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Garland Rich and his Father Lloyd Lindley Rich |
Garland Rich son of Lloyd Lindley Rich and Bennie Ruby Boyle was born 16 May 1926 in Callahan County, Texas and died in the sinking of the USS Indianapolis midway between Guam and Leyte Gulf on 30 Jul 1945. His body was never recovered but has a marker at Manila American Cemetery, Philippines. |
Dedication by Pauletta Hicks who owns the picture
This is Garland "Cotton" Rich, my Mothers brother. He was too young to join the Navy during WW2 so he lied about his age, got his Grandad to sign for him and took off, much to the disappointment of his parents. He was 16 years old. He died 2 years later on the USS Indianapolis and received a purple heart posthumously. A couple of the few survivors of the USS Indianapolis wrote my Grandmother letters describing Garlands last few days of life, floating in the Pacific Ocean. One letter told of Garland holding up his commanding officer for there was a shortage of life jackets. This photo is of he and his Dad (my G-Dad) in San Diego waiting for him to ship out, never to return. I never met him, he died before I was born but the stories of him have had a big impact on my life. He was quite a hero and died when he was just a kid doing a man's work. I salute you, Seaman Rich, job well done. |
Story of the sinking of the USS Indianapolis CA-35 Following major repairs at Mare
Island California that were inflicted by an Imperial Japanese Fighter
Plane during the invasion of Okinawa the USS Indianapolis received
orders to proceed to Tinian island, carrying parts and the enriched
uranium (about half of the world's supply of Uranium-235 at the time)
for the atomic bomb Little Boy, which would later be dropped on
Hiroshima. Indianapolis departed San Francisco on 16 July. Arriving at
Pearl Harbor on 19 July, she raced on unaccompanied, reaching Tinian
on 26 July. Indianapolis was then sent to Guam where a number of the
crew who had completed their tours of duty were replaced by other
sailors. Leaving Guam on 28 July, she began sailing toward Leyte where
her crew was to receive training before continuing on to Okinawa to
join Vice Admiral Jesse B. Oldendorf's Task Force 95. At 00:14 on 30
July, she was struck by two Type 95 torpedoes on her starboard bow,
from the Japanese submarine I-58 under the command of Mochitsura
Hashimoto. The explosions caused massive damage. The Indianapolis took
on a heavy list, and settled by the head. Twelve minutes later, she
rolled completely over, then her stern rose into the air, and down she
plunged. Some 300 of the 1,196 crewmen went down with the ship. With
few lifeboats and many without lifejackets, the remainder of the crew
were set adrift awaiting rescue. Navy command had no knowledge of the ship's
sinking until survivors were spotted three and a half days later. At
1025 on 2 August a PV-1 Ventura flown by Lieutenant Wilbur "Chuck"
Gwinn and copilot Lieutenant Warren Colwell spotted the men adrift
while on a routine patrol flight. Of the 880 that survived the
sinking, only 321 men came out of the water alive; 317 ultimately
survived. They suffered from lack of food and water (some found
rations such as Spam and crackers amongst the debris), exposure to the
elements (hypothermia, dehydration, hypernatremia, photophobia,
starvation and dementia), severe desquamation, and shark attacks,
while some killed themselves and/or one another in various states of
delirium and hallucinations. The Discovery Channel stated in Shark
Week episodes "Ocean of Fear" that the Indianapolis sinking resulted
in the most shark attacks on humans in history, and attributes the
attacks to the oceanic whitetip shark species. Tiger sharks might have
also killed some of the survivors. The same show attributed most of
the deaths on Indianapolis to exposure, salt poisoning and thirst,
with the dead being dragged off by sharks. The Indianapolis sent distress calls before
sinking. Three stations received the signals; however, none acted upon
the call. One commander was drunk, another had ordered his men not to
disturb him and a third thought it was a Japanese prank. For a long
time the Navy denied that a distress call had been sent. The receipt
of the call came to light only after the release of declassified
records. Story from Wikipedia. A good site for more of the story http://www.ussindianapolis.org/ Edgar Harrell a Member of the Marine Detachment wrote a book about his experiences entitled "Out of the Depths" http://www.indysurvivor.com/
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