Terrere Nullis

Somewhere in the Pacific, 1948…

Our airplane was way off course, our radio was dead, nobody knew where we were, and we were going down...We were going to ditch on a dark night in the Pacific Ocean...

Your life doesn’t pass in front of your eyes when you’re about to be killed…you’re too busy praying…I found out atheists don’t act smug; with nothing to think about for the next world they show their fear full on in this one…

Everyone believed they were going to die…everyone except one man…

His voice came over the public address system of our airplane that he was flying,

‘I’m landing on the surface of the ocean! Hold on tight! When we come to a stop, we’ll break out the rafts and survival supplies…Keep smiling!’

His voice was as clear and as calming as it was when he was narrating documentaries, acting in radio plays, starring on the silver screen or demeaning himself doing commercials.

I’m not going to mention his name because everyone knows him. He’s one of the biggest movie stars in Hollywood. You know him as the man who single-handedly took on and mopped up the floor with gangsters, pirates and hostile Indians in both the Wild West and the Mysterious East with nerves of steel, a glint in his eye, a weapon in one hand and the woman he won in the other. He convincingly portrayed real men because he was one…

I know him as my Dad, and let me tell you, when it came to heroism in the face of death, I and everyone else found out he’s the real deal…Terrere Nullis…he was afraid of nothing…

Where did all this begin? With Dad, of course.

* * *

Dad never finished University, his family couldn’t afford it and he wasn’t keen to waste time studying books; he wanted to learn and earn by starting in his chosen profession. He was the fourth generation of an acting family; they may not have been wealthy or renown, but they were highly respected in their trade.

He was discovered on Broadway as an actor and brought to Hollywood where he became a star.

Though intense self-confidence was crucial, it didn’t matter whether you believed you were really good or not; it was what your employers and the general public believed, and the reputation important others built up for you that you had to maintain. It was a triangle, and you couldn’t survive in show business with only one or two of those things, you needed all three.

His fans didn’t only love him, the man in every boy and the boy in every man wanted to be him and every girl and woman wanted to be with him. That did not make Mother happy…

My mother couldn’t take Hollywood with its phoniness, backstabbing, stupendous egomania balanced by colossal insecurity and most of all, the long hours away from home and the temptations to a man’s ego, for Dad could resist anything but temptation…They separated, then divorced, with his alimony giving us a comfortable lifestyle during the Depression, until Mother remarried a scion of a wealthy Eastern family. I initially didn’t like them, but Mother, for she never would accept being called ‘Mom’, felt at home with them as they came from the same part of the East.

I rarely saw Dad when I was a boy. I recall him on a few visits to our home, but the arguments started again, and he soon returned. I was sent to boarding schools and military academies that I hated, but the good part was that he visited me more at school. His visits were brief, but we were together. No one knew he was my father, the one thing Mother and Dad agreed on, so when he visited me, I didn’t have to share him with the school.

I loved him as he was so wonderful to be around; everyone who saw him in his movies must have thought the same…However, he would slap me silly if I said something disrespectful about Mother.

He took me to his Hollywood studio once. He delighted in pointing out how fake everything was, the paintings of New York City on the windows of indoor sets, the false fronts of the Western town on the back lot that were built slightly smaller to make their heroes look taller, and the eternally smiling faces I was introduced to, who Dad would only say were people never to be trusted.

Besides his own career, everyone in Hollywood has an obsession. His wasn’t gambling, fishing, hunting, yachting, polo or womanising, though he dabbled in them all. His passion was flying. He told me he was only free when he was flying himself through the wild blue yonder; it wasn’t a phrase, it was his world, the only one he thought that mattered.

Even before the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor he wanted to enlist. His studio delayed his entry and threatened him with oblivion; he replied that was what he truly desired. At last, he joined the United States Marine Corps.

Despite his youthful swashbuckling image, the Corps told him that he was too old for combat flying. He fought to be able to fly transport aircraft across the Pacific.

I’ll never forget his visit to our home, dressed in his tailored Marine green gabardine officer’s uniform with his gold pilot wings. As always, he exuded self-confidence and the spirit of adventure.

He gave me a bigger sparkling smile than usual,

‘This isn’t a corny costume, Son. This is something I earned!’

‘I wish I was old enough to enlist, Dad.’

My mother began her disapproval, but his eyes became prouder, his masculine voice more genuine.

‘I’ll always be proud of you, no matter what you do, just as long as you don’t become a phony-baloney movie star.’

‘He’s going to make a success of his life, like his new father.’

‘Men are dreamers, women are schemers…Son, whatever makes you happy is a success.’

‘He’s not going to grow up to be a person who never grew up like his old father going from one young floozie to the next.’

Mother had started; Dad never ran from a fight in his life.

‘Son, when women are single, they go all out to have a wonderful time with you. When they’re married, they go all out to give you a miserable time.’

‘Your Father always has to have an audience for his bad behaviour…’

I saw him off at the railroad station when he shipped out…

The entire nation was stunned and grief-stricken when his plane vanished over the Pacific. Sometime later, he and his crew were found alive when the Jap-held island they made their way to was taken by the Marines. Dad and his crew had organized the natives in the hills as guerillas, for they trained him to be a Marine on the ground as well as a pilot in the sky. He prided himself on being damned good at both occupations; that meant more to him than all the laurels Hollywood gave him.

He turned down a Navy Cross when the Corps wouldn’t give every man in his crew one. When they ordered him to shut up and accept it, he demanded a general court-martial. Not many leathernecks told the Commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps where to get off…he and every one of his crew were awarded a Bronze Star. Dad told me that he had contemplated making a career of the Marine Corps but was told he wouldn’t be welcome after the war. He said the Corps had bigger egos than Hollywood.

It was a long while before I was able to spend more than a brief time with him. He returned to his studio after the war, but things had changed.

Though he was older, he was still popular with his fans, as re-releases of his films during the war had a bigger audience than the remakes starring the 4F actors who dodged military service. He no longer appeared as a youthful heart throb, but he still was in demand as a swashbuckling hero. He starred in one period film after the other, so many that he complained his voice was becoming stilted. He secretly despised the swashbuckling films because it was not a role an actor could do in his old age.

His studio allowed him his way by his appearing in two excellent serious films where he displayed his acting talents, but they failed at the box office. He kept his word to his studio and willingly found himself back in costume adventure films. The crews on his films as well as his fans accepted him more than the new young replacements his studio discovered to try and replace him, for no one could. They knew him…and they knew his wartime experiences made him the real deal.

The other thing that had changed was that instead of the studio back lot, films were being shot overseas that had financial benefits for everyone involved, except for Hollywood’s unions.

After the war he purchased a surplus C-47/DC-3, the type of plane he flew in the Marines. After completing shooting a film on location, he would fly his entourage somewhere with him.

My stepfather and Dad would never argue; the two men were different, but they respected each other for they were at the top of their different worlds. Dad got me to change my mind about my stepfather and suggested it would mean a lot to him if I called him ‘Dad’ as well. He was right, as usual.

I worked in my stepfather’s firm from the bottom up, and Dad told me that from what my stepfather told him, he was proud of me.

They spoke to each other as two men. I was there when my stepfather asked him if it wasn’t better to invest his earnings into something lucrative, rather than flying around the world with his friends. He replied,

‘I’ve seen too many people on deckchairs on liners who saved their money for travel and adventure, but by then they were too old to enjoy themselves. They sat like meat carcasses in a freezer watching the world that they had missed go by in front of them.’

During my summer break from school, I was to fly with him across the Pacific.

‘Your Mom must’ve fought tooth-and-nail to keep you coming with me.’

‘She wanted me to spend the time in my stepfather’s business. I told her there was time enough for that, and my stepfather told her off that I was right.’

I had decided to become a chemical engineer. That made everyone happy, my stepfather, Mother and Dad. I never dreamed of following in Dad’s footsteps because I knew I could never be half the man he was. Dad said he had more respect for science than acting and business combined, for he believed that science would make a better world, and that was something to truly be proud of. Everyone agreed on that as well. Mother said that maybe the both of us were growing up.

With my career set with university studies, and Dad promising he wouldn’t have any of his ‘personal assistant’ girlfriends on board, Mother agreed for me to fly the Pacific with him between my graduation from high school and the start of university.

The First Day

As Dad said, any landing you can walk away from is a good one.

Afloat in our rafts, we heard the sound of waves breaking on shore. Dad kept us from landing until the dawn where we could see if there was a reef that would shred our rubber boats. We were in luck, we had a clear passage all the way to the beach, for the Corps had taught him to be at home and in control of a rubber boat as much as an airplane.

Dad wouldn’t say what happened but declared that the blame was all his. His co-pilot, drinking buddy and comedy sidekick Mr. Barry confessed all. He was drunk. Whilst Dad slept, he went off course on autopilot, and when our plane got in trouble, he didn’t know where we were. Both men swore off the booze for life. My Dad forgave him but still blamed himself, for it was his ship. The buck stops here, as President Truman says…

The good news was that Dad and Mr. Barry located our position, the bad news was that our radio was beyond repair. We had plenty of empty bottles and it was decided to send at least one message in a bottle out every day.

‘I’ll need everyone helping to organise until our rescue. We’ll be rescued, we just don’t know how long we’ll be on a tropical vacation until it happens, but then we’ll have to face Hell and go back to work.’

You couldn’t argue with anyone like that. He looked the part of a hero in his USMC leather flight jacket, the tan chino shirt and trousers called suntans, chukka boots and all topped off with a black faced underwater watch, aviator sunglasses and a hat with his miniature gold pilot wings.

We split into pairs and explored our island, not an atoll. There were coconut palm trees that Dad and the Boy Scouts called the tree of life and fresh water, though we had to boil it to drink it. There was plenty of dead vegetation to make a signal fire and construct shelter. Some of the palm trees had been pulled down, with Mrs. Kelton saying it looked like they had been gnawed by something. Dad had never seen anything like it. Everyone else thought it was some sort of tree disease, tropical termites or Oceanic woodpeckers.

We had fishing supplies, and other survival gear, but no working radio. Dad said that when the war started, they removed most of the survival gear from aircraft to make more room for fuel, bombs, or cargo, but when Eddie Rickenbacker went down, they brought the gear back. He had enough for everyone on board.

I used my Boy Scouting skills to help in our preparation of shelter, latrines, a signal fire and foraged for food, Dad knew what to eat and what not to. Everyone was cheerfully working together like a team on a tropical holiday.

We talked about food with Dad saying when he was on the enemy island all of them learned to eat rats that was the Oceanic version of rabbits. ‘Jungle protein’, he called them. Everyone else said they would have to be pretty desperate to eat them. I could read Dad’s mind that he was thinking that everyone would be desperate in time...

The Clarksons alerted everyone to some odd, faded spoor. The tracks were old, and no doubt washed out by rains, that was a good sign. Everyone agreed that there were wild pigs on some of the islands and we amused ourselves by making spears for going on a Porky Pig hunt the next day and having a Hawaiian Luau the next night.

As we were on a small island, the Harrisons, Dad’s publicist and his wife, wanted some privacy. There was no objection to every couple making their own lean-tos or shelters and latrines away from each other, as long as everyone agreed to do their chores. Dad confided loosely separating was a fine idea, as intense familiarity could breed contempt.

As Dad predicted, there was plenty of rain in the Pacific; it came that night.

The Second Day

Everyone had kept relatively dry and the devices we used to trap the rainwater were overflowing. The rain ceased by mid-morning; however, the Harrisons were nowhere to be found. Their shelter had been destroyed; strange tracks were found around where the pair had spent the night.

Everyone stayed together to form a search party.

We discovered a cave, then we converted some of our pig spears to torches.

‘Stay out here with the women, Son.’

‘I’m going in with you. Somebody’s got to hold the torch, you can’t use your spear if you’re holding a torch.’

‘Looks like your boy’s gone and you’ve got a man in the family, Skipper’, Mr. Barry smiled.

It was hard to know who was prouder, Dad or I.

Mr. Kelton was the first man inside, followed by Mr. Barry carrying our only firearm, a .38 calibre pistol. I was number three with two torches. Dad was with me, Mr. McCulloch, Dad’s lawyer, stayed with the women.

Inside the cave I had never smelled anything worse in my life, like the outhouse on Grandfather’s farm. I knew pigs loved muck and mire, and it certainly felt like we were walking in it.

‘Here pig, pig, pig, pig!’, laughed Dad’s agent Mr. Kelton.

'Piggy-O! Piggy-O! Piggy Wiggy Wiggy Oh!!!', Mrs. Kelton added.

We heard noises, I held the torches towards the noise and at the end of the cave we saw a pair of red eyes.

‘C’mere, Piggy-O! I’d like to invite you to dinner!’, Mr. Kelton laughed. He did his hilarious Porky Pig impression, ‘Ba-dee ba-dee ba-dee, that’s all, folks!’

It was no pig that leapt up and put his jaws around Mr. Kelton’s head and shook it until it was ripped from his body.

Mr. Barry fired three shots into whatever it was, but a second creature grabbed Mr. Barry’s arm with his pistol, ripping his arm off, then went for his screaming head.

I placed my torch on its side and it loudly squealed and went backwards. Dad killed it by sticking his spear through its eye into its brain.

I shone my two torches on the ground. In addition to the two dead giant rats, there was an entire family of pink infant rats whose eyes had not yet opened. The adult rats had brought the remains of the Harrisons to feed the family. Dad and Mr. Clarkson finished them off with their spears.

Our pistol had been crushed by the mammoth rat’s teeth and was unusable. Mr. Barry and Mr. Kelton were dead.

Mrs. Clarkson was an expert photographer; she took photos of the creatures with us to demonstrate their size.

* * *

Once we restarted our signal fire, we used the remains of the baby rats, then the carcasses of the parents that burned well.

Dad and Mr. Clarkson searched for other caves as the rest of us kept the fire going. The dead rats smelled horrible, but they made a lot of smoke.

Everyone had their say of how the rats had come to be, ranging from effects of the atomic bomb to pure Satanic evil that was punishing the Earth for our wickedness. Dad said whatever the rats were, their creation was no accident.

Mr. Clarkson said that the rats were blind, like creatures who lived underground were, and went for noise or smell. They were terrified of the light.

We moved to the highest point of our small island, where we started another signal fire.

Dad and Mr. Clarkson returned to say there were no more caves and no sign of any other creature.

There was a heated but fruitful discussion of whether everyone should leave the island by our rafts. The Clarksons were the biggest ones in favour of that plan as they had a strong knowledge of navigation from their sailing experiences. As we had two rafts, the Clarksons took an amount of water and survival rations for their journey whilst the rest of us would keep the fire going as we felt that if there were any more giant rats they would avoid the fire, as well as the obvious light at night and smoke during the day for a rescue we still believed in.

Late that night we heard a low flying airplane. Dad said it sounded like a Japanese flying boat. Though they were sitting ducks for fighter planes and anti-aircraft by day, at night they patrolled the ocean and would attack ships that they could see from the phosphorescence in their wake, then used their spotlights for bombing and strafing. It made sense that as there were surplus Allied aircraft available after the war, there would be surplus Japanese aircraft as well. Everyone was confident that there was no way they could have missed our large fire, as there was no rain during the night.

The Third Day

Everyone was jubilant that we would soon be rescued. We kept the fires going.

When checking our fishing lines and the walls we built to trap fish at the tides, Mr. and Mrs. McCulloch came running back in fright. As Mrs. Kelton minded the fire, Dad and I followed them to the beach where they had dragged the body of Mr. Clarkson ashore. His wife and their raft were nowhere to be seen.

Mr. Clarkson hadn’t drowned…his body had bullet holes in it…

Why were the Clarksons shot and who did it? The war was long over. Could it be possible that there was still a Japanese submarine who didn’t know or didn’t care that Japan had surrendered? Mr. McCulloch who had been in the Navy said the Japs had giant submarines 400 feet long with seaplanes mounted on them. The Clarksons were unarmed: surely, they would have taken them aboard their boat to question them?

The Fourth Day

After the tragedies the very early morning before dawn brought new hope.

‘A ship!’

Everyone looked out to sea, then loudly cheered, and wildly waved. It was clearly coming towards us! Dad and Mr. McCulloch took off their shirts and tied them to their spears to wave as torches.

Anyone with military experience or those like me who had viewed the war through newsreels recognised that it was a former US Navy Landing Ship Tank. The Pacific was punk with LSTs as they were cheaply sold off as surplus to anyone with the cash. Some had just been left behind to rot.

With its shallow draught and large ramp, it came straight towards us, but there was no one visible on deck or on the bridge.

Everyone ran up to the LST as it beached ashore. Dad and Mr. McCulloch leaned in relief on their spears, the women ran out in the water to welcome our saviours as the giant ramp that had let off our tanks on enemy beaches slowly opened.

Two more giant rats came out and ripped Mrs. McCulloch and Mrs. Kelton’s heads off, then began eating them.

Dad didn’t miss a beat. He ran to them and thrust his spear into the eye of one of the rats that instantly killed him. The second rat was too fast for Mr. McCulloch, he joined his wife in death. Dad came to his rescue, but the surviving rat ripped Dad’s arm off. I jumped on the surviving rat and thrust Dad’s K-Bar jungle knife into its eye as Dad had done. The rat died squealing; its hellish shriek sounded heavenly to me…I felt great.

The LST had shut its doors and backed out to sea.

‘Take off your belt and make a tourniquet!’

* * *

We talked for the remainder of the day and most of the night.

Our theory was that some group with scientific knowledge and a lot of money had engineered the giant rats. When they viewed us being still alive, they must have surmised that their creations were dead and brought two more to breed on our island. Their flying boat had detected the Clarksons and machine-gunned them and their raft, but Mr. Clarkson’s remains had avoided the sharks and come back to us.

Dad confessed that Mother was right when they had their argument before he shipped out to the Pacific. He always had to have an audience for his bad behaviour. He had never known if he had true courage until he went down in the Pacific during the war. If he had been alone, he would have panicked. As he had an audience, and he was playing the role of the senior Marine officer, he had to act the part. He acted the role of guerilla chieftain as well.

‘Don’t sell yourself short, Dad.’

I told him he wasn’t acting; he was genuine. No one could have done more than him.

‘Everyone’s scared shitless, Son. It’s just that some people are better actors than others.’

‘Were you acting in the Marines?’

‘At first, but when things get tough, they teach you how to go on auto-pilot. You do without thinking.’

He said his one regret in life was that he got me into this mess. I did my impression of Hardy telling Laurel that this was another fine mess that he had gotten me into, and he laughed uproariously.

I told him that I had the best time of my life being with him, more than everything else in my life put together. I realised how stupid that sounded and told Dad so.

‘No, Son…that’s the way it is…when we were about to die on that Jap island we were the most alive that we had ever been. I could never explain that to anyone, but you explained it to me…you’re really something, and I’m so proud of you.’

We embraced, Dad seemed to want to change the mood.

‘I’ve got some really bad news, and I don’t know how you’re going to take this…Son…’

He put his good hand on my shoulder and looked in my eyes with his…,

‘I’ve changed my mind about the wonders of science being a good thing.’

I broke out laughing as did he.

‘So, the last time you saw her, what did Mom think about me?’

He saw my pause and became angry,

‘Like we said in the war, ain’t no time for bullshit!’

‘She said you couldn’t live without debauchery, doing it, then telling stories about it…’

‘She’s right. I could pass the buck and say it’s the Irish in me, or that all actors are like that, as the men in my family were, and none of them lived beyond 50, but the buck stop’s here.’

We changed the topic and Dad said his plan was to start an air cargo business with Mr. Barry. Though movie stars were paid more than most people, the taxes were high with the more you make, the more we take being the motto of the IRS. He had a lot of knowledge of crooked business managers who not only invested their client’s fortune for their own, not their client’s benefit, they also hid their embezzlement leaving their client’s surprised and destitute.

‘What about it, Son? When we get out of here do you want to join me after we get a new plane?’

‘I’m going to be a chemical engineer, Dad.’

‘I’m proud of you like I’m proud of any man who sticks to his guns…Now, get some sleep, I’ll take first watch.’

The Fifth Day

I awoke in the sunlight of the early morning; furious that Dad had fallen asleep and didn’t wake me for my time on watch.

He hadn’t fallen asleep; he had died during the night.

I buried him alongside our other heroes in our cemetery.

The Sixth Early Morning

As I write this, the LST is returning.

No doubt there are two more of the creatures aboard who will land. I have a variety of spears, but I shall remain hidden. I have placed flammable material on the floor of the cave we killed the first two in so I can incinerate them when they make their shelter there.

I will carry out guerilla warfare against them and their replacements when they hide by day. Our signal fire still burns. I am placing this inside a bottle and shall throw it out to sea and hope someone will find it, and I will send out another and another. I have sent out Mrs. Clarkson’s camera with its film and a note in another waterproof container.

I’m afraid of nothing! Terrere Nullis!

FIN

Author Notes: Happy birthday, Dad. I still love you.

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