Todays Helping of Chicken Soup for the Soul

[Guest guest]

Using His Teeth

By Lester

During World War II, a young Navy lieutenant was on patrol duty in the

Solomon Islands, northeast of Australia in the South Pacific. His name was

F. Kennedy.

Kennedy commanded a small-motor torpedo boat, the PT?109, and the

boat's

twelve-man crew. Their mission: to observe and report the movements of

Japanese

warships.

Shortly after midnight on August 2, 1943, a Japanese destroyer loomed

suddenly out of a fog. It crashed into Kennedy's boat, plunging all aboard

into

the ocean.

Two crewmen died. The others clung to the wreckage all night long.

As

dawn broke, Kennedy ordered: " Swim to that island! " It was no easy task.

The

island seemed near, but was actually miles away.

The men began swimming, but one, seriously hurt, could not. The

skipper

had an idea. Despite his own injured back, Kennedy grasped the strap of a

life

belt in his strong teeth. With the seaman attached to the other end,

Kennedy

swam for four hours to the island.

That was clever, but more ingenuity was to come. Kennedy carved a

message

for help on a coconut shell and had a young islander take it to the nearest

base. The message got through. On August 7, help arrived.

Seventeen years later, Kennedy was elected America's thirty-fifth

president. He kept the coconut shell in the Oval Office of the White

House.