The Optimism of Jefferson DeBlanc

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Pushkin

Jefferson DeBlanc was falling through the air.

The wind roared in his ears.

His shoulders were gripped by the harness of his parachute.

He was plummeting thousands of feet towards the Pacific Ocean, having jumped seconds before from the wreckage of his plane.

He was hoping to land somewhere close to a shoreline, because as he was falling, night was falling too.

It was the evening of January 31st, 1943.

Jeff was a Marine Corps fighter pilot, and for the past hour, he had been battling Japanese warplanes in the skies over the Solomon Islands, weaving in and out of enemy fighters, dodging bullets, firing in return, and watching his good friend, his wingman, get blown out of the air.

Jeff himself had shot down several enemy planes.

He had looked directly in the eyes of one of the men he had killed right before the man's plane exploded.

And then Jeff's own plane had been shot to bits.

The engine caught fire and the plane fell apart around him.

Not in minutes, but in seconds.

As Jeff scrambled onto the wing and pulled the ripcord of his parachute, he knew that falling through the sky was the best of a bunch of bad outcomes because there was no chance he survived in his plane.

But there was a chance he could survive the fall.

A slim one, maybe.

The water was filled with sharks.

And even if he managed to get to land, the islands below him were occupied by the Japanese military.

He had seen their bases from the sky.

If he survived the swim, and that was a big if, he would be stranded deep in enemy territory.

But his current predicament was the direct result of two very specific decisions he had made.

One at the start of the battle and one at the end.

But both were the same.

To stay and fight.

Stay, even if it meant that this was the endgame.

Plunging through the atmosphere towards the water as the sun disappeared over the horizon.

Jeff DeBlanc was 21 years old.

And somehow, he was incredibly calm, convinced that he wasn't going to die.

But how he would survive would be another story entirely.

I'm J.R.

Martinez, and this this is Medal of Honor, Stories of Courage.

The Medal of Honor is the highest military decoration in the United States, awarded for gallantry and bravery in combat at the risk of life above and beyond the call of duty.

Each candidate must be approved all the way up the chain of command from the supervisory officer in the field to the White House.

This show is about those heroes, what they did, what it meant, and what their stories tell us about the nature of courage and sacrifice.

Jeff DeBlanc's story is about long odds, some of the longest I have ever heard, but that's not the reason I love it.

Jeff's story is incredible because it gets to something that's at the very heart of the Medal of Honor, a key to answering the question,

Why, in the name of protecting others, do some people knowingly do things that might kill them?

To Jeff, the answer was clear.

It was because he felt accountable, not to his country or his comrades or a higher power.

He was accountable to himself.

Jefferson de Blanc was born in 1921.

From a very early age, he was obsessed with aviation.

Here he is, talking about the moment he fell in love with it when he was about six or seven.

An airplane came over a biplane and had engine trouble and landed in the pasture about a mile from our home.

So we all ran to see the aircraft.

That accent you hear in his voice?

It's Cajun.

Jeff was born in Louisiana, and he was descended from the French-speaking settlers of that region.

He grew up in the bayous, specifically the Achafalaya Basin, the nation's largest river swamp, bigger than the Everglades.

He spent his youth scrambling around in the murky heat of those dense, jungly swamps.

Not a place where planes usually just fall out of the sky, but to a kid on that bayou, this was a dream come true.

And of course, I was the first one to get there.

And when I got there, for a reward, he picked me up and put put me in the cockpit.

And I looked at the dials, I was caught and hooked.

No doubt in my mind.

The instrumentation was fascinating.

And that's how I got hooked on aviation from then on out.

You will come to know something special about Jeff.

Once he sets his mind to something, decides to do something, that's it.

It just sticks.

From a one-time encounter with a plane as a kid, he picked a life path and stuck to it.

He went to college in 1938, and by 1939, with war escalating in Europe, the government started training civilians to fly.

Jeff signed up for flight school as quickly as he possibly could.

In July of 1941, at the age of 19, he joined the Navy with the plan of becoming a fighter pilot.

The attack on Pearl Harbor put pilot training on hyperspeed.

With the declaration of war, the military had to turn out aviators in record time, which meant that Jeff barely got 250 hours of flight training before he was shipped out.

No lessons in dog fighting tactics, almost no instruction on how to fire guns.

And we did not have any survival training.

The name of the game was get the bodies out fast, and that's what they did.

Jeff graduated from flight school.

But then he was told the one thing that no fighter pilot wants to hear.

The Navy needs needs you to fly reconnaissance aircraft.

They were going to make a P-boat pilot out of me and I didn't want it.

I wanted fighters.

So Jeff transferred to the Marines.

There, he could be a fighter pilot.

In the summer of 1942, he was commissioned a second lieutenant in the Marine Corps Reserve.

His airplane would be the F-4F Wildcat.

rugged and easy to maneuver with six machine guns mounted on the wings.

It had a flying range of several hundred miles, but any dog fighting would burn fuel quickly.

You could strap on an extra 50 gallon fuel tank, but that tended to have problems, including making the plane more difficult to fly and easier to blow up.

Jeff couldn't wait to start flying wildcats, but he hadn't trained in them at all.

Before he fought in one for the first time, he had only flown a wildcat for nine hours.

Almost nothing.

He would have to turn that nothing into something pretty fast because he was shipping out to the Solomon Islands, specifically Guadalcanal.

We've talked about Guadalcanal before on this show.

Last season we told the story of Doug Monroe, the Coast Guard signalman who died during one of the early battles there.

In the months after Pearl Harbor, the Japanese Empire had gained footholds throughout the Pacific, the Philippines, eastern China, Singapore, New Guinea, and more.

Their goal was to move eastward, to threaten Hawaii, and southward, to cut off Australia from the rest of the Allied forces.

The Allies were going to have to stop them if there was any hope of winning the war.

So the Allies set their sights on the Solomons, a chain of more than 900 islands scattered over 11,000 square miles in the South Pacific.

In 1942, they invaded Guadacana, the biggest of the islands where the Japanese had carved out an airfield.

The Allies captured the airfield, dug in, and used it as a staging ground to take on the enemy.

This is the airfield on the island of Guadalcanal in the Solomons, for the possession of which so much heavy fighting has taken place.

In American hands, it's become a vitally important base from which to bomb Japanese warships and convoys.

Fighter pilots and Wildcats would escort dive bombers as they went to strife the Japanese.

The Wildcats would take on these Japanese float planes and fighter jets so that the bombers could get close to their targets.

You couldn't send out bombers without the Wildcats.

They needed that protection if they were going to get to their targets and get home safely.

These aerial missions were inherently dangerous.

An estimated 420 American pilots would eventually lose their lives in the skies over the Solomons.

And so in November of 42, Three months after the start of this campaign, Jeff arrived in Guadalcanal.

The terrain of the Solomon Islands reminded him of Louisiana.

The relentless heat, the mosquitoes, none of that was new to him.

He was, as ever, completely calm, full of hope, and a kind of giddy, youthful faith.

He told himself, I could survive here if I had to.

And soon enough, he would put that theory to the test.

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The months passed and the Battle of Guadacanal ground on.

The U.S.

troops still only held the airfield, while the Japanese were elsewhere on the island and on bases scattered throughout the Solomons.

Both sides had lost thousands of men, and yet as the years slowly turned to 1943, it seemed that neither would budge.

On the afternoon of January 31st, Jeff was given a mission.

Word came down from fighter command that a Japanese invasion fleet was coming down with ships to probably reinforce Guadalcanal for the final fight.

So they scrambled us eight fighter pilots to go up there to escort 12 dive bombers to hit Japanese destroyers and ships that were in the Colombangara area and Vela Lavela, 250 miles out.

Now that's beyond the range of the Wildcat.

So we had to strap on a wing tank of 50 gallons to make it.

That 50 gallon tank of fuel was going to be the difference between the fighter pilots making it all the way out to the fight and back to the base, or potentially having to bail out of their aircraft somewhere over the ocean, fuel tanks on empty.

But it was also a liability.

Jeff, as usual, was unfazed.

He strapped on a watch he had just bought on leave a few weeks before.

It was already a prized possession.

He was really proud of it and curious to see how it would do in the altitude.

He climbed into his plane and fired up the engine.

The eight fighters and 12 bombers set out.

Jeff was in the lead.

It was 3 p.m.

when they took to the skies.

Fairly shortly, Jeff realized that things were going sideways.

It was about 100 miles out.

I'd already used my 50 gallons and the main tank was not full.

I was using gas like mad.

There was a leak somewhere.

I don't know where it was, but I knew that I would never make it back.

Something was up with the tank.

And not just his.

He watched as two of the other fighter pilots peeled off and returned to base.

Two guys must have had the same trouble because they turned back.

So they left six of us to do the job of protecting the dive bombers.

Now we needed all the guns we could get up there.

to protect the dive bombers or else they were dead ducks.

The bombers desperately needed the wildcats to keep them safe and to fend off the Japanese attack that was sure to come.

Jeff knew that when they got to the bombing site, he would most likely be engaged in a dogfight.

Every evasive action he would take would cost him more precious fuel.

Nevertheless, he made a decision.

He would stay and fight no matter the cost.

Now, I'm not a brave man, but I have to live with myself.

If I quit now, that would be one less fighter pilot to go up here.

So I decided to keep going.

As the convoy reached the target area, the dive bombers descended, circling for marks.

But Jeff realized they were no longer alone.

Two Japanese floatplanes appeared from above, diving down towards the American bombers.

Jeff had the advantage of altitude.

He saw them, but they didn't see him.

He lowered his Wildcat and got the rear float plane in his sights.

He let out a burst of gunfire, a direct hit.

He watched as the aircraft went into a spiral and exploded.

Then he settled behind the next one, right in the Japanese pilot's blind spot.

He opened fire again.

The float plane climbed into the sky and shattered into a flash of light.

Jeff and his wingman Sergeant James Felloton climbed higher, searching for a safer altitude.

But then they saw it.

A swarm of Japanese fighter planes heading straight for them.

Jeff swung his wildcat below the group of enemy planes, shooting at the lead fighter.

That plane caught fire, but escaped.

Another Japanese pilot spiraled up from the pack, trying to figure out what was happening.

Jeff followed.

Right on his tail, he got the fighter in his sight and picked it off.

But now he and Felton had the attention of the whole group of Japanese pilots.

They were completely outnumbered.

So the two Americans turned their wildcats towards each other, weaving back and forth, covering each other's tails.

Then Felton swung too wide and came straight into the crosshairs of one of the Japanese guns.

Felaton took a hit to his engine.

His plane started streaming black smoke.

He had no choice but to bail out, parachute into the ocean below.

The rest of the Japanese fighters scattered.

For a moment, the sky was clear of the enemy.

The sun was setting, and the window to return home and land safely was quickly disappearing.

The American dive bombers assembled in formation.

They had done their job.

It was time to return to base.

Jeff glanced at his fuel gauge, and what he saw made his stomach turn.

The dogfight had depleted his fuel even further.

But he might have enough to make it close to Guadalcanal, close to where someone could find him, rescue him, if he had to bail out.

He was ready to head back when he noticed something out of the corner of his eye.

Two enemy fighters on his tail.

If he stopped to engage them, he would never make it back to safety.

But he had to draw them away from the American bombers.

That was what he had been sent on a mission to do.

Out of fuel, thousands of feet in the air, ocean and jungle islands beneath him, and a choice to make.

Well, after all, he told himself, he'd grown up in the Louisiana swamps.

He wasn't afraid of the jungle.

I figured I knew enough about survival, so I wasn't trained for it, but I was born and reared here in this chapel bishop that I could survive if I hit the islands.

So he decided, once again, to stay.

He watched as the American bombers disappeared over the horizon to Guadalcanal and safety.

And then he climbed higher to attack the two enemy planes head-on.

They closed the space in a heartbeat.

He fired.

The first Japanese plane caught fire, but it wasn't going down.

Jeff realized the pilot planned to fly his burning fighter right into Jeff's Wildcat.

This guy was sharp.

He knew he was dead.

He caught fire and he was going to ram me.

Is he coming straight toward me?

It's still on fire.

So I held the trigger down.

He exploded, and I flew through to pieces.

Debris flew past him, hitting Jeff's plane, but his engine was still running.

His wildcat was still flying.

And as far as he could tell, there was just one fighter left.

He banked sharply to get on the tail of the second fighter plane as it sped by.

But the pilot had guessed his plan and pulled up high above him.

Then he came down straight towards Jeff.

When I saw him coming down down on me,

he was picking up speed and he was too anxious for the kill.

You get too anxious.

You've seen birds that way or animals get too anxious to kill.

They anticipate and they caught themselves.

So he was coming down so fast that he didn't realize he was overtaking me.

The normally the reaction would be, let me get out of here and press and see if I can pick up more speed and run away from him.

That's your normal way of trying to preserve your life.

Run away, but not in the fighter plane.

Instead of trying to run away, I chopped the throttle which slowed me up then i skidded so he couldn't stay on my tail in effect jeff slammed on the brakes trying to force the japanese pilot to overshoot him it worked the two pilots locked eyes wingtip to wingtip and we looked at each other then i knew and he knew that he was a dead man

it was a moment that would stay with Jeff forever.

That tension between seeing your adversary, acknowledging his humanity, and knowing what you were about to do to him.

And yet, his conscience was clean.

A lot of pilots rationalize.

We don't shoot down or kill men.

We just shoot down airplanes.

You know, that's a shield to take away the idea of having killed somebody.

It doesn't work that way.

You either kill or you be killed.

Okay?

And

you have no remorse for for the enemy.

He's out to kill you.

So the name of the game is you kill him before he kills you.

Jeff fired, and the Japanese pilot's plane exploded.

For the first time in hours, Jeff seemed to be out of harm's way.

I figured I had it made.

Let me go home, try to survive.

And while I'm doing that, the sun is setting.

He glanced at his watch.

It was 6 p.m.

It would be dark soon.

And that's when I got hit.

The first bullet came through over my left shoulder and took my watch off my wrist.

He hadn't seen the new fighter planes behind him, but now they were lighting up his wildcat with bullets.

The instrument panel burst into flames.

The engine lost power.

His plane was disintegrating.

As Jeff looked frantically around, he saw another fighter bank to take a run at him.

He was a dead man.

So I got out of there like a tall dog because the bullets were setting everything on fire and hitting the armor plate and everything else.

But I was lucky I was having a few shrapnel cuts, but I didn't realize it then.

But the adrenaline was flowing so fast that I didn't even feel I was hurt.

The only thing left to do was bail out.

He was about 3,000 feet, somewhere over the western Solomon Islands.

So I jumped out, trailing for the edge of the wing, and pulled a rip cord and

flowing through the air was beautiful.

Like I said, this is one extremely unflappable man.

Man, that was the most sensational thing I ever did in my life.

And it was outstanding.

But then he hit the water harder than he'd anticipated.

His gun, canteen, and extra shells were ripped away from him.

He managed to inflate his life jacket.

When he broke the surface of the water, he could see shoreline ahead of him, but the current was sweeping him out to sea.

Jeff knew he was bleeding, and he knew there were sharks.

All aviators at the time were given chlorine pills to break into the water to keep sharks away, so Jeff broke his as he swam and swam

and swam.

It would take six hours of swimming for Jeff to reach shore.

Dusk settling into full darkness, the stars coming out, and an unknowable amount of swimming left to do.

But he kept going.

Finally, he reached the shore.

He pulled himself up on the sand, tore off his life jacket, and ran across the beach to the underbrush.

It might have been dark, but he knew the Japanese had a base on this island.

He had seen it from the sky.

He was in enemy territory now.

I knew enough to get off the beach and cover up my tracks and I fell asleep right there.

For the moment, he could rest.

Kind of like a worn-out kid, Jeff could sleep pretty much anywhere.

This place was Kalambungara Island.

That night, he found peace.

But what awaited him on the island was every bit as dangerous as anything in the sky.

Jeff DeBlanc woke up to the feeling of rain.

He ached all over.

He had a backpack with the basic survival kit, so he dressed his wounds as best as he could and had a bite of chocolate from his pack.

He had no idea where to go, or if the Allies knew he was still alive.

He was pretty sure the Japanese did.

One of the pilots had circled him as he was parachuting down.

I had to figure, well, I'm in enemy territory and I know they're looking for me because the man circled me and they shot me down, so they're looking for me definitely.

Yet somehow Jeff was convinced that he could survive in the jungle, maybe Maybe even steal a plane off the Japanese base and get home.

He started to trek inland.

He had a knife in his pack and he walked with it out in front of him.

The vegetation was so thick, he found it easier to climb into the trees moving above ground from one to the next.

The second night he fell asleep, this time in a tree.

even though his wounds had started to bother him.

The following morning, he spotted a grass hut in a small clearing.

It had a straw sleeping mat inside, and Jeff gathered coconuts from the trees and rainwater from where it had pulled on massive leaves.

While exploring the jungle, he found a downed Allied fighter jet swarming with flies.

He saw that the machine guns had been removed, and he shuddered.

Had the Japanese been there?

But then he saw bare footprints surrounding the wreckage.

He knew what that meant.

One of the local indigenous tribes must must live close by.

Because the Solomon Islands were populated, of course, by people who lived there for thousands of years.

Some Melanesians, some Polynesians.

In fact, more than 80 different languages are spoken by the peoples of the Solomons, making it one of the Pacific's most diverse countries in terms of language and ethnicity.

Jeff had known he wasn't alone.

Not really, but he didn't know if these islanders would be happy to see him.

He didn't count on it.

He gauged his safety by listening to the birds outside his hut.

As long as they were singing, he told himself, he was alone.

If the birds are singing, everything is right.

I know that from the swamps.

It's all over the world that way.

The birds are singing, fine.

He spent a night in the little hut, and then another and another.

listening to the bird song, tending to his wounds, staying his same hopeful self.

And then he woke one morning and said something had shifted.

The birds stopped singing.

What does that tell you?

It tells you in trouble.

Something is out there.

He grabbed his knife and walked to the door of the hut.

A young islander stood there, about five foot two.

He was grinning.

Now, why should he be grinning?

I'm taller than he is.

I have a knife.

He has a machete.

I can can throw a knife.

I don't have to fight him hand to hand.

But there's some reason for him to be grinning.

And when I stepped out that hut, four or five others were right there with machetes.

Oh, Jeff thought.

That's why he was grinning.

Jeff was totally outnumbered.

He dropped his knife.

But he wasn't exactly stressed.

He wasn't an anxious guy.

Just in his 21-year-old, not particularly sophisticated way, he was a little worried that they might eat him.

I could see myself in the pot.

Yeah, right.

The men moved Jeff through the jungle to the water's edge.

An outrigger canoe was waiting there, and they motioned for him to get inside.

When they put me in the 12-man outrigger, then I knew they were going to trade me to the Japanese because they weren't friendly.

They punched me and if I'd moved, they'd stick me with a knife, which means don't move.

And I got the message in a hurry.

They paddled along the shoreline for hours.

Towards a village, towards the Japanese base.

Jeff had no way of knowing.

Finally, they stopped and motioned Jeff out of the canoe.

He followed them to a village, where they put him in a bamboo cage with two guards set outside.

Jeff waited.

Even to unflappable Jeff, this was starting to seem pretty bad.

Then six more islanders entered the village.

One of them was carrying a sack.

When he walked into that compound, you could tell he had authority.

He had a 10-pound sack of rice, which he put down at the feet of the men who held me.

They let me go and I quickly joined him and we all took off, heading out of the jungles towards another village.

Jeff wasn't sure what was happening, but he knew one thing.

He had been traded for a sack of rice.

When he threw that 10-pound sack of rice down, I knew exactly how much I'm worth.

A 10-pound sack of rice, that's the value of my life.

The new group of men walked for an hour without exchanging a word.

And then the leader turned to Jeff and spoke to him in Pidgin, a dialect close enough to English that Jeff could understand.

They weren't taking Jeff to be sold to the Japanese, he said.

They were rescuing him.

Unbeknownst to Jeff, a network of Coast Watchers had been hunting for him every bit as hard as the Japanese had.

The Coast Watchers were largely British and Australian men, mostly civilians who had stayed in the Solomons after the Japanese invasion.

Now they worked as Allied spies, hiding in the jungles to report on enemy activities.

Islanders had been helping the Allied forces since the start of the war as well, working as guides, providing valuable intelligence, leading down pilots like Jeff through the jungle to safety, often passing within inches of the enemy.

They were the primary communication link between the Coast Watchers.

They were also targets of the Japanese.

That was the reason Jeff had been kept in a cage in that first village.

Japanese planes had circuit each village.

They were looking for me.

And if they see a white man in the village, they strafe the village.

and bomb it regardless of the natives.

That man who had traded Jeff for the sack of rice was named Ati Lodukolo.

He was tasked with bringing Jeff miles across the Kalabangara Island, across the sea, and onto the next largest island, which was called Vela La Vela.

From there, they could arrange for the allies to pick Jeff up, but they would have to get there first.

So we went to another village, and I was a chief there.

I'm stripped to the waist and everything else.

I have my Marine Corps buckle there.

The chief grabs my buckle.

The intelligence officer said, if any native takes something from you, you take something from them as protocol.

When he grabbed that buckle, I grabbed that spear that he had.

Well, we traded, in other words.

He nodded, and I nodded, and I walked off with the spear.

Jeff held tightly to that spear as he and Ati traveled on.

They reached another 12-man outrigger canoe.

They paddled in the darkness through a rainstorm with nothing but the tides to guide them.

Then daylight and into another canoe.

This time, Ati made Jeff lie on the bottom and covered him with palm fronds.

Being spotted by the Japanese would have meant death to them all.

They paddled on, swiftly, quietly, until finally, they reached Vela La Vela.

So they've took the palm fronds off of me.

Jeff blinked and looked out from the canoe.

I see a big red born.

and I see a white man coming down with three natives.

And he spoke Oxford English and said to me, Lieutenant de Blanc, and he didn't miss it at de blanc or this or that.

He came out in perfect French.

It was Reverend A.W.E.

Sylvester, a New Zealand missionary who had refused to evacuate the islands after the Japanese invasion.

He was a coast watcher too.

That's how he knew who Jeff was.

In fact, Sylvester himself had only survived the Japanese invasion because the Solomon Islanders had led him to safety, just as they had helped Jeff and the other stranded allies.

Here's Sylvester speaking to an interviewer about it back in 1945.

I certainly owe my life to the natives.

One of my native teachers came and gave me the warning, and all my decisions regarding evacuation were made on their information.

We never made a mistake.

Through the services of the natives, the total number of people we evacuated were 254 from our island.

Jeff couldn't have known it, but his route from Ati to Sylvester to safety was one that the Coast Watchers and the Islanders had been perfecting for months.

He had fallen into just the right place.

Sylvester welcomed Jeff into his home, where Jeff unsurprisingly slept like a log.

He also got a piece of welcome news.

His wingman, Felaton, had survived as well.

Wounded, ribs broken, but alive.

The following day was a Sunday, and the men were having a leisurely British cup of tea when an islander ran up and whispered something in Sylvester's ear.

The minister put down his teacup.

He said, well, we'll have to have Mass now, and then after Mass, you're going to have to leave.

I said, why?

He said, the Japanese are coming in.

He said, I know you're Catholic and this is a Church of England, which is not the same denomination, Protestant, but I said, please, I'll be on the first seat seat in the first row.

And so, in the middle of the jungle with the Japanese on their way, the group gathered and prayed.

Then Jeff, Ati, and a few other islanders booked it out.

They wound up trekking for miles, finally reaching the village where Feloton had been hidden.

Safety started to feel closer.

But the two Marines would have to wait until an American rescue mission could be organized to take them back to Guadalcanal.

Guadalcanal.

Two Coast Watchers invited Jeff to hike to their secret outpost in the mountains, where he saw Japanese planes take off and land from nearby bases.

Only then did he understand the extraordinary work these hidden Ally spies had done and what risk they had taken to save Americans whenever they fell.

On February 12, 1943, three days before Jeff's 22nd birthday, planes left Guadalcanal to pick up Jeff and his wingman.

They were taken offshore in a canoe.

Ati rode with them, safeguarding them until the end.

The rescue plane landed, escorted by fighter pilots, within sight of three Japanese airfields.

They picked us up on the run.

Ati was the one who brought me back through the P-boat.

It's made to land on the water to pick up things.

So they landed on the water, but didn't cut the engines.

I threw my spear in there first and then jumped in after them.

The men on board had risked their lives to get Jeff and Felaton, just as Ati had.

The P-boat took off, headed to Guadalcanal, and Jeff finally exhaled.

I knew I was safe.

He had lived with this decision to not turn back, to stay and fight.

And he had also lived.

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Jeff went on to serve a few more months in the Solomons.

When he returned home on leave, his little town presented him with a watch to replace the one that had been blown off his wrist.

He was awarded the Navy Cross for his actions in the skies that last day of January 1943.

He volunteered for active service again.

He flew missions during the Battle of Okinawa.

He touched down in Japan after the war ended, curious to see what the country looked like.

But he was ready to return home, specifically to Louise Barard, his high school sweetheart.

He had known her since she was the star forward of the championship girls basketball team, a dark-haired beauty with a sweet smile.

They got married.

Jeff went to college and then in December of 1946, he got a call.

He was told that he was going back into active duty.

He couldn't understand it.

Why?

He has served his country.

He was a reservist.

What active duty was he even going back to?

I said, what?

I'm a reserve.

I don't go back.

He said, this is to come to Washington to get the Medal of Honor.

He said, you got to be joking.

I said, send it to me in writing.

And they did it.

So they put him on active duty to go back.

It wouldn't cost me anything.

Yep, they put him on active duty so that he wouldn't have to pay for the trip.

Anyways, he and Louise went to Washington and President Harry Truman gave Jeff his Medal of Honor at the White House.

Jeff went on to stay in the Marines as a reservist until 1972.

He and Louise had five children, a girl and four boys.

Jeff got advanced degrees in science and mathematics.

He became a teacher.

He taught middle middle and high school kids.

And then he went back to the Solomon Islands four times.

The first was in 1992, for the 50th anniversary of Guadalcanal.

He went up in a plane, this time flown by someone else, and peered down over Kalambangara Island, searching for the hut where he had hidden out so many decades before.

And then in 2000, he flew to Vela La Vela to be reunited with Ati Lotucolo, the man who had guided him on his treacherous path to safety.

Jeff was taken by boat to Ati's village, where his former guide, now in his 90s, was waiting.

The two hugged.

They ate dinner together.

They exchanged gifts.

57 years had passed since they had met in the jungle, since Ati saved Jeff's life.

Jeff had never forgotten his bravery or his kindness.

Or of course, that 10-pound bag of rice.

Jeff DeBlanc died in 2007 at the age of 86.

The spear he traded his belt buckle for now sits in the World War II Museum in New Orleans, Louisiana.

Even at the end of his life, When asked about the Medal of Honor and his actions on January 31st, 1943, Jeff brought everything back to one thing.

Not heroism, not bravery, but personal accountability.

I could have easily turned back and nobody would have questioned it because two guys did already.

But I would have to live with myself

because no doubt in my mind, a lot of those bombers would not have returned and that would be a part that I would have to be accountable for.

And I don't like that.

The kind of accountability Jeff is talking about isn't expectations from others or a job description.

It's a personal ethos.

It's the feeling of being sure what your values are and the determination to stick to those values no matter the cost.

Some might call it a conscience, that little voice inside your head.

That little voice told Jeff that if he turned back and abandoned his mission, he'd be turning back to a life he wouldn't want to lead.

So he stayed and protected those bombers, even when he knew he might never make it home.

I think that's why Jeff felt such peace when he found himself falling thousands of feet through the air, the empty ocean rising up to meet him, seeing this glorious beauty in the fall with a conscience as light as a feather.

Medal of Honor, Stories of Courage is written by Meredith Rollins and produced by Meredith Rollins, Jess Shane, and Suzanne Gabber.

Our editor is Ben Nadaf Hoffrey.

Sound design and additional music by Jake Gorski.

Our executive producer is Constanza Gallardo.

Fact-checking by Arthur Gompertz.

Original music by Eric Phillips.

The rest of the team includes Carl Cadel, Greta Cohn, Christina Sullivan, Sarah Nix, Nicole Oppendos, Eric Sandler, Morgan Ratner, Jordan McMillan, Kira Posey, Owen Miller, Amy Haggerdorn, and Jake Flanagan.

Special thanks to the series creator Dan McGinn, to the Congressional Medal of Honor Society, and to Inja Ta'anga, the audiovisual archive of Atiorora, New Zealand.

If you want to learn more about this story, take a look at our show notes, where we have some of the resources we use to put together this episode, including a book by the man himself, Jefferson DeBlanc.

We also want to hear from you.

Send us your personal story of courage or highlight someone else's bravery.

Email us at medalofhonor at pushkin.fm.

You might hear your stories on future episodes of Medal of Honor or see them on our social channels at pushkin pods.

I'm your host, J.R.

Martinez.

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