WWII Veterans and my dad
IT’S ALL ABOUT OUR
CORNER
It’s understood that the greatest generation in the history of the United States is without a doubt our World War II veterans. These patriotic individuals fought to keep our nation free and liberated. Had we not won the war we would be speaking German or Japanese in this country today.
Concisely the Nazi invasion of Poland started the war which lasted until 1945, six years, until the Allies defeated Nazi Germany as well as Japan. It was the deadliest war in history which was fought with 16,200,000 of our people. Today there are less than 500,000 individuals still living and due to their ages, they are passing away at a rate of 348 people daily.
My dad, Charles, at 97 years old, is one of the remaining WWII living veterans and my biggest blessing beyond what any words could possibly say. In fact, he seems to be everyone’s dad once they meet him. He’s loved by all and called “my dad” by several great military men! He’s in excellent health, constantly on the move with projects in his workshop and even continues to work out at the health club! With a birthday on the 4th of July (1922), you can only imagine he is the most patriotic person you will ever meet. He loves his country, the flag, supports his President and loves the NAVY.
Dad and I have travelled together working around the US, Central and South America. During our travels he has relayed many stories about his years in the Navy. Some fascinating, some scary and all just flat interesting.
He started one of our trips describing the state of the United States and the home front patriots. After WWII started in 1939 and the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor December 7, 1941, dad said our entire country became patriotic. The entire population wanted to join the forces to fight for our country, he included. In 1942 he enlisted into the Navy and went from Minnesota cross country by train to boot camp in Idaho.
The Drill Sargent in boot camp asked if anyone in Company 120 could type and dad was the only one of all those guys that had had any typing during high school. Consequently, he was volunteered as the official yeoman to keep all the records of his squad. I think he liked that job because he didn’t have to work out as hard as the rest of the guys!
Once boot
camp was completed, he was assigned to Quarter Master school in camp Farragut located in Farragut, Idaho. For those that don’t know about the Navy, a Quarter Master is the Navigator on the bridge steering the ship. I believe next to the Captain the Navigator is the most important person on the ship! Once the Quarter Master school was completed dad was a QM/3C and had one week to get to San Francisco and his ship, the USS President Monroe.
Dad recalled the President Monroe was docked at Lock #6 in San Francisco Bay right next to the Taxi dock that had boats coming in and out all day picking up the general public and delivering them to the dock at the end of Market Street. He boarded the President Monroe at 9:30 pm in the dark.
This ship was part of the Dollar Line when the Navy took it over and outfitted it to be a war ship. This particular ship was a luxury cruiser with a swimming pool, ice cream factory and a salt water converter and had been designed for extremely wealthy clientele to circle the globe. Dad said the ship made only a maiden voyage around the world and then one trip to Alaska with the Captain and the main crew to get familiar with the ship. Captain Morrison was the only Captain the entire time the ship was in Navy operation.
Dad was on board while the ship was being outfitted for war in the San Francisco Bay. He said they poured an 8” thick concrete wall around the wheel house which was the most vulnerable part of the ship because all the navigation is done in the wheel house. They poured several loads of concrete in the lower hull of the ship for stability. As far as guns, he said they installed a 5” gun in the stern of the ship and four 3” guns on ship top side, multiple quad 40’s for anti-aircraft and multiple 30mm machine guns. Additionally, they had landing craft; 4 for personnel and 5 for equipment. Once all installations were completed for the war the ship took off for Pearl.
Dad recalled perfectly that the main element of the San Francisco Bay was giant swells in the water. As soon as they left the dock he told me he got immediately sea sick on departure. He went down to the ship’s galley and got a piece of sweet cherry pie. By the time the ship went under the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco to the harbor entrance he was no longer sea sick and never was again. God Bless Cherry Pie!
On the way to Pearl Harbor which only took 4 days, they had gunnery practice with the “5-incher”. The crew got to shoot it for the first time. They rigged up a target on a block long cable to be pulled behind a plane. The gunners hit and broke the cable and dumped the target….first shot! Dad said it was totally amazing for a first shot as the entire ship cheered. They knew then they could hit any and everything!
Dad said the next unusual thing was they could hear music coming from the Hawaiian Islands. Sound travelled over the water with no visibility of the islands. Coming from the center of the country he had never seen so much water and was amazed that they made the trip in only four days.
For about a month in Pearl Harbor the President Monroe with the Navy crew spent time training Marines. They would pick up a company of Marines in Pearl take them to another island that had a high cliff. The Marines would climb up the cliff, spend the night, climb down the cliff, get back on the ship and the Navy would take them back to Pearl and pick up another crew to do the same maneuvers over and over.
Once the month of training had finished, they loaded and shipped out to the South Pacific. On that voyage they had 2,100 Marines from the 2nd Marine Division in two of the five hulls outfitted for people; and three hulls had equipment like graders and heavy equipment like bulldozers, trucks and big “stuff” to fix air strips, etc.
On this voyage the President Monroe was part of a flotilla. Dad said a flotilla is an organized group of ships with a schedule acting as a single unit. The schedule will tell the ships exactly the same thing… what to do when… stay on this heading so many minutes, turn to so many degrees and stay for so many minutes, then turn again, etc. All the ships would move exactly together just like a single ship. Outside of the flotilla you would have destroyers and cruisers which provided security. He didn’t think there was a battleship in the group, but there may have been.
He was laughing as he told me he walked on a Marine. I said, “what”? He told me he was on midnight shift and had to go to the stern of the ship to get a reading for the ships log. There were Marines sleeping on the top deck and he literally walked on a Marine, which he will never forget. I said he probably got some choice words and a good cussing for waking up a sleeping Marine! He said he did!
There were two funny stories that he told me. 1) The first time you cross the equator you get a beating for initiation. The Captain issued orders that no one on duty would participate in the ceremony. Knowing there would be some sort of initiation, dad volunteered to work two shifts. To no avail as
they were waiting for him as soon as he opened the door to get off his shift. They had rubber gasket pieces about 3 ft long and 2” wide from the door frames and gave the “slimy pollywogs” a good beating and then threw them into the swimming pool and wouldn’t let them out. Dad couldn’t swim and almost drowned. However, they finally let him out and he became an official “Shellback”. To this day as a result, he will tolerate a shower, but you won’t catch him in a swimming pool anywhere! He said his “backside” was sore for two weeks!
The President Monroe was a transport ship responsible for getting service men and equipment to various locations. They would pick up new seamen in Pearl from time to time. The new seaman had to go through initiation but they didn’t realize what was going on. Each man was given a pair of binoculars and assigned watch for a 4- hour shift on the bough of the ship and watched for the “mail buoy”. This was a total fantasy of course and the old crew got a good laugh watching the new seamen fall for the joke!
They finally left Pearl and headed to the Battle of Tarawa with 2,100 Marines on the President Monroe. There was a total of 10,000 Marines in this battle. The battle started off tragically as the United States didn’t realize that the island was surrounded by a coral reef and the landing craft couldn’t get over the coral. The Marines were forced to jump off the landing craft and swim about 200 yards without any protection making them sitting targets for the Japanese.
The Island where the battle took place was about one half the size of Central Park in New York City and was lush with palm trees and heavy foliage. The Japanese had 2 years preparing the island for this attack and had 4,500 men as their complement of fighters. The Head of the Jap group said his 4,500 men could withstand one million enemies fighting against them as they were so prepared. The battle of Tarawa lasted four days with the US having 2,004 casualties. At the end of 4 days of battle there were only 16 Japanese left that surrendered with 122 N Korean slaves (of the Japanese). There was not one palm tree still standing. Dad said at the end of the 4th day the US was using that island as an airstrip and were landing planes.
I asked dad what they did while the Marines were fighting and he said they were anchored waiting to escort the Marines back to Pearl. There were no attacks on the President Monroe while they were anchored.
They finally started back toward Pearl as a single ship after the battle. Dad was on night shift when a Japanese sub launched a torpedo which went about 50 ft ahead of the ship and shortly thereafter another torpedo went about 50 ft behind the ship. No hit either time. He also wasn’t hit during his stent as the Navigator while he was on duty fortunately. The Bridge was his station at the top of the ship and the kamikaze pilots would try to take out this part of the ship to disable the steering of the ship.
On the trip back to Pearl, Captain Morrison called for dad. The other Navigator on the ship was sent to get him and take him to the Captain’s quarters. Captain Morrison told dad he had 4 tests that he wanted dad to take. The tests started on Monday and each one was 4 hours. He took English, History, General Information and Math tests. 2 days later he was called back to Captain Morrison’s quarters where Captain Morrison said, “I don’t understand you at all Charlie. You got a 99, 98, 97 and 45 in math”. Dad told the Captain that when he was in high school his counselor told him if he didn’t plan to go to college it was a waste of time to take math, so he didn’t. The Captain told him if he would agree to get math tutoring he would send him back to the states for officer training. Dad, having just come out of the battle of Tarawa, didn’t have to think before accepting the offer.
He was sent back to the states on the first available transportation which was a Baby Flat top called the USS Coral Sea. This carrier was so small no planes could land or take off but was used only to ferry planes to and from the Pacific.
On the Coral Sea dad was assigned to the Quarter Master division and his shift was to be “over” the drive shaft in the very bottom, lowest part of the ship. This ship had been fabricated by the company in California that outfitted so many ships as fast as they could for the war. Dad said when a wave would hit the ship the side would dent in and dent out making such a horrendous racquet. All the way back to the mainland he heard, BANG….BANG….BANG….BANG! He was glad to get off that ship.
As soon as he was on land, he headed to a little greasy spoon restaurant for a cheese burger, which was the best he ever ate in his life! I tried to find that little place several years ago but it doesn’t exist anymore although the building is still there.
From San Francisco he headed back to Minnesota in the dead of winter. He arrived home at 3:00 am in sub zero temperatures. Coming from the steamy hot South Pacific to the climate of Minnesota he almost froze to death as he tried to wake up his mom and dad to let him come inside!
The very next day dad went to the High School and talked to the Advisor Ms. Daniels. She was a math teacher that had majored in math in college. Ms. Daniels agreed to teach dad and told him they would do 2 hours in the morning and 2 hours in the afternoon and cover Algebra, Geometry, Trig and Calculus in a 3-week time frame.
Dad was one of the fortunate ones! He was in training until the end of the war and decided to finish college and not continue a Navy career. If he had continued with the Navy he would have been commissioned as an Ensign Officer.
The Navy sent him to Washburn Municipal University in Topeka, Kansas and to the University of Texas. The Officer in Charge at WMU wrote a letter to his dad saying Charles was doing phenomenally well in math. Dad said he could have taught any of those classes! To this day at 97 years old he’s still incredible with his math skills.
Dad told me yesterday, “remember many major events in your life are sometimes created by people you don’t even know…like Captain Morrison, the Navigator and Ms. Daniels”.
As a result of leaving the ship, dad avoided the rest of the battles that involved the President Monroe. The ship was awarded 5 Battle Stars; Tarawa was the first star.
Dad had not planned to go to college but the Navy changed his life. Even though the war ended and he decided not to return to the Navy, it’s evident that his Navy years were the best years of his life! Had he continued with the ship and through the battles there might have been a good chance that he may not have survived, met my mom, and had my brother and me.
Dad is my blessing. I thank the Lord every day for this incredible man who has been in my life for 69 years and ask HIM to continue to watch over us and guide us through the remaining years with good health and many blessings. AMEN.