The “human tugboat”: he swam a raft with 15 sailors to save their lives under a Japanese attack in World War II
A few minutes after 1 a.m. on September 5, 1942, the USS Gregory, a destroyer of the US Navy, sank in the waters of the South Pacific, somewhere in the Solomon Islands archipelago. The ship had been discovered and fiercely attacked by Japanese ships, in the context of the so-called Battle of Guadalcanal , a battle between Japan and the United States during World War II.
In the darkness of the night, amid the desolation and among the sunken ship's crew floating in the sea while the enemy continued to shoot, a hero named Charles Jackson French emerged. He was a 23-year-old black kitchen boy who saved about fifteen of his countrymen, many of them wounded, by putting them on an inflatable raft and then swimming them, pulling them by a rope, through waters infested with sharks. When one of the sailors from the boat recommended that he join them to avoid these dangerous sharks, the heroic waiter replied: "I'm more afraid of the Japanese than of sharks."
Despite his enormous act of courage that allowed many men to survive, the US Navy gave him only a letter of recommendation from a superior as the only recognition. This was then denounced by the media aimed at the African-American community in the United States.
French was born in Foreman, Arkansas, on September 25, 1919. After the death of his parents, he moved out of state to live with a sister in Nebraska. In 1937, he decided to enlist in the Navy. He was assigned to the USS Houston, which sailed to various points in the Pacific, including Hawaii, the Philippines, and Shanghai. His role was as a third-class mess hall steward , where he was required to serve food to the crew, clean tables, and keep the mess hall tidy.
At the time, that was the only position a black man could aspire to in his country's Navy. In 1941, French left the sea life to return home to Nebraska, but decided to return to the Navy after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor . It was then that he joined the crew of the USS Gregory . It was March 1942 and the sailor was now a first class cook's mate. He now tended the officers' mess and cleaned their cabins.
The Gregory was assigned to patrol the waters of the South Pacific during the so-called Battle of Guadalcanal . The name corresponds to the main island of those that form the Solomon Islands, which was a territory disputed between the Japanese and the Americans, as were the rest of the islands in the area. Although this conflict lasted from August 7, 1942 to February 9, 1943, the USS Gregory would not arrive until the end of the conflict. Its final night would be from September 4 to 5, 1942.
The destroyer French was travelling on had just landed some marines on Savo Island and was sailing between Savo and Guadalcanal on a night that, despite the thick fog, seemed calm. Next to the USS Gregory was another Japanese destroyer, the USS Little. Contrary to appearances, this night was anything but calm. In the distance three Japanese destroyers appeared, the Yudachi, the Hatsuyuki and the Murkumo, with the intention of attacking American positions on land.
When the Gregory and the Little saw the flashes of gunfire from the enemy ships, they began to hesitate between engaging in combat or escaping the area in the greatest possible silence. The captains of both ships were debating this when an American Navy plane flying over the area also saw the flashes of the Japanese ships and, believing them to be submarines, dropped five flares to unravel their position.
Bad luck would have it that the lights cast by the plane did not reveal the existence of submarines but illuminated the silhouettes of the American ships, which were thus discovered by the Japanese ships. There they began a fierce and expeditious attack on them. As a result, the Gregory was hit, its boilers exploded and a few minutes later it was devoured in flames, killing a good part of its 141 crew members. A similar fate would befall the USS Little.
It was Robert Adrian , an ensign on the USS Gregory , who would best record the ship's catastrophe and the galley boy's colossal act of heroism. This Oregonian briefly lost consciousness and was wounded in the legs by the shells hitting the vessel. When he came to, he barely had time to eject himself from the sinking ship and was left floating by the life jacket he was wearing.
Here and there survivors clung to whatever floated in order not to succumb to exhaustion. Moreover, far from having calmed down, the Japanese continued to attack their enemies, now aiming searchlights and firing at the men who remained on the water's surface.
In this desperate state, French appeared. Standing 5'7" and weighing 160 pounds, a far from Herculean build, he somehow managed to find a life raft in the wreckage and move it to load the wounded sailors onto it. That's how he found Adrian, whom he also helped onto the rescue boat.
When everyone was aboard the small boat - the chronicles speak of about 15 sailors, all white - Adrian noticed that the current was taking them towards the enemy position, and he told the kitchen boy. Without a second's hesitation, French offered to swim the raft away from the Japanese. He claimed that he was a good swimmer and immediately tied a rope around his waist.
Before the black man jumped into the water, the ensign tried to dissuade him, warning him that the water was full of sharks, but the brave man replied: “I am more afraid of the Japanese than of sharks.” Then he said to his boatmate: “Just tell me if I am going the right way.”
French swam for six to eight hours, hauling the raft with the wounded men. At dawn, Allied reconnaissance planes spotted them and soon sent a landing craft to pick them up and bring them to safety. Charles Jackson French 's great feat had been accomplished: the men had survived the Japanese and the sharks.
Shortly thereafter, on October 21, 1942 , Ensign Adrian advised on a radio reenactment of what had happened in the Pacific. It was on the NBC radio program It Happened in the Service . At the time, he only knew that the man who had saved his life was called “French,” but he had no idea of his first name and was not sure if that was his last name. However, on that radio program, the sailor was absolutely grateful to the mess boy and stated: “ And I can assure you that every man on that raft is grateful to mess boy French for his brave action off the Guadacanal that night.”
The AP picked up the story and soon, even though the hero's full name was not known, a chewing gum company, the War Gum Trading Card Company, which sold these sweets with cards or postcards depicting heroic events of World War II, published an illustration of French's feat. There was a full-color image of the mess hall attendant in the water with a rope pulling a raft loaded with wounded men and, in another part of the image, two shark fins protruded from the surface. The image only had the following caption: "Black swimmer drags survivors."
NBC eventually tracked down French's life story and name, and once his identity was discovered, he was dubbed "the human tugboat." The Pittsburgh Courier , one of the most important newspapers for the African American community in the United States, also picked up on the story. In a passionate editorial, it praised French 's heroism and complained about the fact that blacks could only do kitchen work and other service or cleaning duties on Navy ships.
“There are not many opportunities for heroism in a ship’s galley or wardroom,” the editorial said. “But every man on a ship is in danger in time of battle, regardless of where he serves or what his skin pigment is. Although mess boy Charles Jackson French of Arkansas did not have a heroic job, he made it heroic. He, who had been despised as a man of caste and frozen in status, was suddenly admired as a savior.”
In any case, and despite this newspaper's protests, the kitchen assistant did not receive any recognition for his great feat. Some of his colleagues recommended him for the Navy Cross , the second highest decoration below the Congressional Medal of Honor , but that did not come to fruition. French only received a letter of recommendation from Admiral William F. Halsey Jr. , commander of the South Pacific Fleet, "for his meritorious conduct."
But the Admiral 's written acknowledgement contained a considerable error: it said that French had swum "for more than two hours without rest, thus attempting to tow the raft," when in fact, the galley boy had been paddling with the boat at the other end of the rope for between six and eight hours.
French continued in the Navy for a while, always on duty, and little is known about his life after that. But the writer Chester Wright had the opportunity to meet him in San Diego, California, where he heard him tell his story. Wright wrote this story in his book Black Men in Blue Water, and there he records that the kitchen boy recounted with a smile that he was about to urinate when he felt the sharks brush his feet, but then he thought: “They are not going to feel like eating a scared black man.”
In another part of his review of his experience, the writer recalls, good old French became truly furious. It was when he remembered that, after having saved all those comrades, when they arrived at a rest camp, the authorities wanted to separate him from his comrades simply because he was black. Fortunately, the whites refused this separation, saying that they were willing to come to blows as long as they were not separated from their kitchen boy.
Wright concludes his story about French by writing that it was highly probable that the black man had returned with post-traumatic stress from the war due to everything he had been through and that it was also possible that he had been discharged for mental problems. Other chroniclers say that French turned to alcoholism. The truth is that, abandoned to his fate, this hero died on November 7, 1956 and his remains rest in the Fort Rosecrans National Cemetery in San Diego .
The great paradox is that French was an excellent swimmer at a time when almost all public beaches and swimming pools were off-limits to men euphemistically called “colored.” Those who write about his story venture that he learned to swim in the Little Red River and in the stone quarries near Foreman, his hometown in Arkansas.
To end this story of bravery on a good note, it is worth saying that the United States Navy is planning to design an Arleigh Burkle -class destroyer, which will be named USS Charles J. French , in honor of the heroic sailor. At least that is what was announced in January 2024 by Carlos del Toro, the Secretary of the United States Navy under President Joe Biden .
lanacion
