Trascrizione (en)

Japanese submarine slammed two torpedoes into our side chief. He was coming back from the island of Tinian to Ledi and just delivered the bomb, the Hiroshima bomb. 1,100 men went into the water. Vessel went down in 12 minutes. Didn't see the first shark for about half an hour. Tiger, 13-footer, you know. Now you know that when you're in the water, Chief, you tell by looking from the dorsal to the tail. Well, we didn't know that our bomb mission had been so secret no distress signal had been sent. They didn't even list us overdue for a week. Very first light, Chief, sharks come cruising. So we formed ourselves into tight groups. You know, it's kind of like old squares in a battle, like you see in a calendar, like the Battle of Waterloo, and the idea was, shark comes the nearest man, that man, he starts pounding and hollering and screaming. Sometimes the shark go away. Sometimes he wouldn't go away. Sometimes that shark, he looks right into you. into your eyes. You know the thing about a shark? He's got lifeless eyes. Black eyes, like a doll's eyes. When he comes at you, he doesn't seem to be living until he bites you. And those black eyes roll over white and then Ah then you hear that terrible high screaming The ocean turns red In spite of all the pounding and the hollering, they all come in and they... rip you to pieces. You know, by the end of that first dawn... lost a hundred men? I don't know how many sharks, maybe a thousand. I don't know how many men they average six an hour. On Thursday morning, Chief, I bumped into a friend of mine, Herbie Robinson from Cleveland. Baseball player, bosun's mate. I thought he was asleep. Reached over to wake him up. Bobbed up and down in the water. It was like a kind of top. Upended. Well, he'd been bitten in half, but all the waste. Noon the fifth day, Mr. Hooper, a Lockheed Ventura saw us. He swung in low, and he saw us. He was a young pilot, a lot younger than Mr. Hooper anyway. He saw us, and he come in low. And three hours later, a big fat PBY comes down and starts to pick us up. You know, that was the time I was most frightened, waiting for my turn. I'll never put on a life jacket again. So, 1,100 men went in the war. 360 men come out. The sharks took the rest. June the 29th, 1945. Anyway, we delivered the bomb. The bomb.