Captain Cousteau, War Hero

A Veteran’s Day salute to French Naval Officer Jacques-Yves Cousteau.

Thanks, Captain Cousteau, for your military service to your nation Jacques-Yves Cousteauand the Allied cause in WWII. 

I loved your 60’s TV series, “The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau.” It gave teenage me and millions of others our first glimpse of ocean depths and mysteries and wonders.

I read once that your childhood passion for swimming helped you as a young man get your strength back from a near fatal car accident, but that you were never expected to have the stamina for diving.

How amazing that you invented the aqualung in 1943, the first SCUBA gear, and perfected an underwater camera so you could film what you saw. Your very first film, 1956, “The Silent World,” won the Palme D’Or at Cannes.

Thanks for your hundreds of other films, for the Cousteau Society, for your successful protest of France’s plans to dump nuclear waste in the Mediterranean, for your continuing legacy.

But long before your TV success and international fame you had a 20-year naval career, 1930-50.  I learned about that in the film I saw recently, “My Father, The Captain,” that your son made, and released on what would have been your 100^th birthday (2010). I now know that several years before you invented the aqualung you used your technological prowess to develop key underwater minesweeping technology, locating and destroying Italian and German mines in the Mediterranean.  Thanks for your bravery.

Thanks also, for the naval intelligence work you did in Japan and China in the late 30’s.  (I think you had returned to France by the time two American intelligence officers came to China in 1943 – Julia Childs, and my father!  Now that’s a trio!)

Every week, Captain Cousteau, I read your words printed on the walls of the fish roundabout at the Monterey Bay Aquarium, “The sea, once it casts its spell, holds one in its net of wonder forever.”

Today I hope we all remember these other wise words of yours: “The sea, the great unifier, is man's only hope. Now, as never before, the old phrase has a literal meaning: we are all in the same boat.”

Copyright © 2017 Deborah Streeter