19 Hours On a Raft
Following is a condensed version of astory which appeared in The Cedar Rapids (Iowa) Gazette.
A life jacket and an improvised raft saved Lt. David Hedges '34 when his ship, U.S. Destroyer Buck, was torpedoed on October 9, about sixty miles off the coast of Salerno. In the explosion which he did not even remember hearing, Hedges was knocked out and regained consciousness beneath the water. His life jacket propelled him to the surface and he grabbed a floating piece of wreckage. It was one half of a life raft.
Aside from a few cuts, bruises and a slight deafness, Hedges was unharmed. He clung to the raft for about an hour, sighted the other half of his raft floating a few yards away. With one arm over the raft, he swam toward the other section, reached it, and flung his free arm over it. At that moment he heard a voice calling "Ahoy." He called back "Over here! Over here!" After 15 minutes of shouting back and forth, a man swam up to Hedges. He was also unharmed, but the oil and water caused his eyes to swell and itch. It was the ship's coxswain, Anthony Pepponi.
Using Pepponi's jackknife, the two men cut a line hanging from the life raft, and began lashing the two sections together. As they worked, they saw a ship silhouetted against the sky, realized before signalling that it was a submarine. They stopped working, lay. quiet on the surface, and watched the enemy ship glide past them. When it was out of sight, they began again the difficult job of lashing the two sections of the life raft together.
After tugging the two pieces together, they discovered that instead of having two halves of a life raft, it was only two sections, and the pieces could not be fitted together to form a raft. Finally they succeeded in turning the semi-circular pieces oer and up, and climbed together at either end, and climbed aboard the "Viking." Pepponi's eyes were almost swollen shut, and Hedges' hands and wrists were aching badly. Both men were shivering from shock although the water was warm.
The lashings were secure, and the little craft floated over the choppy water through the night. An "out-of-this- world, warbling, pitiable sound" echoed across the water, and after prying loose two boards from the raft, they paddled toward the sound. A chilling rain began, lasted about an hour, cleared abruptly, and the "Viking's" crew sighted a tiny speck on the surface. It turned out to be a Negro, Leroy Highe, officer's steward second class from the Buck. He was floating luxuriously in a tiny navy corkand-net type raft, only his head above water, chanting, "Lord, I'm in Your Care." He was glad to see the "Viking," however, and securing his own raft to theirs, climbed aboard, curled up and went to sleep.
In the early dawn, planes flew overhead. The trio yelled and waved. Pepponi's eyes were swollen shut, he fell out of the raft and scrambled back up, still yelling. The planes flew on. About mid-morning, a soggy pack of cigarettes floated by. The hungry men chewed the cigarettes. Another plane flew overhead, low, and a crew member waved from an open door. Expecting help soon, the men began talking excitedly about the steak dinner they would get as soon as they were rescued. They talked on and on—and no more planes arrived. Not daring to admit to each other that there was no help coming, they floated along until late afternoon, when they sighted the distant shore line of the Isle of Capri, and later of Italy itself. They cast off the net float, and began paddling toward the mainland. At 7:30 they saw a silhouette across the water. Pepponi shouted "Isn't that a ship?" Highe chirped:
"It ain't no minnow!"
"The moon!" screamed Hedges, "Paddle for the moon!" and the three men paddled frantically to steer the raft into the path of the moon where they would be spotlighted, and noticed by the destroyer. When they reached the path, the destroyer was a half-mile away.
Suddenly three red flares lighted the sky. Later they learned the flares were from a Very gun on another raft of Buck survivors. The destroyer came back toward them, slowly. The men were ready, in the path of the moon, beating the water with their paddles and hoping those on ship would see the white splashes. Pepponi stood, waved frantically, fell into the water, climbed back. The destroyer heaved toward them, dropped a ladder. On board, Hedges went to the bridge and directed the destroyer to the area where other survivors had fired the Very gun.
All survivors were taken to a hospital in Sicily. After 12 days there, Hedges came home on a 30-day leave.
Remembered on the Dartmouth gridiron, Hedges claimed the training and muscle-building of the game were partly responsible for his survival, but added, "It was like playing five games in one afternoon."
