So Far From Home

So Far From Home Under a curving shimmering blue fish bowl sky the small Patrol Torpedo boat cruises gentle summer swells in the distant Pacific, under summer skies torn apart by brutal bitter total war. Small PT boats crewed by fifteen men ranging far and wide, hunting for fat Japanese merchant ships. Boom! Go the torpedoes when a nice juicy target is found and a quick getaway to fight another day. If the Jap’s capture the American boat and her crew alive it will be torture and a slow death for Nippon’s enemies. They don’t intend to get caught, would rather go down to the ocean bottom if their small deadly craft is hit by enemy gunfire. Built of spruce and ash for excellent strength and good sea keeping the PT boat has the firepower of a destroyer and the agility of a fighter. A wicked peril of the sea out looking for trouble, armed with two or four torpedoes, fifty cal machine guns and twenty and forty millimetre cannon. A real kick ass little ship, a boat, hunting the huge open ocean sinking Nip ships, giving our boys ashore some respite from enemy bullets. Don’t you know after this war, no one will remember the small PT boats that battled a superior enemy bravely in no holds barred combat? Only faded photos survive and old crewmen spending their retirement dreaming of the open Pacific where the sky was always blue. Forgetting bitter engagements when a sinking Tokyo Maru shed burning oil from her ruptured tanks onto her crew in the blazing deep water. Remembering the screams more than playing cards with their own shipmates on R and R, three hundred miles from the nearest port. Only one small PT boat survives, testament to the small powerful craft that fought bravely and bitterly in a war no one cares to remember except the few who were there. Old men dying now...