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Shocked at Britain's prewar policies, Kennedy went back to Harvard, wrote a thesis that, at the suggestion of New York Timesman Arthur Krock, was expanded into a highly praised book called Why England Slept. Three years later, on the night of Aug. 2, 1943, Lieut. John Kennedy, U.S.N.R., found himself at the wheel of PT109, patrolling Blackett Strait in the Solomon Islands. Came the cry "Ship at 2 o'clock"—and in the next instant a Japanese destroyer knifed through the PT boat, hurling Skipper Kennedy to the deck and injuring his back. Expert Swimmer Kennedy saved one of his wounded crewmen by holding a strap of the man's Mae West in his teeth and towing him three miles to a small island. During the next six days, according to his Navy and Marine Corps Medal citation, Kennedy "succeeded in getting his crew ashore and, after swimming many hours attempting to secure food and water, finally effected the rescue of his men."
Kennedy was still in the hospital when he learned that his older brother, Joe Kennedy Jr., had been killed on a bomber raid against German V-2 installations in Normandy (a sister, Kathleen—"Kick"—Kennedy, the Marchioness of Hartington, was killed in an air crash in France in 1948). Invalided out of the Navy, Jack Kennedy hooked up with International News Service, covered the San Francisco founding session of the United Nations and the Potsdam conference—and decided to run for the Massachusetts Eleventh District congressional seat being vacated by indestructible James Michael Curley, who had just been elected mayor of Boston again.
Inept at the Switch. Jack Kennedy, politician, was—and is—a long way from the likes of Pat Kennedy and Honey Fitz, a fact still resented by some of Boston's old Irish types. Says one: "Tell me, who'd he ever get a job for? When did he ever attend a wake? When did he ever get out and rustle food for a poor starving family? Or raise the money for an undertaker?" In fact, Kennedy is even inept at the "Irish Switch," a maneuver that consists of vigorously shaking one person's hand while talking enthusiastically to someone else (Honey Fitz, a true artist, could pump one hand, speak to a second person, and gaze fondly at still another).
Kennedy made up for such handicaps by traipsing tirelessly through the slums of the Eleventh District shaving in back alleys before speaking appearances ("The Kennedy campaign trail," says a friend, "was littered with used razor blades"). And on the night of June 18, 1946, old Honey Fitz climbed onto a table to sing Sweet Adeline in celebration of his grandson's primary victory over eight other Democrats. The general election was a mere formality: Republicans do not get elected in the Eleventh District.