My Book Availible in Kindle Format Now - and FREE for limited time!

Its Out! My publisher has just released Wattensaw Bayou in ebook/Kindle format and it is FREE for the first four days. You must hurry, they will start charging for it after June 25th. There is an Amazon link below.


Thanks!
Mark Hubbs

... The Secret of Wattensaw Bayou is an action packed yet sometimes touching tale of war, family and forgiveness set during the twilight days of slavery.This is a side of the Old South that is seldom seen.If you love Civil War or Southern history, The Secret of Wattensaw Bayou is a must read!

You can download it HERE:  The Secret of Wattensaw Bayou

A True "Castle Keep" - World War II’s Strangest Battle

This is the first time I have reblogged a book review on Eras Gone.  The review itself is so well done and the story is so compelling, I could not help but pass it on.  At first blush, this reminds me of the 1969 war movie, Castle Keep.  However, as I read more I realized that this true story is much more fantastic and only has a castle in common with the 1969 movie with Burt Lancaster. 


World War II’s Strangest Battle: When Americans and
Germans Fought Together

May 12, 2013 4:45 AM EDT

By Andrew Roberts

Reblogged from: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/05/12/world-war-ii-s-strangest-battle-when-americans-and-germans-fought-together.html

Days after Hitler’s suicide a group of American soldiers, French prisoners, and, yes, German soldiers defended an Austrian castle against an SS division - the only time Germans and Allies fought together in World War II. Andrew Roberts on a story so wild that it has to be made into a movie.

Castle Itter. From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Schloss_Itter.JPG

The most extraordinary things about Stephen Harding's The Last Battle, a truly incredible tale of World War II, are that it hasn’t been told before in English, and that it hasn’t already been made into a blockbuster Hollywood movie. Here are the basic facts: on 5 May 1945 - five days afterHitler’s suicide - three Sherman tanks from the 23rd Tank Battalion of the U.S. 12th Armored Division under the command of Capt. John C. ‘Jack’ Lee Jr., liberated an Austrian castle called Schloss Itter in the Tyrol, a special prison that housed various French VIPs, including the ex-prime ministers Paul Reynaud and Eduard Daladier and former commanders-in-chief Generals Maxime Weygand and Paul Gamelin, amongst several others. Yet when the units of the veteran 17th Waffen-SS Panzer Grenadier Division arrived to recapture the castle and execute the prisoners, Lee’s beleaguered and outnumbered men were joined by anti-Nazi German soldiers of the Wehrmacht, as well as some of the extremely feisty wives and girlfriends of the (needless-to-say hitherto bickering) French VIPs, and together they fought off some of the best crack troops of the Third Reich. Steven Spielberg, how did you miss this story?



Taken about two months before the battle at Schloss Itter, this image depicts Company B commander Jack Lee (at right) with, from left, 2nd Lt. John Powell, one of Lee’s platoon leaders, and 1st Lt. Harry Basse, Co. B’s motor officer and Lee’s closest friend in the unit. Within weeks Powell was dead and Lee and Basse had both been lightly wounded.  From: https://www.facebook.com/home.php#!/LastBattleinEurope

The battle for the fairytale, 13th century Castle Itter was the only time in WWII that American and German troops joined forces in combat, and it was also the only time in American history that U.S. troops defended a medieval castle against sustained attack by enemy forces. To make it even more film worthy, two of the women imprisoned at Schloss Itter - Augusta Bruchlen, who was the mistress of the labour leader Leon Jouhaux, and Madame Weygand, the wife General Maxime Weygand - were there because they choseto stand by their men. They, along with Paul Reynaud’s mistress Christiane Mabire, were incredibly strong, capable, and determined women made for portrayal on the silver screen.

There are two primary heroes of this—as I must reiterate, entirely factual—story, both of them straight out of central casting. Jack Lee was the quintessential warrior: smart, aggressive, innovative—and, of course, a cigar-chewing, hard-drinking man who watched out for his troops and was willing to think way, way outside the box when the tactical situation demanded it, as it certainly did once the Waffen-SS started to assault the castle. The other was the much-decorated Wehrmacht officer Major Josef ‘Sepp’ Gangl, who died helping the Americans protect the VIPs. This is the first time that Gangl’s story has been told in English, though he is rightly honored in present-day Austria and Germany as a hero of the anti-Nazi resistance.



A career soldier three times decorated for bravery in combat against his nation’s enemies, Wehrmacht Major Josef “Sepp” Gangl willingly chose to put his life in even more direct peril in order to help Jack Lee save a querulous group of French VIPs locked away in a fairytale Austrian castle.
From: https://www.facebook.com/home.php#!/LastBattleinEurope

Harding, is a respected military affairs expert who has written seven books and long specialized in World War II, and his writing style carries immediacy as well as authority. “Just after 4am Jack Lee was jolted awake by the sudden banging of M1 Garands,” he writes of the SS’s initial assault on the castle, “the sharper crack of Kar-98s, and the mechanical chatter of a .30-caliber spitting out rounds in short, controlled bursts. Knowing instinctively that the rising crescendo of outgoing fire was coming from the gatehouse, Lee rolled off the bed, grabbed his helmet and M3, and ran from the room. As he reached the arched schlosshof gate leading from the terrace to the first courtyard, an MG-42 machine gun opened up from somewhere along the parallel ridgeway east of the castle, the weapon’s characteristic ripping sound clearly audible above the outgoing fire and its tracers looking like an unbroken red stream as they arced across the ravine and ricocheted off the castle’s lower walls.” Everything that Harding reports in this exciting but also historically accurate narrative is backed up with meticulous scholarship. This book proves that history can be new and nail-bitingly exciting all at once.

Despite their personal enmities and long-held political grudges, when it came to a fight the French VIPs finally put aside their political differences and picked up weapons to join in the fight against the attacking SS troops. We get to know Reynaud, Daladier, and the rest as real people, not merely the political legends that they’ve morphed into over the intervening decades. Furthermore, Jean Borotra (a former tennis pro) and Francois de La Rocque, who were both members of Marshal Philippe Petain’s Vichy government and long regarded by many historians as simply pro-fascist German puppets, are presented in the book as they really were: complex men who supported the Allied cause in their own ways. In de La Rocque’s case, by running an effective pro-Allied resistance movement at the same time that he worked for Vichy. If they were merely pro-Fascist puppets, after all, they would not have wound up as Ehrenhäflinge - honor prisoners - of the Fuhrer.

While the book concentrates on the fight for Castle Itter, it also sets that battle in the wider strategic contexts of the Allied push into Germany and Austria in the final months of the war, and the Third Reich’s increasingly desperate preparations to respond to that advance. This book is thus a fascinating microcosm of a nation and society in collapse, with some Germans making their peace with the future, while others—such as the Waffen-SS unit attacking the castle—fighting to the bitter end. (Some of the fighting actually took place after the Doenitz government’s formal surrender.)

The book also takes pain to honor the lives of the“number prisoners” who worked at Castle Itter - faceless inmates from Dachau and other concentration camps whose stories have never before been told in this much detail. Whatever their political leanings or personal animosities toward each other, the French VIPs did what they could to help the so-called “number prisoners” - i.e. the ones stripped of their names - in any way they could.

One of the honored prisoners was Michel Clemenceau, the son of the Great War statesman Georges Clemenceau, who had become an outspoken critic of Marshal Petain and who was arrested by the Gestapo in May 1943. At Castle Itter he showed “unshakeable confidence” in rescue, and had clearly inherited the courage of his father, who’d been nicknamed “The Tiger.” During the attack, with ammunition running dangerously low - they got down to the last magazines of their MP-40s - their tanks destroyed, and the enemy advancing from the north, west and east, this septuagenarian kept blasting away. His father would have been proud of him.

The story has an ending that Hollywood would love too: just as the SS had settled into position to fire a panzerfaust at the front gate, “the sound of automatic weapons and tank guns behind them in the village signaled a radical change in the tactical situation.” Advancing American units and Austrian resistance fighters had arrived to relieve the castle. In keeping with the immense cool that he had shown throughout the siege, Lee feigned irritation as he went up to one of the rescuing tank commanders, looked him in the eye and said simply: “What kept you?” Part Where Eagles Dare, part Guns of Navarone, this story is as exciting as it is far-fetched, but unlike in those iconic war movies, every word of The Last Battle is true.

The Last Battle is availible on Amazon.com:  http://www.amazon.com/The-Last-Battle-German-Soldiers/dp/0306822083/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1371436509&sr=8-1&keywords=the+last+battle

The Author also maintains a Facebook page at:  https://www.facebook.com/home.php#!/LastBattleinEurope

Flipper, the Maritime Archaeologist

SSC Pacific Recovers Historic Howell Torpedo

Story by Elisha Gamboa, Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command

Reblogged from: http://www.dvidshub.net/news/107043/ssc-pacific-recovers-historic-howell-torpedo#ixzz2VN4B7LPP

SAN DIEGO - Space and Naval warfare Systems Center Pacific (SSC Pacific) has discovered and recovered one of the first self-propelled torpedoes developed and used by the U.S. Navy, known as the Howell torpedo.

Members of the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center Pacific Marine Mammal Team pose May 15, 2013, with one of the Navy's specially trained Atlantic bottle-nosed dolphins. The team, along with the dolphin, are responsible for the discovery and recovery of the Howell torpedo. (Photo by Alan Antczak/Released)

Primarily the work of Lt. Cmdr. John A. Howell, the Howell torpedo was developed between 1870 and 1889. The Howell torpedo was an 11-foot-long brass torpedo, driven by a 132-pound flywheel spun to 10,000 rpm prior to launch. It had a range of 400 yards, a speed of 25 knots, and a warhead filled with 100 pounds of gun cotton.

The only other extant Howell Torpedo on display at the
Naval War College Museum in Newport, Rhode Island (US Navy)

 

“It was the first torpedo that could be released into the ocean and follow a track. Considering that it was made before electricity was provided to U.S. households, it was pretty sophisticated for its time,” said Christian Harris, operations supervisor for the SSC Pacific Biosciences Division.

The Howell torpedo was used by U.S. Navy battleships and torpedo boats until 1898, when it was replaced by the Whitehead.

Torpedo Boat "Stilletto" launching a Howell torpedo c. 1890

 

“There were only 50 Howell torpedoes made, and we discovered one of the two ever found,” said Braden Duryee, operations supervisor for the SSC Pacific Biosciences Division.

Hotchkiss Ordnance Co advertisement clipping for Howell torpedoes 11-24-1888

 

The Howell torpedo recovered by SSC Pacific, is stamped “USN No. 24.” The Naval Undersea Museum houses the only other known Howell torpedo in existence today.

SSC Pacific discovered the Howell torpedo in March 2013, off the San Diego coast, near Hotel Del Coronado, during a mine-hunting training exercise with Navy dolphins.

“Dolphins naturally possess the most sophisticated sonar known to man. They can detect mines and other potentially dangerous objects on the ocean floor that are acoustically difficult targets to detect,” explained Duryee.

The Navy has an entire program dedicated to studying and training marine mammals, called the Navy Marine Mammal Program. The development, training, veterinary care and research facility that supports NMMP is centered in the Biosciences Division at SSC Pacific.

With the NMMP, the Navy trains dolphins to find and mark the location of underwater objects. Some of the objects the animals find, such as non-explosive Navy training mines, are expensive to replace. Others could present a danger to Navy personnel and vessels. In this case, the object found was an important piece of naval history.

“The animals are very good at their job. We were just doing our daily training exercises with the animals, when one marked an object on the sea floor. About a week later, another animal marked the same object,” said Duryee.

During training and the actual hunting of mines, a dolphin waits to receive a cue from its handler before it begins to search a specific area. Once the dolphin completes its search, it reports back to its handler, giving one response if a target object is detected, and a different response if no target object is detected.

This time the dolphin detected a mine-like target; the handler sent the dolphin to mark the location of the object so that Navy divers could recover it.

A Navy-trained dolphin named Ten, with handler Shawn McDonald, found the torpedo. (http://www.timesdispatch.com/news/national-world/article_9eab2680-f0cd-556c-b888-70dc189d987b.html?mode=image&photo=0)

At first, the recovery team thought the object was an old tail section off an aerial drop mine, but once the object was recovered, it was obvious that the object was something completely different.

“It was apparent in the first 15 minutes that this was something that was significant and really old,” said Harris. “Realizing that we were the first people to touch it or be around it in over 125 years was really exciting.”

After thorough research, the team discovered that the object was in fact a 130-year-old Howell torpedo. After the noteworthy discovery, SSC Pacific moved quickly to preserve this part of naval history.

“The torpedo was in remarkably pristine shape, so to preserve it, Braden Duryee had the idea to submerge it into a tank of water to prevent it from breaking down in the surrounding oxygen,” said Harris. “Later on, experts confirmed that Braden was correct.”

Navy technicians move the tail section of the torpedo to a holding tank. (US Navy)

 

The center section of the torpedo is submerged into a holding tank.  The sections will be stored this way until they can be properly cared for by museum conservators. (US Navy)

SSC Pacific will continue to preserve the torpedo until it can be shipped by air to the Naval History and Heritage Command, located at the Washington Navy Yard. The Naval History and Heritage Command is an Echelon II command responsible for the preservation, analysis, and dissemination of U.S. Naval history and heritage for present and future generations.

You can learn more about the Howell Torpedo here:  http://www.hnsa.org/doc/howell/index.htm

My First Interview As a Fiction Author!

Blogger Chris Rice Cooper interviewed me recently about my book The Secret of Wattensaw Bayou.  It is the first time that I had been interviewed in my new career as a writer.  Chris interviews authors of all types on her blog that reaches thousands each day.  Some are well know, others like me are new to the craft.  I was humbled and gratified that she enjoyed Wattensaw Bayou and took and interest in the story and how I came to write it. 

She has included some illustrations from the book among the photos that she has used in the blog.

My only regret is that she has gotten my illustrator's name incorrect.  It should read Tracy "Scott" Lyndon instead of Tracy "Lyndon" Scott. 

You can read the interview on Chris's blog here:
http://chrisricecooper.blogspot.com/2013/06/historical-writer-me-hubbs-fiction-and.html

By the way, the e-book version of The Secret of Wattensaw Bayou will be available soon.  I'll post a notice here when it comes out.  If you prefer to read the old fashion way (like me!) the hard copy is available at Amazon.com and other on-line book sellers.  It is also on the shelves of most Books A Million stores.

The Bodkin and the Prince

I have always had a deep interest in medieval history.  English medieval to be more exact.  During the last few years I have done a great deal of research on the material culture of the era to help me in writing, The Archer's Son.  This is a middle grade story about a young boy who is part of a company of archers during King Henry V's 1415 campaign into France during the Hundred Years War.  Of course, the novel will climax at the bloody battle of Agincourt.  I'm almost finished with the first draft :)



Most of Henry's portraits are profiles from his
left side. Was he hiding a ghastly scar?

Henry's providential success at Agincourt against overwhelming French odds, and his later campaigns in France, have overshadowed an earlier chapter of his life.  Life, that is what Prince Hal almost lost on 21 July, 1403 at the battle of Shrewsbury England.
I'll not go into the details of the revolt of the Hotspur Percy.  You can read more about it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Shrewsbury

Henry, or Prince Hal as he was often called before he became king, was a warrior at heart.  At the age of 16 he commanded an entire wing of his father's army when it brought battle to the Percy's at Shrewsbury in 1403.  The teenage prince was an agressive commander and performed well on the field of battle.   As the fight raged in close quarters, an enemy arrow struck the young prince in the face next to his nose and lodged six inches deep into bone and muscle.  The wooden shaft was wrenched free, either by Henry himself or one of his retainers. 





An exhibit from the Shrewsbury Museum
Courtesy Nicky Hughes

Remarkably, Prince Hal fought on until the victory was secured, with a one ounce iron arrowhead lodged deep in his head!

The victory did not end the threat to Henry's life.  As his wound began to fester, the heir to the throne and the fate of the English Crown was in jeopardy.   The prince was taken to Kenilworth Castle as his condition worsened.  Eventually, London doctor John Bradmore arrived to care for the heir to the throne.  Although Bradmore may have been stranded in an era of medical ignorance and superstition regarding the treatment of illnesses, he understood the intricacies of treating wounds.  Bradmore's account of treating this wound survives in his medical tract Philomena.

". . . struck by an arrow next to his nose on the left side during the battle of Shrewsbury. The which arrow entered at an angle (ex traverso), and after the arrow shaft was extracted, the head of the aforesaid arrow remained in the furthermost part of the bone of the skull for the depth of six inches."

Bradmore devised a instrument for extracting the arrow head.

"First, I made small probes from the pith of an elder, well dried and well stitched in purified linen [made to] the length of the wound. These probes were infused with rose honey. And after that, I made larger and longer probes, and so I continued to always enlarge these probes until I had the width and depth of the wound as I wished it. And after the wound was as enlarged and deep enough so that, by my reckoning, the probes reached the bottom of the wound, I prepared anew some little tongs, small and hollow, and with the width of an arrow. A screw ran through the middle of the tongs, whose ends were well rounded both on the inside and outside, and even the end of the screw, which was entered into the middle, was well rounded overall in the way of a screw, so that it should grip better and more strongly."

The design of medieval arrowheads made extraction more difficult. They have an open "socket" where the wooden shaft is inserted.  Bradmore's device couldn't just grab the arrow head, it had to be inserted into the socket and expanded to properly grip it.

A recreation of Bradmore's device

It is believed that the iron arrow head came to rest to one side of the spine just under the base of the skull.  There was no anesthesia as we know it.  The pain that the teenage prince experience during the extraction process must have been horrendous.  After preparing the wound channel over the course of a day, Bradmore successfully removed the arrow head.  The prince survived to become King Henry V. 

Here is an excellent video recreation of how John Bradmore extracted the arrow head and saved the prince's life: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C8Nef1siUus

This would not have been possible, even with Bradmore's treatment, had the arrow head in question have been a broadhead instead of a bodkin.  What is the difference?  A bodkin is a narrow point designed to pierce armor.  It has no barbs.  A broadhead is wide with a large cutting surface designed to inflict maximum damage to the flesh of men and horses.  Broadheads are barbed and difficult to remove through the wound channel that they inflict

A recreated Bodkin arrowhead

A broadhead. 
The barbs make extraction almost impossible

There is some controversy as to which side of  Henry's face was hit by the arrow.  Bradmore says the left side next to the nose.  It was most certainly the left side as one is looking at the face.  Not the left side from Henry's point of view.  Later in life almost all of Henry's portraits are in profile, showing only his left side.  Could he have been hiding a ghastly scar on his right cheek?   It is also interesting that none of the film versions of Henry V, have portrayed him with a scarred cheek, a scar that he most certainly bore for the rest of his short life.

Tom Hiddleston, the most recent Henry in "The Hollow Crown" (2012). 
Like his movie predicessors, Hiddleston bears no scar.

Kenneth Branagh, in "Henry V" (1989)

 

Sir Laureance Olivier, "Henry V" (1944)

 

The Mary Rose Archers

I’ve been researching Medieval English archers for several years.  The culture that evolved around the bow and the men who mastered that weapon, fascinate me.  The research has also helped me in writing The Archer’s Son, a middle grade novel that should be completed in draft form soon.   

The Mary Rose is also a historical subject that captured my imagination.  I visited the Mary Rose museum in Plymouth England in 2008.  It was late afternoon, near closing time and we only had a short time to visit.  The new Mary Rose Museum opens soon, with much more of the ship’s artifacts on display.  I look forward to visiting again! 

This article is reblogged from Rita Roberts excellent archaeology blog: http://ritaroberts.wordpress.com/2013/05/18/the-archers-that-crewed-the-mary-rose/#comment-1716

 

THE ARCHERS WHO CREWED THE MARY ROSE

By Rita Roberts, 18May 2013

When the Mary Rose was raised from the Solent in 1982 the skeletons of 92 men were recovered. Historical sources record that a company of longbowmen were on board when the vessel sank, but until now it has not been possible to isolate which of the skeletons might have belonged to this group.

 

Now Sports scientists, osteologists and modern technology have joined forces to help identify the archers that crewed the Mary Rose., Henry Vlll’s flagship sank in l545.

Nick Owen, a Sport and Exersize Biomechanist from Swansea University, has been examining bones from the wreck to see if any show signs of the repetitive, strenuous actions associated with archery.. The Mary Rose Trust contacted Nick to help with this research because he works with modern elete athletes’, Nick said that the Longbow archers were the elete athletes of their day. They used very powerful bows, some of which required a lifetime of training and immense strength as the archers had to pull weights of up to 200lbs’.

 

The Mary Rose Longbows. Courtesy of Murray Sanders.

In order to determine which bones might show the effect of regularly firing heavy bows, Nick set out to establish where the greatest bilateral difference in forces acting on the muscles would occur. Modern- day longbow archers were brought into the lab and marked up with motion-capture equipment to see exactly which parts of the body were used when firing the bows. This helped to establish the radius needed.

Nine pairs of arms and shoulders were analysed, carefully matched by an osteologist, of which three had both radii. When these were examined the heads of the bones showed differences in surface area of up to 46%

The next stage of the project will see the analysis of DNA from the skeletal material, to help match the bones more exactly, and to shed light on the individuals who made up the ill-fated flagships crew.

Watch this space for more about the Archers of the Mary Rose.

A Citizen Soldier Wins the Navy Cross

 

By Mark Hubbs

I had intended to post this blog on April 29, the birthday of the hero in this story.  However, travel away home distracted me.  Here is the story of Dr. Shank.

Lawton Ely Shank is one of America’s forgotten heroes.  The Indiana doctor is the only civilian, and, to my knowledge, the only Army Reservist to receive the Navy Cross.

The Navy Cross

Lawton Shank was born in the little town of Angola, Indiana in 1907 to Lyle and Lulu Shank.  After medical school he worked in a local hospital where he met his future wife.  He was only married for four years to the former Ruby Ricker before he left the hospital to work for Pan American Airways.  This was near the end of the Great Depression, and we can only surmise that the airline offered pay and travel they he could never expect to enjoy in small town Indiana.

Shank's first assignment was in Canton China, the terminus of the Pan American’s China Clipper route.  In early 1941 he was reassigned to tiny Wake Atoll on at the Pan American layover station in the mid-Pacific.  Pan Am maintained a four star hotel on Peale Island at Wake Atoll.  The China and Philippine Clippers of the Pan Am fleet made over night stops at Wake during trans-Pacific flights to Asia.  The wealthy passengers paid dearly for their seats on the clippers and demanded the finest lodgings during layovers at Wake.



The Pan American China Clipper at the seaplane dock on Peale Island, Wake Atoll c.1937.
 From: http://www.flysfo.com/web/page/sfo_museum/exhibitions/aviation_museum_exhibitions/K3_archive/china_clipper/03.html#top

 

War clouds were gathering in the Pacific.  The US military began to fortify several islands in the Pacific to serve as a first line of defense should Japan flex its military muscle.  A consortium of several construction companies formed the Contractors Pacific Naval Air Bases (CPNAB) to construct naval and airbases and Wake and other remote locations.  Civilian construction contractors, mostly employed by the Morrison-Knudson Company - part of the CPNAB,  began deploying to Wake Atoll soon after Shank arrived on the island.  Although his Pan Am duties included caring for sick passengers and workers at the Pan Am Hotel, the doctor was also "loaned" to CPNAB to care for their workers until a physician could be hired and brought to the island.  Within a few months, over 1,000 CPNAB workers were busy building a new submarine, seaplane and airfield on the atoll.

Dr. Shank left his Pan Am job and Wake Island for home in July 1941.  Remarkably, he was back in just three months later, this time on the payroll of the CPNAB.  As the threat of war intensified, the military presence on the island also grew.  By November, over four hundred Marines and sailors were assigned to Wake. 

The predictions were correct and war came on December 8th, 1941.  Within a few hours of the attack on Pearl Harbor, Japanese bombers from Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Island flew 600 miles north to bomb Wake.  Wake is east of the International Date Line, so it was a day later than Hawaii.  This was the first of a series of almost daily air and sea assaults from Japanese forces. 

Dr. Lawton Shank, "Lew" as his friends called him, was the only medical doctor on the atoll.  Almost 1,600 hundred men, civilian and military, would rely on him in the days to come.  He and his small staff were ill prepared for war.  Scores of men were killed and wounded on the first day, and the makeshift hospital that was established to care for them was bombed on the second day.  The care that Dr. Shank provided for his patients, usually under fire in the worst conditions possible, earned him the respect of every man who knew him.  Below is the citation for the Navy Cross awarded posthumously to Dr. Shank after the war.

To All Who Shall See These Presents Greeting:

This is to Certify that The President of the United States of America Takes Pleasure in Presenting

THE NAVY CROSS TO

SHANK, DR. LAWTON E. (POW)

Citation: The President of the United States takes pride in presenting the Navy Cross (Posthumously) to Dr. Lawton E. Shank, Civilian (U.S. Army Reserve), U.S. Civilian, for extraordinary heroism in action against the enemy as Physician to American Contractors, Naval Air Station, Wake Island, while associated with the naval defenses on Wake Island on 9 December 1941. At about 1100, while in the camp hospital, during an intensive bombing and strafing attack in the course of which the hospital was completely destroyed and several persons therein killed or wounded, Doctor Shank remained at his post and supervised the evacuation of the patients and equipment. With absolute disregard for his own safety, and displaying great presence of mind, he was thus enabled to save those still living and to establish a new hospital in an empty magazine. Doctor Shank's display of outstanding courage and devotion to duty were in keeping with the highest traditions of the United States Naval Service. Born: April 29, 1907 at Steuben County, Indiana Home Town: Angola, Indiana

An American ammunition bunker near the north end of Wake Island.  This is probably the bunker that
Dr. Shank used to shield his patients. Photo by author.

 

The garrison endured daily air attacks and on December 11th repelled a naval and amphibious assault with its heavy seacoast guns. A larger, more determined invasion force arrived two days before Christmas and the well-trained force of Japanese Special Landing Force troops finally overwhelmed the garrison after heavy fighting. In the dawning hours of 23 December 1941, the Japanese captured 1,621 Americans with the fall of the atoll.

All but 360 of the Americans were transported to POW camps in China three weeks after the surrender.  Lew Shank stayed behind to care for those me who were put to work building island defenses for the Japanese.  In September, 1942 another 260 Americans were transported to Japan from Wake Island.  Lew Shank volunteered to stay behind and provide medical care for the remaining 98 POWs.  Dentist James Cunha, and a surgical nurse named Henry Dreyer also stayed to assist Dr. Shank.  Lew Shank was mentioned and praised by many men who knew of his dedication during the battle and during those first few months in captivity.  However, all that we know of Lew and the other 97 POWs left on Wake Island in September, 1942 comes from testimony during war crimes trials that occurred after the war.

Dr. Shank and 97 other American Civilians were murdered by the Japanese on October 7th, 1943. 



The beach where Dr. Shank and 96 other American civilians were murdered by the Japanese in October, 1943. 
Photo by author.

When the war was over, the murders had occurred more than three years previously.  The public had already been outraged with the news of similar massacres in the Philippines and in the European Theater.  No national acknowledgement of the Wake Island massacre ever materialized.  However, Wake Island commander Winfield Scott Cunningham did not forget the heroism displayed by Lew Shank and recommended the doctor for the Navy Cross.  The posthumous award was issued on May 6, 1947.

In Section G of the Punchbowl National Cemetery in Honolulu there is a large, flat, marble gravestone. At 5 by 10 feet it is the largest in the cemetery. On it are listed the names of 178 men. This common grave holds the remains of all the unidentified military and civilian burials repatriated from Wake Island in 1946.  Many of these men were killed during the siege, and circumstances did not allow proper burial and identification. Of these names, 98 represent the men who were murdered by the Japanese in October 1943.  Dr. Lawton "Lew" Shank lies mingled among them.

The memorial stone marking the unknown dead of Wake Island at the Punchbowl Cemetary, Honolulu. 
Photo by author.

 

Dr. Shank's parents lived long after World War II.  The family added a memorial to Lew Shank on their headstone in Angola, Indiana.  From: http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=31644842

 

For more details about the ordeal of American POWs at Wake Island, see a series of previous blog entries that start here:    http://erasgone.blogspot.com/2012/08/a-wake-island-helmet-part-one-dodging.html