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Five days that last forever
By KATHERINE GAZELLA
© St. Petersburg Times, TARPON SPRINGS -- For all those hours -- 109, to be exact -- that Robert Gause floated in the Philippine Sea, he watched his fellow sailors get eaten by sharks and prayed he would have the strength to stay alive. Of the 1,196 men who started the day of July 30, 1945 on the USS Indianapolis, only 316 remained when rescuers finally reached them almost five days later. Gause was one of them, hungry and delirious from the lack of food and water, clinging to a Mae West life jacket. So it is not surprising that Gause, 81, has mixed feelings as he prepares to attend a reunion of survivors this weekend. In some ways, he is glad to see his fellow sailors who survived the torpedo attack by a Japanese submarine. But he also is wary about reliving the horrifying events of the worst sea disaster in U.S. Naval history. "It's going to be a one-way ticket to hell," he said Wednesday, with just a touch of lightness in his voice. Gause is a Tarpon Springs native who returned to his hometown after the war and started a lumber business and formed a bank. He is attending the reunion in Indianapolis this weekend with his wife and three of their four children. They will attend a banquet, hear essays about freedom and listen to the Navy Band play. The reunited crew may or may not talk about the events in the Philippine Sea, Gause said.
Gause is reminded of the harrowing experience nearly every day, with or without a reunion. "I think about it at night. It keeps me from sleeping," he said. Gause, who had a stroke a few years ago, still can recount many of the details of the attack and aftermath with great clarity. He was a quartermaster, and he was high up on the bridge of the boat when it started to go down. He knew immediately that the boat would sink, and he grabbed a life jacket. He gave it to the ship's captain, then later acquired two more for himself -- the Mae West and another inflatable jacket. An officer said, "Prepare to abandon ship," and Gause thought, "Well, I have been prepared," he recalled Wednesday. As he swam away from the Indianapolis, he saw a man without a life jacket and gave the man his extra one. "I don't know what happened to him," Gause said. "He probably drowned." After days at sea, he could no longer force his head out of the water. Repeated prayers culminated in one last petition. "He said, 'God, I know you answer prayers, but you've got to get on the ball,' " his wife, Norma Neal Gause, said Wednesday. Moments later, Gause felt something sturdy under his feet and was able to stand. He does not think it was a rock or a fortuitous sand bar, but "the Lord's hands," he said. Nobody who could help knew the boat had been attacked, so the rescue did not occur until someone in a plane saw them by accident almost five days after the attack. Naval rescue boats picked up Gause and other survivors. At the time, Gause did not know the ship's mission. Later, he and other sailors learned that the Indianapolis had delivered atomic bomb parts at the island of Tinian, where the Enola Gay would later take off for its run over Hiroshima. One of the main topics of conversation at the reunion likely will be the exoneration of the ship's captain, Charles Butler McVay III, Gause said. McVay had been court-martialed for failing to evade the Japanese submarine that sank it. Last month, after a long fight by McVay's family and surviving crew members, the Navy cleared his name, 33 years after McVay committed suicide with his Navy pistol. Crew members had considered McVay a scapegoat in the incident and had waited many years for the exoneration. "It's long overdue," Gause said. - Staff writer Katherine Gazella can be reached at (727) 445-4182.
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