6 Октябрь 2014| Tennant Charles

Recollections of service in the USA Navy, December 1941 – February 1946

Charles Tennant [1916–2010] was born to a family of American farmers in Alabama.  Since the age of 18 he served in the USA Navy, including his service in 1936–1943 on the USS Portland— a heavy cruiser, at first as a fireman, then as a machinist.  In the course of the war with Japan, after the Japanese attack on the Pearl Harbor [7 December 1941], the Portland participated in the Pacific battles and the Atlantic warfare.  In 1943–1944 Ch. Tennant served on the USS Thomas—a destroyer escort, and PGM-16—a patrol gunboat, which vessels participated in North Atlantic operations, and also at Palau and Okinawa islands.

In 1991 Charles Tennant, taking into account his notes made earlier, dictated memories about his life to a tape recorder.  In 2006 his granddaughter Christina Petrides transcribed these records.  Here, excerpts from Charles Tennant’s recollections are published.

Christina indicates that racism never was a trait of Charles Tennant’s character, and the sharply negative expressions concerning the Japanese occur only in his recollections of the war with Japan.

***

On December the 6th, we had what’s known as general assembly on the quarter deck.  That is all hands are there to listen to what has been said by the skipper.  He was bringing us up to date on situations that he was allowed to tell, and not compromise any security to the enemy, because you don’t trust nobody, whether he’s for you or against you.  But, he told us that the war on Pacific would start by surprise attack by the Japanese, possibly on the mainland, or some of our possessions.  Wherever they deemed that they could do the most damage.  So, I went back below, it was Saturday, we done what duties we had to do.

We had two boiler rooms in operation, we had two engine rooms in operation, and my responsibility was to keep the boiler rooms repaired and ready to go.  We had one boiler room, it was out of commission.  It was down, it was apart.  But nothing was said about getting it ready and we didn’t give it much thought.  But 24 hours later from the time that that skipper told us that the surprise attack would start, it did.  It started in Pearl.  Our orders for that day—we had general orders for that day—and our orders was to have rope yarn Sunday.  Well that was a hell of a rope yarn Sunday.  At 15 minutes to 8, I was sitting in my shop, and the alarm went off in 5 minutes, the PA system come out and says, “All hands report to your battle stations on the double—this is it.  Japanese started an attack on Pearl this morning.”

I went to №3 boiler room, I picked up the headsets and reported in to the main engine room, which was №2 engine room.  I told him, “Just reporting in from the battle station.”  That was not my responsibility, but I was the first one done there, so I done that.  The officers on the watch got on the phones there and he told me to put those two boilers on the line as soon as I could.  I says, “Do you realize they’re out of commission, they’re not together, they got to be assembled?”  He said, “I said put them on and now as fast as you can.”  Well that happened.  There was 2 or 3 other people came down and I told them, “Let’s go.  We gotta get this thing done.”  In 31 minutes, those two boilers was on the line with 300 pounds of steam.  Normally, it would have took 3-4 hours to put those boilers together with people working pretty fast.  But we was allowed for the damage control parties to come down and help us.  When they lit one of the boilers, a good friend of mine named Murei (sp?) from Ohio was crawling out of the fire box.  It nearly burned his fanny when they lit it off, but he crawled out and we slammed the door shut, and that fire was contained inside  we was doing all the speed we could because our skipper had had some instructions to go someplace.  We didn’t know, and we didn’t, we wasn’t interested in that, we was just going to give him what he asked for.  All that day, we shifted around, we watched the rest of the group, we listened, we waited, we waited for instructions and things that we knew.

There was planes that came over and we fired on them and they turned out to be American planes, but we never did see anything, really, of the Japanese.  We did hear about the Japs working out, trying to work out a peace agreement with the Secretary of State, Mr. Cordell Hull.  And this all was exactly like Captain Van Hook said it would be.  How did he know? But he was a well-read, intelligent, in-the-know skipper, which he had the respect of the whole crew.

On December the 13th, which was 6 days later, on Saturday, the Portland returned to Pearl.  We saw the damage that had been done.  The sinks that had been sunk.  The ships that had been burned and we could hardly make it into the harbor because of the damage.  But we went in and we picked up about 3 or 4 hundred people that came to our ship to supplement our crew and make it the full complement.  Some of those people have been on The California, they’d been on The Nevada, they’d been on other ships in there, but they didn’t have a ship no more, so they were coming to us as to supplement our crew and they, we needed them for our ship.  We experienced a real letdown when we saw the damage in Pearl.  It was a disgrace.  We figured we’d been sold out.  We just didn’t know what to think.

***

… reviewing and looking at the many damaged ships in Pearl, listening to the radio, the turmoil that was coming out of our nation’s capital, seeing who to blame for this awful battle at Pearl Harbor where we was totally unprepared, the ships had not been prepared for war and we was at the mercy of the Japanese.  Had they known as much about what they should have done, they could have took Pearl Harbor if they’d have brought troop ships with them on December the 7th, and I think we would have probably helped them land, not knowing any better.  But this is all past, and we, we’ve got to start at this point to see what we can do.  The country became united at that time behind the President and the Congress and the armed forces.  There was many songs out that boosted the morale.  We left Pearl and rendezvoused with a group of ships outside of Pearl.

***

On May the 7 th, 1942, we knew that they were up there above us at time, but it was raining and they couldn’t see us, and they didn’t, wasn’t able to hit us before about 11:00, 11:30.  We sank one carrier, in that first, and bombed another one and done some superficial damage to some of the support service ships.  About 11:45 they came in on our group and they hit the Lexington, they really worked the Lexington over.  The Lexington was hit with torpedoes and damaged with bombs, and also the damage caused fires on the Lexington, and caused the battery locker to explode, the ammunition lockers to explode and it was pretty much tore up from its own internal explosions.  Ah, but it could still make 30 knots.  Later in the day and we was attacked again by the Japs, but they didn’t do any more damage to the Lexington, they did hit the Yorktown with one bomb.  It exploded on the main deck.  There were some casualties on there, but she was able to still take on planes and dispatch planes.  That afternoon we experienced another raid, this was close to 5 o’clock.  Later, it’s about dark, the order was given to the Lexington to abandon ship and many of them went into the water and she stopped dead in the water and the taskforce destroyer, I don’t remember which one, went alongside at the, at an adequate distance to launch his torpedoes and he put his full load of torpedoes into the Lexington, after what we thought, most everybody got off.  There was some, we think, went down with the ship that was unable to get off, because she was dead in the water, the lights was out and there was no way of seeing.  If somebody was in the deep part of the engine room or boiler room that was undamaged, we doubt if they got off before the ship sank.

So much for the battle of the Coral Sea.  We regrouped, slid back, no surface ship was damaged that day, as far as I could tell, or from my reading of the account of the battle.  The Lexington gone, the Yorktown was the only carrier.  So we figured we were pretty good that day, going up against 4, possibly 5 carriers, and we come out of there, we lost one and they lost one, and possibly more, but we stopped them.  That stopped their march down into the South Pacific.  At no point in time did the Japs ever attempt going any further.  They had, they consolidated their stronghold on the Solomon Islands, but they never ventured further south from then on.

***

We had to get into the North Pacific as fast as we could.  This being in May, according to our timetable, that the Japs had already left their anchorage in the northern part of Japan and some of the islands anchorages north of Japan, and they were pursuing in a direction towards the Aleutian Islands and on down toward Midway.  Well we was out there in the North Pacific, I would say, from the last days of May to the first days of June waiting.  Now to, we heard over the news—and we had regular news broadcasts that we picked up from, with our radio—that the Japs had made a landing up in Attu.  Well, on June the 3rd, we was out there waiting.  Knew that it would be coming in the next day.  Our scouts from Midway, our scouts from Johnson Island had peeked and got up high and looked far out into the Pacific and they had realized that the Japs was coming down in, I think, 3 or 4 groups.  Now their, their troop ships and their auxiliary ships, which was tankers and food ships, was further behind.  They had submarines in there.  We had picked up some submarine contacts in the area.  On June the 4th, we was at GQ well before daylight.  The Portland was with the Yorktown, and the Enterprise.

***

At this point I should tell the tape this, that in the battle of the Coral Sea, we picked up about 15-1600 survivors off the Lexington.  There was a complement of around 3000 men on there, course I would say, 200 was lost.  We had that amount on the Portland and the other carrier, or, cruisers and destroyers had picked up some.  But, we could hardly move.  That made a total of around 2700 people on the Portland.  You could hardly move from the people on there, and we had to operate the ship and continue to be ready to repel any attack from the Japanese.  That was kind of a precarious situation of having that many people aboard that ship and being a fighting force against the Japs.

Well, those people were transferred off, they was split up.  In fact they was, some of them was put on 10 destroyers.  I started to say 10 cans, which was our name for destroyer, and they were given the instructions to take them back to Pearl.  There was a lot of these survivors that was burn victims and they were in our sick bay.  A lot of them had shrapnel, and some of them was dead, and course they was in the morgue, which we didn’t have a morgue, but we had refrigerated area and they put in there, I don’t remember how many, but there was many bodies in there.  The burns was treated.  Some of them had, their complete bodies was burned with flash fire and gasoline fire and acid fire, whatever, it was really a serious thing.  And the shrapnel included that scrap metal that we had sold to the Japanese in the 1930s.  Fact, it was pointed out that some of the shrapnel they took out of our own sailors had the, still had the name stamped into the shrapnel, which “Made in America”, “Diamond files”, other manufacturers.

***

Back to the Battle of Midway.  I was still at that battle station as late as 10 o’clock that night, when we had lost the Yorktown, was dead in the water, they abandoned ship, and we had lost, that was the only carrier we lost in that battle.  But there were several, I would say, a good four Japanese carriers lost in the battle because of the other things, the other planes that went off from the Enterprise, and I’m told, later, that the Hornet was there, which was a carrier.  That was on the 3rd.  The war continued on all night.  During the night we transferred some wounded people from the Fulton which was an auxiliary ship.  It had picked up some pilots and they were transferred to us, and we had some casualties on ours, but they was taken to where they would get the best medical treatment.  And ours was going over to the Fulton for that kind of treatment.  That was an awful sight the way we had to transfer them, and one man was burned, and he was broken and he was screaming to the heavens in pain, and we was transferring him in a canvas bag with lines from one ship to another in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.  That was really, could tear your heart out listening to that man scream, but it was the best we could do under the conditions.

Yorktown went to the bottom of the Pacific Ocean, there between Pearl Harbor and Midway Island, or north of there.  But we took more of the Japs down than they wanted to admit.  There was also some surface ships that was damaged, there was some tankers that was lost.  Some Jap ships that run out of fuel in the North Pacific, but we didn’t have enough force to go after them at that time, and still be a defensive force in case they rallied and came back again.  So, as far as I know they was taken in tow and took back to Japan.  But now, this was the second major battle of the Pacific War and it was the one that was the most decisive against the Japs.  We surmised at that, that since Mr. Yama[mo]to had lost this battle and we’d stopped him, this was the end of his aggression.  He would begin to recoup what he already had, and then this is exactly what he done for the rest of 1942.

***

We did take a lot of damage on Midway.  They never got to Pearl, but Johnson Island took a lot of bombings, and one thing that they tore up on Johnson Island was vital to the stay of the soldiers, Marines there, was that the fresh water plant was damaged and the, it had to be quickly repaired, or I think they could transport fresh water from Pearl out there, but that would take another ship, and they made a great effort to repair those evaporators that manufactured fresh water from the sea water on Johnson Island.

***

Other things that went on in our minds, was, in case we had to abandon ship, which wasn’t out of the question.  While we was in Honolulu, we didn’t think that the Japs would ever gas us, it would be kind of hard to gas a ship out in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.  But we had gas masks.  But what I done was take my mask out of the carrier.  And in place of it, I put it in my shop, course it was there in case I needed it, but in case of the mask, I stocked my gas mask with Horlicks malted milk tablets.  And bullion cubes.  These were to take care of enough nourishment in case I had to abandon ship and was in a life raft.  However, they would be best that you had some water to go with them, but we was hoping that the flask that was available in each mask, would be intact and we would have some fresh water.  Course they would melt in your mouth and give you the benefit of having something to live on in that time that you was in the mask.

***

The other thing that we done, was our shop was in a blower intake room.  The blowers for numbers 5 and 6 boilers took their fresh air in there to supply the air for combustion in the boilers.  We took the screens out, I say “we”, I instigated it, we took the screws out of those screens so that they would be able to be taken out quite easily.  They, the resistance to pull was enough to the air would not pull ‘em out, of course, a hit, a shell hit would [unintelligible] ‘em out.  The reason we took em out was we had to get the heck out of that first deck onto the main deck, and then we could get to a raft or whatever was necessary to hit the water.  But, we done it.  We was not being wrong, we was just looking out for what we thought was necessary for a life-saving measure.

***

I must say at this time, when we was out there in the Pacific, we listened to the news from Tokyo, we listened to news from Sidney, we listened to the news from the States, and we liked to listen to the news from Tokyo because we’d get to find out some things we didn’t know was going on—they did put out nice, soothing music to sailors, but they lied like a dog.  The Portland, I guess, at that point in time had been sunk at least three times, and we still looked like, like a cat—we had more than one life.

At the same time, we had another ship, the Juno, and they sunk a ship—I think it was a small craft—and picked up about 30 or 40 survivors.  And they took ‘em aboard, and of course they disarmed ‘em and put ‘em in a compartment and they was POWs.  So, we anchored down the road there in one of those islands and they had those Japs and our sailors went over there and looked at ‘em—most of them were people—they were real young, as young as fifteen, sixteen years old—but they were in the navy, fighting for the Japs at that time.

***

We found out that the Japs was making an extra effort to re-take Guadalcanal.  They had sent some extra troop-ships there.  They’d bombard the heck out of us—I mean the Marines over there, but they was in foxholes, and they’d kindly got used to it after another two, two and a half months since the time they went in there, and they would fight back.

***

On October the 26th [1942]—I believe I’m right here, somewhere along here I got it wrote down—we got up early that morning.  And the Japs had been spotted, and we knew where they were and they knew where—October the 26th—we was traveling with the Wasp—that’s a big carrier.  The Wasp sent its planes after those task group of the Japs.  Just like they sent theirs after us.  They bombed the stew out of us, and as I said, we had the South Dakota, which was a big battleship, and I can remember—that day, I wanted to see that air battle, so I stood on the quarterdeck and watched them Japs bomb the stew out of us, but they missed the Portland by feet.

***

As I said, was standing on the quarterdeck (like a fool—I’ve often said, God was looking after me)—but there was a torpedo plane coming straight at us and our guns was hitting ‘im pretty close, and finally one hit ‘im.  But before he—before they hit ‘im—he was thumbing his nose at us on the quarterdeck.  He got hit, and he exploded, and when he dropped in the water, you could see the fire, that aircraft fuel would burn under water—fire was underwater.  Shortly after that, as I said, we was turning to port again, and we saw, or heard—the people on the bridge saw the ripples of torpedoes coming after us and of course there’s—the skipper had the helmsman had a hard left turn and I thought we was gonna turn over.  But I heard three—distinct—bumps.  In other words, that three torpedoes hit us on the starboard side.  But the reason they didn’t explode was the Jap was too close to us and usually a torpedo has to travel from 90 to 100 yards before it arms itself.  Anyway, they wasn’t armed and I do thank the Almighty for being in that position at that time.

***

Another thing that happened that way was an odd thing.  We had a destroyer in that area named the Porter.  It stopped to pick up an airman, and when it did, a submarine put a torpedo in it, and it broke in half and went down.  And there was some survivors—I don’t think they was all picked up, but we got many of ‘em.  But there was another ship that day that—and I may be getting these two ships mixed up, but what difference does that make, as this was fifty-something years ago—this other destroyer caught fire.  It got hit up in the bow with some small bomb or strafing, but it caught fire on the bow.  As the South Dakota, which was that 35,000-ton battleship went up there, it created a pretty big wave, and when it passed that ship that was on fire, he give it a hard right rudder and it went across the wake of the South Dakota and he hit it just right, and the wake caused the heavy sea to come over the bow and up on that little second turret of that tin can, and when it came over, it put the fire out, and that old destroyer just kept on right going, shooting the Jap planes and carrying out its part of the battle and displaying seamanship to the highest degree.

***

After about two days, we spotted planes, and they were called “bandits,” or “bastards”—that was for the Japs.  It’s around the eighth of November [1942].  They were coming down.  They was torpedo planes and they didn’t come down for bombardment purpose, they come down to torpedo ships.  When they got down in our area, every gun on those 4, 5, 6 ships was unloading there at ‘em, and they was giving ‘em everything they got.  After about 20, 21, 22 minutes, there was one plane left.  The rest of ‘em were shot down, and that plane got away and went back north.  And we thought we done a pretty good day’s work of shooting down 29 planes, and we picked up what survivors what would come in the boats.

***

And we saw one plane, Jap plane, it was down in the water and they was gonna pick ‘em up, and a destroyer went alongside—he [the plane] started shooting at ‘em with his small arms, and he was at the mercy of the sea and the water.  That shows you how desperate they were to get killed or kill you.  He was a fanatic of the first degree, and he showed it.  But when he shot at those sailors on that ship, one of those gunmounts just turned a five-inch gun on ‘im and blowed him and plane and everything else out of the water.

***

Anyway, we just hoped that that one plane that got away went back and told those people what they’d run into down there in Guadalcanal, or Iron-Bottom Bay, and let ‘em know that things was not going too well for them.

***

The President of the United States [Franklin Roodevelt] awarded to the Portland the Presidential Unit Citation for its performance in the Battle of, which was November the 13th, 1942.  This was a most deserving citation, and many people who I’ve met since I’ve come out of the service, who were in the war in the Pacific, when you tell ‘em what ship you was on, they always say, “The ol’ reliable Portland, who was always there when it was needed.”

***

We was transferred from the Portland on January the 15th, 1943.  This is one of the hardest things that I ever had to do, and the decision was made completely by the fact that I had been on the Portland more than 6 years—I knew that ship from stem to stern.  I knew everything as far as getting it underway, as far as maintaining the equipment, I had made a strong effort to know what to do in case of a disaster.  I did leave the ship with a lot of sorrow, because some of those people I had known for five years.  Some six, and many for three and four, that I had stood by, and cried with, been scared with, but it was necessary in my opinion that I move on, and go to other places where I could broaden my ability to become a good sailor.

I had served on that ship as I said six years—more than six years—and I went on there as a seaman 2nd class, and now was a chief petty officer, which was from the lowest enlisted man to the highest.  I had come on there as a farm boy from Alabama, from parents who loved the country and who encouraged us to be honest and straightforward in everyday activities.  Those parents at that time were proud that they had 4 sons that served their country in its time and need—also there was 1 son-in-law that was in that same position.

***

There was a lieutenant on that ship who was from Louisiana.  He was a level-headed man, he was quite friendly with me—I guess he was close to my age, I was 26, maybe he was 30 (he might’ve been older than I).  But he told me that he had heard they—we was gonna get the war over early.  I said, “The sooner the better.”  He told me that and that brought my spirits up and I was getting ready for the war to be over—I had had it.  I had never been injured or anything like that, but that was all right—I was ready and there was millions other people that were ready.

In April or May, yeah, April or May of 1945—the information had come out that we was gonna drop a nuclear bomb on the Japs and that gonna finish the war up.  I don’t know how he got that information but when I was in Australia in 1942 there was information in the paper then about the nuclear effort of the United States and winning the war.  Now, that was highly secret back then, and but somebody was talking about it.

***

Our next destination was Kerama Retto.  That is an anchorage east of Okinawa.  That was where the Americans went in first and took that anchorage and several little islands there on Easter morning, the first of April, 1945.  Then the next place that they landed was at Buckner Bay on the west side of Okinawa and also on both sides they came in.

***

When we were back in Kerama Retto, there were ships that had been damaged and tied up in Kerama Retto, towed in there and they were being cannibalized for parts for the other ships, for any replacement parts—for diesel engines, particular.  You couldn’t put ‘em in a dry dock and take the screws off, but they was even—they just was just above sinking.  Some of the compartments was flooded, many of ‘em the superstructure was tore loose, there was many things that could come off the ships that could be used by the rest the navy in there, and that’s what they used for.  However, they got so bad, they was towed to sea and sunk.  On this day, there was a tug towing one out to sea to sink it, and he had wire cable to it, and he was going in the southern part of the entrance to Kerama Retto, and here come a kamikaze plane, and saw that ship and he figured he’d finish it off.  So dived himself into there and sunk it.  Well, the tug just cut the cable and let it go.  That proves to me that they was really fanatics and not really giving some thought to winning the war with that activity of having the suicide planes come in and do damage to the American navy.

***

Right after that, there was another kamikaze come in, and it hit the Wright, which is a sea-plane tender in Kerama Retto, anchored in there, doing some repair work, and taking care of what sea planes we used for spotting in the area and picking up survivors that had been shot down and picking up survivors that had been in life rafts, and just doing the regular utility work for the navy and army and whoever needed ‘em.  But when this plane got hit—this ship got hit, it got a fire up in the bow and there was a sailor in there above them and the ship was on fire and it had its gasoline with it when it landed in the compartment—the deck was red hot.  Well, this sailor was holding on to the overhead, and he couldn’t get out—if he’d’ve he dropped down on that deck, it being that hot, he would’ve burned his feet, his shoes off—he wouldn’t’ve been able to ever walk.  But, there was a sailor that saw that, and he quickly picked up some pieces of wood which was used for damage control—they was actually wedge-shaped, and he had a hammer and nails—this was, evidently was a damage control locker adjacent to where he was, and he put a nail between his toes into those—and through his shoe, into the sole and into that piece of wood, and that insulated ‘im from that deck, and he walked in, and the man put his arms around ‘im and he walked out of that compartment and saved him from any injury.  That was pretty resourceful, I thought.  Now, I didn’t actually see this, but the fellow that told me was on that ship, and I thought it was commendable that that man’d do that to save his shipmates any injury.  There was many things that happened in the war that we didn’t realize could be done to cause the effort to be made in a greater way to win it, and that was one of the little things that happened over and over, many, many times.

***

I should tell you about our time at sea [on the Vestal ship, after the end of the war].  That was real interesting to me, in a way, those 45 or 50—whatever they was—chief petty officers, supposed to be good sailors, the salt of the sea, able to do most everything that they could as far as a sailor was concerned.  They all went to bed when we went to sea, because they couldn’t go to sea, except me.  And that’s not bragging.  But I was the only chief petty officer walking around.  Well, I’d been to sea, I’d just come off a little old gun boat, and it’s like a leaf on a lake, it just bounces around.  They—what they had done, they’d swung around the buoy and they’d lost their sea legs.  And they was all sick as heck, we—I didn’t have to worry about getting any chow there, ‘cause I had no competition.  But anyway, I went to sea, took care of my responsibilities, I even told ‘em in the engine room I’d come down and stand watches if they needed, but that officer was still down there that I told about the sick fella, and he didn’t—he didn’t think I ought to come down.  But anyway, I didn’t.  We had an old dog on the ship there, too, and he was in the Chiefs’ quarters always—he was kind of their mascot.  And as one sailor said, “You and that old dog’s only ones that didn’t get seasick.”

***

After things settled down a little bit, I was detailed to go over to a floating drydock to repair a minesweeper that was in there that was having shaft trouble and was unable to stay at sea and perform the minesweeping operations that was needed at that time because the war was over.  It ended just before this storm at sea that I just told you about.  As I’ve said earlier, I was ready and I think there was millions of other people that was ready for this war to be over.  But to end the war, we dropped two bombs on those yellow bastards up ‘ere, and they seen the daylight after they started picking up the dead and seeing what damage is done, and I was grateful for that because had we went on into Japan, based on what happened in Okinawa, we’d’ve lost millions of people and many, many ships.  But, it was over.

But I was going to this detail on this floating dry dock to fix this minesweeper.  We was working at night—it was three shifts working, one shift in the daytime and one at night.  We didn’t work past midnight, but we worked from eight in the morning approximately to midnight to try to get it ready.  We had to pull the shaft out of that ship to see that where the stern tubes was completely wore out.  It was one of those quick-built ships, and it was an odd way of getting it out, but we was gonna take the shaft out that night and we disconnected it from the engines inside the ship, slid it out.  I had about three or four young fellows over ‘ere with me, and they was inexperienced—but that’s no disgrace, we’ve all been down that road— we had a line—the shaft of this ship was not great—not real heavy, but it was heavy enough to put it to a block and tackle on it to lift it and pull it out.  We’s pulling it out, and I had one sailor who’s a little spastic, I thought, or excitable, and he had ahold of the line, and he was—it was practically lifting ‘im off the floor of the dry dock, but he was holding on and he didn’t—his help had moved to some other place, and that left him in a kindly of a precarious position.  He was yelling, “I can’t hold it! I can’t hold it!”  Well, the shaft was swinging.  And I says, “Let it down.” And he didn’t let it down, he turned it loose.  And when he turned it loose, you know who the shaft hit.  Me.  Knocked me down, and came on top of me, and I fell between the chocks.  The chocks support the ships, and they were in blocks I would say 18 inches, 24 inches long by 10 to 12 inches wide, and they was separated so that they didn’t fit right—and a man could fall and lay between ‘em, and that’s where I was laying, but I had—it was right on top of me, but also was being supported approximately 2 to 3 inches off of my chest.  When it did, it broke many ribs on my left side.  But it took me back to the ship, the Vestal, and put me in the sick bay.  I could walk and talk and tell ‘em what—how I felt—and I only felt it in my ribs.  I was sore as a boil the next morning.  I stayed in the sick bay approximately a week or so.

***

Well, we arrived in Pearl, must’ve been sometime in February [1946], we stayed there approximately a week.  We was transferred to the receiving station from that LST and we stayed over there a week or so out in the pineapple fields, walking around.  Part of our baggage didn’t catch up with us—and it finally caught up with us—just things was in a hell of a mess with the navy—they had forgot they’d just finished a war, and everybody’s wanting to go home—which you couldn’t blame ‘em—but they wadn’t as responsible as they had been during the time that they was fighting those Japs.

***

We was sent to a cargo ship in Pearl—it was destination of Treasure Island, Long Beach, California.  We arrived there, we was “processed.”  Processed.  You had to be processed to reenter the old country—at least we was told that we couldn’t fit into society, we’d been used to the hard knocks of the war, and that we should follow their instructions.

They had all the social engineers, the psychologists, the usual LLBs who had wrangled their duty back into the States and they were experts on taking these battle-hardened, uncivilized sailors back in and to treat them in a way that they would become good citizens.  But we wasn’t leaving the navy at this point in time—we was going back for reassignment.  My orders read to report into Philadelphia Navy Yard for reassignment to the East Coast.  Well, that was what I wanted to do because the Atlantic Ocean is to me was better than the Pacific as far as duty. Well there was a yeoman there was finally wrangled out the fact that I needed some leave.  Well, I hadn’t had any leave since 1940.

 

The material was provided to the www.world-war.ru website by the granddaughter of the author of the recollections, Christina Petrides (США, petrides13@hotmail.com).

 

© Preparation of the text for publication by Maria Shelyakhovskaya and Christina Petrides.

 

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