Maritime

Maritime Tales of the Sea

Washington and war correspondents embedded with them -- and 20-odd million voting
parents. The eventual 250,000 merchant mariners had only mom and pop.
As the "Bridge of Ships" grew, new vessels were rushed into convoys carrying Lend-
Lease war cargoes to embattled Britain. German submarines began attacking the bridge
in earnest.
On May 21, 1941, U-69 in the south Atlantic sank the American freighter Robin Moor,
giving her crew and passengers 20 minutes to abandon ship. This accelerated American
preparations for war.
Immediately after Pearl Harbor, German Adm. Karl Dönitz, commander of the
submarine force, sent five U-boats to the Atlantic off the American coast. These
launched a virtual reign of terror on U.S. shipping that, in Winston Churchill's words,
"almost brought us to the disaster of an indefinite prolongation of the war‖. The
challenge became to build ships faster than the U-boats sank them.
Congress had been reluctant to arm merchant ships, but as pressure grew to repeal the
Neutrality Act, the navy prepared to arm ships. It organized an armed guard to provide
gun crews for duty aboard the country's 1,375 merchant ships, as it had done in World
War I. The first of the Armed Guard received their 3 weeks' training at Little Creek,
Virginia and the first trainees and their officers were ready to sail in November 1941,
when Congress repealed the act. Merchant marine officer cadets and seaman trainees
were already receiving gunnery training, and served guns when needed throughout the
war.

Seaman trainees get gunnery training
Roosevelt had to virtually coerce Fleet Adm. Ernest J. King (mid-1943) to convoy U.S.
ships to the "MOMP" or Mid-Ocean Meeting Point where the Royal Navy would
escort them the rest of the way. By then most American ships were armed.
At last, the tide began to turn. Most ships had 5-inch guns aft and a 3-incher at the
bow, with three 20-mm antiaircraft guns on each side. The bow gun was a versatile
weapon against aircraft or surface targets. Gunners on merchant ships downed many
enemy aircraft during the war.

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Maritime Tales of the Sea

But every man aboard a seagoing merchant ship in World War II was a target, gunner
or not. The engine room was a bull's eye for the U-boat, and a direct hit there would
make the place a furnace.

No one was immune from the consequences of a hit. A torpedo or bomb often
wrecked the lifeboats. The sea was a lethal enemy, boats or not. Men were forced by
fire to leap into the sea. A bomb or torpedo could make a ship a flaming pyre. Oil from
ruptured tanks could blaze for hours around the sinking ship.
Expert swimmers, unwounded, could dive through the flames, swim underwater long
enough to clear the burning fuel, and hope to find a raft or lifeboat. If not, drowning,
or sharks. Unburned oil in the cold ocean congealed into a thick pad that made surface
swimming impossible. Without protective clothing one can live in the ocean only until
hypothermia claims him, and in the North Atlantic that span is measured in minutes.

S.S. Muskogee crew, photographed by U-boat.

None survived.

Not all deaths were slow and tortured. The fate of anyone torpedoed or bombed on an
ammunition ship or tanker with aviation gasoline, was instant obliteration. Sailors in
convoys where such cataclysms occurred are unanimous: the explosion is horrendous,
there is a rising cloud of dust or vapor, and nothing falls to earth. The ship and its
people have disappeared, been vaporized, and disintegrated.

For 44 years after the war, merchant marine survivors were not even war veterans. As
the GI Bill of Rights was being debated in Congress, a Seamen's Bill of Rights was
proposed, strongly endorsed by President Roosevelt and a number of influential
members of Congress.

But it was rigidly opposed by others, swayed by the leaders of the American Legion and
the Veterans of Foreign Wars, who had been persuaded by a series of lies and
misunderstandings about the merchant marine circulated most effectively by newspaper
columnists, Westbrook Pegler and Walter Winchell, who also had a national radio
audience.

Only a few hundred of the 8,412 killed died a quick death when their tanker or
ammunition ship was disintegrated by torpedo or bombs. The others died more slowly,
drowning, burning, or as shark food. But every man and boy (16 was the minimum age)

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that went to sea in the wartime merchant marine knew he faced these specific perils
every time he left port. And not one of them was drafted, each a volunteer.

The barrage of falsehood and disinformation killed the Seamen's Bill of Rights despite
Roosevelt's, and later Truman's efforts to resurrect it. Military heroes -- MacArthur,
Wainwright, Eisenhower, Nimitz, Vandegrift, and many others -- praised the valor and
gallantry and selfless service of the merchant marine, but the truth never caught up with
the fabrications.

Until, that is, a trio of merchant mariners who had survived the war took the
government to court. (One of those, Stanley Willner, had been a Prisoner of War in the
Japanese prison camp on the notorious River Kwai.) The Defense Department had
assigned the Secretary of the Air Force to oversee veterans' group applications for
recognition. He had repeatedly rejected the application of Edward Fitzgerald, Dennis
Roland, and Stanley Willner, though in their judgment they met all the stated
qualifications.

Those included having received military training, being subject to military justice,
discipline, and control; lack of freedom to resign; susceptibility to assignment for duty
in a combat zone; and whether it was reasonable to expect such service to be
considered active military service.

The case came to trial in Federal District Court in Washington in 1987. The court
found decisively and in pungent terms for the plaintiffs, and ordered further actions
leading to legislation recognizing men with oceangoing merchant marine service in
World War II as veterans.

This led to a cascade of rulings and regulations recognizing merchant marine veterans
organizations, granting the old mariners access to Veterans' Hospitals and medical care,
residence in Veterans Homes, burial in national cemeteries -- and a flag for their
coffins.

The truly major benefits of the GI Bill, college tuition and home loan guarantees, long
since bypassed this dwindling cohort. A credible estimate is that of the 250,000 about
10,000 are left. Even the sixteen-year-olds of 1945 are in their late 70s now. The old
salts of then who left retirement and patriotically went back to sea are long dead. The
rest have outlived their life expectancies and, for many, their resources. For the latter,
Veterans Home eligibility offers one hope.

(Note that upon the court decision the American Legion immediately complied and
welcomed merchant mariners. VFW did not and does not.)

Bills are circulating in Congress, seeking cosponsors, that would grant the old salts
$1,000 a month for the short remainder of their lives. One is H.R. 23, by Bob Filner
(D.) of California, and at this writing it has nearly half the 435 members of the House

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signed on as cosponsors. A similar bill has at this writing just been introduced into the
Senate -- S. 1272 -- by Sen. Benjamin Nelson (D) of Nebraska.

Major military leaders hail the old men of the sea; the new World War II memorial in
Washington celebrates them along with the soldiers and sailors and airmen and marines
whose guns and gas and bombs and fighter planes they delivered.

Only a small scattering of citizens today even know there is a merchant marine -- now
with mammoth ships and smaller crews -- or that the supply ships and tankers and
troopships of today's Military Sealift Command are sailed today as they were in both
world wars and Korea and Vietnam and Desert Storm, by today's men, and now
women, of the United States Merchant Marine.

The President's Proclamation calls for flags to be flown on all government buildings
and for all U.S. ships at sea to dress ship, to honor that vital company of invisible
heroes, and their calling: down to the sea in ships.

Tomorrow when you see a flag, murmur a prayer of thanks for those unsung men and
boys of 65 years ago, silent heroes who volunteered and risked all to deliver the goods.

The Merchant Marine in Peacetime and War

In today's merchant marine fewer companies operate fewer and much larger freighters
and tankers. Cruise ships have supplanted ocean liners. The Military Sealift Command
(MSC) handles logistics for all the armed forces on huge modern freighters and tankers
crewed by civilian mariners.

Graduates of the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy (deck and engineering officers, men
and women) can serve in any military branch or the merchant marine, and are in
demand on foreign ships.

The major U.S. union, Seafarers International Union (SIU), operates training schools
and hiring halls for men and women in unlicensed jobs (non-officers). New
technologies made new seafaring jobs, e.g., electronics technicians, more electricians in
the turbo-electric world. In war, the biggest difference is that control of the sea is not
an issue but cargo inspection is, and eternal vigilance (e.g., USS Cole) is essential. Career
opportunities and job openings still exist.

This article originally appeared on page 1 of The Chicago Tribune’s Sunday Perspective section on National Maritime
Day, May 22, 2005. It has been updated by the author.

Sources:
"The Liberty ships of World War Two" published as a Special Edition of The Pointer, USN Armed Guard WWII
Veterans, 115 Wall Creek Drive, Rolesville, NC 27571, August 1998Off Soundings. May 1943. Avalon, Santa

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Catalina Island California U. S. Maritime Service Training Station
Moore, Arthur R. A Careless Word - A Needless Sinking: A History of the Staggering Losses Suffered by the U.S.
Merchant Marine, both in Ships and Personnel, during World War II. American Merchant Marine Museum, Kings
Point, NY: 1998.

Other articles by Bruce Felknor:
A World War II Mariner Looks at the Iraq War
D-Day Plus 60 Years
Drama at Sea Rescue at Sea during World War II and today
Song of the Merchant Mariner -- poetical tribute to World War II mariners
SS Cornelius Harnett: A happy ship on the Murmansk Run
Sinking of the Esso Tanker T. C. McCobb
Top Secret Project Ivory Soap -- Aircraft Repair Ships
Tragic Voyage of the SS Sunset Crew
SS Richard Hovey: a Tale of Japanese Atrocities and Survival
A Privateersman's Letters Home from Prison -- War of 1812
Tribute to Lane Kirkland -- Peacetime Hero to Mariners
07/19/05

www.USMM.org ©1998 - 2005 by Bruce Felknor and U.S. Maritime Service Veterans. You may quote
small portions of material on this website as long as you cite American Merchant Marine at War,
www.usmm.org, as the source. You may not use more than a few paragraphs without permission. If you
see substantial portions of any page from this website on the Internet or in published material please
notify usmm symbol @ tdl.com

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

A Merchant Mariner at Omaha Beach: Les Ellison Looks Back
L. Dow Nichol III

LHA member Lester E. Ellison was born in Mt. Vernon, Texas. Now
Les, at 83, and his wife, Jean, are comfortably retired in that town. In between,
however, came service as a Merchant Mariner in WWII, helping build the artificial
harbor at Omaha Beach to support the allied landings in Normandy, a successful
career in nuclear and other heavy engineering taking him all over the world, 50 years of
residence in and near New York City, retirement to Florida and now to Texas, and a
growing interest in documenting the activities of the merchant marine at Normandy
and the history of his own family, including his ancestors from the line of William
Leftwich, son of Augustine Leftwich, Sr.

Les grew up in several East Texas towns as his father, Ernest Ellison, set up steam

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engines for cotton gins and oil drilling. His father had learned about steam, engines,
and machinery during a hitch in the Navy and three years at sea -- including a visit to
China as it was over 90 years ago. The stories of the Navy, the machines, and the
travel -- especially to China -- left a lasting impression on Les.

The Merchant Marine: Not long after his graduation from high school in Van, Texas
the attack on Pearl Harbor brought his country into war. In May 1942, Les applied to
be Naval Aviation Cadet; but his physical exam showed a heart murmur, and he was
rejected. Next he applied to the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy. That physical found
him to be qualified for appointment as a cadet, and he reported in to the Academy in
October 1942. But Merchant Marine officers are also officers in the U.S. Naval
Reserve, and when his papers were forwarded to the Navy for approval they were
questioned because he had been found not physically qualified for flight training. After
re-examination he was found physically qualified as midshipman, Merchant Marine,
U.S. Naval Reserve.

Soon thereafter, he began his first trip to sea on The MS West Gram. The captain of
that ship was extremely demanding, but Les responded well and received a high
recommendation for his next position. The SS William H. Prescott was ready to sail,
but did not have a third mate. So the Merchant Marine Academy sent Les, age 21, on
his second trip to sea as Third Mate on the Prescott. There he continued what he
describes as very intensive "on the job training". In August 1943 he ended his tour of
duty on the Prescott, in New York City, and began a series of assignments on Liberty
ships. The next phase began in February 1944, when Les was sent to England as first
officer on Tug ST-761 with the Army Transportation Corps. (The ST tugs were short
tugs, about 86 feet in length.) There, in Southampton and Plymouth, he trained for
three months for D-day at Normandy.

Operation Mulberry: Winston Churchill issued the order 1 in May 1942: "We require
piers for use on the beaches. They must float up and down with the tide... Do not argue
the matter -- Let me have the solution worked out." At dawn on D-Day+1, June 7,
1944, at age 22, Les Ellison was at Omaha Beach on one of some 158 tugs participating
in "Operation Mulberry", the construction of two artificial harbors immediately after
the initial landings. The first order for his tug at Normandy was to move a barge loaded
with ammunition onto a beach not cleared of mines, under shelling from shore and
through waters that still carried the occasional floating mine. "It was just one of those
things you're told to do", he says. "Usually the beach would have been swept for mines
first, but they needed the ammunition. They wanted it on the beach. Luckily, we carried
out our assignment without mishap." And they returned to work on the harbors.

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The Mulberries were essential to bring in men, supplies, and equipment to maintain the
assault on Normandy until the French ports could be recaptured. The American
harbor, Mulberry ―A‖, was to the west, opposite Omaha Beach. The British, or
Mulberry ―B‖, was further east, in the Gold Beach area. Mulberry ―B‖ was somewhat
more protected from storms, a fact that became very significant. Each Mulberry was an
artificial harbor about three miles long, created by a breakwater about one mile off the
French coast. The break-water was made of a line of old cargo ships (including his first
ship, the West Grama), known as block ships or Gooseberries. Each block ship was
held in place against the current by Army tugs while it was deliberately sunk -- by
explosives placed in the hull -- in 15 to 20 feet of water.

The Phoenix floating caissons were the main protective barrier for the pier portion of
the Mulberry harbor and for ships unloading directly into smaller craft that could land
on the beach. The caissons were made of concrete and steel, each about the size of a
six-story building. Beginning early on D-day 150 of them were towed over 90 miles
across the English Channel. On D-day+1 each was held in place against the current, by
up to four tugs while the small crew opened the flood valves to sink it, in about 15 feet
of water, in its assigned place in the harbor. The Lobnitz floating pier heads, or "spud"
piers, were the key component that made it possible to unload a ship in 60 minutes,
throughout the two daily 21-foot tides. The Whale floating causeways stretched from
the pier heads to reach shore above high tide. Each completed Mulberry was to have
three half-mile-long floating causeways, six Lobnitz piers, and over three miles of
caissons and sunken ships for a Breakwater.

The American Mulberry Harbor was finished
enough to begin operation on June 14, a day ahead of schedule, although it never was
completed as designed. From June 14 to 18 more than 11,000 men, 2000 vehicles, and

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40,000 tons of equipment and ammunition, well above design capacity, were unloaded
to shore through Mulberry ―A‖ to sustain the invasion. Then the storm hit.

The Mulberries were designed, when completed, to withstand the force of the summer
gales. On June 19, came the strongest June gale in the English Channel in 40 years. It
lasted for two days, largely wrecked the uncompleted and less-sheltered Mulberry "A",
and caused the loss of additional caissons and materials still in transit. Some of the tugs
continued to work throughout the storm, rescuing gunners placed on top of the sunken
caissons and helping ships in distress. As the storm subsided on June 22, Tug ST-761
was among those helping to restore Mulberry ―A‖ as much as possible. Merchant ships
were used to plug holes in the breakwater. Tonnage unloaded returned to 10,000 on
June 23, and to 14,500 on June 26. The other U.S. installation off Utah Beach, with
some natural protection from the Cherbourg Peninsula, came through the storm almost
intact and the British Mulberry "B‖ survived.

The French port of Cherbourg was captured at the end of June, and the high command
decided not to rebuild the greatly damaged Mulberry "A‖. The British Mulberry
continued to land smaller quantities of supplies and men even on the worst days of the
storm, and remained in operation through October. Through the two harbors had
come 156,000 U.S., British, and Canadian troops with their trucks, tanks, artillery
pieces, food, fuel, and ammunition.

Les Ellison remained on tug ST-761 at Normandy through August 1944, with his
tug being on station and on duty 24 hours per day, every day. Then he was assigned
to tug ST-247, and later other tugs, as captain. He returned from Europe in April,
1945, and then served in the Philippines until January 1947.

Engineering: On his return, Les attended New York University and earned a degree
in mechanical engineering. His professional career for the next 40 years centered on
nuclear power and quality engineering. In 1957 he went to work for Ebasco
Services, a large engineering firm, in New York, and after several years he was
reassigned to Houston. Among the opportunities of that assignment, it appears that
Les' wife, Jean, a New Yorker born and bred, found that she liked Texas. Some
years later he was invited back to New York to start the new nuclear quality control

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division, which be had suggested and which grew to 200 employees. In 1979 Ebasco
moved into 25 floors of the World Trade Center, and Les had the opportunity to
choose his new office - the northwest corner of the 88th floor, with great views of
the city and river. That history also gave him a very personal viewpoint on the
events of September 11, 2001, which occurred some eleven years after he had
retired.

In 1980 Les won a three-year contract in China, where he had never been, and he
remembered his dad's visit there and the photo album from that trip. After the
contract ended successfully in 1983, his client invited Les and Jean back for a
private tour of Communist China, including some of the places his father had seen
and photographed

Retirement: The Ellison‘s have been married for 60 years. They have
two daughters - Leslie and her family in New Jersey, and Lisa and her family in Florida
- and five grandchildren. Les retired from Ebasco in 1990, after 33 years, but they
stayed in New Jersey, near Leslie and her family. In 1996 Les and Jean moved to
Jacksonville, Florida, near daughter Lisa and near the sea. Les continued documenting
his, and the Merchant Marine‘s, wartime activities, especially in Operation Mulberry. He
began studying the history of his ancestors, including his Leftwich line, in the colonies
and as they moved west, eventually to Texas. He attended the dedication of the
National D-day Memorial near Bedford, Virginia, in June 2001. He learned that four
Leftwich descendants had been among the "Bedford Boys" landing on Omaha Beach
on D-day, and that one of them, their captain, had been killed there 2. He found
Leftwich Street in Mt. Vernon, near the site of an old cotton gin, and much else. In
November 2003 Les and Jean, pursuing their interest, moved from Florida to Mt.
Vernon, Texas.

Les says he did not talk much about his wartime experiences over the years - in
part because the idea of a merchant mariner serving on an Army tugboat under
Navy command was hard to convey and even disbelieved. In retirement, and
around the 50th anniversary of the Normandy landings, he sought assistance from
the Navy's Operational Archives Branch and obtained copies of documents, by
then declassified, that provided detailed support for his story. He now has drawers
full of documentation, including war diaries, ships‘ logs, weather reports, and task
force commanders‘ citations for the ships involved. Much more information is
available now, in print and on the Internet, including recollections of participants

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and the work of professional historians, museums, and organizations, such as the
U.S. Merchant Marine and the U.S. Army Transportation School and Museum.
Sixty years after D-day those events in Normandy are still of continuing interest to
the public as well as to the participants and their families. Helping make these
events clear to his family, and the public, is important to Les Ellison.
………………………………………………………..

References
1. Personal conversations with Lester E. Ellison
2. Article in the Jacksonville (Florida) Maritime Museum Society, Inc., Newsletter April 2003
3. Article in the East Texas Journal, Mt. Pleasant, Texas, May 2005
4. ―U.S. Merchant Marine involvement at Normandy Invasion, June 1944", by Lester E. Ellison

(www.merchant-marine.com/normandy.htm)
5. "Operation Mulberry (D-Day 1944)‖, U.S. Army Transportation Museum web site

(www.transchool.eustis.army.mil/Museum/Mulberry.htm)
6. D-Day Plus 60 Years, Bruce L Felknor (www.usmm.org/felknorrdday html)
7. U.S. Army Transportation Museum, Operation Mulberry web site:

www.transchool.eustis.army.mil/museum/Mulberry.htm

………………………………………………

Image credit: Photos of Lobnitz floating pier, Phoenix floating caisson under tow, and Whale floating
causeway, and paintings by Dwight C. Shepler of "Mulberry at Work" and "Storm on Gooseberry" are
from U.S. Army Transportation Museum, Operation Mulberry web site (Reference #5, above) and are
reproduced here by permission of the Museum Director. Photos of Lester Ellison in 1945 and at
retirement are from Lester E. Ellison.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

THE U.S. MERCHANT MARINE AND WAR AND PEACE
Henry B. Rowland
Ticonderoga, NY 12883

The U.S. Merchant Marine during World War I was under Navy control. FDR changed
this awkward arrangement early in World War II and put the U.S. Merchant Marine
totally under the control of a civilian agency, the War Shipping Administration (WSA,)
an agency of the Commerce Department, which separated the Merchant Marine from
the Armed Forces. The name of the WSA was subsequently changed to The U.S.
Maritime Administration (MARAD) and was tasked with the responsibility of
implementing new ship construction

During World War II this involves building a fleet of about 5000 new Merchant vessels
using commercial shipyard facilities. It also was given the job of training and manning
the merchant marine with civilian crews. These Seaman were trained for wartime duty
at several government owned training stations that were based mostly on each coast.
The emergency U.S. Merchant Marine Wartime Training Program, manned by civilian

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instructors at U.S. government facilities, functioned all during the war as the U.S.
Maritime Service. Merchant Marine Radiomen were licensed by FCC as operator
maintainers of a steadily growing number of different kinds of ever more sophisticated
maritime mobile electronic equipment. Our maritime service officer‘s cap insignia
consisted of crossed olive branches, the universal symbol of peace, plus our National
Emblem, the Eagle. We didn't bear arms just our bare fists. Officers and crew had
separate mess rooms and cabin areas in accordance with the long-standing shipboard
traditions of this country. Trained U.S. Merchant Mariners, together with merchant
mariners from other nations, who had escaped capture during World War II, were
joined together to support an even greater armada of free world civilian cargo ships,
troop ships and tankers. Together they kept the free world's shipping lanes open after
the fall of Europe. Norwegian ships and sailors in particular were able to help the allies
because almost their entire merchant marine was at sea when Germany invaded
Norway and so they avoided capture. In the end, Norway lost half of its Merchant fleet
to German U-boats while carrying war supplies.

Although hauling war supplies was a joint global effort, most of the action took place in
the Atlantic war zone from early on, in what was to go down in history as the Battle of
the Atlantic. The British Royal Navy played a major battle role by organizing,
controlling and protecting the free world's only supply line to the Eastern Front and in
developing the plans to convoy allied shipping from continental USA, across the
Atlantic to the United Kingdom, and around the North Cape of Norway to Murmansk
and Archangel, Russia. Only a view of the free world's seaports managed to remain
open all during the war.

The heart of the Royal Navy's methodology was the use of the same commercial
emergency terrestrial radiotelegraph communications command and control networks
that had been in use so effectively and efficiently by world commerce in peace time,
ever sense Marconi invented radio. Emergency ship/shore radiotelegraph systems were
required by international law to be a mandatory part of the safety equipment aboard all
commercial vessels subsequent to the Titanic disaster in 1912. These requirements
were updated in the USA by the Communications Act of 1934. Global Regulatory
Body (FCC in the USA) requirements call for government licensed civilian radio
personnel both onshore and afloat.

FCC approved radio operating procedures and message handling protocol, were strictly
enforced from the beginning. For the steamship operators, it was either comply with
FCC requirements or face stiff fines, loss of operating privileges and jail sentences or all
three. The use of SOS 500kHz Radiotelegraphy, using a Code of Federal Regulations
(CFR) enforced in this country by FCC monitors and inspectors had finally corrected
long-standing safety deficiencies on the high seas; i.e. where many nearby commercial
ships could have rescued the survivors of the Titanic, but were unaware of the disaster
or knew about it and just continued on their way (as is openly done now, under

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deregulation.) Commercial steamship operators have attempted to skirt the CFR 1 ever
since 1912.

Major commercial coastal installations that once were used to handle the world's
ship/shore emergency communications 2 in war and peace included a large AT&T
radiotelegraph station WSL at Amagansett L.I. WSL is now permanently abandoned.
Personnel are retired and gone. WSL handled most of the Western Atlantic emergency
radiotelegraph communications. Great Britain‘s radio telegraph stations,GBR at
Portishead/Rugby, covered Eastern Atlantic, North Sea, and Arctic areas.

Those large commercial radio stations and their efficient communications techniques
were implemented once again by the British Royal Navy during World War II to
quickly organize emergency communications for convoy use, and for broadcasts to
Allied Merchant ships (BAMS) in the war zones. Commercial emergency
radiotelegraph proved to be particularly effective in helping to reduce the number of
human casualties due to U-boat (submarine) and aircraft attacks on world shipping.
Nazi U-boats sent much of the world's commercial shipping to the bottom but many of
the seamen, who once manned those lost vessels, were able to be located at sea and to
survive because their lifeboats were fitted with 500 kHz radio SOS beacon transmitters.
The majority of survivors volunteered to sail again aboard other merchant ships or
aboard those being launched in large numbers concurrently under the U.S.
Government's ship construction program.

Although 500 kHz radio telegraph equipment and antenna have been removed from
American flag Merchant vessels, proficiency in use of Emergency CW Radio remains a
mandatory FCC licensing requirement for 680,000 Americans who are currently active
licensed (non-seagoing, today) amateur radio operators. (Amateur in word only.)

My first World War II shipboard assignment: The T2 Tanker, S.S. Plattsburgh by
Henry Rowland, ex-2nd Radio Officer

This is an account of a wartime experience aboard a U.S. Merchant Marine T2 oil
tanker during World War II into the Pacific war zone and back to San Pedro, (then a
small seaport at Los Angeles) California.

U.S. Merchant Marine Radio Officers were civilians whose wartime ship assignments
were managed by several Maritime AFL or CIO Union Halls through various steamship
companies with stateside home offices located in our major seaports such as the World
Trade Center area of lower Manhattan. My first S.S. Co. was Deconhill of San Pedro.
My union was the American Radio Association (ARA). I was licensed by the Federal
Communications Commission (FCC) as a 2nd Class Radiotelegraph Operator, and was
trained and certified by the U.S. Maritime Service as a WWII Warrant Radio Officer in
1944. I‘ve sailed from that time until 1997, all over the world and whenever I pleased,

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as a non-Naval Reserve, part time, fully licensed hands-on U.S. Merchant Marine
Officer.

I had just completed an eight month (accelerated) Maritime service training program at
their brand-new Hoffman Island radio trainee station in New York Harbor in October
1944. It was the Radio Union‘s custom in those wartime days to offer their newcomers
a choice of initial seagoing RO job assignments. These choices were: #1 a tanker, #2 a
tanker and #3 a tanker. Commercial Oil Tankers were widely known to be prime
targets for U-boats but I was told that the meals in the officer‘s mess were going to be
excellent.

So I accepted without a whimper. All three of these oil tankers were permanently
based on the West Coast. Like all technology then, commercial air travel was still in its
infancy so the train seemed to be my only viable travel option between New York and
San Francisco and a long trip such as this via transcontinental steam locomotive train
took me five days. ARA‘s Union Hall sent me off to Seattle on arrival in San Francisco.
I was off to sea at last after years of waiting and being kept off ships because of bad
eyesight. RADAR had not yet come into widespread use in the merchant marine so
perfect eyesight was then a mandatory requirement for licensed deck officers and A.B
Merchant seamen.

After sending off a big bunch of red roses to Corrine so as to arrive in Hartford for
Christmas, I caught up with the Plattsburgh at the Seattle Pilot Station. She was about
to sail for Los Angeles, in the dead of night, in a howling, November gale and got to
make my first climb up the side of a ship via pilot ladder from a harbor tug, bag, and
baggage.

The S.S. Plattsburgh was manned by a total of about 35 licensed commercial merchant
marine officers and crew members. The Captain was one of the oldest aboard, he was
twenty-three. She was a very small tanker by today's standards.

Shipboard electronics was all in the T2‘s radiotelegraph shack. NO RADAR then.
Naval architecture has progressed to the point where today's supertankers carry about
eight times a T2‘s capacity. Under deregulation, supertankers have a total crew of less
than 20 licensed officers and men. 3

About 35 U.S. Navy armed guardsmen were aboard for the duration of the war, to man
the bow and stern guns and our anti-aircraft guns amidships. Every day around noon
all gun covers were removed and practice rounds were fired at old orange crate donated
by the stewards department and tossed overboard for target practice. The navy
gunners never managed to score a direct hit on these orange crates. That's all I can
recall of that stormy five-day coastwise trip as I went to sleep seasick.

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We next picked up a load of high octane aviation gas in San Pedro, also took on deck
cargo of U.S. Navy fighter planes. Thence we made a sure round trip out to Pearl
Harbor, territory of Hawaii, where we dropped everything off and returned to San
Pedro a few weeks later for another load of high octane aviation gas. We departed
Pedro in early December 1944 on an 8,000 mile round-trip voyage to the Marshall
Islands. The Plattsburgh was very fast for a commercial vessel of that era and because
of this, we could travel alone, and without the usual U.S. Navy escorts the entire way to
the Western Pacific war zone. We arrived at our destination (Eniwetok Atoll) without
incident by Christmas time 1944.

A deep environmental scar was all that remained to be seen of the Battle of Eniwetok.
Along the Lowell stretch of beach where the United States Marines had landed, all the
great tropical palm trees were reduced by bombardment to thousands of stubby tree
trunks extending across the Atoll and into a relatively more open area that was once
thick tropical jungle. 4

That was my first of many views of what World War II beachhead battlefields looked
like, several months or more after battle and in my mind's eye, the shock of this first
view of war wreckage remains crystal clear to this day. Pearl Harbor Navy Yard where
we had recently visited seemed to have returned to business as usual, compared to
denuded Eniwetok Atoll. Our captain skillfully maneuvered the ship alongside a U.S.
Navy oiler were we tied up and transferred our entire cargo to the oiler under cover of
darkness. The oiler then headed Westerly, further into the war zone, resupplying Navy
aircraft carriers off Japan. We departed Eniwetok and headed south easterly for the
Panama Canal. After that,we were to take on another load of aviation gas at our
Curacao refinery.

The voyage to Curacao had a very exciting beginning for me, but it was never ever
completed. Shortly after departing Eniwetok, coded messages began coming through
from U.S. headquarters in Hawaii warning that a ―screen‖ (that's what the message
called it) of several submarines had just been discovered by PBY patrol aircraft up
ahead of us and that our ship was in danger of being intercepted.

We sounded general alarm to alert the gun crew and immediately changed to zigzag
courses. Evasion continued well into the night, with the steam boiler safety valves in
the engine room frequently tied down to keep the ship running full speed.

Dumb luck!! The S.S. Plattsburgh escaped. This was to be the only World War II
wartime action that I experienced and it only involved this known direct contact for
several hours of battle evasion tactics off Eniwetok Atoll between my tanker and an
unknown number of enemy submarines. My wartime experiences may have resulted in
a different story after that, but the enemy was only a few months away from total
collapse following the NAZI surrender. Then when Japan quit, war was all over for me

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but the Cold War, and a never ending series of local hot wars began for the United
States of America and its allies. We quickly found out that we had won World War II
with a decisive victory, but not the peace, once the USSR began to rearm for world
conquest.

We were not back on course for very long when the ship‘s speed suddenly dropped
back and it was discovered that one of her two boilers was failing under stress. We
could no longer continue on our assigned course to the Panama Canal so we were
eventually diverted to a boiler repair facility near Los Angeles where I was discharged
on January 12, 1945. From there I decided to ride a Greyhound bus back to New York
City, to try and find a Liberty Ship, like everyone else.

My second ship assignment. The Liberty, S.S. J. Frank Cooper

No sooner had I returned to New York City than I was assigned to a Liberty Ship, S.S.
J. Frank Cooper, owned by Delarama S.S. Co. and we sailed from New York in a huge
convoy for Naples, Italy, on January 29, 1945. (No radar) our entire cargo was clothing
and relief supplies going to Italy. This was provided by the Red Cross for recently
liberated Italian civilians. It was sobering, after we got to Naples, to see long lines of
people waiting at relief distribution centers around the city. Everything was shambles.
Transportation was generally by donkey cart or via G.I. trucks. The opera house was
open. Mostly cold, hungry, barefooted, Italian civilians stood patiently waiting in long
lines for their turn to get inside.

Nazi General Rommel used the extensive Italian port facilities at Naples to keep Axis
supply lines open during his push across North Africa, early in World War II. Naples
also became the primary Axis evacuation route seaport when Rommel was eventually
driven back into Italy from North Africa via Tunis and Sicily, some time prior to our
arrival.

After Allied airpower made the Naples seaport complex untenable, Rommel was forced
to evacuate from there as well, but not before he had every ship scuttled in the harbor
and had sent in demolition crews to blow up the Italian dockside warehouse and cargo
handling facilities; facilities that were once, in peace time, one of the largest of their
kind in the world. Our view of all the destruction of war strewn about was
unbelievable.

We picked our way into the harbor through large sunken ships and wreckage of every
description (including a sunken white hospital ship with an unmistakable red cross on
its stack) and tied up alongside a capsized cargo ship at a demolished pier to unload. 5
This was before the days of super container ships, and we used our own shipboard
cargo booms, steam winches and handling gear to quickly complete unloading and get
out of there.

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Corrine‘s Grandma Gerry was connected with the Vitelli Tomato Cannery business in
Naples and she spent her World War II years at their farm and tomato paste cannery
north of town. I contacted her and she invited all the ship's officers to her home for
dinner. She lived in a large Villa located on a relatively untouched stretch of the harbor
opposite the Isle of Capri, just offshore. We arrived in uniform with our pockets
bulging with cartons of cigarettes, candy bars, and soap for her. These were the kinds
of small things holding the economy together. Her dining hall was huge, with velvet
drapes on the windows and views of both Mount Vesuvius on one side and Capri on
the other. We definitely got the best of the deal. She came from Brooklyn and when
the officers began introducing themselves, I could see her face light up with each of
Italian or Irish surname. The Chief RO was Jewish and I an Episcopalian. This
international mix got along and things went fine. On leaving, she presented us with all
the bottles of Chianti wine that our pockets could hold.

Her dinner was a crown jewel of the voyage and lifted our spirits and hers to new
heights. She felt that the German troops seemed more mature and well behaved than
the GI‘s. (Dead silence from us. It was her show from there on. We were green, all
right.)

The return voyage to New York was most uneventful. I was discharged from the S.S. J
Frank Cooper on April 13, 1945. My next ship assignment was delayed because of
some back injuries I has sustained in an early spring storm off Bermuda and I was
admitted to the Staten Island Merchant Marine hospital for surgery. I needed about
two months of R&R ashore before I was considered to be fit for duty again.

I was at home in Greenport Long Island getting my new 20 foot Cape Cod Catboat
ready for launching on Peconic Bay at Bishop‘s May 17, 1945, when much to my
surprise and my everlasting thanks to God, the news of the NAZI surrender in Europe
came over the air waves. Hitler was dead. Nazi Germany ended as quickly as that, but
war ain't over ‗till it's over. U.S.S.R. began all the dumb kinds of things that lead to a
cold war.

My third World War II ship assignment was on The Liberty, S.S. Cyrus H.K. Curtis

I joined everybody else is celebrating our victory a while before reporting to my next
ship assignment at the American export lines harbor side terminal building pier in
Hoboken, New Jersey, on June 29, 1945. She was the liberty ship S.S. Cyrus H.K.
Curtis (NO RADAR,) being loaded with a cargo of sugar for Algiers and Tunis, North
Africa. Nobody let on that we would be transporting an army combat unit, plus their
equipment, to the Western Pacific to fight in the invasion of Japan. (No victory at Sea
for us.)

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The U.S. Navy gun crew and all their guns left, so did the Atlantic convoys and UK
escorts and we were free to use the ships radio transmitters to broadcast our noon
position every day as we proceeded across a very peaceful Atlantic. World War II radio
silence was no longer in effect and the international SOS radiotelegraph frequency 500
kHz soon went from World War II radio silence to complete bedlam as ships from all
over the world were always trying to transmit foolishness at the same time. 6

The Cyrus H.K. Curtis‘s sugar cargo was unloaded in Algiers. The Arabs must still be
scratching their heads over what to do with it. We proceeded on to Tunis and from
thence to Oran to rendezvous with other ships soon to be heading for Japan. We were
at sea when the BBC announced that two bombs have killed 100,000 people and
injured 110,000 more in separate air attacks on two large Jap cities. (The first two A-
bombs.) We were at anchor in Oran on August 14, 1945, when we received word from
shore that the Japs had agreed to unconditional surrender and the Jap trip was off.
Everybody went nuts with joy. Tension quickly dissolved and guys began diving
overboard from all over the ship.

We arrived back in Philadelphia on August 28, 1945. It was my birthday and Corrine
came down from Hartford to celebrate. We had big helpings of fresh Philadelphia
scrapple with maple syrup for breakfast. On September 4, 1945, we were married at
the Congregational Church on the Green in Hartford.

My first peace time ship assignment; The Liberty, S.S. Renald Fernald

Finally the long bloody war came to a close in the Pacific. I joined the Fernald in
Baltimore on September 27, 1945, for a trip to Antwerp, Belgium. (NO RADAR)
Orders from the North Atlantic and Gulf S.S. Company were to pick up as many Army
GIs as we could get aboard and to bring them home to the states. Army wanted out of
there very badly. These GIs has survived the battle of the bulge a few months before
in the largest single campaign in American military history. It involved 600,000
Americans. 8,600 Americans died in that battle alone, 47,000 Americans were wounded
or captured.

The Fernald had survived several years of continuous convoy duty on the Murmansk
Run under Captain Leveau and he welcomed the soldiers aboard, even though we
weren't rigged to carry passengers. The Army brought their own C-rations.

When the ―tween‖ decks in our cargo holds had filled with victorious GIs, we threw off
the lifeboat covers and let them live in them all the way back to the states. Our
wartime life rafts were still in the racks (though we may not have had enough lifejackets
for them.) If our captain (oldest aboard) was concerned, he never let on.

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Maritime Tales of the Sea

This was my first experience as the only Radio Officer, as one RO was the normal
peace time compliment in the radio shack of a U.S. Merchant Marine vessel. Things
went okay though, considering all the loud homeward bound revelry going on down
below. We arrived back in New York on November 4, 1945, after a stormy passage.
After the last GI was safely on his way home, we proceeded to Philadelphia to load
cargo for the USSR.

We departed Philadelphia on November 9, 1945, bound for Murmansk, Russia, with a
general cargo of public utility supplies below decks and a deck load of two locomotives,
two tenders, two boiler cars, and public utility items (this appeared to be bundles of
iron water main piping.)

North Atlantic cold winter weather was abysmal from the start of the voyage and then
we were shut in with five days of dense fog and total darkness as we skirted the
Hebrides.

The ship's ancient Sperry Gyro compass 8 swung wildly from side to side and then
became worthless in those northern latitudes. 9 Of course, the ship's magnetic compass
did likewise.

We made landfall off Cape Wrath, Scotland by RDF and continued eastward along the
northernmost coast of Scotland towards the Pentland Firth on RDF bearings and
Depth Recorder readings. Only an occasional glimpse of the wild Scottish coast was
seen in the distance because of constant sleet, snowstorms and gloomy skies. I recall
getting a quick glimpse of those cliffs rising perpendicular to the shoreline for about
100 feet above sea level. This coast is where the highly respected World War II
Outward Bound Survival Program was conceived and implemented early on. Outward
Bound continues in the USA in quite the same way except that it doesn't function
during the winter months now at its hurricane Island based in Vinalhaven, Maine. It is
not teaching young merchant marine seaman of the world all weather survival for
extended periods in open lifeboats on the high seas for obvious reasons; i.e.
unrestricted submarine warfare, and the chances of merchant mariners having to
survive in open lifeboats for long periods of time has for the moment, ceased to be a
problem, and the national problem it once was, soon forgotten.

After stopping overnight at Kirkwall, Orkney Island, to survey extensive storm damage,
update our navigation charts and shoreside navigational aids documents, rules of the
road, etc. we headed across the North Sea and ever northward along the Norwegian Sea
coast to the northernmost tip of Europe, the notorious North Cape of Norway.
Storms were of force 8-10 or greater all the way. What little navigation we did was by
RDF signals received from the coast of Scotland and finally by Dead Reckoning (DR)
only. Very few of the many Norwegian RDF beacons had been reactivated at that time.

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Maritime Tales of the Sea

With the vessel heavily laden, we had minimum freeboard and thick, frothy white sea
spume continually blew across the ship in horizontal sheets. The ships emergency radio
telegraph antennae became saturated with salt sea water, and that shorted out all
antenna insulators, making emergency radio transmission impossible until the storms
abated. I think I would have become a nervous wreck for the rest of my life, had I
been in ex-2nd Radio Officer Johnny Stanish‘s 10 shoes just a few months earlier, during
wartime, aboard the Liberty Ship S.S. John A. Quitman experiencing not only these
same kinds of weather conditions but also being in constant risk of Nazi U-boat attack
from nearby Norway bases.

Enemy submarines had the advantage of operating comfortably a few hundred feet
from their targets but well below the surface, unaffected by high seas and hurricane
force winds. They seemed to have favored adverse surface weather conditions for their
torpedo runs against allied convoys. Merchant marine crews had become World War II
NAZI U-boat fodder in the most brazen violation of International Law that the world
had ever witnessed, to that extent before or since, on the high seas.

I exchanged pleasantries for some time on 500 kHz with communications personnel at
the liberated Norwegian commercial radio telegraph stations in Tromso and Vardo, as
we proceeded north, above the Arctic Circle, then eastward out along the far northern
shores of Lapland, before their radio signals faded away in the roar of low-hanging
Arctic Aurora and snow static. We reached our USSR destination, Murmansk on the
Kola Inlet a little after Christmas 1945 and proceeded to discharge our cargo.

Little did I realize at that time, but my chats with those northernmost Norwegian
coastal radio stations mentioned above would be one of the last friendly contacts that I
would have with the free world, outside of my personal shipboard contacts, for the
next seven months. The Fernald‘s radio transmitter power switches were sealed on our
arrival in Murmansk by USSR government officials in accordance with International
Agreement. I would shortly find myself on USSR‘s side of that Iron Curtain but feeling
lucky to still be alive. My shipmates and I had survived a disaster, but we discovered
that peace was war, behind the Iron Curtain.

―From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic an iron
curtain has descended across the Continent.‖ -- Sir Winston
Churchill, Speech in March 1946

It was after our initial departure from Murmansk February 1946 that disaster struck like
a bolt from the blue. We proceeded out to sea, followed long-established U.S. Rules of
the Road regulations, i.e. we kept to the right when in the Murmansk shipping lanes,
but we encountered an incoming Russian cargo ship coming straight for us. 11

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Too late, we found ourselves in the middle of the shipping lane, broadside to that other
ship which of course was attempting to steer clear of us also. That is internationally
known as crossed signals which translates into collision within a few seconds to us
American seagoing men, but no signals were ever sounded by the Russian beforehand
as she headed straight into us. When I heard our whip‘s whistle blowing the general
alarm signal, I hightailed it topside to the radio shack and got to work as fast as I could,
shaking like a leaf at first, not knowing what was going to happen to us next. Anything
from a boiler explosion just below me, to a capsizing was possible at that point.

Unfortunately, she ran into us very hard, and came to rest well inside our amidships
section. The force of the blow seemed to lift the Fernald up out of the water
momentarily and set us back down into the water again like a ruptured duck.

The Russians bow entered our engine room below the water line and destroyed all of
our lifeboats up topside on the side of the ship opposite the radio shack. Ships sank
like a rock from such a big hull rupture below the waterline, but we were lucky. The
entire star board fuel tank was welded into the hull, effectively giving us a double hull
along the point of impact. Of course all fuel in it ended up overboard but the inboard
sides of the tank held fast. A liberty ship has fuel tanks on both sides of the ship, and
most of the significant collision damage involved tearing open the top of the starboard
fuel tank, and that made for one great big engine room waterfall that we had to deal
with for five months.

Needless to say, there was quite a flurry of activity aboard following collision, so I can
only describe what went on out on deck and down below, secondhand. I never left the
radio shack once I scurried back up topside from the officer‘s mess. 12

I was at the supper table when we were hit and my supper flew up off the dish at me.
Mr. Williams, our first engineer, made it down into the engine room okay. The others
on watch had all abandoned it after seawater began to pour in on them and into the
boiler room. After a while, the water rose high enough above the floor plates to put
out the fire under the boiler.

With seawater now up around his legs, Mr. Williams managed to get the steam driven
engine room a bilge pumps started but this wasn't enough to check flooding. By this
time, our captain had become incoherent and our chief mate led the charge to launch
our remaining lifeboat or two located on the boat deck, just outside the radio shack.

All this was going on just below my porthole. The sailors pockets were bulging with
cartons of cigarettes and they acted apprehensive about what they were about to do so I
gave them a shout from the radio shack. Somehow I talked them all out of lowering
our lifeboats and leaving the ship by convincing them that I still had ways to get us
some help; i.e. via nearby ship-shore Russian radio telegraph shore stations. I turned

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up the volume on the radio room receivers for them to hear all the ongoing distress
traffic. One by one they returned to the main deck where our AB‘s and the second
mate, Tom Smith, were in the process of getting ready to assemble a collision mat and
rig lines to haul it over the side, then, to slide it way down and over the gaping hole
below her water line and finally fastened everything securely to the hull.

So the only deck officer left who kept his head from the initial shock of a real, live
disaster at sea and what followed was Smitty; a.k.a. Tom Smith, our second mate. His
was a personal attachment to the Fermald. This didn't surprise me. He had served
aboard her on many convoy runs to Murmansk and returned, during the Battle of the
North Atlantic. He had the right background and experience for the ongoing job of
saving the ship and for resolving the disaster we faced in an orderly fashion, i.e. keeping
her afloat and keeping our remaining lifeboats secured to their davits until help arrived
from shore to tow us in to port.

The deck crew quickly removed one of the huge, heavy canvas tarps from a nearby
hatch, hammered together a wooden frame for it from recent cargo dunnage and with
the help of cargo booms and steam winches, fashioned what was known in those
bygone days as a ―collision mat‖ to stem the inrush of seawater that was by now slowly
starting to flood the engine room. That ―Mat‖ later proved to be what kept us from
sinking. Although never expecting that I would have to last for more than a few weeks,
our heroic collision mat remained in place for five months. More important, both
Smitty and our deck crew gained plenty of respect from the Russian port authorities
ashore who tended towards his kind of a pragmatic approach in resolving monumental
problems with minimal resources and not much help. I think we would have had a
more difficult time getting out of the USSR had it not been for the respect he had
gained by saving the ship.

I've taken you to where the inrush of the sea was somewhat checked but still sounding
like a great waterfall down in the engine room. Otherwise, the ship had a cold, damp,
unearthly silence about it. Boiler pressure was falling rapidly and our engine room
pumps were just barely able to check the rising bilge water, which still was well above
the engine room floor plates. Our angle of list continued to worsen to about 40° and
once it seemed like we were right on the verge of capsize. There was no ship's
electricity. Our generators were steam driven but were shut down because we needed
every bit of steam to run the bilge pumps. The Fernald was hushed except for the
sound of the great waterfall pouring in. She was a cold, motionless ship. That's when I
sent S.O.S.

SOS de KVPE x SS RENALD FERNALD X QTH X SEVENTY TWO DEG
NORTH X THIRTY ONE DEG EAST X SINKING X NO POWER X SEND
TUGS

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We were dead in the water off the unmarked, unlighted coast of Lapland. So for her,
our only casualty was a captain who was still incoherent; also one sailor. He had tried
to hold a big nail with his teeth during collision mat/frame building operations. The
nail was so cold that it instantly adhered to his lip, and tore the skin off.

It was also very dark. In the dead of wintertime, up that far north, nighttime lasts 24
hours, month after month. It was snowing constantly too, so not even the ever present
northern lights were displayed at the time.

KVPE de UMV X MURMANSK RADIO X QSL SOS X TUGS DISPATCHED

The Russians were sending help. This was fast international commercial radio
telegraph distress communications cooperation in its finest hour. (Or so I thought.)

HOW THE COMMUNICATIONS ACT OF 1934 SAVED THE S.S. RENALD
FERNALD AND HER CREW

Sparks-the most essential man aboard for a little while, that night… The lives of all
initially depended on that radio link and the man who operated it. A long-standing
international law had decreed that no ship could leave port without operational radio
gear and a qualified radio officer aboard, responsible only to the Captain. Legislation
was also passed in America a few years before World War II under the
Communications Act of 1934 resulted in the same kind of high standards for regulating
U.S. Merchant Marine ship‘s radio telegraph stations, operations and maintenance
personnel. This legislation was enthusiastically enforced by the FCC under the Code of
Federal Regulations in order to insure that matters involving distress communications
messages at sea always took top priority over own ships business messages and
anything else, particularly, priority over personal radio telegrams. 13 14 & 15

Ship owners, Maritime Mobile equipment manufacturers and political lobbyists were
given no loopholes that would allow them to bypass FCC requirements. They were
forced to comply with the rule of law. So it was not by chance that even after the ship's
main electrical generators were shut down that the Fernald had a safe, FCC government
licensed, annually inspected, well maintained, emergency commercial radiotelegraph
installation that functioned flawlessly all during our distress. When I signed ships
articles at the beginning of every voyage, it was with the understanding that I was there
under FCC rules and regulations to primarily do what was necessary to seek assistance
via the 500 kHz International Radiotelegraph Distress channel when disaster struck out
of the blue.

The Fernald‘s emergency radio telegraph station was powered by a very large and
efficient bank of storage batteries. These would have lasted for days if need be, so the
thought never occurred to me to abandon ship. That would be a violation of ships

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articles, anyhow. The Communications Act of 1934 is what made it possible for me to
send SOS and establish contact with nearby ship/shore stations almost instantly. 16
Even when the ship's position was very far above the Arctic Circle. So it was that our
crew returned safely to port, but the fate of the Fernald remained unresolved for many
months.

Clearly something wasn't right ashore. Instead of quickly bringing us to their (no doubt
U.S. funded) floating dry dock facility we were brought to an Anchorage and USSR
port officials resealed my transmitter power switches to keep us off the air. Fernald was
taken into a shallow water anchorage that was used during the war for battle damaged
ships. By the light of Aurora Borealis, we saw that there were sunken hulks nearby, all
that remained of the wartime convoys. The intensity of some of local battle action,
involving World War II's last Murmansk Convoy (Nr. RA 64), that took place a year
before at the nearby entrance to this port.

The port began to freeze in (including their damned floating dry dock) and so did we.
By now, we were three months into the voyage and our food supply ran completely
out. I have explained earlier how the Royal Navy had closed its wartime Murmansk
North Atlantic Convoy control operation there, following the German surrender and
that most civilian maritime affairs were no longer being handled in an orderly fashion.

The Red Army was methodically stripping Eastern Europe's industrial infrastructure of
its every last nut and bolt and Murmansk had become Russia's major seaport Depot for
the collection/distribution of all this stuff to USSR industrial centers across Siberia.
The dock areas nearby were just swarming with civilian engineers and technicians.
Crates of factory machinery were piled everywhere around the port and the new steam
locomotives that we just hauled across the wild North Atlantic from Philadelphia were
both put to work right away along with plenty of other locomotives that were similarly
shipped over from the USA.

So that's why things didn't seem right ashore. The British had correctly evaluated the
situation and completely evacuated, whereas the U.S. was trying to help them rebuild
the USSR. The Russians wanted no allied personnel to remain in Murmansk. 17 This
was an extension of USSR's World War II policy of taking all the war supplies we could
deliver but they forbid American troops from coming ashore, even when the Red Army
was being annihilated at the Battle of Moscow. America had instantly become a
postwar foreign enemy power and we found ourselves being treated like detained,
potential enemy agents, particularly after Churchill‘s Iron Curtain speech on BBC:
Freedom is slavery.

Obviously, Stalin had no intention of disarming anyhow. He was rearming his
decimated, antique, war machine. Our ship lay at anchor, astride what was eventually to
become his Murmansk Nuclear Submarine Base. Soon we were towed to an

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abandoned Murmansk wartime cargo pier and dumped. They put us under 24-hour
NKVD surveillance as a USSR/USA political freeze intensified. 18 Nothing moved very
often in port except for a gigantic Soviet icebreaker. (Most of the crew aboard that
vessel were women.)

We were allowed to come and go as we pleased, but there was nothing to see except
stark war-torn desolation, the infamous POW stockades or maybe the black market
bazaar where strange looking Lapland stuff could be had for a pack of Pall Malls. I
brought back to the states a pair of home brew cross-country skis that were war surplus
from Russia's ill-fated war with tiny Finland back in the 1930s. (The skiing Finns really
skunked ‗em.)

Murmansk was only a small communist outpost then but it was of major strategic
importance to ongoing USSR Cold War planning. Big portraits of Lenin were
everywhere. I oftentimes thought to myself ―Why not some big portraits of Stalin,
too?‖ No one seemed to know.‖

Street corner bullhorns loudspeakers blasted Soviet propaganda all through those long
winter nights and copies of PRAVDA were posted here and there on street corner
bulletin boards as well. I never saw individual homes, housing was communal, and so
was news. Most residents there lived in big buildings similar to the way we house
temporary hurricane refugees. Heating and cooking was by electricity. Travel was
mostly by big Red Army (Ford) trucks made in USSR, a giant version of a little antique
model ―A‖. George Orwell has described this lifestyle in his book ―nineteen hundred
and eighty four.‖ i.e. Peace is War; Love is Hate, Freedom is Slavery. My ―end of
WW2‖ was not to be.

Nazi POWs (mostly Romania's Nazi satellite troops) from the decisive battle of
Stalingrad constituted much of Murmansk's visible workforce. Bombed out buildings
were enclosed by barbed wire and Hitler's finest ex-troops were hard at work inside
with pickaxes and shovels, cleaning up the port. There we could only wonder about
their captors as the POWs spent that Arctic winter, housed at their work sites in
shelters that resembled doghouses covered with tarpaper. There they died, probably,
starving (like us.) Stalin didn't return many Nazi POWs. I always tremble a little
whenever I see today's black-and-white POW/MIA flags, remembering the horror that
I witnessed taking place behind Stalin‘s Iron Curtain, and knowing that today‘s
America‘s fighting forces still have not resolved POW/MIA issues. 20

When Churchill delivered his Iron Curtain speech in March 1946, we began to joke
about being led away to nearby salt mines. But we were eating well then, nothing but
rice three times a day and all the water we could drink for five long months.

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THE INTOURIST HOTEL, PORT OF MURMANSK

These tales happened in the final days of when Britannia ruled the waves and there was
a UK Seaman‘s Club in about every port throughout the old British Empire.

The Intourist Hotel was modeled after them. There was a banquet hall, once used for
incoming war convoy celebrations, a barber shop, restaurant (practically no edible food
served) a bar room that wreaked of vodka only and an auditorium for when entertainers
from Moscow came into town. When I went ashore, I went there.

The most useful service was provided by the interpreters and in Murmansk they were
both women, Val and Tanya. One or the other met every convoy that came in port
during the war and they met our ship at war‘s end.

There was also Ivan. He was born and grew up in New York City. Disillusioned by his
life in the states, he became a communist and went to the USSR before World War II.
Disillusioned by his life there as well, he spent most of his time onboard with us,
listening to world news on BBC.

Tanya was a dedicated communist. We had many discussions about Christian religion.
She was smart as a whip and usually ended our conversations with questions like ―I
don't believe we have a soul… does your God give a fish a soul as well?‖

Val wasn‘t as belligerent. I told her about the Ten Commandments and all, and she
wanted to know what the New Testament said as well. So I gave her my Bible to keep
and she probably remains a Christian to this day. I can picture Val surviving until 80+.

It seemed strange she should ask at the time. I figured Christianity had to have
flourished all over Europe once upon a time. Russian composers have written our
finest and most musical Christmas music and I noticed that lots of Russians were
putting up trees also. Christmas Day seem to be delayed awhile, until around New
Years, I guess, and their only holiday celebration appeared to be on New Year's Day
only, in Murmansk, at least. Now with the USSR dissolved, most all the people
probably have returned to having their Christmas Day celebrations at Christmas time
and that they are enjoying their own Christmas music with an extra long fun mid-winter
holiday season the same as us.

Both women kept us informed about upcoming entertainment and special events. One
event was the reindeer races. After all, we were in Lapland and herds of reindeer were
everywhere. So off we went to a little Lap village in the nearby mountains. Yakity Yak
Yakking through Lapland. This particular event featured a native Lap ski patrol, a Red
Army unit in full battle gear, light machine guns for all hands. The patrol lined up, each
member on skis but harnessed to a reindeer team and off they would race across the

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frozen tundra like ancient Egyptians behind their war chariots, or like old Santa. I'd
hate to face those little guys on a battlefield. But it was good, live entertainment and so
very different from anything I'd ever seen before or since. In the present (1996) days
of container ships, container ship terminals and automation, every port that I go into
appears the same. High rise abounds ashore for the teeming masses who once
swarmed through the streets. Even the Chinese junk fleets of Hong Kong and
Singapore have disappeared, replaced on Asiatic fishing grounds by diesel powered
sampans. Ugly high rise apartments have become the international residents of choice
for many seaports. Life now seems to revolve around container ship terminals and high
rise apartments.

Back to Murmansk. By March and April, 1946, daylight has slowly started to return and
a rather extensive ski event was in progress in the mountains above Murmansk that
would have put the 1980 Lake Placid winter games to shame. USSR‘s most elite class
showed up in all the newest and most fashionable snow bunny ski paraphernalia. To
see flashy, colorful clothing like that and lots of people having so much fun once again
was invigorating. But fraternize… don't even think about it!! Big brother was always
watching.

Murmansk is located on a deep water fiord in a mountainous region with breathtaking
views, similar to a Scandinavian fiord and it appeared that the competing participants of
this skiing shindig came up from Moscow to enjoy the sights as well as the powder
snow.

When the USSR came apart in the eighties and the shocking disparity between poor
and wealthy over there was revealed, I thought of how those communist elite had been
enjoying fun and games for over 40 years like that under secret police protection.

We were a very young crew and all of this Russki skiing ashore caught our fancy.
About twenty of us descended on a pile of used, home-brewed cross-country skis at the
black market bazaar, each picked up a pair of skis and off we went to the nearest hill to
try our luck. I guess the mistake we made was in thinking we could maneuver with
cross-country skis on a ski slope like the Russkis were doing with properly fit ski
binders. That didn't work well for us ,of course, but we were undaunted. It was quite a
show.

The next Russian holiday in Murmansk was celebrated on May 1st – Mayday. I had
never seen a Maypole before. Theirs was a thing of beauty. Of course nobody
onboard knew what the significance of the celebration was all about but after awhile the
crowds were disbursed by a subzero blinding snowstorm so we didn't get to see any of
the final action.

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By May, our steady diet of water and rice was taking its toll on my digestive system. I
passed out a few times because I wasn't able to digest rice anymore and I was taken
ashore in pain to the local hospital. The hospital was staffed entirely by women in
dirty, blood stained white coats. All I could think about was getting out of there fast
and back aboard the ship so that's what I did. Getting rid of what little that I had on
my stomach, etc., seemed to be what would have been ordered anyhow and everything
turned out fine from then on. I'm not just making this up. Whenever I felt sick
thereafter, I just went into my room and locked my door.

During June,we began to view Murmansk in the light of day. The ranks of Hitler's
POW‘s who had been working around bombed out buildings dwindled down to
precious few by now. The bright sunshine even poured through my porthole at two
o'clock in the morning from a setting sun in the west that never went down and sunrise
was likewise bizarre. Now these are unforgettable mind trips for somebody who had
seldom hung out overseas or experienced the many unbelievable spectacles of brutal
humanity and/or glorious nature like this on faraway shores like in ―the land of the
midnight Sun.‖ It also would no doubt have led to incurable insomnia had I left my
(blacked out) port hole open after 10 p.m.

The long-awaited thaw of 1946 finally arrived above the Arctic Circle about June and
roads and wooden walkways in Murmansk became quagmires, looking just like Currier
and Ives early Americana Frontier paintings. Even Murmansk shipyards infamous
icebound floating dry dock, actually floated free again so the ship was towed there and
hauled out. Still with that big list to port she had carried for several months. A few
scruffy Russki Electrish Velkers made quick work of crudely welding steel plates over
our coalition hole from top to bottom and soon we would try making it a more
beauteous departure, the second go around. Fuel and provisions for our return voyage
arrived via one of several Russian ships that had been running now and then all winter
between Baltimore and Murmansk, and it was time to celebrate by having a little
something to eat. Their first food to come aboard was a crate of stewed tomatoes.
The Second Engineer grabbed the crate out of the cargo net as it swung aboard and he
passed the contents around. I don't recall how we managed to open those big cans, just
that we very quickly scarfed down all the tomatoes in them, pirate fashion. All I can
remember of our liberation celebration is how good the taste of those canned tomatoes
made us feel, following our POW starvation diet of rice and water over the previous
five months behind Stalin‘s Iron Curtain. The more we gorged ourselves the better we
felt. We even began to laugh and horse around again. ―Living on Top of the World‖
for so long, made thoughts of taking the ship back to the U.S. East Coast seem
insurmountable. Even small jobs were monumental tasks. I had never felt so washed
out, but before long things like stewed tomatoes, fresh beef, and plenty of hot coffee
did the trick and all hands were ready to sail once again. The Fernald started to look
shipshape and the smell of fresh paint filled all the passageways. We were Outward
Bound. The epic voyage of my life was at last coming to an end.

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I tried to identify the location of obstructions we would have to deal with enroute (like
large icebergs) from North Atlantic ice reports which once were transmitted daily from
NSS, Washington, D.C. via shortwave radio. Reliable North Atlantic short wave radio
reception was nearly impossible because of high level atmospheric static. Signals from
the states were always weak and distorted since we were thousands of miles north of
stateside transmitting stations.

We chose a route between Greenland and Iceland for our initial leg of the voyage home
and it turned out that our biggest obstacle would be pea soup fog all along that way.
Navigation was reduced to Dead Reckoning (DR), Radio Direction Finder (RDF) and
Depth Finder. Fog was so thick after we were at sea, we could only see as far as the
wings of the bridge (for two long weeks,) so we had to blow the ship‘s foghorn
constantly. Initially, the return voyage was lots of fun, it was midsummer, the seas were
smooth and the wind moderate. Icebergs perhaps? The remainder of our route home
was anticlimax. We anchored safely at last at the Baltimore quarantine station by July
17th, 1946. Fernald was the last of the WWII Murmansk Convoy ships to return home.

We quickly discovered that MARAD was actively relegating our 5000 ship wartime
merchant marine to a national reserve feet, otherwise known as the boneyard. Or
selling them to the highest foreign bidder for very little to avoid the high cost of towing
them away to be scrapped. This was the end of our hopes and dreams all during the
war for the revival of our once great peacetime American Merchant Marine. We had
tried to describe the kinds of things we saw going on behind the Iron Curtain, but it
was like talking to deaf ears.

WWII Merchant Seamen Denied G.I. Bill of Rights by Congress.

More than bitter pills -- news about this G.I. Bill of Rights no-go decision was of epic
proportions in my lifetime but was actually handed down via a routine radio newscast
after I returned. It had a most harmful impact on what I intended to be doing by
screwing up every plan I had made to continue my college education when I returned
from war.

I explained in the introduction how FDR had put the merchant marine under the
Department of Commerce before WWII instead of under the war department, so I
really didn‘t figure it would be possible to classify us as war veterans along with the
armed forces when we didn‘t bear arms. The Navy Armed Guard came aboard and
took care of what little armament our merchant ships had. We were trained to man
antiaircraft guns when I was at Hoffman Island, but this was just a holdover from the
days of Nazi U-boats and aircraft were taking a heavy toll of free world shipping. That
emergency was ending by the time I came along. There was no longer any need for us
to man any guns or anything else that U.S. Navy did during the war and visa versa.

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Antiaircraft gun target practice at Hoffman was a lot of fun, but I never realized before
how much skill was needed before becoming an accurate AA gunner, especially on
Kamikaze targets.

So I went ashore after my discharge from the Fernald and I worked ashore for three
years and so did Corrine. We had graduated from the Collegiate Prep School in New
Haven together just before I went into the Hoffman Island Maritime Service Radio
Training Program, and I got a job with RCA Communications in N.Y.C. on the
strength of the commercial FCC Radio license I received when I graduated from
Hoffman plus my collegiate school education. …

1 These FCC regulations, and their once rigid enforcement, constituted one of the major differences between the U.S. Navy and the U.S.
Merchant Marine and radio ship jobs in peace and war.

2 The International Distress radiotelegraph channel, 500 kHz, continued to be the heart of this worldwide high seas emergency distress
system, in peace and war, for nearly a hundred years but it‘s use (500 kHz) was discontinued for all time under the Communications Act of 1995.
500kHz ground wave transmission provides for reliable linking of all shipping within a radius of three hundred miles for vessels in distress during the
day and well beyond that after dark.

3 The engine room is now manned by day watch Engineers only i.e. they work from 8 am to 5 pm and go back below whenever their
fault alarm bells sound. There are a high percentage of false alarms.

4 Regarding future environmental scars: interestingly, a beautiful tropical lagoon, near the one where we dropped anchor at Eniwetok in
the Marshall Islands in 1944, would eventually be where bigger (nuclear) bombs of the future (cold) war would be tested by our government. A lethal
level of radiation was found on Bikini Atoll long after open air U.S. atomic energy commission's nuclear test program ceased in the late 1950s.

5 Unloading under those conditions would be impossible today unless helicopters, large enough to handle the sea container cargo boxes
now in universal use, were available.

6 I would live to see the day when that international distress radiotelegraph frequency 500 kHz would go silent once more. This time,
silent forever. It will never be used again in and emergency out they are on the high seas. Thanks to the regulation of the U.S. maritime industry and
the Communications Act of 1995, international distress SOS (Save Our Souls) calls have ceased to exist by government decree. Replaced today
aboard American Merchant vessels by GMDSS. GMDSS= Global Maritime Mobile Distress and Safety System

With the rapid global implementation of satellite communications today, many believe that FCC regulations that once controlled
emergency radio installations have successfully been skirted for commercial radio operations. Other, experienced professional seagoing career, Sr.,
Merchant Marine officers and seamen such as myself, disagree. We feel that the new global maritime distress and safety system (GMDSS) is a
disgrace. Both the government and classification societies either lacked experience or were out of touch with seafarers at the sharp end of the industry
to have passed legislation on GMDSS to allow the president unsafe situation to happen. GMDSS in use today is the result of steamrollered legislation.
Both owners and equipment manufacturers successfully lobbied the legislators to introduce GMDSS for profit. In the case of the owners, the modern
technology was seen as a chance to dispense with an expensive radio officer and reduce manning. There is no substitute for a properly trained radio
officer or specialist on a safely run and manned ship.

8 About five days from landfall.
9 (Many years later, during the Cold War, nuclear submarine characteristics made functioning possible in the Arctic under adverse
weather (or while experiencing atmospheric reception and Gyro problems) because they could operate submerged at departure from home base until
they return from patrol duty. Consequently the Navy's electronic systems and enlisted personnel training courses satisfied completely new and
different mission and environmental requirements. In particular, the Navy operated with fare re low frequency (VLF, ground wave terrestrial radio
transmitters) which were monumental government owned radio transmitting facilities at Cutler Maine for transmission of outgoing command and

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control, common to FBM nuclear, etc. submarines which operated silently and deeply on station during the cold war. The Floating Fortresses of
George Orwell‘s famous old book, ―nineteen hundred and eighty four.‖))

Encryption and decryption systems using convoluted communication codes were installed both a sure and aboard the sub's for secure
U.S. Navy VLF, etc. in coming record traffic and message handling. Conversely Merchant marine ship/shore communications had up until 1995,
utilized only non-secret, commercially available, message handling facilities, FCC licensed civilian career Officers and commercial FCC type approved
commercial shipboard electronic equipment during peacetime but our U.S. Navy Gunnery Officer came aboard with a Government code book during
WWII for translating our BAMS messages.))

10 A. Hoffman Island classmate, John Stanish, ex 2nd Radio Officer, provided me with an interesting account of his first trip to see,
which was from New York to Arctic areas, after our graduation from Hoffman Island. John had been assigned to the murder man USSR run and he
his World War II life combat experiences are reported here in as a separate story by Carl L. Hammond, his ex-chief radio officer. Hammond tells
about a typical young Merchant marine radio officer's wartime duty aboard a liberty ship in the very last convoy to sell of the war. They arrived in
Murmansk a little after Christmas time, 1944. John and I had gone from our classrooms and electronics systems labs on Hoffman Island two different
lines and different war zones, but enemy submarines sneak attack strategies, (i.e. near wars end enemy vengeance attacks against Merchant vessels as
they were departing port, were chillingly similar worldwide.)

11 Their concept of the Rules of the Road, like most everything else we would soon discover behind the Iron Curtain, was completely
opposite to ours. We were truly the Rightists and they were firmly the Leftists. i.e. peace is war, love is hate, freedom is slavery, right is left, and two
plus two is five. You name it. Those folks had some really serious issues.

12 Thanks to the dedicated efforts of a fuse savvy MIT electronic engineers, following Italian passenger liner S.S. Andrea Doria‘s
needless (i.e. Radar assisted) sinking off Cape Cod, some ships of today are fitted with collision avoidance radar. This was found to sometimes
prevent bizarre coalitions such as the Fernald‘s. Very few commercial ships (not even ours) were fitted with any kind of a radar device at all during
World War II. New collision avoidance radar was a state of the art U.S. Merchant Marine development. Solid state radars involving solid-state
circuitry and digital electronics were the first of many electronic shipboard systems that were to change the commercial radio officer's shipboard job
description and FCC technical licensing requirements ever thereafter.

13 (the horrors of past peacetime disasters were still fresh in legislators mines the end and see loss sustained during World War II was
overwhelming. 800 American manned ships like hours were lost to enemy action. Only the United States Marines has suffered a relatively greater loss
of life. U.S. Merchant ships were not allowed to undock or proceed to see unless fully qualified, FCC licensed radio officer's were on board, during
war and peace. FCC requirements called for ship departure radio test to be conducted and all test results had to be recorded in the radio room log
well before departure. While at sea, and injury was required every 15 minutes in the radio room log to record regular ship communications on 500
kHz and a three minute silent. Was observed on this international distress frequency every half hour to check for distress communications. This was
the situation in the U.S. Merchant Marine right up until recent across-the-board government deregulation of the maritime industry was implemented
in this country.)

14 The order of radio telegram priority was: distress, urgent, medical, ships business, personal radiograms
15 Distress messages go unrecognized on today's world wide web. There is no order of message priority on the web.
16 jumping ahead 60 years to the 21st century. The Communications Act of 1995 and GMDSS are now in effect and have superseded
the Communications Act of 1934 laws for six years now.
17 At the close of World War I, USA had landed in American Expeditionary Force ashore at our very location and at Archangel as well,
to help the CZAR quell the Bolshevik October Revolution (only about 25 years earlier.) So that evidently hadn't set well in the USSR for good post-
World War II American relations, because they didn't trust us after that incident.
18 Navy Lt. Dedman, USNR, arrived about then. Liaison with the Russians was neither effective nor efficient after that. The lieutenant
was no match for Russians astute Russian Navy Yard management who outranked him by several wraps of gold braid. The Fernald appeared to take
last priority at their war-torn floating dry dock facilities although she had a considerable port list, see water had been pouring into her engine room for
weeks and we desperately needed hull repairs to make the ship seaworthy again plus some fuel and lots of food supplies to get us out of there.
19 Or if they did, no one said. (It always felt like big brother was watching and listening)

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20 Dedman couldn't establish U.S. mail delivery service for the Fernald

EPILOGUE

Casualties: The United States Merchant Marine provided the greatest sealift in history
between the production army at home and the fighting forces scattered around the
globe in World War II. The prewar total of 55,000 experienced mariners was increased
to over 215,000 through U.S. Maritime Service training programs.

Merchant ships faced danger from submarines, mines, armed raiders and destroyers,
aircraft, "kamikaze," and the elements. About 8,300 mariners were killed at sea, 12,000
wounded of whom at least 1,100 died from their wounds, and 663 men and women
were taken prisoner. (Total killed estimated 9,300.) Some were blown to death, some
incinerated, some drowned, some froze, and some starved. 66 died in prison camps or
aboard Japanese ships while being transported to other camps. 31 ships vanished
without a trace to a watery grave.

One in 26 mariners serving aboard merchant ships in World WW II died in the line of
duty, suffering a greater percentage of war-related deaths than all other U.S. services.
Casualties were kept secret during the War to keep information about their success
from the enemy and to attract and keep mariners at sea.

Newspapers carried essentially the same story each week: "Two medium-sized allied
ships sunk in the Atlantic." In reality, the average for 1942 was 33 allied ships sunk each
week.

Source: http://www.usmm.org/ww2.html

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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BIOGRAPHIES

RAYMOND C. ALLARD
Bakersfield, CA

I joined the Merchant Marines on November 4, 1942, in New Haven,
Connecticut. I went through training at Sheepshead Bay, New York. After finishing, I
volunteered to go to Portland, Maine to install Torpedo nets on Liberty ships made at
the Portland shipyard. I was then transferred to Boston, MA, then to Philadelphia, P A,
and then was sent to Galveston, Texas, where I stayed from November 19, 1943 until
March 5, 1944, installing nets.

On April 8, 1944, I was on a Liberty ship sailing to Naples, Italy. While sailing
through the Mediterranean Sea, we were attacked by German Torpedo Bombers every
night at dusk. One of the ships caught a torpedo in its net. The ship went into a port in
North Africa to have it removed.

The port of Naples was heavily
damaged, along with the city. Ships were sunk all over the area. We were about 1200
feet from a hospital ship. There was a steady stream of ambulances, day and night,
delivering injured soldiers from Anzio Beach, where terrific battles were fought. We
were in Naples about a week and the ambulances never ceased.

On our way home, as we were going through the Straits of Gibraltar, we
received word of D-day, the invasion of France. Half of our convoy was sent to
England, to ferry supplies.

On December 12, 1944, we sailed to Antwerp Belgium. We made it to
Antwerp, and then the Battle of the Bulge started. A V 2 bomb exploded above our
ship and there was damage from the concussion. It landed about a half mile from our
ship. There was a piece of the bomb found with a date stamped 2 days prior to when it
exploded. They were making and launching them as fast as they could. We constantly
heard V 2 and buzz bombs heading to England. If you heard the engine quit, you took
cover, as it could land close by. There were gun stations along the coast that shot many
of them down, but a lot got through to England causing great damage.

On March 15, 1945 I was on a Liberty ship docked at Baltimore, Maryland.
Bombs, grenades, and all types of ammunition were loaded. As we were sailing to
Ghent, Belgium, I was on the 8 to noon watch. At 11:30, I reported a small boat, dead

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ahead of the convoy. I was relieved at noon and went to the mess hall. About 12:30, all
hell broke loose. A Liberty ship, on our port side, was hit. As I ran out of the mess hall,
I noticed the nose of the ship was sinking. One life boat got away. When I got to my
station, which was the flying bridge at the starboard rear 20 mm gun tub, a British
tanker, about 2 ship lengths off our starboard, was aflame. It had been hit in the engine
room and was exploding tank by tank. Two men were running forward on the catwalk
as the tanks were blowing, explosion after explosion, eventually engulfing the 2 men. A
lot of ammunition from the tanker's ammunition locker was exploding and hitting our
ship and our gun tub, as we huddled inside. The sides were only about 30" high and we
were sitting on a shipload of ammunition. I was sure we were going to blow sky high at
any moment. All the ships were in disarray trying to keep out of each others space and
we were getting closer to the burning tanker. Everything finally straightened out and we
continued sailing. We were drawing too much water, so we had to unload several tons
of ammunition in order to navigate the shallow canals, to the port of Ghent, Belgium.

It took about 2 weeks to unload most of our cargo and then V E day was here.
We sat there for 2 weeks until it was decided what to do. We had to load everything
back on the ship and take it back to Charleston, South Carolina. We sat on ammunition
for a round trip. How nice!

I then set sail on a Victory ship to Liverpool. On our way back to the U.S.,
while I was at the wheel, our steering engine quit. On the 12-4 afternoon watch, there
was quite a tangle of ships trying to avoid us in the convoy. We watched the whole
convoy leave us. It was quite rough and we were rolling violently. I hung on to the
wheel, but my feet would go out from under me.

I signed on another Liberty Ship near the end of October 1945, in New York
City. We sailed to Murmansk Russia which should have been a 2 to 3 month trip, but
ended up being 10 months.

The shipping company outfitted us with a quarter inch thick, felt knee boots
with rubber articks, fur vests, and sheep lined jackets. We arrived in December and it
was very cold, 25 to 30 degrees below zero.

We were leaving the port on December 30. I had just finished eating, got up to
go relieve the wheelman, when there was an awful collision, midship, on the starboard
side. A Russian ship hit us and put a gash all the way up to the officer's quarters and
way below to the engine room. We were still in the harbor and had to anchor there as
they would not bring us back to the dock, for fear of sinking. We got 2x4's from the
Russians to build a frame and cover it with canvas. This would be used as a collision
mat over the hole. We worked day and night and it took a week to build. It was so cold
you could only stay out about 20 minutes at a time. The rubber boots we had froze
solid, and it was like walking on wooden shoes. We all worked on sea watches, 4 hours
on and 8 hours off. We had to pass a line under the anchor chain. We lowered a
seaman down on a chain and wooden slat ladder. His hands froze to the ladder. We
finally figured a way to get under the anchor chain and drag a cable up the port side.
We lowered the mat over the starboard side with the cable attached, in order to pull the
mat to the hole. In the meantime, the pumps in the engine room had to continuously

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be repacked, as they were pumping water coming in through the hole, 24 hours steady.
Our steam on deck had to be on continuously or the pipes would freeze. That

created a slippery mess on which to walk and work. We were left anchored 2 weeks.
We were finally brought to a dock, when it was decided we weren't going to sink. I
never worked so hard on any ship.

There were no other U. S. ships in the port. We had run out of food. The
Russians furnished us with fish and a deer carcass. We were given a barrel of flour that
was rancid and full of flour bugs. The baker sifted all the bugs he could, out of the
flour, but some slipped through. It had a rancid odor when baking, and to eat it, we
had to toast it, and it stunk again. We ate Spam that we had in our store room, along
with some dried fruit that was reconstituted. Many of the crew would get sick and run
to the head or the side of the ship to vomit. I used to laugh at them, then, one day, it
happened to me. It was very hard, not having proper food.

Finally, 6 months after the collision, we were brought to the shipyard. It was
now June. We were there about 2 weeks. All that was done was weld a plate of steel
over the hole. This did not please the crew, because we had a long way to go to get to
the states and we were concerned about the patch holding.

We left the dry dock around the end of June and instead of going south along
the coast of Europe, the Captain decided to take a straight line to the states from the
Arctic Circle. We were in amongst the icebergs for about 5 days. There was no visibility
and the fog horn was blowing twice a minute, day and night. Eventually we made it
back to New York. That was the last trip I made.

My first job, when I quit sailing, was at a fertilizer manufacturing plant for
about a year. My next job was collecting residential refuse on a sanitation truck, for a
couple of years. I then worked at a plant, manufacturing chains for farm machinery
until my wife (whom I married on March 9, 1944) and I moved to Long Beach, CA in
March of 1952. I worked at Douglas aircraft, in Long Beach, as an aircraft assembler,
for nine and a half years.

In 1961, I went to work for Prudential Insurance Co. I transferred to
Bakersfield, CA in 1971 with my wife and 2 children. Our free time was spent flying in
our 4 place Cessna airplane, camping, boating, waterskiing, and motorcycle riding. We
traveled back and forth, as a family, to the East coast several times. In 1978, with our 2
children, we took an 11,000 mile trip to a Prudential convention in Quebec, Canada on
our 2 motorcycles.

I rode an annual 3 Flags run, for 20 years. It
covered many different routes, from Mexico to Canada, each year over the Labor Day
weekend. On the 20th year, I collided with a bear going 70 MPH. The bear was being

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chased out of a campground. The bear was killed and I went over the windshield and
handlebars. I was skinned up and broke 2 ribs. That was the last time I rode a
motorcycle.

My wife and I travel once in a while, and take a cruise now and then, but most
of my time is spent reading and watching all types of automobile races, and ballgames
on TV.

IAN T. ALLISON - Co-chairman
THE JUST COMPENSATION COMMITTEE

Ian T. Allison was born in Vancouver, Canada January 27, 1920. His parents
immigrated with their two sons to San Francisco, CA. in 1921. He went to school in
the Bay Area working for Bank of America from 1938 – 1942 and became a naturalized
American citizen in 1944.

He shipped ―off the dock‖ in San Francisco in January 1943 as an Assistant
Electrician on the S. S. Alcoa Pennant, a C-1 cargo vessel. Within a month he
advanced to Chief Electrician. Ian was assigned to Swan Island Shipyard in Portland,
OR to qualify as Chief Electrician on the S. S. Fort Erie, a new 6,000 hp. turbo electric
tanker. After getting married, he continued to go to sea on new T-2 tankers, the S. S.
Chaco Canyon and the S. S. Baldwin Hills.

While in the Canal Zone, Ian sat for his 3rd Engineer‘s license and passed while
crossing the Canal 4 times by train to sit his exam at the U.S. Coast Guard station in
Balboa, Panama. He became 3rd Engineer on the S. S. Baldwin Hills and sailed with her
until August, 1945, when the war ended. Ian continued sailing after the war and was
able to pass his 2nd Engineers exam in Portland and his 1st Engineers exam in Boston,
MA.

He left the sea in 1947 for the timberlands of Northern California to construct
and operate a sawmill until 1949. Between then and 1953, he did relief engineering in
the S. F. Bay Area, sometimes loading bombs at Port Chicago, CA. In 1953, he became
a Public Accountant and opened three offices in the Redwood Empire of Northern
California. He sold the offices in 1956 and founded Lumberman‘s Acceptance Corp, a
California financial corporation which was listed on the National OTC. He sold his
controlling interest in 1982 to ―retire‖.

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That same year, Ian joined famous actor of stage and screen, Eddie Albert in an
eleemosynary effort to help others grow their own food. The Seed Corps has since
shipped seeds to 53 countries world-wide. And although Mr. Albert passed over the
bar in 2005 at the age of 99, Ian continues with The Seed Corps‘ activities.

In 2002, Ian was elected CEO of the North Bay Chapter of the American
Merchant Marine Veterans. He and Henry Van Gemert of Palmetto, FL volunteered to
organize an unincorporated association of Merchant Marine Veterans of World War II
into the Just Compensation Committee. To date they have accumulated 6,600 plus
Veterans to help in the effort to get 2 Bills passed (HR23, first introduced by
Congressman Bob Filner, and S1272) to restore the 1944 G. I. Bill of Rights to U. S.
Merchant Mariners of World War II.

OWEN J. ARKISON
―The German submarine remained on the surface and headed for our lifeboats‖

This is Owen Arkison‘s story, in his own words, of the night he was torpedoed
off the Louisiana coast on May 16, 1942. Owen was born November 13, 1920 in Fall
River, Massachusetts. His family later moved to Newark, New Jersey. After high
school, he obtained his seaman papers in March 1939, and joined the Motor Ship Jeff
Davis as a wiper in the engine room. On March 27, 1941, he joined the U.S Maritime
Service at Hoffman Island. After his training, Owen sailed on the M.S. William Penn.
In October he was promoted to Third Assistant Engineer and transferred to the diesel
tanker, Wm C. McTarnahm. What follows is edited from his original story, ―The
Making of a Chief Engineer‖ published in the 1994 Liberty Log.

―On May 16, 1942, at 4:10 am, the Wm .C. McTarnaham, a tanker owned by
the National Bulk Carriers of New York, with Captain John Leech of Galveston TX.
was torpedoed by the German submarine U-506 in the Gulf of Mexico about 35 miles
east of Ship Shoal Light (28-52 North) (90-20 West) while enroute from New York to
Port Isabel, TX via Charleston, SC., in ballast. She carried a crew of 39 and a Navy gun
crew of six. Seventeen crewmembers were lost.

The first torpedo struck the number two cargo tank and a second later another
torpedo struck the engine room. The explosion started a fire in the engine room and
the aft quarters. The torpedo and fire in the engine room destroyed the generators and
all electric service on the vessel.

I was asleep in my room. As Third Assistant Engineer, I stood my watch from
8:00 a.m. to 12 noon and from 8:00 p.m. to 12 Midnight. I awoke to a dark room and
the ship was listing about 25-30 degrees to the starboard side. I grabbed my life jacket
and all my personal papers in a waterproof package. Due to so many ships being
torpedoed on the coast, we were sleeping fully clothed.

I knew that I had to leave my room and proceed to the boat deck. The general
alarm was ringing. I opened the door of my room and stepped out into the passageway.
The ship was now at 35 degrees to the starboard side, and I was afraid that the ship was
going to roll over and start sinking. I made my way aft and out the watertight door to

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the after deck. The Second Cook had been sleeping on the aft deck on a cot. When I
saw him, he was attempting to enter the door to the lower deck where his room was. I
asked him what he was doing, and he replied that he was going to his room to get his
pay. I tried to stop him but was not successful. I never saw him again.

I made my way to the boat deck where the officers and crew were preparing to
lower the lifeboat. We moved the wounded to the main deck where we could put the
badly injured into the lifeboat. I found Mr. Markley, the Chief Engineer, sitting on
deck holding his lifejacket. I still don‘t know why, but I asked him if he was hurt. He
replied, ‗No‘, that he was just sitting there waiting for a streetcar to go by. He was
badly burned over most of his body with 3rd degree burns. Mr. Markley and I had been
shipmates since June 1941. I helped him down to the main deck and into the lifeboat.
(Mr. Markley later died). The ship was empty and other than the list was not about to
sink. The Captain said we would be better off staying aboard the ship. At this time a
shell from the submarine hit the ship at the bow. We could see the flash of the deck
gun on the submarine when the second shell hit the ship. The Captain ordered us to
abandon ship. We proceeded into the lifeboat, and the Captain ordered the boat away
from the ship to prevent any further loss of life. The submarine continued to shell the
ship. When we were far enough way from the ship, we stopped rowing. The
submarine remained on the surface and headed for the lifeboats.

At this time the Captain threw the ships papers and codes over the side in a
water canvas bag. Also, he cautioned us to say that no ship‘s officers got off the vessel.
The commander of the submarine only asked us if we had any wounded. We informed
him we had some badly burned people. He suggested we dip them in the water to help
with burns. We did not follow his advice. He also asked if we had any cigarettes and
matches. We replied that we had some. He advised us that there was a lifeboat farther
aft with 4 or 5 seamen in it. It turned out to be the Navy gun crew that was on watch
and had managed to launch a lifeboat from the port side. The commander of the
submarine also told us there was a life raft with one man aboard. The man on the life
raft was Vic the electrician. Before the submarine moved away the commander advised
us to stay where we were and that a Navy plane would be in the area at 7:00 a.m. He
did not miss it by very much—just three seconds. At just over 7:00 a.m., a Navy plane
flew over. We released flares to draw his attention. He dipped his wings and flew back
toward land.

Three fishing boats picked us up and took us to a Texaco mother ship where
the most serious wounded were transported by speedboat to Houma, Louisiana. The
crew of the mother ship provided coffee and sandwiches as well as clothes for those
who needed them. At 1l00 hours we were taken by speedboat to Houma. ‖

What follows is Owen‘s description how the survivors were treated by the
authorities who were not sure if they were American or German. ―The streets from the
dock to the hospital were lined on both sides with civilian defense members with their
hard hats and arm bands. Local police and sheriff‘s department personnel were also
lined up along the street with small arms and rifles. We were marched down the middle
of the street. I was barefoot and had two cracked ribs from being struck with a block

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from the lifeboat when we launched it. They took us to the hospital for first aid and
shots. The eight men who were in serious condition remained in the hospital when the
rest of us moved out.

Under guard the rest of the officers and crew were marched to the local hotel
and left on the second floor under armed Navy guards. We were not allowed to call
our families or anyone else. In fact, the elevators were not allowed to stop on the
second floor, and neither food nor coffee was allowed to be brought to us. A young
Navy Ensign who interviewed us only concern was whether we could draw a sketch of
the submarine that attacked. After the majority of the crew had been interviewed, it
was now our radio operator‘s turn to answer to the naval officer. His answer was that
he was too busy trying to send out an SOS and that he forgot to take his sketchpad
with him into the lifeboat. This remark seemed to upset the ensign, and he started to
have us prove our citizenship. I showed him my U.S. Seaman‘s I.D., my Seaman‘s
passport, and the $20 bill I had in an oilskin pouch inside my jacket. I was about the
only one who had his papers with them. Because the address on the passport was
different from my I. D. papers, he questioned my papers. . He then started to inquire
about my name, was it Norwegian, or what nationality was it. We were separated into
several rooms and tried to make the best of things. We were told that there would be
no food or drinks delivered to the room. On Sunday, May 17, there was still no food
or even coffee given us. About noontime the radio operator somehow managed to
make a telephone call to the White Houses. He was trying to call President Roosevelt
but not able to reach him. However, the people he did talk to managed to start
movement from the Navy. We were allowed to call out and newspaper reporters
interviewed us. The local people were very nice and helpful once they were assured
that we were American seaman.‖

After the war, Owen married, Mary Colwell and remained in the Merchant
Marine working his way up to Chief Engineer. He and Mary had four children. He
joined the Texas Maritime Academy as a member of the faculty where he remained till
1985. After 30 days of retirement, Owen returned to teaching at the Texas A&M
Engineer Extension Service as an instructor training Texas Department of Criminal
Justice inmates in Stationary Engineering. He was an active member of the SS Stephen
Hopkins Chapter of the American Merchant Veterans until he died.

GEORGE W. BAKER

I enlisted in the Merchant Marine in August -1943 after trying to join the Air
Force. The recruiter was very rude and indifferent to my enlisting. A friend told me
about the Merchant Marines. The pay sounded good, too. I was sent to St. Petersburg,
Florida for three months of training as an Able Bodied Seaman. Then I was sent to
New Orleans, Louisiana to wait for a ship assignment. I remember riding on a stake
truck down Canal Street, New Year's Eve, 1943. It was in a freezing rain and about five
minutes till midnight. You don't forget that!

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My first ship was the LT-220 Army Tug. Our crew flew to a small port in
Mexico in January of 1944 to tow a barge through the Panama Canal to San Diego,
California.

My next ship was the Lt-229 Army Tug which towed a dredge "Raymond" from
San Diego to Milne Bay, New Guinea in the summer of 1944. We stopped at Hawaii,
Marshall Islands, and Guadalcanal on the way.

In November, 1944, I was assigned to the Liberty Ship Asa N. Duncan sailing
out of New Orleans. This ship had Air Force, Navy, and Merchant Marine Personnel
aboard. It was named 4th ARU or Aircraft Repair Unit-Floating. We left the Panama
Canal and sailed for 26 days and nights on a zig-zag course to the Marshall Islands.
From there we went to Guam-our home port.
In March 1945, we were sent to Iwo Jima to repair damaged airplane parts until land
facilities could be set up. In April, 1945, we were sent to Okinawa to do the same thing.
We were at Okinawa on May 8, 1945 when V.E. Day was declared.

While at Guam, we had to leave port and ride out seven typhoons. The only
time I was really scared during the war. After V.J. Day, we left Guam and sailed back to
San Diego in December of 1945.

After the war I received my Third Mate's License and sailed for the United Fruit
Company to Tela, Honduras on what they called the "Banana Run".

In the summer and fall of 1946 I enrolled in college. In the summer of 1947, I
went to New Orleans to catch a ship, but I was #187 on a waiting list. It was then that
I left the sea, and concentrated on my education.
I retired in 1983 after twenty-nine years working for the Gulf Oil Corporation. We have
a son Kirk and a daughter Kay. Our four grandchildren are Andres, Jose, Arielle, and
Ariana. (Pictures: George at St. Petersburg; George and June at their 50th Anniversary
Party, January 30, 2005.)

MOSES BARKER
Fort Worth, Texas
Courage on the High Seas

Yon are familiar with the story about the SS Stephen Hopkins sinking a
German man-of-war. One of our Chapter members was a gunner on Hopkins. This is

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what he saw as told to the Fort Worth Star Telegram reporter Frank Perkins, whose
comments follow.

"My hat is off to you guys who went into harm's way with nothing but small
arms and few obsolete cannon to duel with the best. Moses (Barker) is a fine man and
I count it an honor to have met him and written about his exploits."

Veterans mark 55th year since ship honored for battle
Moses Barker took a rare day off from his Seminary Drive Dairy Queen

Restaurant on September 27 to visit with buddies at the S.S. Stephen Hopkins Chapter
of the American Merchant Marine Veterans in Bedford.

It was a special meeting, marking the 55th year since the chapter's namesake
won one of only nine "Gallant Ship" designations given out in World War II by the
U.S. Maritime Administration after a desperate battle with two German commerce
raiders. Barker was a 17 year old Navy gunner aboard the Hopkins when that battle was
fought.

The Hopkins was 1,000 miles off the Coast of South America when it met the
Stier, which had six powerful 5.9‖ guns and the Tannenfels armed with 20-mm anti-
aircraft guns.

"When we got to the 4" gun on the ship's stem, we just did whatever jobs had
to be done," the Fort Worth native said. "We were about half a mile from the
Germans by then. I concentrated on getting shells into the gun's breech. I didn't look
much at the German ships because every time I did, it looked like they were firing
right at me."

The Stier had already sunk 50,000 tons of Allied shipping, and its shells
smothered the Hopkins, killing and wounding the crew and slowing it to one or two
knots, according to official reports at the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy at Kings
Point, NY. One German bullet grazed Barker's groin, and he took a shell fragment in
his leg as the 29-minute battle stretched on.

Barker remembered shells were hitting around the gun several times a second,
filling the air with constant explosions and clanging, whizzing shrapnel. "I kept yelling,
'Fire! Fire!‘ after I had loaded one shell and then I looked up and saw that everybody
round me and the gun was dead or unconscious, so I tripped the trigger," Barker said.
"There were only five shells left at the gun but they had rusted in their containers and
I couldn't pull them loose. I left the gun and went forward and was ordered onto a
lifeboat," he said.

Barker later received a commendation from the Secretary of the Navy for his
valor at the gun. He is convinced that he was the last man alive at that gun, but history,
based on survivor's interviews, gave that honor to a Merchant Marine Academy
student who was ordered to sea before graduation because of the war. He was Edwin
O'Hara, and according to after-action reports, logs and survivor's accounts, O'Hara,
although seriously wounded, loaded and fired the last five 4" shells into the Stier
before an incoming shell killed him.

A building at the academy's Kings Point campus was named after O'Hara, and

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a painting entitled The Last Five Shells by Merchant Service Lt. W.N. Wilson shows
O'Hara loading the smoking cannon while a life boat pulls away from the Hopkins.
That's not how Barker remembers it.

"O'Hara was never on that gun," Barker said. "He was down in the magazine
helping pass up shells to us, and when a German shell hit that magazine, he probably
died there with everybody else. He was a very brave man because no one wanted to
work in that magazine. It was a death trap."

But Dr. George Billy, the academy's librarian, said the decks of the Hopkins
were so bloody and confused that O'Hara's actions at the gun could have occurred
after Barker had left it, thinking he was the only one left alive. "It is possible that an
explosion loosened the rusty shells and that a grievously wounded Cadet O'Hara could
have crawled from the wrecked magazine to load and fire them into the Stier before he
died. Whatever happened, they were both very brave men," Billy said.

Both the Stier and the Hopkins sank. Of the 57 men aboard the Hopkins, 15
including Barker survived the battle and 31 days in a lifeboat before coming ashore in
Brazil. Barker recalled that the lifeboats and life rafts launched by the Hopkins
survivors drew fire from the Tannenfels, which was picking up survivors from the
Stier.

"I quit cussing and began praying and told God that if he would let us live I
wouldn't ever hurt anyone again. A storm came up and the Germans went away and
we were safe. Since that day, I‘ve never hurt another human being," he said.

The survivors finally came ashore at 4 a.m. October 27, 1942, at a small
Brazilian village. The villagers cooked a hog in celebration, but the hungry survivors
couldn't eat it. ―Our stomachs had shrunk so much that we couldn't eat," Barker
recalled. After recuperating, Barker served on several merchant ships in the Southwest
Pacific. He was discharged from the Navy at the war's end in 1945.

Moses Barker of Fort Worth was a 17-year-old gunner on the S.S. Stephen Hopkins during a World War II battle that left all but 14 of his crew mates dead 1,000
miles off the coast of South America. Star-Telegram/Ron T. Ennis

ASA (GUS) BAUMGARNER
East Liverpool, Ohio

Asa Augustus (Gus) Baumgarner was born in Glen Jean West, Virginia, on the
15th November 1920. Gus was one of 14 children born to his parents over a period of
23 years. He was the 6th child in the family that had 10 boys and 4 girls. Gus‘s Dad was

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a contractor that moved the family around quite often in his young life; by the time he
left home in 1940 they had moved and lived in 26 different homes in many different
towns in West Va. and Ohio.

In 1939 Gus was living in a place called Shadyside which was 3.7 miles from
school in downtown East Liverpool, Ohio where the lived when he graduated from
high school. The 3.7 mile walk to school in the bitter cold during the winter months
was so cold his ears, nose, and fingers would freeze. One morning so bad the school
nurse had to properly thaw him out. When this happened the principle gave him a letter
to take to Penny‘s and get a mackinaw, boots and whatever he needed to keep warm.
Later on that year he was given another letter to Robin and Sant so he could get a suit,
a shirt, a tie, socks, and the works to wear at his graduation. Gus never knew who the
Good Samaritan Benefactor was that gave him the clothes.

After their Dad was crippled in a construction accident Gus and his brother
Sheldon had to go to work during the mid 1930‘s to help supply food for the family.
During this time they continued to go to school. After graduation Gus went to work
for the Goodyear Service Store in East Liverpool. Gus and his lovely wife Ernestine
were married on April 3, 1942. Preparation for war was in full swing and some of his
Brothers were already in uniform serving their country

At this time Uncle Sam was breathing down his neck so wanting to sail on the
ocean he tried to get in the Navy but was turned down because of the glasses he was
wearing. One day he was listening to the radio and heard that up in Cleveland they were
looking for men to join the Merchant Marine. In October 1942 Gus finished his work
with Goodyear and began training for a career as a Merchant Mariner. He was sent to
Sheepshead Bay for thirteen weeks and from there to Hoffman Island for two months.
On March the 28th 1943 he finally shipped out on his first ship the SS Bennington a pre
WW-II freighter. This ship was a coastwise vessel that was not giving him the
satisfaction of ocean travel that he was looking for so he got off.

Gus‘s first trip was as follows. Leaving Boston the seas were fairly calm, we had
word that a storm was in the making, meaning the seas were going to turn rough. I
went to the galley to get some crackers to eat so my stomach would be able to ride out
the rough weather. The bow was going up and the fantail was going down, then the
fantail would go up and the bow would go down. This continuous action would soon
make a person not used to it get sick at the stomach. While there an AB came in and
said, the old man wants to see you on the bridge! Now if anything will upset your
stomach, it‘d be the Capitan wanting to see an ordinary seaman on the bridge! I made
my way to the bridge as requested and when I got there, the Capitan said, ‗Have you
ever steered a ship‘? ‗Well, I‘m just an ordinary seaman!‘ And he said, ‗Well it‘s a good
time for you to learn.‘

So I took the wheel and there were these spokes that reminded me of the old
jersey cow back home but they were upside down. I grabbed hold of that wheel and
gave her full right rudder. The old stern took off to the left and the bow went the other
way and I gave her hard left and she went the other way! I was making my own course
right down the middle of the ocean. The Capitan had left the bridge and the third mate

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was still there. He was a 71 year old who had gone back to sea after retiring putting his
life in jeopardy for his country. Man he was laughing, and he said, ‗young man, if you
didn‘t take such a hard grip on that wheel, you‘d go a lot further in life!‘ So, I kind of
eased up on her and I got the gist of the thing. I learned it was a lot easer to steer than
what I was making out. When we got to New Jersey I signed off the ship. I never saw
the third mate again, and I often wonder if he made it through the war.

On my second ship the liberty SS James G Birney that I joined in New York on
May 28 1943, was the first real combat action that I saw. We were enroute to Glasgow
Scotland; I was on my way to the bridge with a picture of hot chocolate the Capitan
had ordered because he was not a coffee drinker. As I was about half way up to the
bridge a German U-boat surfaced in the lane between us and the next line of ships to
our left. I was in a state of shock and was trying to decide what next, when there were
shots fired from the Destroyer that was escorting us and the U-boat exploded in a
mushroom cloud and sank. The general alarm went off not only on our ship but the
rest of the convoy. Every one was on deck and depth charges were going off all around
us. I made it to the bridge but I don‘t remember what happened to that picture of hot
chocolate.

On my next ship the liberty SS Eugene Field that I caught in New York August
12, 1943, we were returning back to the states from Glasgow in convoy one morning
and a U-boat came up between us and a liberty ship to the left of us. The sun was a big
red ball on the horizon, the water was kind of calm and there was a slight fog that made
it hard for us to see. The U-boat sent a torpedo into the ship ahead of us hitting it amid
ships. The ship broke into and the aft section went down first. There were men in the
water and as she went down the screw was still turning and pulling men in the water
down with suction, only three men survived. Approx. 62 men went to their deaths that
day, one that I will never forget.

The liberty ship SS Eugene Fields slipped her mooring at Glasgow, Scotland,
about the first day of October 1943. Two days at sea, the barometer dropped, the winds
picked up, and our fifty ship convoy began to experience the ravages of a hurricane that
had passed up the east coast. For the better part of a week, we ate no cooked food, nor
was there anybody able to sleep. The empty ships were disappearing from view in 40ft.
rollers. The 22nd of October we sailed into New York harbor. I signed off, grabbed my
old sea bag and took off for home, I‘d had it. If I never saw salt water again, it would
be too soon.

Two weeks later I was back in New York ready to ship out. The tanker, Pan
Rhode Island, came up on the board. I thought this was just the thing for me because
tankers rode better in the water. Our thirty three ship convoy cued up outside Sandy
Hook. And we took off for the southeast. This convoy was different than any other I‘d
been in our escort was a baby flattop with search planes. Over around the Azores, we
peeled off from the rest of the convoy on a zigzag course to the Gold Coast of Africa.
We ‗tankered‘ up and headed for Gibraltar. We made several stops along the northern
coast of Africa; Bone, Tunis, Algiers, and finally ending up at Alexandria, Egypt. By
then we were pumped out.

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About this time a German stuka bomber laid a egg down the stack of a
ammunition ship in the port of Bari, Italy, causing a fire storm that sank 17 ships in the
harbor including one that had mustard gas that the Allies were going to use in the event
German forces decided to use it first. The loss of life and military supplies was so great
Bari became known as the Pearl Harbor of Europe. Right then and there the Air Corps.
Ran out of gas. Our tanker was scheduled to pick up a load of Aviation gas at Abadan,
Iran.

Two weeks later we approached the port of Bari, fully loaded. A launch came
out with a high ranking Army officer and the Pilot, boarding our ship. They called the
chief engineer up to the bridge for a little pow-wow. Evidently, we had a big problem.
The entrance to the harbor was too shallow by several feet. We couldn‘t stay at sea for
the menacing of a submarine, and foremost, the Air Corps. Was out of fuel at Gula Air
base. Cernignola, Italy.

We took her out to sea for four or five miles, tied the steam pop-off valve
down to get a full head of steam and headed for the entrance to the harbor. She was a
steam turbine and we gave her everything she had, full steam ahead. The bow of the
ship rose up into the air. There was a terrible shudder as the ship passed over the ledge
at the entrance to the harbor. They put her in full speed astern. We dropped both
hooks running out the full length of the anchor chains. Dust was flying everywhere. I
was in charge of one anchor, the Boson the other. When the Air finally cleared, a
Destroyer sat about 20 feet squarely in front of us. A few more feet and the whole
harbor would have gone up in another fire storm. Signaling the engine room slow
speed astern, we reeled in the anchor chains. We docked her and the next day, Navy
scuba divers checked our bottom. Number two tank had a hole torn in her bottom big
enough to drive a car into. It took a few days to get her load pumped out.

We were running out of food. When we left New York Harbor, we had only a
three-month supply. The Army gave us a few canisters of peanut butter and dehydrated
potatoes. This along with a few cereal boxes that we had to fill with running water to
float the bugs out was our existence. Then came the day we took our place in the
convoy, headed due west out past the Straights of Gibraltar into the Atlantic. We
started pumping her out. There was a wake of red gasoline behind us for as far as you
could see.

Arriving in NY Harbor three weeks later we dropped a hook in the mouth of
the Hudson. There I stood anchor watch in the bow, pacing back and forth, looking
longingly at the shore with people going to the movies, eating popcorn and licking at
those huge ice cream cones. Oh, boy! What kinda deal is this? Next day, we tied her up
at the dry docks over in New Jersey. There was a cute little diner just outside the fence.
I sat down on a counter stool, ordered up ham and eggs, home fries, toast and coffee,
orange marmalade, orange juice of course. I took a few bites, my stomach wouldn‘t take
it and I had to quit. I signed off, grabbed my old sea bag and headed for West Virginia.
When I arrived my skin was breaking out over my whole body. We made an
appointment with Dr. Gottlieb. He took one look at me and he said, ―So you‘re a
sailor. Have you ever heard of scurvy?‖ He gave me a prescription for some high-

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potency vitamins including cod liver oil.‖ Drink plenty of orange juice, Son. In a couple
weeks, you‘ll be a new man. A month later I signed on the Gulf oil tanker, Jalapa, which
was to spend the next eight months in the Pacific.

The following is a letter that Gus wrote to his daughter Linda that is found in
his biography book that I have been privileged to read. I could not help but to be
touched by it and thought it very appropriate for this book.

On March the 20th 1946 the Liberty ship, George Bellows, nosed her bow in
toward the dock. It was a cool overcast day in Norfolk with the sun streaming thru the
clouds and occasionally, the seas were calm. We tossed out the heaving line and the
shore crew pulled our mooring line to the pier and fastened it down. Orders were given
upon the bridge to give her full right rudder. The engine room gave her a couple of
tugs on the propeller and we ―snugged‖ her in against the dock and tied her up. We ran
out the gangway and Customs came aboard to check her out.

I had already said ―Good bye‖ to the rest of the crew like I had done a
thousand times before. The Purser placed my pay and trip discharge in my right hand
and I stuffed it into my hip pocket. Then I turned on my heel and walked down the
gangway. I picked up my sea bag, tossed it over my right shoulder, when a thought
came to me. Never again would I hear that infernal ―boom-boom-boom‖ of the
engines. Never again would I ever hear the sound of the general alarm to man the battle
stations. The war had lasted four long years and I was going home at last. I tossed my
gear into a waiting cab and, as we slowly drove away, I never, never looked back. Upon
arriving home, I stuffed all my sea papers into an old dresser drawer where they laid for
over fifty years.

To: our dearest Linda,
Each and every armed chair warrior, who has escaped the ravages of time, loves

to spin his own yarn to produce its own particular color or texture. Of all the yarns that
your mother and I would love to unravel, this is the one we would tell to you. Lavender
Blue-Lavender Green. She was my girlish wartime Queen.

Back in the days when New York Harbor was bustling with military activity,
hundreds of sailors from Brooklyn Navy Base and hundreds of men from New Jersey
flooded lower Manhattan on weekend passes. It was nothing to see, ship after ship
steaming down the Hudson, past Mother Liberty holding her hand on high as if to
wave you good-bye. In those days the statue was a light greenish grey. The ships passed
on out of the harbor, past Sandy Hook, to make up convoy. The entire coast was
blacked out. You had to have proper identification to get on and off the docks. No
cameras were allowed or taking of pictures. The ships went to sea under sealed orders.
The radio operator could receive but he could not send. Port holes were painted over
and dogged down tight. The least little stream of light could spell disaster for the entire
convoy at night. Now, Linda, are you beginning to get the picture?

It was a beautiful sunshiny summer day with a very light breeze blowing. The
seas were calm. We were making our way into New York Harbor. We had been at sea
for some time. Our ship was light and riding high out of the water. At a distance we

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could see someone waiting on the docks. As we came closer and closer, we looked
down and there stood a beautiful young lady in a two piece suit. It was Lavender blue
and lavender green. The collar and sleeves were trimmed in white lace. Dutch cap on
her hair of flowing brown. I had to caution the yahoos, who were helping me to tie the
ship up, to watch their lip. I did not want to hear any wise cracks out of them for that
was my wife standing down there on the dock. We snugged the ship up to the dock,
tied her up and ran out the gangway. You know who was the first one down the
gangway. I ran over and literally swept her off her feet. We took the subway back down
to lower Manhattan.

All the big bands were playing; Harry James, Xavier Cougat, Woody Herman
and you name it. For little over a week, we had a ball. Then came the final day. The ship
was almost loaded. We checked out of the hotel and took a cab over to Grand Central
station. I placed your mother‘s suitcase on the train, planted a tender kiss on her tear
stained cheek, and gave her that one last desperation hug. She was on her way home
back to the hills of West Virginia.

The following day, we battened down the hatches and slipped the moorings
lines The Tugs escorted us out to the middle of the stream. We gave her full right
rudder, signaled the engine room full steam ahead, and once again we were on our way
out of the harbor to ports unknown.

Now, you may think this is where the story ends. No way. For you see, we left
out the punch line. And, of course, I know your Mother would like to tell her part of
the story.

I found out your father‘s ship was coming into Brooklyn, NY. I took a
Greyhound from East Liverpool, OH. To Pittsburg, caught old smokey, (The trains in
those days had coal fired steam engines) which took me to New York City. I rented a
half decent hotel room in downtown Manhattan, and caught the subway to Brooklyn. I
identified myself to the customs guard at the gate. They let me onto the docks to watch
for my lover‘s ship to come in. Of course I had to look my best. I pulled a compact
with a mirror out of my purse to check my final appearance. It caught the light of the
sun and flashed into the guards eyes in the guardhouse. They rushed onto the dock,
demanded to see my camera and told me I wasn‘t allowed to take pictures. I pulled the
little mirror out of my purse and flashed the sunlight in their eyes again.

Now, Linda, a half century has gone by, but if by some circumstance you
should ever have the occasion to visit a certain dock over in Brooklyn, you will see two
big husky guards standing there, slapping each other on the backs and laughing their
heads off at a beautiful young lady, dressed in lavender blue and lavender green.
Your ever-loving mother and father,

Asa Augustus ―Gus‖ Baumgarner Able Bodied Seaman Z355116 is blind and still lives in
his home in East Liverpool, Ohio. His wife Ernestine passed away in 2001. Gus practiced and
trained for the day he would be unable to see because of a rare eye disease that gradually destroyed his
ability to see. So he is still able to get up in the morning and cook his own breakfast. Gus has many
more yarns to tell and loves to get phone calls. He is surrounded by a loving family and friends. I have

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enjoyed the DVDs, and tapes he sent me along with his Bio book, from which I have extracted the
best. Willard Byrd.

DEAN BEAUMONT
Purser aboard the Brander Matthews, Samuel Parker & tanker – USS Elk Basin

In 1942 I volunteered for service in the Navy, but because of my asthma, I was
turned down. This hurt, because most of my buddies at Occidental College were
accepted in the Navy. (All those who joined got the GI Bill, even some who never went
to sea.) Immediately after being turned down by the Navy I had joined the Merchant
Marines through the help of my father who knew the owner of the American Mail
Lines as they needed officers for their many ships. Because of my background as an
Eagle Scout and 6 years as a student in a Military Academy, I was accepted as an officer
in the Merchant Marines. Two weeks later I was proud to be serving my country on a
Liberty ship, the SS Brander Matthews, heading for Saipan. I was the youngest officer
at the age of 18 in the Merchant Marines. At the end of the war, I was depressed and
very disappointed that I was denied the G I Bill which would have helped me pay for
college, housing, etc. I was even more upset when I saw that some of my friends, who
never served on a ship or never were in any danger because of the war, got the G I Bill.

These were the ships on which I served during WW II:
SS Samuel Parker which received the Gallant Ship Award by President Roosevelt for
taking 300 tanks from America to Africa to help get General Rommel out of Africa
during which time the ship shot down 2 German dive bombers.

SS Brander Matthews which left Pearl Harbor with 500 Torpedoes and a
shipload of ammunition. We traveled under Australia to avoid Japanese Submarines.
We heard that a Merchant Marine ship one day ahead of us was sunk by a Japanese
submarine whereupon the Japanese then rescued 42 Americans. However, only one
American Merchant Mariner of those 42 rescued prisoners aboard the Japanese
submarine was subsequently rescued by an American Navy destroyer the next day. His
story, as told to the Captain of this American destroyer, was that one by one each
rescued Merchant Mariner from his ship had his head chopped off by a Japanese
Sumari Sword prompting this Merchant Mariner to jump into the sea and hide under
the submarine. It could have been our ship. We all felt we had a close call.

Again on the SS Brander Matthews, we hit a tremendous typhoon in the
Mozambique Channel off Africa. The ship was listing 34 degrees with much damage to
the ship when our jumbo boom block broke loose repeatedly smashing the decks.
Fearing we would sink, we sent men out on deck with ropes to lasso the block. Those
brave men saved the ship. Again a close call, but I dismissed the fear by thinking that I
was proud to be serving my country.

In 1944 I was in the 21st General Hospital in Bari Italy due to "battle fatigue".
There were four U.S. Merchant Marine ammunition ships in the Harbor near us. I
remember thinking, "These ships might be attacked and we would all die." The day

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after I left Italy, the Germans bombed that harbor blowing up the 4 ammunition ships.
One of those 4 ships was carrying chlorine gas and some 2500 people were killed.

Again on a Tanker, the SS Elk Basin, carrying a large dangerous cargo of
gasoline to the Philippines, we were all apprehensive sensing danger. No one was
allowed to even smoke. This experience again caused me great distress and anxiety.

Considering it all, these were only a few of the many events that caused me
great distress. Then to come home and find out that Merchant Mariners alone were
singled out to be denied our proper recognition as heroes. We were the Forgotten
Heroes of WW II. On top of that I had to face my buddies, who never even went to
serve in the war, and yet did get the G I Bill which I and some 220, 000 others in the
Merchant Marines were denied. Our brave Merchant Mariners suffered the highest
casualty rate in WW II with the Marine Corps a close second.

Please. Let's finally honor all these brave men, now near the end of their lives,
by voting to pass this bill.

Thank you for your consideration, Dean Beaumont

WILBUR UDELL BELL
Arlington, TX 76015

I grew up in Vashti, Texas in 1927, the nearest
large town was Wichita Falls. I was the middle child of six children. My older brother,
Kenneth, joined the Air Force and my brother-in-law, Avon, was in the Marines.
Kenneth and Avon both talked me into the Merchant Marines; they said that I could
make more money and if I didn‘t like it I could get out and join the service. So after I
graduated from high school in Bellevue, TX, I joined the Merchant Marine at the age of
17.

In January 1945, I went to Dallas, Texas for my physical examination and after
acceptance into the service, I was sent to St. Petersburg, FL for six weeks of training.
After I completed my training I was temporarily stationed in Charleston, SC for about
two weeks awaiting assignment. I trained on the American Sailor.

In March 1945, I was assigned as a Fireman aboard the S.S. Oklahoma, a tanker
owned by Cities Service Oil Co. We sailed from Savannah, GA to Tampa, FL and on to
Venezuela. On our return, we had stops in Texas and Rhode Island.

After one voyage aboard the S.S. Oklahoma, I was transferred to Ft. Mason
(San Francisco), where I was assigned to Army transport vessels. These included the
S.S. Shawnee, the General Autman, and the General Rhea.

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I remember
on one trip we were going to Japan where we hit a storm and for 12 hours we were
going full speed ahead but did not move forward at all. During this storm one of the
men was thrown from his bunk, hit his head, and it killed him.

I finished my service in February 1947 and returned to Wichita Falls and
married my high school sweetheart, Patsy, We have two daughters and four
grandchildren who all live near us.

In 1966 I opened my own business, The Bedroom Shop, where we make
mattresses, and I have five retail stores. I‘m 81 years old and I still work—it keeps me
young.

Pictures include me, Jr. Engineer with my 3rd Engineer, Mike Grambusch.

HERB BENNETT
Dallas, TX 75228

These are the words of Herbert J. Bennett of Dallas, Texas, written for his
children… ―Recalling memories of our past life can sometimes be unpleasant, but on
the other hand, it can also be a blessing…. In the middle of August, 1942, I received
my draft notice. I would have to report to the draft for a physical by January 1st, so, in
August, I signed up for the U.S. Merchant Marines. I left Dallas on September 25th for
St. Petersburg, Florida. My other options were to join the army, or wait to be drafted.

Life suddenly turned serious…My older brother Joe had to report to the U.S.
Army in July 1942. When I left my job at the Melrose Theater in September, my title
was Chief of Staff. I was being paid the grand sum of $17.00 per week. And, I was
giving half of that to my mother.

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This being the first time leaving home, I expected Daddy to give me a long list
of do‘s and don‘ts. The only thing he said was, ―Don‘t do anything you can‘t write
home about in a letter.‖

I and my fellow recruits, left Dallas by train. Our first stop was
San Antonio, Texas. Our next stop was New Orleans, and then, another day and a half
to St. Petersburg, Florida. I was in the Naval Reserve, Eight District, Apprentice
Seaman, Class M-1. My original enlistment at San Antonio was for two years.

The first 30 days was a make or break period. We were in a Platoon of 60 men.
We marched in formation, exercised, went to class, sailed on duty, and did everything
together. After 30 days, we chose which department we wanted to serve on ship: the
Galley, the Engine Room, or up on Deck. I chose the Engine Room. We were then
issued our uniforms. After those 30 days, we were given Leave off base for the first
time. You could go to town by bus every half hour between 5:00 and 9:00 PM. All
lights went out at 10PM. We could take Leave every other day.

Thirty days of confinement---some people have a hard time with it. Sailors
compared pictures of those back home they were writing to. There were several of us
with strict orders to get pictures taken in uniform as soon as possible.

Going on Leave was another challenge. A choice had to be made, whether I
wanted to follow the crowd, choose my own direction alone, or travel with like-minded
sailors . So many of these 18 to 22 year olds were looking for a good time in all the
wrong places. Several were kicked out and sent home by early October.

Thanksgiving would be the first holiday away from home. The movie ―Holiday
Inn‖ opened in the theater in town, and the song ―White Christmas‖ was being played
in the shopping areas, in the parks, and on the downtown streets. It seemed to me that
the song ―White Christmas‖ gave the sending and receiving of Christmas cards a little
more meaning that year. Talking on the phone long distance, on Christmas Day, truly
was a gift.

On December 29th, thirty-five of our Platoon were transferred to Long Beach,
California. By train, it took five days. Effective January 7, 1943, I received the title of
Boiler Fireman in the USMM. I then sailed from San Pedro, CA on the SS Kekoskee
to Seattle, WA and back to San Pedro, from the 8th to the 19th of January.

In February 1943, I went to the Merchant Seaman‘s Union Hall in
Galveston, Texas. In Texas City, I signed on a tanker named ―The Aztec‖. We sailed
on March 3, 1943, to Corpus Christi, and back to Texas City on March 21st

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