WWII Navy vet recalls 46 days lost at sea

“We ate a lot of raw fish after that,” he said. “We had to get them with your knife, pitch them over your shoulder and throw them into the boat. They’d come right up and play around the boat.”

They had to perfect the technique. If they fished in bright sunlight, their shadows and movement would tip off the fish and the school would scatter. They learned to wait until twilight, fishing and gathering food.

“That’s what we lived on from a long while,” he said.

False hope

Losing count of the days in that lifeboat would have been easy, but the men kept a tally by making scratch marks on the hull. One morning, when the wind had died down and the sails weren’t moving them, they noticed what looked like land off in the distance.

“Someone of us looked up, and we thought we had come up near some land. There was a big island like off to the side.”

Before the first hoot of joy labored long on the air, the Norwegian shot them a quick warning. “He says, ‘Shut up. I don’t want to hear another sound.’ He says, ‘I’ll tell you right now that’s a whale laying over there — just resting. If he discovers that we’re over here, he’ll be nosing around and he’s going to dump us.’”

They sat waiting, not making a sound for most of the morning, before the whale decided to leave. “I guess he figured we were something else or we weren’t worth going after — so he left. But he was a monstrous whale.”

Deliverance

On another calm morning, before noon, they saw something on the horizon. It looked like a bird at first, moving in front of them. But it lingered on the horizon, getting bigger. A plane came toward them, circling tight and close.

“They flew so close to the boat, I thought they were coming in it. They just went right around the boat two or three times.”

Becker thought they’d be saved at last. The other guys waved and cheered at the plane. But it swooped back up into the sky. “They disappeared as fast as they came.”

A little disappointed, the men knew that someone was probably close by. They watched all day. In the evening, late in the afternoon, they saw a smokestack on the horizon. “When we saw that, we knew there was a ship.”

The ship, an English destroyer, sidled up next to them but never stopped. Three crewmen jumped off with lifelines. Unsure if the lifeboat survivors were friendly, the Brits tied up the remaining 10 men to get them ready to board the boat. They signaled for the destroyer to return.

“They threw the lines up. They hoisted us up. They weren’t stopping to make a target for themselves. They hoisted us up on that destroyer. They took their guns and sunk our lifeboat, and we were on our way,” he said.

Homecoming

After the ordeal and some initial treatment for starvation, the Brits got Becker and the other men back into American hands. They shipped the then-19-year-old sailor back to New York for treatment. Becker and the other Navy men got a 30-day leave to go home and see their families.

“I got my leave to go back to Charles City, Iowa, and I got on the train in New York and took off for Chicago. I got out to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and I could see I was going to get in pretty late in the night. So I phoned my parents, told them I was coming,” Becker said.

The other end of the phone line went silent as the grave for a few seconds. Western Union had already delivered a telegram on Feb. 23, 1943 — about a month after he went missing — notifying his parents.

“They had gotten a telegram from the government that I was dead. They never told them they had found me. They never said a word,” he said.

Back in Charles City, Becker was already counted among the honored dead servicemen. His family had held a funeral. They’d mourned him. By March 12 — the day the sailors were rescued — the Beckers thought their son had been dead for at least 20 days.

“So that was kind of like party time when we did get home and get together,” he said. Becker comes from a large family. He has two older brothers, three younger sisters, and his mom and dad. Now almost in his 90th year, Becker has outlived them all.

“They thought they buried me. They’re all dead and buried, and I’m still going,” he said.

In that month back home, people didn’t get over their disbelief. Becker traveled around town with his dad to the American Legion or farm program meetings, telling his story. “If they were like me, I never saw the ocean in my life — until I wound up in it. And it’s a big place.”

After that, he came back to base in Brooklyn. The doctors there told him he could get out of the service on medical grounds, due to the severity of his ordeal the first time out. He opted for a desk job. He told his story to help sell war bonds. He met a girl, Cathy Pace, who later became his wife. But when they started talking about shipping him back out — this time to France — he revisited the doctor.

“I took the discharge,” he explained.