Our labor here is brief, but the reward is eternal.

Tears In The Darkness

In the weeks that followed, as the survivors finally came to their senses, they began to count their great good luck. For every one of them, three had died. What but luck could explain that? There was no accounting for the sadness, of course, the emptiness that always follows the euphoria of luck. Almost every man had lost a buddy, a friend for the road. And they could not shake the feeling that their lives, their great good luck, had somehow been purchased at someone else’s expense. To a man, they also remembered a voice. When the bedlam was at its height, when men were screaming and moaning and begging for their lives, Father William T. Cummings, the Maryknoll priest who in Bilibid had read Ben Steele the last rites, would make his way to the middle of the hold and shout to be heard.

“Listen to me,” he would yell. “You must listen to me!” Then, in a clear but calming voice, he would recite a prayer. 23 Our Father, who art in heaven . . . Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses, As we forgive those who trespass against us . . . He recited that same evensong every night, a prayer for the living, a prayer of thanks, a prayer for the dead. The priest ministered to anyone who needed him, and almost everyone did. In a month he recited more last rites than most padres offer in a year of combat, then berated himself openly for not being able to hold the hand and ease the dying angst of every man in the ship who needed him. “Father, please, pray for me,” they begged, or, “Baptize me, Father. I don’t want to die without being baptized.” He was a short, thin man, forty-one years old, in constant pain from an old back injury that had required spinal fusion. He had chronic asthma as well, and the close air in the holds must have been torture for him. Nothing, however, seemed to slow his ministrations.