would A CONVERSATION WITH PT BOAT VETERANS 6.27.05 PAGE 27 be their prime targets. We went out at night. We would go out about five, six o’clock. I could always tell because I got a pain in my stomach at four o’clock because I knew I would be going out. And we went out at night. And we’d stay out all night. And more likely than not, we would intercept some barges and that would be the type of combat we had mostly. We only had two torpedo actions. The rest of it were gunboat actions, which were short and nasty. The only effective way the PT boat could destroy a was to get within 20 yards of it and blow it apart. Because we had no armor. So it was a question of getting in as quickly as we could and have our firepower as our protection as well as destroying them.

GREENWAY: Were the barges self powered or were they being towed? Self-powered?

KERESEY: Self-powered. Right. And they were various configurations.

GREENWAY: Did they have armor themselves? Did they have machine guns they could fire at you?

KERESEY: They definitely did. The first one I was in, my friend here, Bill Battle was leading it with a great fellow by the name of George Cookman as the division leader. And this was the first barge action I was in. Bill, you may have been in some earlier. And I will always remember it because Bill’s boat discovered a group of about ten to a dozen or more barges. This is all at night. But we could see it was this sort of a group. A CONVERSATION WITH PT BOAT VETERANS 6.27.05 PAGE 28

And his division leader, George Cookman, told us that he’d discovered this group and he started to speed up. And he sped up a little too fast for me and I lost some distance to be really effective and go in with him. I must have been 100 yards behind him when I wanted to be no more than 50. And they went into this entire group of barges at night. And the next thing I saw, they looked like hoses of red fire. And they were the Japanese barges on either side firing at Bill’s boat.

And you could see of fire from Bill’s boat. This was my introduction to barge fighting. And I didn’t know it would get better after that. But in that first barge action as a gunboat, Bill lost the division leader George Cookman and I know your executive officer.

BATTLE: Ensign Cook.

KERESEY: Huh?

BATTLE: Ensign Cook.

KERESEY: And it seemed to me that half your crew was done in. These barge actions were -- unless you got in very quick and unless you were really fighting just a couple of barges -- they were short and nasty.

GREENWAY: Would you like to tell a bit? I mean you were right in the middle of that firefight. How did you get out of it?

A CONVERSATION WITH PT BOAT VETERANS 6.27.05 PAGE 29

BATTLE: Well, I guess we just kept going. We were lucky. I don't know how any of us survived it. I think that it was a black, dark night and, frankly, I had not seen the barges on our starboard side. George Cookman was standing right up above me. I’m sure he saw them and he was giving us directions. A wonderful guy. He got hit right in the head, fell right down. And Ensign Cook was on the side of the boat down by the tubes directing the gunfire. And he got hit to the stomach. And first patrol he’d ever been on. He was a young guy. Never will forget it. He refused medical treatment until everybody on the boat had been taken care of. Absolutely refused it. And I gave him three shots of morphine before we got back to base to keep the pain down. And when we got to the base, we were going in to park the boat and get the medics out. And I gave a signal to the engine rooms to stop the engines and take them out of gear and nothing happened. It kept going. I gave it again. Nothing happened. It kept going. And so I had to punch the emergency cut-off to cut off all three engines, and we were able to drift in to one of the other boats that was tied up in the lagoon. And I went down in the engine room and the engineer was frozen right at the controls, passed out from carbon monoxide. The stacks, the exhaust stacks had been riddled by the Japanese fire. And he had passed out cold but he stayed aright. That’s the kind of kids we had, you know. And it was just a remarkable group of kids. They were just kids. Here I’m talking about kids.

GREENWAY: How old were you at the time?

BATTLE: I would have been 21.

A CONVERSATION WITH PT BOAT VETERANS 6.27.05 PAGE 30

GREENWAY: An old guy compared to Mr. Kowal.

BATTLE: Yeah, I was real ancient.

GREENWAY: Mr. Fay, you had an encounter with a Japanese airplane, did you not?

FAY: We did. We were, in fact, I think there were about eight or ten Japanese planes. And this was off of Rendova. And when it happened, the torpedoes were never armed enough so that they could explode. And I’ll never forget. There was an LCT that was with us at that time. And the skipper of the LCT came alongside and said, “I think we have a Japanese torpedo in our engine room.” And he said, “We want to make sure that it’s not.” So my torpedo man onboard the , he said, “I don’t hear any motion at all in the torpedo, so I don’t think it’s alive.” And there was a fellow named Peter Corel who was on . And he said, “I’m not going to abandon my ship.” And, in fact, every one of the people on the crew got on our PT boat and we took them back to Treasury Island. And at that time, why, I love the fact that Peter Corel said, “I’m not going to be the one that’s going to abandon this ship and have it be the first ship to be turned over to the Japanese navy.” And with that, Peter Corel and he took five of the crew back to Rendova. And as a result of that, why, the officer got court martialed and Peter got the Silver Star.

A CONVERSATION WITH PT BOAT VETERANS 6.27.05 PAGE 31

GREENWAY: Mr. Kowal, what did you think of as the biggest danger to you, Japanese planes or fire from the barges? Whhen you were on Jack Kennedy’s boat, what did you consider the biggest danger?

KOWAL: Well, the biggest danger was getting close to the shore to bombard their restrooms. [Laughter]

GREENWAY: Is that sporting?

KOWAL: Every morning we would come in off patrol, we would destroy all the restrooms we had seen on the way in. And the Japs were there firing their rifles at us, but we were out of range. The 40-millimeters took …

GREENWAY: They never learned to put the restrooms a little further back from the beach?

KOWAL: No, they have to be on the beach. There were no flush toilets.

GREENWAY: A-ah.

KOWAL: They were built out into the water.

GREENWAY: And Lord help you if a PT boat came along. [Laughter]

KOWAL: That’s the way it was in Tulagi. Yeah, if you’re constipated, we cured that for them. [Laughter] A CONVERSATION WITH PT BOAT VETERANS 6.27.05 PAGE 32

GREENWAY: Well, what we’ve heard here is an astonishing description of … Maybe you could say that World War II was really the last naval war, as it was fought in Nelson’s time. Now Tomahawk missiles fire from hundreds of away. But this was the last naval war where ships fought each other, side-to-side, not unlike Nelson.

So I’m going to turn it over to questions now from the audience. And I’m going to ask you to please make sure there’s a microphone. Please talk into the microphone because this is going to be broadcast on WBUR. They can’t pick it up if you don’t speak. And I would like you please to identify yourself, and you can ask a question to one person or to anybody. So who would have some questions? Anybody at all? Please.

AUDIENCE: Good evening and thank you for being here tonight. It is such a privilege.

GREENWAY: And your name, sir?

AUDIENCE: My name is Matthew Careys. My question this evening is directed towards Mr. Kowal. And it’s actually two-part. One was, Mr. Kirksey [PT 109 crewmate who died the night of the attack] supposedly had a premonition about PT 109. And after it was sunk and you were not on it, what were your thoughts about that?

A CONVERSATION WITH PT BOAT VETERANS 6.27.05 PAGE 33

KOWAL: Well, he had this premonition and the skipper wanted him to stay ashore. And he said if he would, they would call him yellow. So he went out, and he knew he was going to die that night. I don't know how, but he did die. Now, what was the second part?

AUDIENCE: How did you feel when you were in the hospital and heard that the 109 had gone down and you were safe?

KOWAL: Well, we were very close. All PT boat crews were very close. And Kirksey and everybody else were very close. We almost knew each family by their first name, by their activities. It was a great shock to us. And I never forgot that to this day.

AUDIENCE: And, obviously, you were overjoyed to the fact that there were 11 survivors.

KOWAL: Oh, definitely. Our prayers were answered.

AUDIENCE: Well, thank you, again.

AUDIENCE: My name is Kevin Hardigan. My question is for Mr. Kowal, too. No offense to the officers, but [laughter] whenever a Republican criticized Kennedy to my father for having lost his boat, my father’s answer was always, “Couldn’t have been his fault because most of his crew volunteered to serve with him again.” My question is, was my father right? Were most of the men on 59 from the 109? A CONVERSATION WITH PT BOAT VETERANS 6.27.05 PAGE 34

KOWAL: No. They split it up because Ensign Tom got a boat of his own.

AUDIENCE: But did a lot of the 109 survivors serve with him again?

KOWAL: Not too many. I can’t remember how many. But Ensign Tom got the other boat. And it was a 77-footer. So there wasn’t too many.

AUDIENCE: Thank you.

KOWAL: … Because Harris was on with the other boat. And we had a lot of people coming in from San Francisco, new recruits, rookies and all that. And they were putting them on our boats. Because I bet there was more than … I can’t remember. There weren’t too many old crewmembers on there because they split up in two groups.

AUDIENCE: Thank you.

GREENWAY: But just to follow up on the question, I think it’s an important one. You didn’t feel that Lieutenant Kennedy, that it was his fault that he lost the boat?

KOWAL: Absolutely not. He was hit by a Japanese that eventually ended up splitting the PT 109 in two. And there were two people that were killed on that particular time.

A CONVERSATION WITH PT BOAT VETERANS 6.27.05 PAGE 35

GREENWAY: Yes.

AUDIENCE: I have the honor of being here tonight.

GREENWAY: Just one second. Just follow up on that piece.

AUDIENCE: Oh, I’m sorry.

GREENWAY: Just wait.

KOWAL: I think it is very important because the attack on Jack has been that it was his fault. And it was negligence and it should have been avoided. And anybody that takes that position has never been out there in the dark of night in the situation he was. And a PT boat, the wake from a PT boat was very visible from the sky. And we were harassed all the time at night if we were underway by these Jap float planes that carried one bomb and it would come in and drop it.

And therefore he, obviously, was idling ahead on one engine, is the way I recall it, very slow, to keep from making a wake. And without any warning, this destroyer going full speed comes out of the black right on to him. And I don’t think you could have seen that ship 50 yards away from him. And in order to avoid it, what you had to do with a PT boat, if he is idling ahead with one engine, he’s got to take time to put the indicators into gear. And that’s relayed to the engine room and the engineer shifts the gears and A CONVERSATION WITH PT BOAT VETERANS 6.27.05 PAGE 36 engages those other two engines. And then you can speed up. And all this takes time.

GREENWAY: And if I’m not mistaken, when you are going very slow, it doesn’t accelerate quickly?

KOWAL: No.

GREENWAY: Because you have to get up on the plane.

KOWAL: It doesn’t jump out. It doesn’t jump out.

GREENWAY: So with a destroyer going full speed, even if he put it in full throttle, he couldn’t have gotten away.

KOWAL: That’s right.

GREENWAY: Sorry, madam.

AUDIENCE : That’s all right. My name is Peggy Fahey. And I’m so glad to be here because my fiancé was on Solomon Island. He was only 17, and he was in the Marine Corps. But he told me a cute little story. A priest came over and said, “I want to hear your confessions, Henry.” And he said, “Father, I’m not ready to die yet.” And he did make it back, thank God. And also, we used to see Jack a lot, walking around Castle Island with Dave Powers. He would have loved this spot. A CONVERSATION WITH PT BOAT VETERANS 6.27.05 PAGE 37

And my boyfriend went into the state police and was with him a lot down Cape Cod and he greeting him all the time when he came in at the airport. And, ironically, today is my dad’s birthday. He was in World War I. And he was shot four times in the front lines of France. He came back on the Acquitania ship. That’s a sister ship to the Lusitania. And guess who went out on that ship on their honeymoon, Jacqueline Kennedy’s mother and father. [Laughter]

Yeah. It was quite a thing to see ten thousand men aboard that ship coming into New York. I just wanted to share that with you because today is my father’s birthday. [applause] I loved all the Kennedys and it’s such a treat to be with all you gentlemen here. Precious. Precious. Thank you.

[Applause]

GREENWAY: Gosh.

AUDIENCE: My name is Jonathan Garlet. I have a question for all of you. I grew up with a generation where we could here these stories from our fathers. I brought with me today my son and a good friend of his who is 13 years old. And they want to learn about these stories first hand. They don’t have the opportunity to here it from their fathers. So they learn it from you, about your acts of heroism. So what would you tell them that they should tell their friends about what your lessons in life were in terms of what they can teach their friends, since they will be ambassadors now in terms of A CONVERSATION WITH PT BOAT VETERANS 6.27.05 PAGE 38 relaying the stories and your experiences for their generation? They are sitting up here and there are some other young people in the audience. What can you tell them in a few sentences that they can carry as a message of your heroism and your sacrifices?

GREENWAY: Bill, do you want to answer that? [laughter]

KERESEY: Mr. Ambassador?

BATTLE: Well, I think all of us would come to the same conclusion when asked a question like that. This is the first time I’ve ever thought about it. But thinking right here as we sit here and knowing what these fellows went through and our comrades, and what turned out, what happened to the ones that didn’t perform and dropped out and wouldn’t go on patrols and things of that sort, is, when your duty is there, do it to the best of your ability, no matter how tough it is. Because if you slack off, you are going to get caught in the middle as sure as shooting.

I remember distinctly one night we were to go out from Bouganville(?). And, again, I couldn’t get my engines started for a different reason. I went down and the engineer was frozen at the controls, fear. He couldn’t do a thing. He couldn’t move. And I tried to reason with him. I tried to talk to him and he just couldn’t make it. We put him on the beach. And I came back that morning, they were taking him out. He had been wounded in an air raid on the beach that night. You never know. But I do know that if you A CONVERSATION WITH PT BOAT VETERANS 6.27.05 PAGE 39 face your duty and do it to the best of your ability, it will usually work out to your betterment.

GREENWAY: Well done, Bill.

[Applause]

AUDIENCE: My name is Art Newmore. I’m an amateur naval historian. I have two questions for the whole panel. Number one, when the PT boats were re-armed with the later Mark-13 torpedoes that were much lighter than the original ones, did the boats become a lot faster or did they load them down with all the kinds of extra equipment to make them the same speed?

KERESEY: Well, it depending on where you were. The Mark was a Mark-13 torpedo, which was a warplane torpedo. And it was much lighter than the ones we had. So it did lighten the boat to have those torpedoes. But, at the same time, the 20-millimeter gun was replaced by a 40-millimeter gun. So the tendency was to increase the weight on the boat.

The boats got heavier but they didn’t lose their speed because the engines were made more powerful. And they went from 12 hundred horsepower to 15 hundred horsepower. So the PT boat was capable, always capable of turning up at least 42, 43 knots or faster. I once had a 105 going, I would estimate, 50 knots.

GREENWAY: And what would that be in miles per hour? A CONVERSATION WITH PT BOAT VETERANS 6.27.05 PAGE 40

KERESEY: What?

GREENWAY: What would that be in miles per hour?

KERESEY: Sixty.

GREENWAY: Sixty miles per hour.

KERESEY: This was extraordinary. I only knew it was doing that much because of the RPMs. You did it by the revolutions per minute. You had the dials there. And the 105 was going that fast.

GREENWAY: He doesn’t look like a cowboy, does he? [Laughter]

KERESEY: No. No. There was a good reason. We were running from shore guns.

AUDIENCE: On the second note, when you noticed … I noticed you targeting the Japanese outhouses, did any of the wakes from the PT boats knock over any of our privies, like 31-knot Birks(?) did?

KERESEY: No. No. We never did that. [laughter]

AUDUIENCE: Because I didn’t know how big the wakes were from the PTs versus the destroyer. A CONVERSATION WITH PT BOAT VETERANS 6.27.05 PAGE 41

KERESEY: I didn’t get that.

AUDIENCE: Because I didn’t know how big the wakes of the PTs when they were at speed versus that of a destroyer, which is about ten feet high.

KERESEY: Yes. I don’t get the question.

AUDIENCE: I was asking do the wakes from the PT boats knock over any of the privies at our bases?

KERESEY: No. You would always go out slow around our bases and not make a big wake.

AUDIENCE: Thank you very much.

KERESEY: Thank you. That was a tough one.

AUDIENCE: Came to say hello, Red. I haven’t seen you in a few years. I’m an old, old Navy like you guys. I was down on Guadalcanal in that area with the naval aviation. And I appreciate you guys being there. And I was fortunate because I was on the Jeep carrier briefly ... (inaudible) got Lay- tay(?) Gulf. And I think the islands are great because they don’t float away when you try and find them. But I go way back with the Kennedys when I was a young lad, back about 70 years ago. It is good to see you again, Ray, and Fred. A CONVERSATION WITH PT BOAT VETERANS 6.27.05 PAGE 42

And I really appreciate you guys down there. And you said the Japanese were … We used to call them “washing machine Charlie flights.” Around midnight, just to harass us, they would come bombing us, and not much damage but they would wake you up and screw up your nights. They were always a pain in the butt. Like you guys, we had our own little club. At one point we got a … Being Navy guys, we had Marines there and Australians and New Zealanders and the Army-Air Corps on Henderson Field. So we had got an abandoned Quonset hut and we had the build a bar. And we used to pay them, flying in the mail from Pearl Harbor, to get stateside booze. Strangers would bring in bomb bays of beer. And we had our own club for a while and people would fly in. “Where the hell is this hotel da Gink(?)?” And it was our club. So there were some good sides when you survived. But it is really good to see you guys again, particularly Red. And it’s great that you guys did your job. Thank you. No questions. Just thank you very much.

[Applause]

AUDIENCE: Good afternoon. My name is Hodiga(?) Falk(?). I’m a son of a soldier of a German soldier. I’m not quite satisfied with the wisdom question: What would be your wisdom to say to the youth? Particularly, I came from the other side, from the enemy side. A more practical question is, I know that the sea war in the Pacific cost a lot of human lives. What was your feeling when you listened to the drop of the atomic bomb and almost immediately the war was over? Besides happiness that the war was over, A CONVERSATION WITH PT BOAT VETERANS 6.27.05 PAGE 43 was there resentment to fight the war, for example, that the atomic bomb should have dropped earlier, for example. I would like to know about this. Thank you.

GREENWAY: The question was how did you feel about the dropping of the atomic bomb on Japan? And maybe you could all answer that question. Maybe it would be interesting to know where you were when that happened. You were stateside by then, weren’t you Mr. Fay?

FAY: Absolutely. I was stateside, no question about it. And the nuclear bomb was dropped on Japanese territory. And I know that when I was … I was still in PT boats at that time. But it was an unbelievable accident. It could have happened. It blew up that whole bloody area there. But that’s the best answer I can give you.

GREENWAY: Mr. Battle.

BATTLE: Well, I was delighted, absolutely delighted. It didn’t enter my head to rationalize how many poor human lives were lost. It was just that mine was saved. There is no doubt about it. I was in the on a PT boat and they were getting ready to load us into these, what they called landing ship dry docks that they could put quite a few boats in and take them north and drop us off and use us as picket boats. And we would have no place to return to. We would just be up there. And it was a ridiculous scheme. But, you know, aside from that, having seen what we had seen, the barbarism and the fanaticism of the Japs, the signs they left behind, it didn’t A CONVERSATION WITH PT BOAT VETERANS 6.27.05 PAGE 44 encourage us to have any sympathy for the Japanese, there is no doubt about it. We did not have any sympathy. We weren’t trying to be barbaric, but we wanted to get a war over just as soon as we possibly could. And it would have cost hundreds of thousands of lives, I think, if we tried to invade the home islands of Japan.

GREENWAY: You might make a case it also saved hundreds, thousands more Japanese lives.

BATTLE: Maybe.

GREENWAY: Because they might have, in fact, probably would have fought to the, every single …

BATTLE: That’s right.

GREENWAY: … stone and stick in Japan. Did you have a feeling about that Mr. Keresey?

KERESEY: Yes. I was on my way out. And it was just a complete profound relief for me. And like Bill, I was delighted. We were in different places, but we knew that our chances weren’t very good for a second time around like that.

GREENWAY: Mr. Kowal?

A CONVERSATION WITH PT BOAT VETERANS 6.27.05 PAGE 45

KOWAL: I was relieved because the Japs would never surrender. They fight and fight and commit suicide. They were killing our boys badly. So I was happy. I wished they would have dropped two.

GREENWAY: Hm-hmmm. They did.

KOWAL: I mean at that one time.

GREENWAY: Did any of you ever hear if President Kennedy ever had an opinion about this controversy -- on whether we should have dropped the bomb or not? I don't know that he did? Did he ever say anything to you, Mr. Fay, about that?

FAY: You know, he mentioned that the dropping the bomb would probably be … In fact, when we were in the Bay of Pigs and Admiral Anderson was the Chief for Naval Operations … and he said every one of our ships is in good shape so that the commanding officers on each one of the ships would be in charge. And the President said, I want to make sure that we don’t have any problems whatsoever about any of these ships firing on the Russian ships because they are worried that if they did that Kruschev would start hurling the nuclear bombs off Cuba. And thank goodness for Bobby Kennedy. He said, “Why don’t we take all the missiles out of Turkey.” As a result of that they took all of the, Khrushchev took all the nuclear launches out of the Bay of Pigs.

GREENWAY: Any more questions? A CONVERSATION WITH PT BOAT VETERANS 6.27.05 PAGE 46

AUDIENCE: My name is Resa Hill. I’m from Georgia, but I live in Martha’s Vineyard now. My father served at Normandy, survived. And on a lighter note, Mr. Fay, I know one thing the President really enjoyed from you was having you sing, “Hooray for Hollywood.” [Laughter]

FAY: What did she say?

GREENWAY: Having you sing “Hooray for Hollywood.”

AUDIENCE: Would you honor us with that small bit?

FAY: Do you want me to do it right now?

AUDIENCE: Now.

FAY: Right now. [Sings song]

[Applause]

AUDIENCE: Very good. Very good.

GREENWAY: Well, unless there are any more questions, I don’t think we can top that. So I want to thank our panel of heroes all, heroes all. Thank you for coming.

A CONVERSATION WITH PT BOAT VETERANS 6.27.05 PAGE 47