PEORIA — For 11 days in 1942, Boatswains Mate Third Class Jack Scovil floated around the South Pacific on a small life raft. Within a month, the Peoria native lost two ships, one to the Japanese and one to the high seas.Yet, as he floated around the seas off New Caledonia, an island near Australia, Scovil's wit and humor never wavered, as evident from a handwritten journal he kept.The story was largely forgotten until recently when Scovil's nephew, Dick [...]