More of Paul Harvey’s
The Rest of the Story – Paul Aurandt
The Light Show
On the night of April 14, the ocean liner California
has progressed to within fifteen hundred miles of her destination, Boston
Harbor. Midnight.
Second Officer Herbert Stone is due for watch on the bridge. Reporting for
duty, Stone finds his apprentice seaman glued to a pair of binoculars, staring
toward the black horizon. He, the apprentice, has sighted a steamer in the
distance. He can make out the ship’s masthead light, her red light, and a glare
of white lights onher afterdeck. Stone asks the
apprentice to try for communication by means of the California’s
Morse lamp. A bright beacon signal is flashed. No answer from the steamer. “Will
that be all, sir?” Stone nods; the apprentice leaves to make record in the
patent log. Now the Second Officer Stone is alone on the bridge. Glancing idly
over the water, a white flash catches his eye – a white flash of light in the
direction of the distant steamer. Stone scratches his head, picks up his
binoculars. Four more white flashes, like skyrockets bursting
in the heavens. Stone notifies the ship’s captain. Over the voice pipe, the captain asks if
the flashes appeared to be company signals. Stone cannot say for sure. The
captain then requests further communication attempt through the Morse lamp. By
now Stone’s apprentice has returned to the bridge. The beacon signal is
employed once more. Still no answer from the steamer. Lifting
the binoculars to his eyes once more, Stone observes three more flashes in the
continuing light show, but now his attention is drawn to the steamer’s cabin
lights. They seem to be disappearing, as though the steamer were sailing away. At
1:40 AM, tone sees the eighth and
last white flash in the night sky.
In one hour, all the steamer’s lights have vanished into the
blackness. It is not until 4:00 AM
that anyone on board the liner California
learns THE REST OF THE STORY. Neither the Captain nor the Second Officer aboard
the Californian had interpreted the white skyrocket flashes as cause for alarm.
It was a matter of coincidence that they had been seen in the first place. For
earlier that night – the night of April 14 – the Californian had reversed
engines and parked as a precautionary measure, halted in her course by an
immense field of oceanic ice. That unscheduled stop in the middle of the sea
had provided the Californian a ringside seat for an unimaginable drama. The
distant steamer had intended those rocket flares as distress signals, and the
Californian – only nine miles away – might have rushed to her aid. Except for one thing. The steamer was sending other distress
calls – by radio. And the Californian was well within range of those messages.
But her radio operator was asleep. The Californian’s fledgling radio operator –
fresh from training school – was fast asleep in his cabin. And that night the
ship’s Second Officer, from his vantage point on the bridge, unwittingly
watched the sinking … of the Titanic.
Great Expectations
If today it is often true, a hundred and fifty years ago it
was invariably so. The hopes of a family rested on the male child. Parents and
daughters all sacrificed to promote the son; if there were more than one, the
eldest. A century and a half ago, Patrick’s family lived in a tiny village in Yorkshire,
the north of England.
Patrick, the father, was vicar of the village church. His wife died young; his
brood included three daughters and a son. Just one son – named Branwell. Branwell was considered
the family genius. At an early age, he demonstrated remarkable artistic and
literary talents. His drawing and paintings, his poetry and prose, seemed to
forecast a brilliant future for whichever he chose. At first, Branwell favored art. His family – his father and three
sisters – scrimped and saved and sent him off to London
to study at the Royal Academy of Arts. In a few weeks, Branwell
returned home penniless and without the education for which he had been
sponsored. Yet the family confidence remained undimmed. Branwell
was merely misunderstood, they said. What he needed was the opportunity to
work, to develop on his own the genius with which he was obviously endowed. The
family – the father, the three sisters – found a position for Branwell as a private tutor. Surely that would give him
enough spare time to paint and to write. And once again, Branwell
returned home, no job, no money. Only excuses. As the excuses piled up, as one
failure led to another and another, Branwell’s
delinquent recreation expanded to include alcohol – eventually opium – and his
already unpromising situation was made even less promising than before. Still,
his sisters were certain that Branwell would one day
be recognized, universally acclaimed as the genius he was. Inspired by this
earnest hope for their brilliant brother, they continued to work to support
him. The sisters cut corners on household expenses; they hired themselves out
as teachers and governesses. What came of their great expectations is THE REST
OF THE STORY. Today, one hundred and fifty years later, no one looks at Branwell’s paintings; no one reads anything he wrote. He
died as he lived, an unmitigated failure. The devoted, concerted efforts of Branwell’s three sisters were, in this respect, in vain.
They had labored to finance their brother’s dreams and eventually his excesses,
for nothing. But as Branwell’s three sisters sought
to relieve the dull drudgery of their own hard, narrow lives, they – in their
only spare time, usually by candlelight in the dark of night – tried to emulate
the lofty literary ability they believed was their brother’s. So far as we
know, their brother had no such literary ability. But they did. For the three
sisters who flattered and supported Branwell with
their unfailing confidence, the three young women who unselfishly invested
their all in their brother, were Anne and Emily and
Charlotte. Anne wrote the novel Agnes Grey. And Emily penned the classic Wuthering
Heights. And Charlotte
authored the immortal Jane Eyre. Anne, Emily and Charlotte –
Bronte.
Search Me – I Dare You
In the July 19, 1948, edition of Time magazine, under the heading of “National
Affairs,” under the subheading of “Heroes” – a heroine. A young woman
newly awarded the Medal of Freedom. A lady they called Joey. Joey was, in fact,
Mrs. Josefina Guerrero from Manila,
a society figure in her native country. During World War II, Joey was a spy. Our side. And she was the best. For all the secret maps and
messages she carried back and forth across enemy lines, she was never
apprehended, never searched once. How Joey was able to achieve her remarkable
wartime record is THE REST OF THE STORY. Josefina Guerrero was the toast of Manila.
She was young, pretty, vivacious; her husband was a
wealthy medical student at Santo Tomas
University. Everything was going
her way. That was before the war. After the Japanese invaded the Philippines,
Josefina joined her friends – the other young matrons of Manila
– and together they worked to help the internees and the U.S.
prisoners of war, bringing them food, clothing, medicine, messages. When the
Americans landed on Leyte,
Josefina offered to become a spy. She had already gained valuable experience in
the Manilan underground; she would be the best spy
the Americans ever had, she said. And we, smiling at her youthful enthusiasm,
agreed. On her first mission, she mapped the waterfront fortifications of the
Japanese and the locations of enemy anti-aircraft batteries. Armed with nothing
more than a sketchbook and pencil, she prowled the restricted areas, recording
all that she saw. From Josefina’s drawings, American planes were able to
pinpoint their targets. The success of this and of subsequent missions earned
Josefina the respect of her allies and it brought her an affectionate nickname,
Joey. Joey, it seemed, could do no wrong in the pursuit of espionage. Because
of her conspicuous bravery, many near-impossible tasks were accomplished in the
line of duty. One mission took her through fifty-six miles of Japanese
encampments and checkpoints and freshly sown minefields. With a to-secret map
taped to her back, she trudged those fifty-six miles on foot. For three years,
Joey continued her cloak-and-dagger career. Then one day the war was over, and
with it ended Joey’s job as a spy. A grateful U.S. War Department awarded re
the Medal of Freedom with silver palm for having saved “untold” American lives.
Visiting the United States,
Joey was presented with a Catholic medallion by Francis Cardinal Spellman for
her “valorous and heroic actions.” But if there was one testimony to her
ultimate success in espionage, it was that she lived to tell about it. Joey –
Josefina Guerrero – was never caught. Stopped many times by suspicious
Japanese, she was never apprehended, never even searched. For
Joey had a secret weapon, an unconditional insurance policy to which any other
spy would be unlikely to subscribe. An impenetrable barrier, if you
will. Her unfailing deterrent to those who would detain her was an authentic
disease … called leprosy!
Going to Hell with Dr. Morell
Dr. Theodor Morell.
What he lacks in competence is compensated for by charisma. He is introduced to
prospective patients socially, makes an impression, and the impressionable are
hooked – eventually, in every sense of the term. A specific case for your
consideration … Dr. Morell is invited to a private
home. His host complains of intestinal trouble. The doctor appears concerned;
how long has the discomfort been going on? Intermittently for
quite some time. Nodding pensively and without hesitation, Dr. Morell offers his diagnosis and his suggested treatment.
Later the patient remarks: “Nobody has ever before told me so clearly and
precisely what is wron with me. His method od ure
is so logical that I have the greatest confidence in him. I shall follow his
prescriptions to the lter.” These “logical”
prescriptions include exotic bacteria and hormones and phosphorus and dextrose
and belladonna … and strychnine. Note enough strychnine to kill the patient, of
course. The dangerous if not entirely evil Dr. Morell
requires the dependence of his patient, for money, for prestige … and for his
sinister experimentation. After a few weeks the patient
notice an improvement in his condition. His own words are: “What luck
that I met Morell! He has saved my life. Wonderful,
the way he has helped me!” In time the patient’s sense of well-being will be
heightened beyond his dreams. For Dr. Morell will add
to his prescriptive arsenal – amphetamines. Speed. By Morell’s own admission his patient “was really never sick.”
Not before he was introduced to Dr. Morell, anyway.
Now it’s a different story. Now the slightest complaint is answered by pills
and injections, a variety of medications spanning the questionable to the
occult. And the result is a shuffling, stumbling, trembling, emaciated,
glassy-eyed, gray-complexioned shell of a man. A human wreck.
Submerged in a sea of uppers and downers, he sleeps no more than three hours a
night. Uneasy sleep. In months he appears to age
years. And still he professes his confidence in Dr. Morell.
Truth is – he needs the speed … In this specific case the “treatments” lasted
nine years, astounding considering the quantities of atropine and strychnine
and amphetamines consumed by the patient in that period of time. Twenty-eight
types of drugs in all, their direct and side effects compounded. The speed took
the highest toll. We shall neither forget nor forgive Dr. Morell’s
patient, the man he was in the beginning, the monster he became. Yet the
monumental irony of his association wish a megalomaniac physician was that in
the end, the master mesmerist was mesmerized, the predator became prey … The
name of Dr. Theodor Morell
has dropped into obscurity. Remembered instead is his patient, a speed freak
who spent that last decade of his life shattered and shaking and with his
brains in a basket, the man who on earth went to hell – because of Dr. Morell. Hitler was “high.” And now you know THE REST OF THE
STORY.
The Cabinet in the Nursery
Perhaps young Bob’s parents should not have told him about
the cabinet in the nursery. That it had been made by William Brodie. Oh, the cabinet itself was a fine old piece of
furniture, an elaborately carved, handcrafted antique. But the same hands which
had so skillfully fashioned it had also carried twin pistols into a series of
daring crimes. Brodie was eventually captured,
charged with armed robbery and murder, tried, convicted and hanged. Some
seventy years later the wooden cabinet he made sat in a corner of Bob’s
nursery, inspiring an endless stream of childhood nightmare. Bob grew up, and
grew up to become a writer – but he never forgot the cabinet in his nursery,
the one made by outlaw Wiliam Brodie.
It was THE REST OF THE STORY. Just what was the fuss about Bad Bill Brodie? He was a depraved character of the eighteenth
century who lived in Edinburgh, Scotland,
Bob’s hometown. He was a heavy drinker and a heavy gambler; his comrades were
thieves and his haunts were the lowest dives in the city. At first Brodie worked alone in his criminal activities. In time, he
organized gang comprised of himself and three ex-cons. Together they shared
cheap wine, expensive women and lascivious merriment, terrorizing Edinburgh
as they went. In 1788, Brodie was hunted down and
captured. They threw the book at Bad Bill Brodie, a
gamut of felony charges running from armed robbery to murder. He was tried,
convicted, executed. There his story might have ended, were it not for Bob. As
a child, Bob had spent many hours gazing at the cabinet in his nursery and
listening to the strange tale of the outlaw who had made it. As an emerging
writer, aged fifteen, Bob had become so fascinated by the life of William Brodie that he wrote a play about him. But something did
not fit. The character had not yet come to life on paper. Reconstructing,
rewriting, did not seem to help. When Bob was thirty-five, married, successful,
he was home in bed, asleep one night, but his rest was not peaceful. Bob’s wife
awakened to hear her husband screaming. She shook him. He opened his eyes,
sitting bolt upright in bed, and still trembling he related his nightmare to
her. It had been about a man, a man very much like outlaw William Brodie. Only the rogue in his dream had seemed so real and
so horrible. The next morning, Bob began to write. Three days and some forty
thousand words later, he was finished. Although you may never have heard of Bad
Bill Brodie, you know well the character he inspired
that poured from Bob’s prolific pen, a sinister synthesis spun from a shadowy
web of facts and dreams. You will better understand writer Bob’s fascination
when you come to know that other side of the real Bill Brodie.
For it is true that he was a libertine, a nefarious criminal, the scourge of Edinburgh.
But all those things he was … he was by night. By day, William Brodie was a respected businessman, a much-admired member
of the Edinburgh Town Council, the president of his union, a pillar of the
highest society, a deacon. Oh, yes – and a cabinetmaker. It was the dual nature
of Deacon Brodie – the two incongruous, unrelated
human halves – that haunted Bob’s dreams, eventually to inspire one of
literature’s most unforgettable characters. For, in a way, the doors of a
handmade nursery cabinet opened wide so that one day, a young man named Bob –
Robert Louis Stevenson – could relate to you The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and
Mr. Hyde.
Stairway to Heaven
A block south of La Fonda Hotel in Santa
Fe, New Mexico, on the corner
of Water Street and Old
Santa Fe Trail, there is an iron-fenced courtyard. Open the gate. Pass through
the courtyard. Enter the Gothic chapel. And when your eyes adjust to the
candlelight you will not believe what they see. No one does. One hundred and
twenty-seven years ago, in the fall of 1852, the Roman Catholic sisters of Loretto left Kentucky
and crossed the continent to establish a convent in the southwestern desert.
The ancient village to which they traveled, founded by
the Spanish in 1610, was known as the City of the Holy Faith. Today La Villa de
la Santa Fe is Santa
Fe, New Mexico. Some two
decades after the sisters arrived, Mexican carpenters began to construct a
chapel for them. It was to be patterned after the Sainte-Chapelle
in Paris, Gothic in architecture,
with a choir loft at the rear. Construction started in July of 1873. Five years
later Loretto Chapel was completed. Almost. The chapel sanctuary was magnificent, including the
choir loft. But there was no way to get from one to the other. The builders,
confounded by the architectural dilemma of rising so high in so small a space,
had omitted a stairway! Their ladder, while adequate for workmen, was both
unbecoming and hazardous for the sisters and the singers.
In the years that
followed, many carpenters were consulted. All gave the same answer: a
conventional stairway to the choir loft would take up too much room in the
chapel below. The sisters of Loretto, who had
traveled thousands of miles to establish their convent, in the face of what
appeared to b their first insurmountable difficulty, took their problem to
their knees. A novena to St. Joseph.
It was on the ninth day, the last day of the novena, that
a gray-haired man leading a donkey and carrying a tool chest came to town and
stopped at the convent academy. To the Mother Superior, the old man sais he
had learned of their problem, that they needed a stairway to their chapel choir
loft. Perhaps he could help. He was welcome to try, the mother superior said.
Using only the crudest tools, the old man went to work. He was eight months
painstakingly applying his obvious skill and his primitive tools. And then one
morning, the Mother Superior awakened to find the job completed, and the
carpenter – gone.
As the sisters
congregated in the chapel that morning, each stood silent and wide-eyed before
an incredible masterwork. The staircase was a narrow, graceful spiral of
thirty-three steps. Two complete
three-hundred-and-sixty-degree turns. No banister. No center support.
Precision-fit, meticulously held together with barely perceptible wooden pegs
richly polished, a spiral that was beautiful to the
point of seeming alive. But where was the carpenter? He had not yet been paid
for his work and was nowhere to be found. Nor had the local lumber supplier any
record of wood having been purchased for the project. Builders and engineers
who have examined the staircase affirm that its full weight appears to rest at
its base. Structurally, it should have collapsed the first time it was used.
Yet it has been used every day … for a hundred years.
Surprise Attack
Beginning in 1931 and for the next decade, the same question
appeared on every final exam for each graduating class at Japan’s
Naval Academy.
Now what would that be? For ten years, every graduating naval cadet in Japan
was asked the same question: “How would you carry out a surprise attack on Pearl
Harbor?” When that question first appeared on the exam, there was
no correct answer. Then in February of 1932, nine years and ten months prior to
the real attack on Pearl Harbor, the Japanese discovered what they believed was
a foolproof plan. That strategy was in fact the one they eventually employed.
Yet for nine years more, the question “How would you carry out a surprise on Pearl
Harbor?” appeared on the Japanese
Naval Academy
final. With literally hundreds of various suggestions, gleaned from the fertile
minds of Japanese youth, not one could rival the strategy of 1932. How they
really surprised us at Pearl is THE
REST OF THE STORY. In the fall of 1941, a Japanese ship arrived at Honolulu.
Four members of the crew, who were posing as stewards, were really officers in
the Japanese Imperial Navy. Two submarine experts, two
surface ship and air operations experts. Had we been more suspicious at
the time, we might have wondered why that particular ship had taken the route
it did to the islands. A far-north approach, passing near the
icy Aleutians. Today we know that the four Japanese naval experts were
testing a plan the Japanese had been counting on for almost ten years. Much to
their gratification, the Japanese naval officers sighted neither ships nor
aircraft on this desolate swath of sea. A month later a fleet of Japanese ships
would take this same route to Hawaii,
only then it would be for real. The Japanese officers, disguised as stewards,
took plenty of shore leave, saw the sights, took snapshots, spoke with the
island natives. They even took tourist plane rides over Pearl Harbor
– and more snapshots. They were testing a plan – and so far, the plan was on
target. The consulate gave these Japanese “stewards” maps of Pearl
Harbor and the military airfields. Just to make certain, they
purchased souvenir sets of picture postcards containing aerial shots of Pearl,
views of Battleship Row and the mooring area by Ford
Island. Returning to Japan,
the naval officer spies were confident; the plan they had had for a decade was
the right one. Indeed, it was the plan they used December 7, 1941 – and were we surprised! In 110 minutes,
8 big battleships and 3 light cruisers had been sunk or damaged, 188 planes had
been destroyed, 2400 men had been killed. The blow not
only paralyzed us in the Pacific for the greater part of a year, it also exposed
our inexcusable optimism and our unbelievable unreadiness
for battle. Behind our anger was one burning question: How did they do it?
Before 1950, six investigations were launched in search of an answer. The
Japanese plan of attack was more than theory: it had been proved effective. For
in 1932, U.S. Admiral Harry Yarnell decided to
demonstrate the vulnerability of Pearl Harbor by
slipping two aircraft carriers in close from the northeast. He launched 152
aircraft which theoretically could have obliterated all airplanes on the ground
and sunk most of the ships at anchor. Japanese naval attaches in Honolulu
read about the exercise, were so impressed that they filed
voluminous dispatches to Tokyo.
Their report ultimately manifested itself as the Japanese Master Plan. That’s
right. Almost a decade before the attack on Pearl Harbor,
we showed the Japanese how!
Savior
You remember Alexander Hamilton as our first Secretary of
the Treasury. Due to the significance of that solitary title, his numerous
accomplishments are frequently overlooked: he devised the federal fiscal system
that paid off the Revolutionary War debt; he established a national bank and
set the stage for our nation’s westward expansion; he encouraged industrialization
before its time; during the early years of the United States he was
instrumental in averting wars with England and France. In fact, the nation’s
capital, Washington, D.C.,
is where it is – because of Alexander Hamilton. And Hamilton himself would
never have lived to make these contributions and he would never have survived
the Revolutionary War, had it not been for the young major who saved his life.
In September of
1776 Alexander Hamilton was a captain in the Continental Army, and he was about
to die. Serving under Colonel Henry Knox, Captain Hamilton and his division
were trapped by the British in lower Manhattan.
Other troops had evacuated in time to save themselves, had fled to what is now
the Upper West Side of New York
City. But Hamilton and his men were stranded. Their
fate comprised two bleak options: they would either fight and be killed, or
surrender and be hanged. They were dead men either way. It came as no surprise
when Colonel Knox issued the order: his soldiers would stand their ground and
fight to the death. In quiet desperation Captain Hamilton awaited the
inevitable attack. Suddenly there was the sound of horses’ hooves. Were the
British advancing already? No, it was not an army. It was a lone rider
approaching on horseback. And the rider was a Revolutionary soldier! But how
did he ride through British lines? Hamilton’s
question was answered soon enough. The horseman was a young major, General Putnam’s
aide. Learning that Hamilton and his men were backed into a corner, he sought
and discovered an escape route for them. From his own position of safety beyond
the British, he had blazed an access to the Bloomingdale
Road. Now, unless Hamilton and his company were
determined to die, they must follow the major quickly. It was an eight-mile
march in the driving rain, but by nightfall Hamilton and all his men were safe
at Harlem Heights.
Exhausted, they could only slump behind the entrenchments and fall fast asleep.
But they were alive, thanks to the daring young major.
Alexander Hamilton
survived the Revolutionary War. And he became one of our revered statesmen. And
surely the face of that young officer – the man who had rescued him – lived forever
after in his memory. He would see that face again. Many
times. In fact it was one of the last faces he ever saw. Historians
frequently conjecture about how much more Hamilton
might have accomplished had he not been gunned down in a duel at the age of
forty-nine. Mostly forgotten is that Aaron Burr, the man who cut Hamilton’s
life short, and the young army major who spared him even as our American dream
was being born – the killer and the savior – were the same man. And now you
know THE REST OF THE STORY.