History - A Most Extraordinary Devotion to Duty - Trapped by the unstoppable advance of Japanese forces in 1942, a Naval Reserve doctor unrelentingly battled impossible odds to evacuate his American patients. By Mike Stankovich February 2021 Naval History Magazine Volume 35, Number 1

 

February 1942: In the wake of the Japanese bombardment of Makassar Strait, the aging light cruiser USS Marblehead is crippled and sidelined after sustaining heavy damages. Worse than the harm to the ship was the toll of the beating on the men on board. A soon-to-be-famous Naval Reserve doctor would be their salvation.

U.S. NAVAL INSTITUTE PHOTO ARCHIVE

In late January 1942, the Dutch East Indies (present-day Indonesia) became the newest last-line-of-defense facing Imperial Japan’s southward-advancing armed forces. Assorted foreign units trickled in to fight alongside the Dutch—including an aging U.S. Naval Reserve physician named Wassell. The ensuing days would become the most dangerous and demanding trial of the doctor’s life, exemplifying the phrase “devotion to duty.” The seeds of his epic exploits were planted on 4 February 1942, in the Flores Sea.

The sea was calm that day. From the west, nine Japanese planes headed in at 15,000 feet through a mostly clear, blue mid-morning sky. Far below, a Dutch and U.S. task force of four cruisers and seven destroyers reacted defensively as soon as the approaching aircraft were spotted. Spreading their attacks over the next two hours, some 54 twin-engine Mitsubishi G3M Type 96 “Nells” walloped the warships twisting across the surface of the Flores Sea. Two cruisers were hit badly, ending an attempt to intercept a Japanese invasion fleet in the Makassar Strait and compelling the Allied task force to retreat toward its base at Surabaya, Java.

The damaged warships were American—the powerful heavy cruiser USS Houston (CA-30) and the obsolescent light cruiser Marblehead (CL-12). The Houston skillfully dodged every bomb aimed at her—except the last one, unseen, which sliced into the deck below the after main battery turret, destroying it and causing many casualties and raging fires. The Marblehead took a couple of bomb hits and several near-misses, causing high casualties, fires, and a jammed rudder, but was most significantly taken her out of action with heavy flooding forward from a punctured and distorted bow.

A Life Lived in Service of the Suffering

The war in the Pacific was not yet two months old when Naval Reserve Lieutenant Commander Corydon McAlmont “Cory” Wassell arrived on the island of Java for duty with the U.S. Asiatic Fleet. Born on Independence Day 57 years earlier, he already had lived a long life of grace and charity—including more than a decade as a doctor-missionary in China—filled with poverty, daunting odds, high drama, tragic personal loss, strife, disease, tumult, and war. Doctor Wassell was called to active naval service in late 1936, and after serving in various commands was ordered in late 1941 to overseas duty at Cavite in the Philippines.

His 7 December departure for Manila, however, was canceled after news of Japanese attacks in the Philippines and Hawaii. With his orders changed to duty in the Dutch East Indies, Wassell shipped out in early January 1942, arriving in Java around the first of February.

While he was getting his bearings at U.S. Asiatic Fleet headquarters at Surabaya, Java, the patchwork Allied task force in the Flores Sea suffered the devastating air attack. The Houston’s many casualties filled her sick bay, wardroom, and senior officers’ quarters. The Marblehead endured crippling damage, with nearly 100 dead and wounded, including her severely burned executive officer. While the old Marblehead crept westward along Java’s southern coast toward the port of Tjilatjap (Cilacap), a number of medical personnel—including Wassell—were detailed to care for the inundation of wounded.

Doctor Corydon “Cory” Wassell was well into his 50s at the outset of World War II. His career had been one of self-sacrifice and courage amid sundry trouble spots—yet his finest hour still lay ahead. Naval History and Heritage Command

Towed into Tjilatjap Harbor during the early morning of 6 February and slipping past the moored Houston—her crew returned the rousing cheer raised from the heavy cruiser—the Marblehead moved directly into a floating drydock. Once moored, most of her seriously wounded were transferred ashore. They were taken to a dockside train, where white-painted, red-cross-adorned hospital railcars awaited them. With some Houston wounded also on board, the train chugged 125 miles east to the little village of Jogjakarta (Yogyakarta), up in the central-coast hills.

There, at the Petrinella Hospital, a missionary facility before the Dutch military assumed its administration, the medical staff evaluated the wounded. Many suffered terribly with burn-blackened skin; the heavy, nauseating odor of charred flesh soon permeated the building where they received first-class treatment.

Wassell soon arrived to assume responsibility for the Americans. Striding into their ward wearing khakis and “an elephant hat” covering the thin, graying hair of his head, his alert, clear eyes projected positive energy. Himself a smoker, he thoughtfully carried enough cigarettes for all, as well as long cigarette holders for those with burned lips.

Defying a Grim Fate

Back in Tjilatjap, there remained a few wounded, including the executive officer of the Marblehead, Commander William Bernard Goggins. Badly burned and in appalling shape, he should have been on the hospital train to Petrinella, but he stubbornly had insisted on remaining with the Marblehead for her voyage back to the States. He was placed in a dispensary until the ship was ready to sail.

Medical officers subsequently decided, however, that the sick bay facilities on board the crippled cruiser were inadequate for the appropriate care of the most severely wounded, including the gravely burned Goggins. During the morning of 7 February, all the dispensary-bound were placed into several military ambulances and driven to Jogjakarta. Seldom stopping in a torturously hot, nine-hour marathon, bouncing along “rutted dirt roads,” they arrived in late afternoon. They brought to 41 the number of wounded Americans at Petrinella.

The pain-wracked Goggins was medicated immediately and fell into a deep slumber. The next day he was visited by the upbeat Wassell, who made twice-daily rounds to visit each man. After leaving Goggins, he conferred with Dutch doctors. The prognosis was grim: The grievously burned officer could not long survive.

Ultimately, there was a death—a badly mauled young coxswain from the Houston. That the critically burned Goggins did not also succumb to his wounds was nothing short of miraculous and directly attributable to the amazing hospital staff and the extraordinary effectiveness of their treatments. As the worrisome days of early February passed, Wassell tended his patients most of his waking hours.

On 15 February, a week after the wounded arrived at the mountain hospital, the great British naval bastion at the tip of the Malay Peninsula—Singapore—surrendered to the all-conquering Imperial Japanese Army. Soon thereafter Sumatra, then Bali, at either end of Java, were overrun. Java’s fate was sealed—and with it, the probable fate of the wounded Americans.

Javanese locals assist the crew of the Marblehead in sifting through the wreckage; one of the cruiser’s casualties was her executive officer, Commander William Goggins, severely burned in the attack. He would come to owe Doctor Wassell his life. left: U.S. Naval Institute Photo Archive; Inset: Naval history and Heritage Command

‘Intimate Familiarity with Desperate Conditions’

Although Wassell’s gregarious nature and fondness for a good time and a good story helped raise the spirits of his patients, he was principally a man of strong character, with intimate familiarity with desperate conditions. Young Cory Wassell had started practicing medicine in rural Arkansas, generally being paid with food or dry goods. Eventually, he and his wife had committed to the arduous journey as missionaries to China. There, his four children were born and his wife died; he conducted medical research and performed diagnostic, treatment, and surgery duties at hospitals, as well as running his own practice.

Among the American and British foreign residents, he was universally respected for his tactful skill of adroitly avoiding religious squabbles. Poverty, pestilence, disease, bandits, warlords, foreign influence, intrigue, and revolution made 1920s China a boiling pot of misery and unrest. Wassell served in army field hospitals and in foreign concessions surrounded by bandit armies—always tending the wounded, sick, and diseased.

Finally, after 12 years of constant turmoil, the Wassells returned to the States in 1927—his family circle by then including a second wife. He started a private practice in Little Rock, which fizzled, worked for the county health service, organized the public-school health system, looked after the poor and indigent, combated malaria for the Civilian Conservation Corps during the Great Depression, and joined the Naval Reserve.

(Partial) Escape to Tjilatjap

At Petrinella Hospital, a fretful Wassell decided proactively to remove his charges from harm’s way, unwilling to wait on high command to decide their fate. On 23 February 1942 he commandeered a telephone and spent hours on the frustrating Javanese-language communication system, looking for a way out.

Being a highly resourceful man possessed of a captivating character, he already had developed many personal contacts at various commands, but most importantly at U.S. Navy headquarters in Surabaya. From a contact there he learned of plans in the works for the evacuation of civilian and armed forces VIPs to Australia. He also learned that the naval command staff was set to move to Tjilatjap “should the situation deteriorate,” thus confirming that town as the most likely place for getting his patients evacuated.

Wassell worked his contacts until he spoke with a naval officer in Tjilatjap with enough seniority to authorize moving his 40 patients there. Permission was granted, but only for the ambulatory. The good doctor, however, had no intention of leaving any of his stretcher-bound charges “to the mercy of the Japanese.” Obtaining westward passage for everyone on a passenger train, he boarded them on the morning of 25 February.

The ambulatory rode in a coach, the bedridden in a hospital car. Always concerned for their morale, Wassell kept secret that the non-ambulatory might be refused shipboard passage. That afternoon, the train arrived in Tjilatjap and the resourceful doctor found lodging for his men in a house already quartering some U.S. Navy servicemen. Room was made for the ambulatory inside, while the stretcher-bound slept on cots out on the cooler porch. With his patients secured, the doctor headed for the port.

He scoured the docks for any ship to transport his patients out of the country. He was successful for the majority—those who could walk. The 30 or so ambulatory were allowed aboard the oiler USS Pecos (AO-6), set to sail on 27 February. However, no ship’s captain would take any of the stretcher cases because of the rigors of the voyage and the lack of adequate medical facilities. The skipper of the Pecos, Commander E. Paul Abernethy, was blunt: The Japanese infested the Indian Ocean, he fully expected his ship would be sunk, and anyone who could not at least walk would certainly drown.

Determined to Survive

The next morning, 26 February, ordered to return his stretcher patients to the Jogjakarta hospital, Wassell broke the news. They were loaded aboard a freight car, a hospital car being unavailable, and their wounds prohibitive of a coach seat. The train arrived in the mountain town in mid-afternoon, and the exhausted men were returned to their hospital ward, trusting that the doctor would do all he could to evacuate them.

Their vulnerability was exposed during the course of the next morning. With each of the multiple air-raid alerts the men could only be moved under their beds by the hospital staff, because the shelter was too far away. Those episodes made Commander Goggins realize he would never escape Java unless he could walk. Determined to survive, he forced himself to his feet and made it for a few very painful steps, then collapsed. He kept at it, trying again and again over the next few days. His amazing determination allowed the brief, excruciating walks to stretch the seared and shriveled skin of his legs. As his endurance and distances slightly improved, his gritty courage and resolve encouraged others to also try. No doubt also inspired by Goggins, the untiring Wassell remained relentless in his pursuit of any and all means of evacuation.

. . . the untiring Wassell remained relentless in his pursuit of any and all means of evacuation.

Promising news came on the last day of February with word that the U.S. Army Air Forces (USAAF) might be able to evacuate them on one of their aircraft that very night. As a result, the doctor and his patients spent a long and sleepless night listening to aircraft roar off the nearby runway. They anxiously waited for the phone call telling them to get to the airfield, but it never came. So the sea became their only viable exit. The cruel irony was that by then, the only seaport from which escape was remotely possible was Tjilatjap, where they already had been refused by all the ships’ captains. For the hospitalized Americans, a fate of “slaughter or capture” seemed to be theirs.

A Fallen Country, a Flood of Evacuees

Unknown to Wassell’s group, Tjilatjap was a nightmare, clogged with thousands of people trying to escape Java. The streets leading to the harbor were clogged with military traffic and weary soldiers. With most of the ABDA (American, British, Dutch, Australian) forces in Java trying to get out of an indefensible situation that only the Dutch thought defensible, confusion reigned supreme. A silver lining was that the Japanese had not yet bombed the port. The biggest obstacle facing Wassell was his lack of transportation to move everyone to distant Tjilatjap—except for a Ford staff car abandoned by the USAAF.

On Sunday morning, 1 March, the Japanese landed on Java. The two heaviest warships remaining in the ABDA fleet, the USS Houston and HMAS Perth, were sunk in Sunda Strait during the early morning hours. As predicted by her captain, the oiler Pecos—with many Houston and Marblehead ambulatory wounded on board—was sunk with heavy loss of life that afternoon well south of Java by Japanese carrier aircraft. That evening, Dutch Vice Admiral C. E. L. Helfrich, the stubborn commander in chief of the decimated ABDA fleet, finally was convinced of his fleet’s demise and only then allowed U.S. Navy Vice Admiral William A. Glassford to dispatch his few remaining auxiliaries to Australia. By that time, the irrepressible Doctor Wassell was on the road with his near-helpless patients.

He used the Ford sedan to shuttle his pajama-clad charges to a local hotel, where he convinced a British Army captain to transport them to Tjilatjap in vehicles of his command. The stretcher cases were loaded onto two trucks belonging to the captain’s mobile antiaircraft unit. Three men were squeezed into the back of the sedan, with Commander Goggins seated in front with Wassell at the wheel. The British convoy left Jogjakarta around noon, headed west on rutted back roads. Concealed by roadside trees, they crept along slowly, widely spaced to minimize any bombing or strafing losses. Five hours later, when the convoy halted for tea and nourishment, the doctor, bringing up the rear, drove on, resolutely determined to find a ship.

The steadfast Navy physician’s heroism inspired the hit 1944 movie The Story of Dr. Wassell, starring Gary Cooper. Paramount donated a percentage of the film’s gross to the Navy Relief Society. Alamy

Late that evening the packed Ford arrived at the Grand Hotel in Tjilatjap—former headquarters of Admiral Glassford, who had evacuated earlier that evening. A Dutch liaison officer met them and provided the doctor with information and invaluable assistance. Having arrived well ahead of his unit, the British captain had brought along one of the doctor’s non-burn patients, who already had evacuated via the USS Isabel (PY-10), an old converted yacht. The liaison officer helped situate the Americans for the night. The three men from the sedan’s back seat were placed in a dispensary while a hotel room was found for the doctor and Goggins—despite the crush of civilian and military refugees jammed into every available space in the building.

A Most Humble Escape Vessel

Dawn of 2 March was heralded with the terrifying wail of air-raid sirens. Within a short time, Japanese aircraft flew over Tjilatjap but dropped no bombs. Meanwhile, Wassell spent a futile morning at the docks searching for an evacuation ship. He learned that two evacuee-packed vessels had been torpedoed overnight with heavy loss of life. Lurking enemy submarines presented unpleasant possibilities even if a ship were found for his patients.

Returning to the hotel by noontime, the doctor was there when the British antiaircraft convoy arrived with the remaining American wounded. But one man was missing—left with Dutch medicos 35 miles back—incapable of any further travel. There was no fetching him, so the doctor moved everyone else to his hotel room, where they were fed a hot meal. After ensuring their comfort, the unrelenting doctor once again left for the docks—off on one last Quixotic attempt to locate an accommodating captain with space for his mostly bedridden patients. Their lives were in the balance—they had to be evacuated, no matter the seaborne perils.

Their fortunes changed dramatically that afternoon when Wassell accomplished the seemingly impossible. Competing with mobs of desperate people, his dogged determination had secured passage for them on board a ship preparing to depart. From somewhere, a Dutch sailor appeared with transportation. Driven to the dock, the patients were carried aboard the Janssens, a small diesel-powered, steel-hulled coastal passenger ship of 300 tons. The Janssens’ single engine would not get them anywhere fast—her top speed was only seven knots—but she could get them out of Java and headed toward Australia. Maybe.

Wassell’s remarkable feat earned him the Navy Cross, the praise of President Franklin Roosevelt, and a legendary status. Here, he shakes hands with a young first lieutenant of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-Shek’s Army Air Forces, training at Kirtland Field, Albuquerque, New Mexico, in 1944. (Wassell had spent more than a decade as a doctor-missionary in war-torn China.) Naval History and Heritage Command

More than 600 evacuees were crowded on board the humble ship. The mass of desperate souls included Dutch naval officers and civilians of prominence—most with their families—and seamen and soldiers of the British Commonwealth. The American stretcher cases were placed on several mattresses—snatched from the hotel by their Dutch sailor—under an awning on the afterdeck, amid a multitude of packed-in refugees.

Wassell, Goggins, and two others were allotted a tiny space in the little dining room that once had doubled as a smoking lounge. The small space was packed with people and uncomfortable for everyone. The doctor struggled through the press of bodies to check on the others. Under way with full darkness, the Janssens moved slowly through the harbor’s protective minefield toward the open sea. Everyone had a life jacket, but many nervously noted the small number of lifeboats. Everyone was worried about being torpedoed and sunk by an enemy submarine, as had happened the previous night, with alarmingly few survivors.

Fortune smiled when a fierce thunderstorm swept over the Janssens just a short distance outside the harbor. The little coaster suddenly was hammered hard by wind-driven torrential rain and violently pounding waves—perfect concealment from a lurking submersible. Overloaded with terrified humanity and battering her way slowly through turbulent seas, the ship passed the night.

Danger Overhead

With the dawn of 3 March, a suffering and restless Commander Goggins immediately realized the ship was steaming eastward, paralleling the Javanese coast instead of the supposed course south toward Australia. Baffled and distressed by the circumstances, he had Wassell take him to question the ship’s captain. The Dutch Admiralty, it turned out, had advised an eastward course far beyond the length of the 620-mile-long island, so as to avoid patrolling enemy warships. Aghast, Goggins argued that land-based Japanese aircraft would find and sink them, but the adamant Dutch captain maintained his course.

About three hours later, panic swept the ship when a large formation of Japanese bombers appeared, headed directly for the Janssens. They droned overhead . . . and flew on, headed west toward Tjilatjap. The anguished passengers calmed, momentarily reassured. The savvy Goggins, however, was positive that the ship’s position had been reported and other planes would soon come. It took only an hour.

Wassell and Goggins were conversing in the ship’s small dining room at about 1030 when screaming aircraft engines and the staccato hammering of machine guns and cannon shattered the relative calm. Everyone on board scrambled for any cover as three Japanese fighters swooped in and strafed the crowded deck. Bullets riddled the packed dining room. The doctor’s immediate concern was for the safety of his patients out on deck, so he tried making his way aft, but never reached them because of the strafing and the scrambling, terrified refugees. (Later, he found them under a sheltering deck overhang, pulled there by good Samaritans.) Meanwhile, a puny defense was thrown up by Dutch sailors banging away ineffectively with the ship’s two .30-caliber machine guns.

Abruptly, the attack ended—amazingly, with only eight wounded among the throng of passengers. Although suffering a lot of structural damage topside, the ship remained seaworthy, and the diesel engine continued to chug along. With some panicked passengers beseeching the captain to put them ashore, the Janssens steered for an inlet to hide through the remaining daylight. There, the captain made the ship as unobtrusive as possible by anchoring as close inshore as he dared.

The Janssens would continue on, but all those who wished could disembark. Although Wassell was prepared to accompany any wounded American who might want off the ship, all his patients, once told the situation, immediately opted for Australia. Around 160 others disembarked. After nightfall, the Janssens got under way, and the captain, now understanding the deadly power of the enemy’s aircraft, set course south, leaving Java behind.

All knew the odds were long against their surviving a passage through an ocean teeming with Japanese warships; the coaster was too slow even to attempt zigzagging to avoid submarines. Compounding everyone’s fears of detection, they steamed all night under the spotlight of a bright moon.

South to Salvation

But no enemy spotted the Janssens. By the third day at sea, 5 March, she was nearly 500 miles south of Java. With no sign as yet of the Japanese, a general buoyant feeling rose among refugees and crew. Then the steering gear broke and the ship, with no rudder control, began circling. Repairs were attempted over an agonizing two-hour period, while the ship continued her aimless steaming. Ultimately, repairs proved futile, and the captain ordered hand steering below.

By 11 March, still heading south, the plodding Janssens had passed a large portion of Western Australia when a plane was sighted headed their way. Anxious eyes watched the twin-engine plane draw ever closer until a joyful cheer arose—it was a U.S. PBY. The seaplane circled the coaster a few times, gave a wing salute, and roared off. They were safe—surely, they were finally safe.

The next day, a submarine suddenly broke the surface in the Janssens’ wake and began following. From her undeviating position a half-mile back, the predatory threat could only be stalking them. Desperate, the captain ordered a drastic course change to determine the intent of the trailing menace. As the Janssens churned off on the new course, the submarine continued on her original track. Their good fortune had held.

Friday the 13th was a lucky and unforgettable day for those on board the battered Janssens as she anchored in Fremantle Harbor. Incredibly, despite the chaos and carnage, the Janssens and all the people on board had come through. Having escaped Java and the marauding Japanese, Wassell’s eight stalwart American patients said prayers of thanks—and showered praise and gratitude on their indefatigable doctor.

And they were not alone. He was awarded the Navy Cross for his “extraordinary” actions in “evacuating the wounded of the U.S. Navy under [his] charge.” President Franklin D. Roosevelt referred to Wassell as being akin to “a Christ-like shepherd devoted to his flock.” A movie based on the doctor’s heroic exploits, starring Gary Cooper, was soon in Hollywood production.

Doctor Cory Wassell was a genuine American treasure at a dark time in the nation’s history. His dedication to his patients and his determination to extricate them safely from peril—while being completely willing to share with them an otherwise horribly different fate—indeed made his selfless actions a most extraordinary devotion to duty. 

Corydon M. Wassell obituary, Arkansas Gazette, 12 May 1958.

James Hilton, The Story of Dr. Wassell (New York: Atlantic–Little, Brown, 1943), vii–xi, 10.

James Hornfischer, Ship of Ghosts: The Story of the USS Houston, FDR’s Legendary Lost Cruiser, and the Epic Saga of Her Survivors (New York: Bantam Books, 2006), 8.

Edwin P. Hoyt, The Lonely Ships: The Life and Death of the Asiatic Fleet (New York: David McKay, 1976), 224, 270–4, 281–4.

The Lucky Bag, U.S. Naval Academy, Class of 1920.

Dwight R. Messimer, Pawns of War: The Loss of the USS Langley and the USS Pecos (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1983), 92–3, 96–101, 131, 147.

Edward Pinkowski, “Dr. Wassell’s Boys” Our Navy, January 1945, 12–14.

CAPT W. G. Winslow, USN (Ret.), The Fleet the Gods Forgot: The US Asiatic Fleet in World War II (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1982), 165–73, 244.

CAPT W. G. Winslow, USN (Ret.), The Ghost That Died at Sunda Strait (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1984), 87–94, 206.