A group of true American heroes met this past winter in the Hill Country town of Comanche. About thirty former POWs (or close family members) from several different wars received a warm welcome from city officials at the Best Western motel as the American Ex-Prisoners of War held their annual mid-winter convention.

Although there is not a Comanche chapter of the AX-POW, the group has strong support in this patriotic town. In fact, a large percentage of Comanche’s youth enlisted in the armed services during World War II, and more than 50 Comanche residents have been POWs. Along with James Arthur (Comanche County Judge and Air Force veteran) and Dr. Raymond Stepp (Mayor of Comanche), one of the featured speakers was a Comanche native and a survivor of the worst naval disaster in U.S. history.

L.D. Cox had joined the Navy at the height of World War II, and had boarded the heavy cruiser U.S.S. Indianapolis at the same time as its new captain, Charles Butler McVay III, in November of 1944. The ship served as flagship for Admiral Raymond A. Spruance, and played an important role in several historic battles, including the invasions of Iwo Jima and Okinawa. Cox recalls one occasion where an American warplane hit the superstructure just over his head when he was in the “crow’s nest” 100 feet above the water. He was privileged to witness the raising of the flag on Iwo Jima, and says “If everyone had seen that, we wouldn’t have flag-burnings today. Every time I see the flag, I feel proud.”

At the battle of Okinawa, Cox was in the mess hall when an alarm was sounded and everyone was called to battle stations. As he rushed to the deck, a bomb from a kamikaze plane tore through nine decks, hitting the mess hall that he had just left. Nine sailors were killed and 26 wounded.

The extensive damage forced the Indianapolis back to port in San Francisco, where it was repaired and sent on a secret mission with a mysterious wooden crate on board. The ship headed for the island of Tinian at full speed, and sailors joked that the crate probably contained scented toilet paper for General MacArthur. It turned out to be components of the atom bomb that would be dropped on Hiroshima.

With that mission successfully accomplished, the Indianapolis began sailing toward the Philippines without any kind of escort. On the night of July 29, 1945, the Indianapolis was hit by two torpedoes from a Japanese submarine, and sank twelve minutes later. After sending three S.O.S. calls, most of the crew abandoned ship, and found themselves floating in the Pacific Ocean. Cox himself recalls that the ship was already listing when he jumped, and he hit the side of the ship before falling sixty feet into the ocean. “I drank a lot of salt water and oil” before surfacing to be sick on the surface as he watched the ship go down. “I saw billions of bubbles come up,” he remembers.

He was soon able to join a group of about thirty men, floating with their life preservers in the open ocean. They were to spend four days in the water before a patrol plane sighted them by accident. No search parties were sent because nobody realized the ship was missing, and a gathering crowd of sharks picked off one sailor after another. Of approximately 880 men who survived the initial attack, only 316 were eventually rescued. Captain McVay was one of the survivors, but he was court-martialed and convicted for negligence, despite evidence that the Navy had put him in harm’s way without the proper precautions. L.D. Cox was taken to a hospital in the Philippines; he lost all his hair and nails from the four-day soaking.

While most of the survivors resented the accusations against Captain McVay, some relatives of the deceased continued to blame him for their loss. Guilt weighed heavily upon him for the rest of his life, and he eventually killed himself. His name was not cleared until years later, when a 12-year-old boy named Hunter Scott began doing research after hearing part of the story in the movie, “Jaws.” Convinced that Captain McVay was innocent, he began a campaign that ended with the captain’s complete exoneration, approved by Congress and signed by President Clinton in 2000.

That was just one of the dramatic stories told at the AX-POW convention. Sally Morgan was a twelve-year-old in the Philippines when she was interned by the Japanese; John Krebs was one of the defenders of Corregidor, who was held in a Japanese concentration camp in Manchuria for three-and-a-half years. AX-POW Treasurer Jim Lollar was a bomber pilot who was shot down over North Vietnam, and spent time in the Hanoi Hilton with John McCain. The former National Commander of AX-POW, Jack Warner, was one of the defenders of Corregidor, who spent three years in Japanese prisons; Paul Ruska, of Abilene, was a German prisoner at Stalag 17B. Bill Roberts, a B-17 pilot from San Antonio, had a recent email from a friend in the Czech Republic who had searched German archives to find out that Roberts had been shot down by a German Messerschmitt pilot named Paul Schmitt, who was himself shot down and killed a little while later over Arnheim, in the Netherlands.

Sina Chandler has been commander of the Austin chapter of AX-POW for the last 12 years. Her husband, Lewell, was a prisoner-of-war in Japan; he was working in a coal mine just 13 miles away when the first atomic bomb hit Hiroshima. He always felt that the atom bomb saved his life, because his captors had told him plainly that all the American prisoners would be shot as soon as Japan was invaded. Fortunately, the invasion was not necessary. One Ex-P.O.W. told of a Japanese pilot, who also claimed that his life had been saved by the bomb. He had already received orders to fly a kamikaze mission, and was due to take off in two days when the war ended.

Presiding over the convention was Mel Stevens, Commander of the Fort Worth chapter. He is from a family with a long military tradition, and notes proudly that two of his great-grandfathers were prisoners-of-war in the Civil War. Two of his friends from the little Comanche County town of Lamkin (brothers Leland and J.B. Bryant) were sailors on duty at Pearl Harbor when the Japanese attacked in 1941. As J.B. watched in horror from another ship, Leland was killed by a Japanese bomb. Stevens himself was a radio man during the D-Day invasion of Normandy in 1944, and the ensuing campaign to liberate western Europe. While his unit was helping to repair a damaged bridge, Stevens was injured by shrapnel from a mortar shell that he says “disintegrated my helmet.”

Captured by the Germans, Stevens was put to work on a railroad detail for six months. He recalls comparing notes after the war with Mark Britton, of Comanche, who was captured in Bataan and forced to take part in the infamous “Death March.” Each was thankful that he had not been in the other’s shoes. Stevens lost 77 pounds (from an already-lean 184) during his captivity, but says he was able to do more for the war effort as a prisoner than he had as a soldier, recounting tales of distracting guards and throwing sand into the carloads of ammunition.

Stevens was freed by advancing American troops in March of 1945, and arrived in New York on V-E Day. “Talk about a celebration!” he says. He was in San Antonio on V-J Day, and the celebrations then were possibly even bigger.

Since the Vietnam war, very few Americans have been taken prisoner in any conflict, so the numbers of AX-POW participants has naturally declined. One of the group’s primary goals now is to involve family members of the former POWs; another is to make sure that all who were held prisoner get credit for their ordeal and receive the benefits to which they are entitled. At the mid-winter convention, Mel Stevens told how he had been listed as Missing in Action and did not find his misplaced service record for 50 years. Morris Barker, of the Waco chapter, reported on efforts to credit military personnel who had been detained in neutral countries, such as Switzerland and Sweden, during World War II. An act of Congress has already recognized pilots who were detained in Russia during the war; it would take a similar act to recognize detainees in Sweden or Switzerland, who were not allowed to leave those countries and were imprisoned if caught trying to escape.

The town felt greatly honored to be able to host this special event, and the group expressed great appreciation of their welcome in Comanche. “Comanche has really

rolled out the red carpet for us,” said National Adjutant Clydie Joanne Morgan. “You served your country well,” the mayor told them. “We owe you a great big thank you.”

The meeting was attended by Jerry Reyes, POW Program Coordinator for the Veterans Affairs Office in Waco. The group’s historian, Alfred Evans of San Antonio, handled the logistical details for the successful (and memorable) convention. For those of us who have enjoyed the blessings of freedom all our lives, the event was another stark reminder that those blessings have not come cheaply.