Destroyer depth charging an enemy sub which was attacking a convoy
Luck was running pretty good for me because our next trip involved an escort back to Frisco, We were also due for some modifications and maintenance. I had recently been promoted to Chief Petty Officer after taking the last test after the war started. I didn't have a chance to tell sweety about the promotion or the trip home so I got to broadside her with a double surprise when I just walked in one shinny afternoon. Ahhhhh, those homecomings still bring back some famn fine memories. My little doll sure knew how to make me feel wanted and needed. She did it excellently in letter form but those face to face ones, well, DAMN.
At the time, I had a pretty squared away group of engineers with the exception of one. What irritated me most about this one was the fact that he was a general screwup and he was a first class. This was not supposed to happen in the Navy. By the time a man made first class he was in 99.9% of the cases one squared away individual. The fact that I had to get in his case and chew his ass on a regular basis grew more of a problem for me as time passed. I had to double check everything he did. After one particular dressing down, he finally spoke up and started rambling on about how bad I was hiding underneath that hat and ordering people around all the time like you think your God or something. POW! He played right into my hands. I took my hat off and told him to meet me on the pier. Now, at the time, I was bout 5'6" and went bout 160 pounds. This idiot was bout 6"2" and went about 225 pounds. We met on the pier and I squared away. He told me he wasn't going to fight me because he would be in serious trouble and he wasn't that stupid. I told him that if he didn't fight me I would without a doubt whoop his ass. I explained to him that I took my hat off which meant that there was no rank involved. He smiled at me and asked :are you sure you want to do this cause I" gonna tear you apart. I told him I didn't see an anchor tied to his ass so lets go. The fight was on. As fights go, it was pretty lopped sided. The man beat the hell outta me but I got my licks in and I kept getting up. I didn't know the XO was watching until he hollered down to me to put that man on report. I told the XO: With all respect sir, this is none of your business so would you mind going into the bridge so we could finish our business down here. I looked back at the 1st class and he was standing with this dumb look on his face staring at me so, I nailed him right in the snot locker with a healthy shot and he dropped. He got back up and continued beating the hell out of me. I kept getting in my shots when I could. Then, we both just quit. I told him to go below, clean up and see me in my quarters. I went down to my quarters and was fixing myself up. The boy had put a serious whooping on me. I was bruised up real good. Out of nowhere, the XO walks in my quarters and tells me he wants that man on report. I told the XO to back up one. I said: first you came into my quarters without knocking. He jumps in and tells me he doesn't have to have permission to enter anybody's quarters. I responded by telling him you need permission to come in mine and you ain't been invited. Then I told him: second, I am not going to write that sailor up even under direct order. The XO was popping a gasket and was just starting to unleash on me when there was a rapping on the door. I was pretty pissed and shot out: who the hell is it? The skippers voice came back and said It's the Captain Chief, mind if I enter. I locked eyes with the XO real hard and told the skipper please do sir with my pleasure. The XO kinda looked like he felt he was on a slick surface. The skipper sat down, sipped his coffee and asked me what was going on. I told him the XO wants me to write this sailor up and I refuse to do so. I took off my hat and I threw the first punch, Sir. The skipper looked at the XO and asked him; So whats the problem here XO? The XO was at a loss for words and the skipper told him he was excused. After he left, the skipper asked me why did I have to pick such a big one. I responded by saying he picked me skipper. I would have appreciated it if he was more my size but thats the hand that I got dealt. He asked me if I was hurt and I told him only my pride, I expected to do a bit better but he's a big un. The skipper left chuckling. Shortly, there was a rap on my door and I stated enter. I was really pleased to see that he had some bumps and bruises on him too. He asked me what now Chief and I said get your ass down to the engines and get to work. He asked me if he was in trouble and I told him not unless he kept screwing up. Then I asked him if he had any questions about who the Chief in the engine room was. He came right back by saying that was one answer he would never forget. I asked him if he was ok and he says hell no, you pack a pretty good punch. From that point on,he busted his buns, asked questions and became a damn fine engineer.
On one of our trips, I found out that my little sweety was going to have a BABY. Hit me like a ton of bricks! I was in a state of shock. In all my years of running around, The thought of a BABY never entered my mind. (TYPICAL MALE) While in this state of shock, I also realized that I was going to be a FATHER! You can bet that I spent a lot of time thinking through this new developement. I believe it was in this time frame that I decided if I was going to have a family, it would in no way resemble the type of family I was reared under. I was going to be a father in the truest sense of the word and I knew that my sweety would make a wonderful mother. That's when the elation and anticipation sstarted to set in for me.
We were making a run between Guam and Pearl Harbor when out of nowhere, I became sea sick in the worst way. Now, I had never been sea sick a day in my life so I figured it had to be something else. It was a bit rough but I had endured much tougher seas in the past. I just spent the day throwing up into everything I could find, except my hat. The next day, everything was fine and back to normal. About two weeks after this incident, I recieved notification through the Red Cross that I was the father of a fine and healthy son. And yes, he was born on the day that I was "sick".
When I also got to see my first born son for the first time. It was quite an experience. I just stood there looking at him. I was afraid to say anything, ya see, because the little fart looked like a Cone Head. Sweety must have picked up on it because she began explaining to me that the doctor said that was natural and that he would outgrow it. Thank God, she was right. The next time I saw him, he was four years old and as cute a kid as you ever did see. He was also a serious pain in my ass ..... but that story comes later.
Well, as I said before, "all good things must come to an end" and they did. We headed for Pearl Harbor again. This time, they sent us to the southwest Pacific and I guess they forgot us. We just kept getting sent from island to island in the MacArthur island hopping campaign. To start off, we were involved in the taking of Eniwetok, Kwajalein and "Bloody Tarawa". Most of our assignments were screening for Japanese submarines.
Sub screening was a particularly harsh duty. You were both hunter and hunted at the same time. Our job was to detect, locate and kill a sub who was attempting to detect, locate and kill us. Everyone aboard was afraid all the time. The only way to deal with the fear was to put it aside, stay busy and do your job. Anyone who ever claims to have served on a surface ship during war time in enemy waters and says he was never afraid is either blowing smoke at you, a fool or a liar. Anytime you are steaming along and suddenly the command "GQ", (General Quarters) man your battle stations was sounded, your heart rate seemed to double, you suffered a massive adrenalin dump and your pucker factor went up about 10 notches. The good thing about working in the engine room during such a drill in reference to your personal fears was that you didn't have time to think. Keeping everything running smoothly during the controlled chaos of dropping depth charges to avoiding an incoming torpedo kept your mind occupied. The down side in the engine room during an attack both mentally and physically was it was indeed one of the worst places to be should the ship take a hit. Every hatch between you and topside was dogged down to keep the individual compartments airtight and getting topside in a hurry was extremrly difficult. Usually the first step in our attack was to fire a pattern of an explosive device referred to as a hedgehog. This was a device that exploded on contact and if it struck a sub, you would see and hear the explosion. We could then set up a run and fire off depth charges from a K gun located both port and starboard while rolling charges off the stern. This action was referred to as bracketing a target.
On one occasion at dawn, the sonarman detected an underway contact and it wasn't a whale. GQ was sounded and in just a few short minutes, all stations were at battle stations. We got on that sucker faster than flies on doo-doo. He knew it and tried to run for it. The sonar boys were to sharp for him. We lined him up on a straight run and fired a rack of hedgehogs at him. When we saw and heard the explosions, we knew we had him. After rolling a few depth charges, the sub blew to the surface and the crew abandoned her. Tensions were high because we had to assume that there were more subs out there and we could still be hunted. As it turned out, he must have been a loner who stumbled across us as we had no further sonar contacts. This is a good time to interject the concept of how the fighting men had to adjust their mentality in order to maintain their sanity. In fact in some cases, men did lose touch with reality. War means death. War means you kill another human being and it's ok...because ..it's war. Killing goes against everything most of us were taught when we were brought up. If you didn't adjust your mentality, you wouldn't make it. Take the case of the sub I just told you about. When word was piped down that we had sunk an enemy sub, every man on board was elated. We were a happy and excited crew. In this case, the enemy crew was rescued. But what about the ones who never came to the surface?? They didn't rate a second thought.
I have to take a moment here and tell you about our skipper at the time because he certainly deserves mentioning. As far as the crew felt, we couldn't have gotten luckier because he was a damn fine Captain. He trained us hard and long until he knew that we knew what to do under any situation. He was a natural when it came to getting the most out of his ship and crew. He was stern but fair. Morale was always high and there's nothing we wouldn't do for him because it was a two way street. And, he was one hell of a seaman. Once he got us to our peak level of performance, he didn't burden us on a daily basis with General Quater Drills. In our eyes that was a smart play because we knew what to do when GQ sounded, we knew it was for real and there was never any half stepping to our battle stations. Why were we so fast going to GQ you ask? It's simple. Until all battle stations were manned and ready, we were the hunted. Once manned..we were the hunters. And there are few things scarier than running to your station knowing there's a sub out there taking target berrings on you. After all, that's your home he's trying to sink. Yup, the skipper was crusty and gutsy. But, we had no idea, in fact noone had any idea just how gutsy he really was until one particular convoy run. As it turned out, we were designated as the Convoy Commander. The skipper put out the word that there would be absolutely no lights after dark. We would circle the convoy at night looking for lights. I happened to be up on the bridge one starlite night between watches when one of the lookouts spotted a light. We looked and sure enough there was this light which appeared to be in the middle of the convoy. The skipper ordered a parallel course with the source of light. We found out the light was coming from a large barge carrying dredging and pile driving equipment. There was this little shack towards the stern of the barge. I don't think I need to explain what a threat one little light could mean to a convoy at night. The skipper very calmly had the radioman instruct the occupant of that shack to douse the light. They reponded back saying they would comply after they finished the game. The skipper very calmly again advised them they had one minute to secure the light. He then proceeded to order the gunner to load one of our 20mm guns. There was dead silence on the bridge as we all watched the skipper sitting in his chair looking at his watch. Exactly one minute later he ordered the gunner to put the light out. The 20mm pounded away for a few seconds and the light went out. I'm not real sure who put the light out, us or them but from that moment on our reputation with the merchant marines was solidified. Don't mess with our ship because we had a madman for a skipper! ( I've often wondered how that card game ended!!!)
One aggravating aspect with this particular convoy was because of the makeup, the overall convoy was as slow as a slug. Hell, a good swimmer could have kept pace with us. But in all, it had been a pretty uneventful trip not counting the sub we dropped. The convoy continued unmolested and uneventful for about two weeks. It was a particularly dark night. You may have heard the term "7 times darker than dark"? You can beleive it at sea when there are no moon and stars. You couldn't see the bow of the ship from the forward gun mounts. All lookouts were put on extra alert. The radarman who has the most stressful job of maintaining contact with every ship in the convoy notified the skipper that he couldn't locate one of the minesweepers, which we were escorting. Suddenly, one of the lookouts reported seeing phosphorus light(which appeared as a result of the minesweepers propellors churning the water, which causes this phosphorus light effect) off the port side. Immediately, there was a pretty significant jolt. We had located the minesweeper. DE's had rammer bows that were sharp as a razor. Minesweepers in those days were woodened hulled. We sliced through that minesweeper like a hot knife through butter. Then we observed a number of lights in the water. Every life jacket was mounted with a small light. We had no chouce but to continue on with our duties. Later, we were advised that the entire crew had been rescued with no loss of life.
� 1997 [email protected]
Get your own Free Home Page