CCS Henry Lancaster - Chief Gunner Gerald Pease

USS Franklin                                     USS Santa Fe

Former seamen’s paths cross years after 1945 maritime rescue



As Henry Lancaster floated face down in waters off the Japanese coast, crewmen from a rescuing ship thought he was dead.  “That’s my chief. He’s too mean to die,” one of Lancaster’s crewmen said. “You bring him aboard.”

It was March 19, 1945, and Lancaster was nearly among the 724 men who died after an attack by the Japanese during World War II on the USS Franklin, an aircraft carrier.  A single enemy plane dropped two 550-pound bombs on the ship, one hitting the flight deck, the other igniting the ship’s ammunition stores.  “When they were hit, their own ammunition was going off,” said Lancaster’s daughter, Barbara Batchelder.  “Their own men were getting killed by their own ammunition.”

Lancaster was faced with two options as he stood on his ship with fire between him and the USS Santa Fe, a light cruiser trying to save crewmen: jump into the water or burn.  But there was a man standing between him and the edge of the boat who was too scared to jump.

“Get out of my way. I’m not afraid,” Lancaster recalls saying.

When Lancaster jumped, his life preserver hit him in the face, giving him a concussion and knocking him unconscious. His face black and bloody, Lancaster floated in the water until he was picked up.  “I swam and floated out there for I don’t know how long, looking to see if something was going to save me,” remembered Lancaster, a resident of Spruce Creek South.

One of the most vivid memories Lancaster has of the rescue is a man whom they were pulling onboard behind him who fell back into the water. They weren’t able to rescue the man.  “He never forgot,” Batchelder said. “That’s the one thing he talked about a lot.”

Villager Gerald Pease remembers that attack well; he was watching men jump from the Franklin onto his ship, the USS Santa Fe, as he tried to watch over his men. The then-chief gunners mate said it was a 45-foot drop from the deck of the Franklin to the Santa Fe, and many of the men who jumped broke their legs when they landed.  “The doctors worked for 36 hours trying to mend broken bones,” Pease remembered. “It’s hard to believe.”

Pease was aboard one of the ships that helped save Lancaster and other men from the Franklin, but the two men’s paths never crossed until recently.  One day while at a church function, Batchelder began talking with Pease and they learned that Pease had been on the Santa Fe.

The USS Franklin was the ship that wouldn’t die — despite the attack that nearly sunk it, it made its way back to New York — and Lancaster said that attack was a horrible experience.  “It was anything and everything you never hoped would happen,” he said.  Batchelder said it has been amazing to listen to the two share war stories and remember the March 19, 1945, attack.

“They’re amazing survivors, they really are,” she said. “They were willing to give their lives for us, and praise God they did. That’s why we’re here.”  Pease said it was exciting to meet someone who went through that experience as well.  “That was a big moment in both of our lives, something we’ll never forget,” he said.

By KATIE EVANS, DAILY SUN
 katie.evans@thevillagesmedia.com.