April 2023 – Paul Linzey

I was a young sailor on June 4, 1942, when the USS Yorktown was sunk in the Battle of Midway. We were only three miles from land—straight down! And that is where our great aircraft carrier still rests today as a tomb for some eighty-six of our friends whose lives so suddenly ended on that tragic day.

The best of the American and Japanese navies were in full conflict at the Battle of Midway, and we already had taken three bomb hits. Our hangar deck was in flames from one bomb, another had set fire to our fourth deck, and a third had exploded in the stack and blown out the fires in our boilers. We all felt the ominous silence of dead engines as we floated lifeless in the water!

At 2:00 P.M., our engineers had just gotten the ship’s engines started again when the next wave of Japanese attack planes came roaring in and dropped their torpedoes for the kill. That was more than a half century ago, and yet I can hear the agitated voice that spoke over the headphones and loudspeakers as if it were yesterday: “Stand by for torpedo attack!”

I can still close my eyes and shudder at the memory of the thudding of the two torpedoes as they struck us on the port (left) side. I was down on the third deck at water level when they blasted the side of our ship and ripped huge holes in our hull, and I can still remember how the ship lifted into the air with the impact of the explosions. As the water rushed in, the great aircraft carrier listed to the port side at twenty-seven degrees until the very edge of the hangar deck was dipping into the water. Inside the ship, there was nothing like a deck or a bulkhead, for every surface was lying at an angle and making it almost impossible to maneuver from one compartment to another. Water mains were broken and were spewing forth water, and the lights were out. Only the blue battle lamps illuminated the scene.

I will never forget the last command of Captain Elliott Buckmaster. A chill went through all of us as we heard his fateful words: “Abandon ship!”

In the following hectic hours, we struggled for survival. We had little time to think of the many friends we were leaving behind in the depths of the ship. If we were having trouble with a loss of electricity and broken water lines at the third deck, surely the men below us were flooded with little hope of survival. Yet, in spite of the jeopardy of our condition, I recall the disciplined calm among our sailors as we worked our way up through the destruction. Well trained for such a calamity, we helped each other find our way to the surface and then slid down two-inch lines into the oil-covered sea.

History has recorded the battle strategies, the mistakes, the glories, and the tragedies of the war at sea. The Battle of the Coral Sea, in which the Yorktown was first damaged, turned back the southern expansion of the Japanese Empire; the Battle of Midway, where she was sunk, was the turning point of the Pacific War. We look back now and see the entire Pacific Theater of the war from beginning to end—the Japanese expansion in Asia and the Pacific Islands, the attack on Pearl Harbor that brought America into the war, the prisoner-of-war camps, the raising of the U.S. flag on Iwo Jima, the atomic bomb attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the signing of the unconditional surrender on the deck of the battleship USS Missouri. Much has been said, written, and documented on film, but what history does not remember is that wars are not composed of the grand battles alone but of the personal challenges, tragedies, sacrifices, and faith of individuals caught up in the greater conflict.

History does not remember that at the very time when the survivors of the Yorktown were fighting for their lives, in the thick oil slick that surrounded the sinking vessel, many individuals and churches in America were praying. My own wife was seized with a deep burden for prayer, and just before the battle, I had one of the most outstanding spiritual experiences of my life. To all that has been written, I am adding my voice to say, “God was at Midway!”

This is an excerpt from the book, Dead in the Water, written by Stanford E. Linzey, and republished with a new introduction by my brother, S. Eugene Linzey, and an afterword by me. It is available on Amazon and on this website. The painting of the ship is by contemporary artist, Richard W. DeRosset.

Celebrating Christ’s resurrection is one of the high points of the year for many Christians, both Protestant and Catholic, and to start the day without mortars made it even better. The sun was shining, but it wasn’t hot yet. We enjoyed the music and I preached on the love of God. At the end of the message, I asked everyone to repeat a prayer of commitment to the Lord. Two people confessed faith in Christ for the first time, and it was an awesome celebration of the Resurrection.

The joy and camaraderie continued as we transitioned from worship to fellowship, with twenty-seven of us going to have lunch together. The DFAC staff had decided to make Easter Sunday a special event, so the entire dining area was decorated in Easter colors and themes: banners, a huge Easter Bunny, streamers, and a special holiday menu. The food was always good, with a lot of options. But today we could select whatever our family’s traditional Easter feast was back home: ham, turkey, roast beef, pumpkin pie. They also brought in a sound system and played music all afternoon.

It was just a wonderful day: worship, celebrating the Risen Lord, fellowship with good brothers and sisters in Christ, great weather, and really good food.

After the last of our group left, I decided to go back to the office. The senior chaplain at Camp Victory required each chaplain to send a weekly report. As I was writing the email around two-thirty in the afternoon, I heard the sirens, so I put on my Kevlar vest and helmet and ran down the hall to go out to the bunker, as shrapnel and gravel pelted the roof of the one-story building. The three explosions were really close.

I ducked into the bunker outside the door, the Colonel and Sergeant Major soon joining me. Just three of us this time. On a typical day there might be more than a dozen of us crammed in there.

After we heard the all-clear signal, I said, “Sir, it’s been fun chatting with you, but if you’ll excuse me, I have to run over to the clinic to see if we have any casualties.”

“OK, Chaps. Let me know.”

“Yes, sir. I will.”

The medical clinic was a buzz of activity when I rushed in the front door. About twenty-five people crammed into a lobby that had only a dozen chairs. Six on one side facing the six on the other side. Not your typical waiting room, this area was mostly a place to drop your gear before going in to see a doc or nurse, or before going in to visit a patient.

“How many?” I asked the guy behind the counter.

“Four so far, Chaplain. No deaths reported as far as I know.”

“Thanks.”

“May I go in?” I asked.

“Sure, Chaplain. Go on in.”

When I asked one soldier how he was doing, he began to mutter, and there were tears in his eyes. I couldn’t understand what he was saying, and assumed he was crying because of the pain. He mumbled something again. Then I understood his words and his tears. “I’m hurt, but my best friend is dead.”

“Your friend is dead?” I needed to clarify, because nobody had mentioned this to me.

“Yes. He was standing right next to me. The mortar landed on the other side of him, cutting him in half instantly. My injuries are nothing compared to what happened to him. He saved my life.”

I rushed out to see the receptionist. “Have you guys heard anything about someone being killed in that mortar attack?”

“No, not yet.”

Just then, a Sergeant Major ran in. I hadn’t seen him before. “Chaplain, we need you to come with us. We have a dead soldier and we have to evacuate him immediately. Are you a Catholic priest?”

Others from the unit started pouring into the clinic. During the next half-hour, more than a hundred people asked the same question, “Are you Catholic? Are you a priest?”

Never in my life did it hurt so much to say I was not Catholic. I wanted so badly to say, “Yes, I am a priest.”

The Soldier who died was the most popular guy in the unit. Many of the visiting Soldiers were Catholic, including him. After the dust and smoke cleared, everyone saw him lying on the ground. They were traumatized. He was, in a way, their emotional and spiritual leader–a devout, godly, personable man who cared deeply about each of them. His fellow soldiers loved and respected him. Now they needed a Roman Catholic Priest.

I conducted a flight-line memorial service as the helicopter crew prepared to take off. The men and women of the unit formed a double line extending from the medical clinic to the evac helicopter, wide enough for the funeral procession to march between the saluting soldiers. It was a tragic, but impressive sight. As the Blackhawk rotors thundered overhead, making it almost impossible to hear, I prayed and committed his soul to God. A Catholic chaplain would have to administer Last Rites somewhere else along the way.

For all Christians, the Resurrection of Jesus Christ is a celebration of life over death, healing after hurting, and overcoming suffering. I had experienced all of it in one day, the good and the bad, and had no idea what the next day or two would bring.

This is an excerpt from my book, Safest Place in Iraq, which is available from any bookseller or from this website.