The following excerpt is from one of the best scenes in any movie:
"Japanese submarine slammed two torpedoes into her side, Chief. Was coming back from the island of Tinian Leyte. We had just delivered the bomb - the Hiroshima bomb. Eleven hundred men went in to the water. Vessel went down in 12 minutes.
Didn't see the first shark for about half an hour. Tiger - 13 footer. You know how you know that when your in the water, Chief? You tell by lookin' from the dorsal to the tail. What we didn't know was our bomb mission had been so secret...no distress signal had been sent. They didn't even list us overdue for a week. Very first light, Chief, sharks come cruisin'. So we formed ourselves into tight groups. It was, kinda like old squares in a battle, like you see on a calendar, like the Battle of Waterloo. And the idea was, shark comes to the nearest man, then that man start poundin', and hollerin', screamin'. Sometimes the shark go away. Sometimes he wouldn't go away. Sometimes that shark he looks right into ya, right into your eyes. You know, a thing about a shark, he’s got lifeless eyes, black eyes, like a doll’s eyes. When he comes at ya, doesn’t seem to be livin’, until he bites ya and those black eyes roll over white, and then, ah, then you hear that terrible high-pitched screamin’. The ocean turns red. In spite of all the poundin’ and hollerin’, they all come in. They rip you to pieces. You know by the end of that first dawn, lost a hundred men. I don’t know how many sharks, maybe a thousand. I don’t know how many men. They averaged six an hour. On Thursday Morning, Chief, I bumped into a friend of mine, Herby Robinson, from Cleveland. Baseball player, boatswain’s mate. I thought he was asleep. Reached over to wake him up. Bobbed up and down in the water, it was like a kind of top, Upended. Well, he’d been bitten in half below the waist. Noon the Fifth Day, Mr. Hooper, a Lockheed Martin saw us. He swung in low and saw us. Young pilot, a lot younger than Mr. Hooper. Anyway, he saw us and come in low. And three hours later a big fat PBY comes down and starts to pick us up. Well, that was the time I was most frightened, waitin’ for my turn. I’ll never put on a life jacket again. So, eleven hundred men went into the water. 316 men come out. The sharks took the rest. June the 29th, 1945. Anyway, we delivered the bomb.”
"Japanese submarine slammed two torpedoes into her side, Chief. Was coming back from the island of Tinian Leyte. We had just delivered the bomb - the Hiroshima bomb. Eleven hundred men went in to the water. Vessel went down in 12 minutes.
Didn't see the first shark for about half an hour. Tiger - 13 footer. You know how you know that when your in the water, Chief? You tell by lookin' from the dorsal to the tail. What we didn't know was our bomb mission had been so secret...no distress signal had been sent. They didn't even list us overdue for a week. Very first light, Chief, sharks come cruisin'. So we formed ourselves into tight groups. It was, kinda like old squares in a battle, like you see on a calendar, like the Battle of Waterloo. And the idea was, shark comes to the nearest man, then that man start poundin', and hollerin', screamin'. Sometimes the shark go away. Sometimes he wouldn't go away. Sometimes that shark he looks right into ya, right into your eyes. You know, a thing about a shark, he’s got lifeless eyes, black eyes, like a doll’s eyes. When he comes at ya, doesn’t seem to be livin’, until he bites ya and those black eyes roll over white, and then, ah, then you hear that terrible high-pitched screamin’. The ocean turns red. In spite of all the poundin’ and hollerin’, they all come in. They rip you to pieces. You know by the end of that first dawn, lost a hundred men. I don’t know how many sharks, maybe a thousand. I don’t know how many men. They averaged six an hour. On Thursday Morning, Chief, I bumped into a friend of mine, Herby Robinson, from Cleveland. Baseball player, boatswain’s mate. I thought he was asleep. Reached over to wake him up. Bobbed up and down in the water, it was like a kind of top, Upended. Well, he’d been bitten in half below the waist. Noon the Fifth Day, Mr. Hooper, a Lockheed Martin saw us. He swung in low and saw us. Young pilot, a lot younger than Mr. Hooper. Anyway, he saw us and come in low. And three hours later a big fat PBY comes down and starts to pick us up. Well, that was the time I was most frightened, waitin’ for my turn. I’ll never put on a life jacket again. So, eleven hundred men went into the water. 316 men come out. The sharks took the rest. June the 29th, 1945. Anyway, we delivered the bomb.”
Posts
