Enduring Valor
The Legacy of Kay Vesole
Some of you of a certain age might remember Paul Harvey’s radio program, which had a “smaller” story providing insight about a “bigger” one, always ending with his trademark phrase, “And now you know the rest of the story.”
I had one of those experiences shortly after posting the story Myeloma’s First Promising Treatment. Near the end is an anecdote about the Axis bombing of American ships in the Bari, Italy harbor unexpectedly moved cancer research forward, a key event leading to the birth of chemotherapy.
Dr. David Vesole (VEE-soul), a myeloma specialist who splits his time between the Theurer Cancer Center in Hackensack, New Jersey, and the Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center at Georgetown University in Washington, DC, wrote to me: “My uncle died in Bari from mustard gas poisoning. Ultimately, a destroyer was named in his honor. I was actually at the decommissioning ceremony in South Carolina in 1976.”
Kopl K. Vesole, known as Kay, emigrated with his family to the United States shortly after his birth in Przedbórz – then in Russia, today in south-central Poland – on September 11, 1913. The family eventually settled in Davenport, Iowa, with Kay graduating from its high school in 1932.
Kay had a taste of local stardom came during his time at the University of Iowa law school, “An excellent swimmer, he saved a man from drowning in the Iowa River.” Shortly after graduation he married his college sweetheart, Idamae, and established a law practice just across the Mississippi River from Davenport, in Rock Island, Illinois. The twenty-nine-year-old attorney volunteered for the United States Navy on October 12, 1942, less than a year after Pearl Harbor.
Following months of training that took him to bases around the country, by April 1943, he landed in Panama City, Florida to command a gun crew on a merchant ship. Later that year, he was in charge of another crew on the SS John Bascom, one of the ships bombed on December 2, 1943 in the Bari harbor, alongside the SS John Harvey, laden with one hundred tons of mustard gas.
The Bascom was sinking, Vesole was wounded. Unknown to everyone, the sinking Harvey was saturating the harbor with mustard gas, which ended up killing 83 of the 628 men pulled out of the water within a week. Vesole died that night, less than three months after his thirtieth birthday. He was posthumously awarded the Navy Cross – only the Congressional Medal of Honor was higher in the Navy, Marine, and Coast Guard – for “extraordinary heroism and distinguished service.”
The award citation noted Vesole was…
…the Commanding Officer of the Armed Guard aboard the SS JOHN BASCOM when that vessel was bombed and sunk by enemy aircraft in the harbor of Bari, Italy, on the night of 2 December 1943. Weakened by loss of blood from an extensive wound over his heart and with his right arm helpless, Ensign Vesole valiantly remained in action, calmly proceeding from gun to gun, directing his crew and giving aid and encouragement to the injured. With the JOHN BASCOM fiercely ablaze and sinking, he conducted a party of his men below decks and supervised the evacuation of wounded comrades to the only undamaged lifeboat, persistently manning an oar with his uninjured arm after being forced to occupy a seat in the boat (he had tried to swim to make room for other wounded, but his crew forced him into the boat), and upon reaching the seawall, immediately assisted in disembarking the men. Heroically disregarding his own desperate plight as wind and tide whipped the flames along the jetty, he constantly risked his life to pull the wounded out of flaming oil-covered waters and, although nearly overcome by smoke and fumes, assisted in removal of casualties to a bomb shelter before the terrific explosion of a nearby ammunition ship inflicted injuries that later proved fatal. (He had to be restrained from going into the flames to rescue others; he also refused to get in the first boat that came to rescue them from the jetty where they were all trapped by the flames, and was forced into the second). The conduct of Ensign Vesole throughout this action reflects great credit upon himself, and was in keeping with the highest traditions of the United States Naval Service. He gallantly gave his life for his country.
Vesole’s last words were, “I’ve a three-month-old baby at home. I certainly would like to see my baby.” He was buried in Rock Island’s Hebrew Cemetery.
Idamae Vesole and her young son were present when the USS Vesole, a naval destroyer with advanced radar, was launched on April 23, 1945, just weeks before the end of World War II in Europe. Over the next thirty years, the USS Vesole served throughout the world including in the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Vietnam War, for the NATO fleet, and the throughout the Indian Ocean and African Coast. It was decommissioned at the ceremony David Vesole attended in 1976 and intentionally sunk off the coast of Puerto Rico in 1983 in a naval target practice area.
Vesole was inducted into the Davenport Central High School Hall of Honor in 1992. Open to graduates of the Davenport or Central “who have achieved distinction…while having a positive influence on the lives of others.” The ceremony includes a poem composed with verses about each year’s honorees. Included in the 1992 poem is the following verse about Vesole, linking him to the nephew he would never know:
You hastened the scientific chase to beat cancer,
closing in with publications and patents
to slow the ravages of this killer until it's stopped,
until, like a rugby winner, you pressured
the research to score the decisive kick.
The Sunday, May 24, 2009 edition of the Quad City Times featured a front-page story on Vesole, “a Davenport lawyer who became a hero in WWII,” about a “national campaign to upgrade [Vesole’s Navy Cross] to the military’s highest honor, the Medal of Honor.” The initiative was spearheaded by veterans who served on the USS Vesole, “of which there are several thousand.”
According to the USS Vesole Association, Vesole did not receive the Medal of Honor because of geopolitical reasons; no one was to know about the existence of mustard gas in Bari. “President Roosevelt concluded that, if exposed to the public, the Bari incident would undermine the war effort, and cause great public and media interest” as it was decided “to keep that information secret and limit Vesole’s recognition to the Navy Cross.”
Although secrecy about the Bari incident is no longer an issue, time now seems to be the biggest obstacle to recognizing Vesole’s valor with a Medal of Honor.
But the “rest of the story” of the Bari bombing its aftermath, does not end here, there’s also one concerning his roots in Przedbórz, Poland. Records of the town’s Jewish community went back to 1570. In 1938, it was estimated that more than sixty percent of the population, 4,500 out of 7,000, was Jewish. By 1939, when the German army invaded Poland to start what would become World War II, Przedbórz’s center, in which most of the town’s Jews lived, was flattened. Locals reported numerous atrocities by the invaders including randomly shooting people in the street.
By January 1940, Przedbórz was made into a ghetto of 4,600 Jews. Two years later, the survivors were forced to leave by foot and many ended up in the Treblinka death camp. There were no Jews left in Przedbórz. And it got even worse:
“After that war, in 1945, nine Jews returned to Przedbórz and settled down in the building of a former restaurant…At the turn of 1945 and 1946, they were attacked by [a local anti-Semitic group]. The Jews were tied and taken away in a lorry to a forest…where they were shot.”
Housekeeping: This August, Wednesday articles will be thematic summations of previously posted articles. I suspect I have a lot of new readers who haven’t gone back to the earlier pieces. On Sundays I will step away from myeloma a little to post a few essays about cancer except for a book review by a myeloma expert about life, with or without myeloma.