“We’re Gonna Need a Bigger Boat”

Robert Shaw as Captain Quint in the movie “Jaws” has one of the most memorable scenes in cinematic history as he recounts the sinking of the USS Indianapolis during World War II and the deaths of more than 700 U.S. sailors eaten by sharks.

It’s the drama that makes for a good movie, but for Bill Wilson of Kalamazoo Michigan, it’s the stuff of nightmares.

Bill Wilson was 19 years old and a gunner’s mate on the Samuel B. Roberts, a supply ship that accompanied carriers under the command of Admiral Bull Halsey into Manila Bay in October 1944. When the battleships headed north in search of the Japanese fleet, the Samuel B. Roberts and a dozen other ships poorly equipped for battle remained in Manila.

Then, darn it if those Japanese didn’t show up in the Leyte Gulf for the beginning of what would later become the largest battle in the history of naval warfare.

But the Samuel B. Roberts with its two five inch guns, along with the other supply ships, weren’t going down without a fight. In fact, they attacked the Imperial Navy. How’s that for chutzpah?

Bill Wilson remembers the words of his commander: “We’re about to go into battle in which survival is not expected.”

The battle only lasted 90 minutes, but it created enough commotion for the fighter pilots from Admiral Halsey’s carriers to arrive at the scene of the action.  As the Samuel B. Roberts sank, Bill Wilson went off the port side into the water, catching one last glimpse of his best friend who lay mortally wounded on the deck.

For the next 55 hours, he and about 100 other sailors huddled together around rafts filled with wounded, kicking at the blue fin sharks that responded to the smell of blood. And just as Captain Quint’s story goes, sometimes the sharks went away.  Sometimes they didn’t go away.

Bill Wilson was on hand, December 7, 2009, at the dedication of an expanded National Museum of the Pacific War in Fredericksburg, Texas. About an hour northwest of San Antonio in the Texas Hill Country, Fredericksburg was the home of Admiral Chester Nimitz, Commander of the Pacific Fleet.  Bill Wilson’s story is told here, along with those of thousands of others who sacrificed their youth for a lifetime of nightmare-filled-sleep.
And that’s why you should go to Fredericksburg.  Because Bill Wilson and his crew members didn’t wait for a bigger boat.  Because Bill Wilson and so many others of that generation simply did what they were supposed to do.  Because as the words of philosopher George Santayana, inscribed on the last exhibit in this world-class museum, remind us, “Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

–Text and photo by Diana Lambdin Meyer, Red Editorial Staff