Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption

suicidal. He waited for the sharks to wander a short distance away, then pulled himself overboard. Louie and Mac knelt near him, jabbing at sharks with the oars as Phil hung on the raft, savoring the cool water and swishing big mouthfuls of it over his tongue before spittingthem out. He only just had the strength to drag himself back in. Since Phil had gotten away with it, the other two thought it worth a try, and took their turns in the water. The men were able to keep the sharks away long enough for all three to have a dip.
    On the sixth day without water, the men recognized that they weren’t going to last much longer. Mac was failing especially quickly.
    They bowed their heads together as Louie prayed. If God would quench their thirst, he vowed, he’d dedicate his life to him.
    The next day, by divine intervention or the fickle humors of the tropics, the sky broke open and rain poured down. Twice more the water ran out, twice more they prayed, and twice more the rain came. The showers gave them just enough water to last a short while longer. If only a plane would come.
    * In 1942,Poon Lim survived for 133 days alone on a raft after his ship was sunk by a German submarine. Lim’s feat was a record, but his vessel was a large, wood-and-metal “Carley float boat” raft, equipped with ten gallons of water, a fair amount of food, an electric torch, and other supplies.

Fifteen
Sharks and Bullets

    O N THE MORNING OF THE TWENTY-SEVENTH DAY, A PLANE came.
    It began with a rumble of engines, and then a spot in the sky. It was a twin-engine bomber, moving west at a brisk clip. It was so far away that expending the flares and dye was questionable. The men conferred and voted. They decided to take a shot.
    Louie fired one flare, reloaded, then fired a second, drawing vivid lines across the sky. He opened a dye container and spilled its contents into the ocean, then dug out the mirror and angled a square of light toward the bomber.
    The men waited, hoping. The plane grew smaller, then faded away.
    As the castaways slumped in the rafts, trying to accept another lost chance, over the western horizon there was a glimmer, tracing a wide curve, then banking toward the rafts. The bomber was coming back. Weeping with joy, Louie, Phil, and Mac tugged their shirts over their heads and snapped them back and forth in the air, calling out. The bomber leveled off, skimming over the water. Louie squinted at the cockpit. He made out two silhouettes, a pilot and copilot. He thought of Palmyra, food, solid ground underfoot.
    And then, all at once, the ocean erupted. There was a deafeningnoise, and the rafts began hopping and shuddering under the castaways. The gunners were firing at them.
    Louie, Phil, and Mac clawed for the raft walls and threw themselves overboard. They swam under the rafts and huddled there, watching bullets tear through the rafts and cut bright slits in the water around them. Then the firing stopped.
    The men surfaced. The bomber had overshot them and was now to the east, moving away. Two sharks were nosing around. The men had to get out of the water immediately.
    Clinging to the side of Louie and Mac’s raft, Phil was completely done in. The leap into the water had taken everything that was left in him. He floundered, unable to pull himself over the raft wall. Louie swam up behind him and gave him a push, and Phil slopped up on board. Mac, too, needed Louie’s help to climb over the wall. Louie then dragged himself up, and the three sat there, stunned but uninjured. They couldn’t believe that the airmen, mistaking them for Japanese, would strafe unarmed castaways. Under them, the raft felt doughy. It was leaking air.
    In the distance, the bomber swung around and began flying at the rafts again. Louie hoped that the crew had realized the mistake and was returning to help them. Flying about two hundred feet over the water, the bomber raced at them, following a path slightly parallel to the rafts, so that its side passed into view. All three men saw it at once. Behind the wing, painted over the waist, was a red circle. The bomber was Japanese.
    Louie saw the gunners taking aim and knew he had to go back in the water. Phil and Mac didn’t move. They were both exhausted. They knew that if they went overboard again, they wouldn’t be strong enough to get back in, and the sharks would take them. If they stayed on the raft, it seemed impossible that the gunners could miss them.
    As the bomber flew toward them, they