Marmur, Jacland "Decision on the Beach"

Marmur's tale of one man's ultimate redemption is set in the late 1950s with a crucial flashback to World War 2 in the Pacific. His protagonist is Peter Ringat, Chief Officer of the San Francisco-based freighter BALLARDINE. Marmur opens his story by introducing a drunken Ringat making a scene in a San Francisco waterfront dive, a condition not atypical of the officer when in port (Marmur makes it clear from the outset that Ringat never takes a drink while at sea). A flashback to the Second World War finds peacetime merchant mariner Ringat serving as a U.S. Navy junior officer aboard a destroyer sent to pick up an Allied "coast watcher" off a beach located on a Japanese-controlled island leading to the Philippines. Ringat is detailed to take a whaleboat in, which he does successfully. However once on the beach and after the coast watcher has been found, patrolling hidden Japanese soldiers attack the Navy detail. One member of his crew is pinned down in the dense beach undergrowth and Ringat is forced to make the decision to abandon the man to the Japanese in order to save a coast watcher who has information of strategic importance for the looming invasion of Leyte. The abandoned man is killed, and Ringat is so haunted by this over the years that he turns to drink. Marmur's story reaches a climax with the BALLARDINE now back at sea in mid-Pacific. In the midst of a terrific storm the freighter comes upon a sinking sailing schooner and Ringat makes a heroic effort to rescue all of the ship's crew. It transpires that one of Ringat's own men has the same surname (Jensen) as the man Ringat had abandoned in the Philippines and indeed had had a father who'd died in the Pacific. When the younger Jensen is swept overboard during the rescue effort, Ringat gives up his own life to save the man. Whether Jensen was indeed the son of the man abandoned by Ringat is left unclear, but that being said, the thrust of Marmur's narrative is clear: Ringat has paid, with his own life, his self-imposed debt. Marmur's story closes simply and powerfully: "What mortal is there who holds righteousness or virtue deep enough to pronounced judgement on the greater value of one life unlived above another?"