From Lifeguard to Lifesaver

Life in his hometown of Atlantic City, New Jersey, was nearly perfect for teenager Charles Natter. The popular student at Atlantic City High School was captain of both the swim team and the football squad, and he always seemed to make a splash with the opposite sex. “We were young guys chasing girls and thinking about girls,” said his close friend John Stinson.¹ 

On most summer days, Natter headed to his lifeguard post at the city’s beaches, where he never hesitated to charge into the surf to wrest a swimmer from the ocean’s pull. The high school student was known to ignore every hazard to rescue someone in need.

One day after his 24 June 1943 graduation, Natter joined the Navy. He wrote to his parents from the Bainbridge Training Station in Maryland: “I just saw our next week’s schedule of musts and boy we are going to have another busy week a fifteen-mile hike and a lot of other stuff. That’s only the musts the rest of the time we drill and drill.”² 

He and the other recruits pored over information in The Bluejackets’ Manual, the legendary guide they called “the sailor’s bible.” The section about sharks in particular caught Natter’s attention: “Splashing with an oar or striking at it will usually drive a shark away. The tenderest spot in a shark is the end of his nose. His gills come next.”³ He hoped he would never have occasion to test that advice.

After Bainbridge, the young sailor became a signalman third class and was posted to a new destroyer escort. “At Last! Ya believe it or not I finally got a crew,” he wrote home in March 1944. “I am now a member of the D.E. crew. My ship will be the Samuel B. Roberts DE 413.”⁴

Duty in a Destroyer Escort

With Lieutenant Commander Robert W. Copeland as her skipper, the Samuel B. Roberts entered the war zone in time to participate in the 1944 assault on the Philippine Islands. Signalman Third Class Natter took his station above the bridge to read or send messages by flag or light. He loved his post in the open air and felt sorry for shipmates sweating in the engine and fire compartments below.

The destroyer escort arrived on station 50 miles east of Samar, an island in the eastern Philippines, on 18 October. Part of an antisubmarine and antiaircraft screen for Rear Admiral Clifton A. F. Sprague’s Task Unit 77.4.3—six escort carriers and their screen of seven destroyers and destroyer escorts—the Samuel B. Roberts guarded the carriers while they launched aircraft in support of General Douglas Mac-Arthur’s forces on Leyte. Three units—Taffy 1, Taffy 2, and Taffy 3—formed circles 50 miles apart off Samar’s eastern coast, with Copeland’s DE screening in the northern group as part of Sprague’s Taffy 3. 

Admiral Soemu Toyoda, commander-in-chief of the Japanese Combined Fleet, had devised an intricate plan to repel the invaders. Called Sho-1, three separate fleets would converge on U.S. forces under MacArthur at Leyte Gulf. While one arm lured Admiral William F. Halsey’s powerful Third Fleet northward from the Philippines, and a second attacked from the south via Surigao Strait, the real punch would come from Vice Admiral Takeo Kurita’s Center Force, arriving from north of Leyte Gulf, through the area that Halsey will have vacated. 

Kurita’s 23 warships included the world’s largest and most feared battleships, the Yamato and Musashi. His force was to rush through San Bernardino Strait, turn south, and descend on Leyte Gulf, unknowingly along a path that would take it directly toward the Roberts—and Signalman Natter.

The Path Cleared to Leyte Gulf

The Center Force, minus the Musashi, which U.S. carrier planes sank on 24 October, entered San Bernardino Strait near midnight on 25 October. When the Japanese ships exited to find Halsey gone and their path cleared to Leyte Gulf, Kurita turned them south with every expectation of success. 

Around 0700, a cluster of ships dotted the horizon 8 to 12 miles north of Taffy 3. Many assumed the vessels were from the Third Fleet, but Sprague knew better. Sensing his desperate predicament, the admiral believed the Japanese would detach a few cruisers to dispatch his 13 lightly armed ships, while the rest of the enemy vessels continued toward the gulf. And he concluded that, at best, he would be in the water fighting for his life within 15 minutes. 

Kurita attempted to box in Taffy 3 by dispatching his cruiser columns to the flanks while his battleships attacked in the middle. Opposing ships hurled shells at one another, with the Samuel B. Roberts coughing tiny 5-inch projectiles at enemy guns that thundered back 18-inch and 8-inch shells. Natter tried to concentrate on his task atop the bridge, but the panorama of destruction unfolding before him made focusing difficult. 

Thirty minutes into the fighting, Copeland received an unexpected order from Sprague: His small DE was to charge the behemoths heading his way. Natter listened as Copeland—in a slightly nervous voice—informed his crew over his ship’s loudspeaker that, along with the destroyers Heermann (DD-532) and Hoel (DD-533), they would race directly toward the Japanese cruisers. Copeland confided that they were now engaging in “a fight against overwhelming odds from which survival could not be expected, during which time we would do what damage we could.”⁵ 

As the Roberts sliced through the water, Natter had a front-row seat to one of the most awesome spectacles of the war: the Japanese battleships drawing closer on the horizon, other enemy units zigzagging to the east and the west to close the trap, and Sprague’s carriers hurrying to the southeast, desperately attempting to escape. Bursts of flame belched from Japanese guns, followed moments later by shell splashes erupting uncomfortably close to Natter’s station at the bridge. Already, he noticed, the enemy had found the Hoel and was raining shells on the stricken ship.

To Swat the Little Ship Away 

From point-blank range, the Japanese cruiser Chikuma, which weighed 12 times more than the diminutive Samuel B. Roberts, trained two of her 8-inch gun turrets on the destroyer escort, fully intending to swat the little ship away with a few rounds before again focusing all her might on the carriers. Copeland wove his ship through water plumes and chased salvos in an effort to remain afloat. 

On the signal bridge, Natter watched the enemy guns turn slowly toward his little ship. He maintained the same calm demeanor he had displayed at Atlantic City’s beaches. But back home he could at least take action. Off the Philippines, he could only wait for those mammoth shells to find his ship. Salvos of 8-inch shells landed close on the DE’s port side, and the battleship Kongo—booming 14-inch shells from 10,000 yards out—kicked up massive splashes 50 yards astern.

Shortly before 0900, three 8-inch shells smacked broadside into the outgunned Roberts. For the next 15 minutes, from ranges as close as 4,000 yards, Japanese ships pumped at least 20 shells of various calibers into her, lifting the ship’s bow out of the water, knocking Natter off-stride, and convulsing the ship. 

At that moment, the war became personal for Natter. Every Japanese gun seemed to be aimed at him. Shrapnel sprayed the signal bridge, wounding both Natter and Signalman First Class Oran R. Chambless. Japanese destroyers, sensing a kill, darted through the middle of the formation pumping shells into the port side of the disabled Roberts. 

Into the Water

Copeland had no choice but to issue the order to abandon ship. As men scrambled through the carnage to reach the sides, Lieutenant Tom Stevenson, the communications officer, and Natter, who volunteered to accompany him, plunged below decks to retrieve secret documents from a safe. The two stepped below to a passageway dimly lit by battle lights and inched to the room containing the safe. “God, I’m going to die down here,” thought Stevenson.⁶ Once the lieutenant opened the safe, he and Natter each grabbed two bags of documents, returned to the main deck, placed weights in the bags, and threw them overboard. 

Now on deck, Natter refused to leave the sinking ship so he could help the wounded don life jackets and assist them into the water. When every injured sailor was overboard, Natter, bleeding from his shrapnel wounds, walked to the side and leaped into the sea. 

After abandoning the Roberts, depending on which portion of the ship they left, the crew swam to one of two rafts. Attached to each were floater nets 20 square feet in size, consisting of small buoyant circular discs joined by interlaced manila line, onto which the men held.

Sixteen men, trapped by fires, left from the fantail. They had tossed into the water wooden planks normally used as scaffolding and clutched the flimsy material as waves lashed their faces. Depending on the ocean’s whims, they floated 100 to 300 yards from Copeland’s raft. Natter left the netting and began swimming to the aid of those shipmates. The ocean swells that nudged him backward made 50 yards of advance seem like 100. 

Depending on which account one consults, he swam to the planking and returned to the net, bringing back shipmates, six to eight times, in each instance risking his own life to drowning or the sharks he knew lurked out of sight below. After a brief rest at the netting, back he went to save yet another shipmate.

Snatched Away by a Shark

During his final rescue attempt, Natter arrived at the planking and started talking to his friend, Signalman Third Class Tom Mazura, hanging next to him on a thin piece of wood. A shark materialized, grabbed Mazura, and dragged him away, cutting short the sailor’s screams by yanking him beneath the surface. Three minutes later, another shark, drawn to the area by the scent of Mazura’s blood, snatched Natter from the planking and pulled him underwater as well. Neither Copeland nor any other survivor ever saw the heroic signalman again.

Back home, Natter’s parents, Charles Francis and Lillian M. Natter, worried. Their son had mailed them updates religiously, but they suddenly had stopped. News of the large naval clash off the Philippines heightened their concern, but they still had learned nothing of their son by the first week in November. “We are into the 4th week since we heard from you,” his father wrote. The elder Natter ended this letter—which was later returned unopened and stamped “Returned to Sender, Unclaimed”—by stating, “We sure miss you a lot.”⁷

The government finally released details of the Battle off Samar on 18 November. Newspaper articles based on the information included the sentence, “Finally two destroyers and one destroyer escort charged the Jap battleships—and went down with their guns blazing.” The article added, “This tiny force saved the day[,]” as the Japanese “turned and ran.” To the consternation of Natter’s father, the communiqué listed the names of the lost ships, including the Samuel B. Roberts, but failed to divulge the fates of the crews.⁸

‘Missing . . . in the Service of His Country’ 

A 19 November telegram from the Navy Department delivered the tragic news: “Your son Charles William Natter Signalman Third Class USNR is missing following action while in the service of his country.”⁹ The communication diminished their hopes for Charles’ safety but left open the possibility that he was still alive.

A lengthy letter from Lieutenant Commander Copeland confirmed their worst fears. The officer wrote that “your son, being a signalman and stationed on the bridge where I spent a very great deal of my time was particularly well known to me. . . . I had the most intimate and personal knowledge of his unselfish heroism and self sacrifice.” 

Copeland praised Natter for remaining on board the sinking ship to assist the wounded, but reserved his highest tribute for his actions in the water. “After a few of us had reached a life net, and most of us were completely exhausted, Charles, who had apparently more stamina than most, and certainly a highest sense of self sacrifice, swam out many times in the turbulent waters to rescue and bring back men, both wounded and exhausted, who but for his assistance would have most certainly been lost.” After rescuing six to eight shipmates, Natter “was too weakened to make it back.”¹⁰ Copeland, who knew from a separate survivor from the plankings that sharks had dragged away the signalman, preferred to couch his description for the bereaved parents in more gentle terms.

News of Charles Natter’s heroics surprised no one in Atlantic City. High school friend Alyce Roppelt Lewis said: “He went to rescue someone in shark-infested waters. I’m not surprised he did that. He would help anybody that he could. That was Charles being Charles.” The city’s mayor sent a letter to his parents, stating, “The Commissioners and myself are trying to tell you that we, and the City, are proud of the gallantry of your son.”¹¹

Charles and Lillian Natter were devastated by their son’s death. Natter’s father wrote Charlie’s younger brother, William: “It is just a knock out. Mother’s nights are the worst.”¹² The senior Charles Natter frequently walked to the beach where, alone with his memories, he stared seaward as tears coursed down his face. For the rest of their lives, the Natters never removed the photograph of their son in his Navy uniform from the living room table.

For his heroics, Charles Natter received a Navy and Marine Corps Medal, and members of the Veterans of Foreign Wars in Atlantic City renamed their post after Charles William Natter.

The highest compliment, though, came from Copeland, who ended his letter to the Natters with powerful words: 

Charles’ conduct was in every way a credit to him and to his family. Great though your sense of loss and grief must be, greater yet should be your pride, that if your son’s allotted time had run out, that to the very end he was a man, worthy of the highest respect and cherished to the memories of those who served with him by his gallant and heroic conduct.¹³