Wow! I would love to hear of his experience.
I worked in medicine, and the type of examination required that I spend several hours with him. I loved that part of the job, because I met and talked to many men of that generation (my father’s generation) at length.
Somehow, we got on the subject of military service, and I told him I had served on aircraft carriers, and he said he had been in the Navy in WWII. When I asked where he had served, he said “The USS Indianapolis”.
I recall stuttering for a second, because I had been for some years an amateur WWII historian (particularly the Pacific theater) and, like Hooper in the movie, I was well aware of what had happened to that ship and its crew.
He told me it was an awful experience, and that to to the day we spoke back in the early Nineties, he still could not even hear “The Lord’s Prayer” without choking up. And I seem to recall him telling me that he had become a minister or lay minister after the war, and it really struck me that it would have that effect on him and that he would take on those religious duties in spite of it. He said they had just said The Lord’s Prayer over and over and over again for days in the water, and that is why he couldn’t hear it.
At that point, he became very choked up and his face began to turn beet red...I could see he was very distressed. I assured him he didn’t have to continue discussing it at all, and he said emphatically that he WANTED to talk about it. He said that he hadn’t spoken to nearly anyone about it for decades, even his family.
He didn’t go into any of the details like Quint did in the movie, but his mind was clearly on the guys who did not come out of the water. He said that he often wondered why he survived that nightmare, and so many others didn’t. He said he thought of those men often.
I did read just recently while searching that he gave an extensive interview shortly before he passed on (after I had the privilege of meeting him) but I can’t find it.