Veteran Transcript
William A. Robie
[b. 8/16 /1920]
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[Note: adjust the following paragraph and put it in brackets if this was not included at beginning of your tape.]
“Today is June 25th, 2007. I am in Lake Forest, Illinois in the home of William Alexander Robie. Mr. Robie lives at 986 Kirkhill Lane, Lake Forest, Illinois, 60045. Mr. Robie was born in Philadelphia, PA on August 16th, 1920 and he served in the US Navy for a number of wars: WWII (1942-1944), Korean War (1950-1952), the Vietnam War (1965-1966), as well as additional ship & shore service.
KWL: Mr. Robie could you give me little more information about your early family and growing up in Philadelphia, and how you ended up becoming a Naval officer?
WAR: I was raised in Collingswood, NJ. A small suburb of Canton, NJ and during that time, my uncle lived across town. He was retired from the navy and during WWI, and had spent many years in the navy and so I took an interest in it. My own father was in the Navy about 1900-1901 and he was in the sailor—helped run some of the sail ships. He later introduced me to the Navy when he took me aboard the USS Constitution in Philadelphia in 1928. I was intrigued by the whole idea of Navy service and getting paid for it. As time went on I graduated from Collingswood High School in 1937 and I spend a year at a preparatory academy and then entered the Naval Academy in June of 1938 and was graduated early along with the class of 1942 on December 19, 1941. My assignment –my first assignment was the USS Boggs (DMS-3). We operated from Pearl Harbor. When I went aboard in December and January 1942, the oil was still all over the harbor and hadn’t been picked up six weeks after the bombing by the Japanese. I stayed with the Boggs, which was a destroyer-minesweeper until August of 1943. I fulfilled all of the requirements of being the communications officer, the mine-sweeping officer, officer of the deck, etc., etc. Most of our time was spent at Pearl Harbor in patrolling the entrance along with others. In August of 1943, I was detached and sent to the United States for assignment and was assigned to a pre-commissioning crew of the USS Melvin (assignment number 680) which was under construction in Kerney, NJ. We met the enlisted crew at Norfolk in October 1943 and ultimately took them by slow steam train to NY City and on to Brooklyn where the ship was being commissioned in the Navy Ship Yard on November 11, 1943. I was the assistant gunnery officer of the ship at the time. The ship had five 5” guns, three mounts of 40 mm guns as well as two torpedo tubes with ten torpedoes. The ship left New York in December for the shake-down cruise to Bermuda. In our crew of 325 there were 20 officers and the rest were enlisted. Of all the people on the ship, there were less than five percent of us who had ever been to sea before. So that when the ship ran into stormy weather enroute to Bermuda, it sounded more like a box of tin bolts being shaken up because people did not have things properly tied down.
[06:21]
Enroute to Bermuda it was foggy the whole way and we missed the island by twenty miles and we turned around and finally found the island due to our air-search radar. There was an airplane flying up over Bermuda. We went into the training period in Bermuda and were there for six weeks approximately during which time the ship was perfect in everything in the final exercise including gunnery, engineering and various deck operations. We were there over Christmas and the Officers’ Club on the night before Christmas—several of the officers—I won’t say who—looked at the Christmas tree which was finely decorated in the Officers’ Club and since the club was closing, we knew that they weren’t going to open anymore that day, so we appropriated the Christmas tree with tinsel and decorations and all. When we got back to the ship, we put it up on the focsile for one and all to see. The next morning the Executive Officer sent for me—I don’t know why me—but me, and said, “where did that Christmas tree come from?” I said, “well, it was probably over at the Officers’ Club.” “Well, the admiral has seen it and wants an explanation.” So we sent the EX kind of a message about “they were a bit inebriated and decided to decorate the ship for the benefit of the whole crew and all the ships around them.” The ship returned to Brooklyn in January and we repaired certain things and tried certain things out and finally readied ourself for movement to the Pacific fleet. We left Brooklyn early February 1943 and transited via Norfolk and Trinidad to fuel and then to the Panama Canal, and then San Diego and on to Pearl Harbor. We arrived in there sometime in March of 1943. Enroute from Brooklyn to Norfolk , the crew got a little bit more extensive interviews. We found one young man was fourteen and he pleaded with us to stay aboard, but in all honestly we couldn’t have somebody that old [young] aboard and he was sent ashore. We continued on to the destination I mentioned. The ship was then assigned to a group that was going to proced the island of Saipan in the Marianas. When we got there, we were to be a gunnery support ship. During the training which occurred off the Big Island of Hawaii 200 and some miles south of Pearl Harbor, one evening our seaman came down with a bad case of appendicitis. I was --- there was nobody was around, no large ships to transfer him to, so our good doctor, Edgar Hawk, did an appendectomy on our wardroom table. This was Dr. Hawk’s first surgery ever. He was a graduate of medical school, but never got any internship and a wonderful man sat there, first place he gave him a spinal anesthesia and he told me later, the first injection took. He then did the surgery, but in doing it some of the people noticed he was looking in a book. What he was doing was turning the page to find out what happened next. In any event, the young man came out of it and we put him in a bunk for about three days and we still keep in contact with him through the ship’s crew. I do not know anything further about him.
[12:06]
We left Pearl Harbor in June—about June the 1st, 1943 in a convoy—a battleship group consisting of about sixteen destroyers, two or three cruisers, and an aircraft carrier enroute to Saipan. We arrived in Saipan on the thirteenth of the month-13th of June. On our last sixty mile run to Saipan we were directed to investigate an unidentified surface object eight miles away. So far then Codename Yardarm, we were told to find out what it was. We got over there about six miles worth and challenged the man with a light, but no response. So obviously, the next thing you do is open fire. By that time I was the gunnery officer and our first shot went over the target 200 yards, the second shot hit the target and by the time arrived about ten minutes later we discovered that all that was left was the diesel oil on the surface. It was a Japanese submarine 062. The submarine was there to report back to shore base when we arrived. Whether they did nor not, we don’t know. The submarine was sunk by gunfire by an elephant.
[14:24]
At Saipan we largely did a backup support to the Marines on the beach and during that time the Turkey Marianas Shoot came up and we were not invited. We remained at the island. But two destroyers –another one like ourselves—found a submarine off the coast of Saipan and we sank that one with the assistance of the other ship. Also, we discovered a surface ship showing up and we went to investigate and ended up shooting that one up. We circled the island many days. We did not go ashore and finally we journeyed down to Guam to help with that as well as the island in between. I don’t remember the name. After that we went over to Ulithie, sometime about January I guess—or February. Then went to—continued on shortly after that to Hollandia where we joined a convoy of ships proceeding to the Leyte Gulf. It included a number of troop transports, supply ships and a number of LSTs, which were slow operators. We arrived there about the 21st of October and patrolled in the area after all the ships got in and they were in the harbor in the north end of the bay. Twenty-second of October, the Japanese put the Sho Plan into operation, which provided if we in the Leyte Gulf area would be the recipients of three Japanese battleships and four destroyers. Simultaneously, the Japanese went chasing carriers to the north of the Philippines, and then finally came back just in time to cut off the Japanese fleet returning into the north channel San Bernadino, I think—and they managed to catch up with a few of the Japs. During the first night when we found the battleships coming north from the south end of the Leyte Gulf, they were reported at eighteen miles when we found them. There was group of five destroyers, the Melvin and two others on the east side and two destroyers on the west side. The decision was taken to meet the battleships and their attendants about ten or twelve miles south and give them a torpedo attack.
[18:46]
There were forty-seven torpedoes fired amongst the five ships. The Melvin fired nine, the Melvin being the number two in column aimed theirs at the center battleship, which was the Fuso. After an eight and a half minute torpedo time run, we heard a big—and saw a large explosion. Meantime, the Japanese had found us with searchlights at about 11,000 yards and we went back to the north end of the strait to protect the troops—troops transports at the north end. We heard a second explosion about twenty minutes after that—or saw a second explosion at that time realized that the Fuso had fallen out of line to starboard. They did not have a good radar—we did and that is what enabled us to get close. There was damage to other smaller ships, but the Melvin sinking the Fuso did the best. The admiral in charge of the Japanese [ships] apparently did not even realize that the Fuso had sunk and went on to battle with two battleships and some destroyers at the north end. We had nine—six battleships at the north end patrolling east and west south of the troop transports that were to the north. The troop transports were starting to unload troops and they were—the battleships were executing what is known as “crossing the ‘t’.” The Japanese were coming north; the battleships paraded east and west across the top, firing all guns each way. The Japanese coming north were only able to fire their forward guns and did no damage. The ultimate result of that part of that engagement, I am not familiar with. This thing started at five minutes to three in the morning and there were no cloud-no --? Nothing but stars in the sky. We completed our task about 3:10—3:15, and returned to the north to patrol the area. The Melvin stayed there for another several days patrolling and then we went further around through the Philippines to support the Manila operations. We bombed ?? over there—no other particular incident. On completion of that, in December, our entire squadron was detached and sent to recreation at the large island south of—I can’t remember the name of it—where we stayed for a week. [some discussion about island] out of the war zone. It was a big French island south of that. ]
[23:38]
At the end of our vacation, we returned to Ulithi anchorage—the islands with Ulithi which were an anchorage. We operated from there for the following seven months. During that time we joined the carriers in coming north to Japan while they bombed the island and then coming back to the Ulithi base and repeating the same operation several times. We had an opportunity to shoot down several Jap aircraft and acted as plane guard, we picked up a few pilots. [briefly emotional] During one of the night aircraft operations aboard a carrier, a flight resistance wire on the carrier broke and wrapped itself around a young man talker who was a talker for the flag officer who was bringing the airplanes down. When it went loose, he found himself in the water forty feet below. The bridge of the carrier didn’t even know that he had been lost for about ten minutes. By the end of that time, the admiral indicated Yardarm, us [the Melvin] and another destroyer to search the sea to see if we could find him. This was a night carrier operation. There was no moon and no lights at all. Our instructions were not to go more than twenty miles astern of the group. We reversed course following our regular procedure to pick up people and returned to make a search of the area which we thought he had gone over the side. We searched for thirty minutes probably. No sign of him. We stopped our engines once in a while to listen, since they had given him a whistle. At any rate, the first ship was sent back because we had distanced ourselves from the carrier group by twenty-two miles and we were making our last turn through the area when Lt. Wood—a lieutenant—sorry, a sonar officer on the focsile reported hearing something over there. So we stopped all the engines, turned on the searchlight and there he was. He had a pair--khaki trousers, dungarees which he had blown up and put around his neck and a rubber life preserver around him. With the lift over there we helped him out of the water. He was cold, but other than that he was fine. He actually had been on a carrier two days and had just arrived from boot camp. How he survived, I don’t know. He has always been a friend of ours aboard ship and he went back to that ship the next day.
[28:15]
It was during one of these operations, when we were a part of the task group running north, I was the officer of the deck peering around with my glasses. I spotted something in the water about five miles away and I couldn’t tell what it was. It looked like a big fish jumping up and down. We went over to investigate. Turned out to be three Japanese. Their Betty had been shot down and they were in the water. We saw two first, and they weren’t real happy about coming aboard the Melvin, so we had two swimmers go in and they persuaded the people to come aboard. One of them had a knife and he got his arm broken and the other man came aboard pretty routinely. And then I looked up further—here was the third one flapping away. He saw us there and he came right aboard. So we had three Japanese aboard and three prisoners of war on a destroyer doesn’t work. We have no place to keep them. We put them in the shaft alley and gave them a glass of water and said, “good luck.” The next day we transferred them to a carrier and what happened to them from there on I don’t know. I can only presume that they might have had reason to roam the carrier and fell over the side, which would have been very easy.
[30:00]
During one of my patrols going north with the carriers, we were attacked by a bunch of Zeros and other Jap aircraft. We shot around an awful lot of them and one of them got through and made a dive at the Melvin. He landed fifty yards to starboard, made a big splash of water. We shot him down.
[31:04]
KWL: Back when you when talking about rescuing the gentlemen off the aircraft carrier, did you perhaps ever get his name?
WAR: It’s out of my mind, I don’t know. He used to live in California is all I know. Members of the crew probably know who he is. There are a few of them around.
KWL: What was the name of the aircraft carrier?
WAR: I have no idea. We operated with all of them, picking their aviators that couldn’t make it back to the carrier at night.
[31:49]
WAR: Let’s see, our last trip north, we as a squadron were—the war ended for us on August the 15th –on our last trip north, the eight destroyers in a squadron were ordered to return to the United States specifically Seattle for overhaul. We stopped at Adak, Alaska enroute. When I was there my picture was taken. As the war ended on the 30th of August, we got a brief message from the commander-in-chief: “remain at anchor until ordered otherwise.” There was a little bit of a psychological problem around the crew, who were of course were counting the days until they returned to Seattle. We had been gone for about a year and a half. We were sent back to Japan to assist with the sweep-up of the mines that were in the Surigao Strait. Minesweepers would go along and pull them up and our chore was to shoot them up. We missed one and got too close; we blew it up at about twenty-five yards. We immediately had a boiler casualty. Bricks flew out of our boiler! At any rate, we were in and out of that strait three or four times, but our sole chore up there was to shoot up the mines. I did get ashore in–I can’t remember the city there—at any rate, there was a city right there. We went ashore one day for a brief period—I walked the town—what I could see of it. The place had been firebombed within the previous three months. The only thing standing was a couple of temples. That was it—the place was absolutely burned down. The population stayed out of our road–certainly wouldn’t talk to us. We got aboard ship and went home—I should say we left for home. Stopped at Pearl Harbor where we had our first modern experience with slot machines. I put a dollar in and I got $20 dollars back—I quit! [laughing] When we left for the United States from Pearl Harbor, we had a muster, of course of all the crew—one man missing and I think we all knew what he had done—he went ashore and found too much alcohol and drank it all. We never saw him again—it was a sad case of an alcoholic. We went on east from Pearl and moored in San Francisco Bay the second week in November at the south end where the meat-packing factories were. There we stayed until I left the ship which was the 31st of December.
[36:15]
KWL: I have a couple of questions that relate back to earlier. If you were going north with your fleet at one point, April 1st of 1945, was the invasion of Okinawa. Now, did the Melvin participate?
WAR: We didn’t directly. No, we were in support of the carriers.
KWL: In reading some of the history, it said that you basically gave cover for a lot of the LSTs and other types of ships that were going into the shore under cover fire or was it a smoke screen . . .
WAR: You mean at Saipan. It was cover fire for them. We were taking directions from the marines as to where to fire on the island. We also put up shells to light the place up for them at night.
KWL: As chief gunnery officer then, you were responsible when they called in and wanted shells to be sent in a certain place—you coordinated that then?
WAR: Well, the coordination was done with our computers [?] and with our C-i-C operation. I was not involved, of course, directly. We put them where they want them. Whether or not we did any good, I never heard. I guess we must have scared them if nothing else.
KWL: Supposedly Saipan was the first of the largest of a island landing versus just a coral reef or atoll type of landing. . . .
WAR: Saipan was I think was thirty miles long and probably a maximum of six miles wide. It is a large island and they grow a lot of sugar cane.
KWL: Of all of your experiences in the Pacific, other than Saipan or Leyte Gulf, I think your ship also came up around Lingayan Gulf. . . in support of Luzon later in the war. . .
[38:40]
WAR: No, no. Luzon—The Lingayan Gulf thing is on the east side of the Philippines . Manila and that operation is on the west side of the Philippines. We had to go from one to the other—we didn’t—were there after the initial landing.
KWL: You mentioned coming into Manila, too—did you come into Manila Bay or were you outside the bay beyond Corregidor?
WAR: I’m not sure. I think we were outside. We did see Corregidor, I know, but that’s as far as we got.
[39:17]
KWL: It mentioned here, too, the bombardment of Karabashiro (I have no idea where that is—it sounds Japanese and it is up near Adak, way up north, perhaps part of the Ryukyus. . . . . . .
WAR: Enroute from the fleet to Adak, we found a group of fishing boats—a fishing village on one of the islands—I don’t remember the name of it. We stopped long enough to shoot up some of the boats that were fishing there. We didn’t stay.
[checks tape remaining]
KWL: Are there any particular experiences, other than rescuing that very lucky gentleman out in the water who had fallen off the ship, or finding the Japanese pilot, any particular mission or perhaps a humorous event stick with you from your experiences in the Pacific?
[40:41]
WAR: Certainly. We were always provisioned at sea when we were out there. Being that the crew was deprived of fresh fruits and vegetables, we didn’t have any say so—and we went along a food carrier—it was called a AKA—a food carrier. They would high-line the stuff over to us. One of the high-lines had a case of oranges sitting on the side—fresh oranges—somehow or other it hit the deck and the orange crate broke and there were oranges all over the place. I was on the bridge watching the operation. As I looked down and it was about thirty seconds later they were all gone. I know they didn’t roll over the side [chuckling]. They didn’t leave any for the officers either.
[41:40]
Also, we carried division commander for a long while—of four of the destroyers, we were one of them. And we got so we didn’t care for him. Some people have said other things about him, none of them positive. Finally, the commodore was ordered off the ship to another duty station and transferring people at sea—you put them in a seat and put them on the high-line and pull them across—I looked down and there was our officer friend standing there with an axe ready to cut the line to put the commodore in the water for awhile. Of course, nothing ever like that happened [chuckling]. At any rate, those are two items that I—I can’t think what other things happened. When we returned fliers to their original source—the carriers, we would always exchange one flyer for a five-gallon tub of ice cream. The ice cream would come aboard and vanish.
KWL: So there was a motivation to rescue as many fliers as possible so you could have more ice cream.
WAR: Absolutely!
[43:20]
KWL: What did you do in your free time, if you had any down time at all?
WAR: Well, in Pearl Harbor I used to go ashore and go to Lau Yee Chais—up to that Hawaiian—the big pink palace up there [The Royal Hawaiian Hotel]. I had a few people, had most of my friends from the ship or else—I did know a lot of them there . . . [?] I attended one gunnery school there for about ten days. It’s about all there. Now aboard the Hamilton, and when we were getting through the Panama Canal—the Pacific side, we took a boat going over to a beach to swim one evening—the boat was swamped with water—along with me, along with probably ten enlisted [men], got into the water and grabbed a boat, turned it around, emptied the water out of it. That was what we used to get back to the ship. [chuckling].
[44:29] End of side A
[ 00:18] Side B
[side comments about Hawaii & Punahou School]
WAR: Talking about Punahou, both my present wife, Beverly, and my first wife, Anne, are military family types. Both of them went to Punahou for awhile—this was 1930s, or mid-thirties about. Now then, my first wife Anne was the daughter of General Edwards from the Air Force, and he later came back to be the number two person in the Air Force—very fine man. After my first wife died, I found Beverly who was the daughter of Admiral Hogue—used to be out here at the base. I never met the man. She was available. We got married—it was thirty-four years ago.
KWL: When you were in Hawaii (obviously this was when you were on the Boggs), you mentioned also the ‘pink palace,’ I assume that is the Royal Hawaiian? It was brilliant pink on the outside.
WAR: During the war it was a drab grey—very prominent navigational piece!
[some more chatting about Moana and Halekulani hotels, etc.]
[1:52]
KWL: Going back again a little bit to--obviously you went to Annapolis, and where were you December 7th, 1941 when you heard the news—what were your impressions?
WAR: There were three of us getting ready for dinner at the home of a professor in English—at Annapolis—we had been invited for dinner. I happened to be sitting next to the radio. I heard this mumbling about Pearl Harbor being attacked and we speeded up the dinner, the three of us got right back to the Naval Academy. I don’t remember who he was, but obviously a very nice gentleman. We all were patrolling Bancroft Hall for a couple of weeks. I had the chore and stationed in the basement right next to the bakery. So, of course, on my duty, when was it—my course of duty—when was it? It was 4:00 in the morning. . . [?] When else do they start baking? Four o’clock in the morning. So the odors were intriguing. [chuckles] That was on December the 7th—of course, twelve days later we graduated.
KWL: So they speeded up the early graduation for that purpose.
[3:25]
WAR: Interestingly enough, at graduation to a normal person they would look at it and say, ‘oh, they graduated immediately after the war started.’ Well, this was sort of planned partially. In 1940 the decision was made to shorten the years from four to three. The Class of ‘41was graduated in February, I think it was in February of ’41. We moved up and were to graduate at the end, I can’t remember—I think in June of ’42. As soon as the war broke out, the need for officers in particular—a large number were needed immediately. So we were graduated. I—along with some 200 other midshipmen sailed for San Francisco on like January the 4th or 5th and arrived at Pearl Harbor the 22nd. No evidence of any enemy traffic at all—all the way over four ships. And of course, when we arrived, one of the things that stunned us all was to look up the channel and see there were six battleships sitting on the bottom. We had no defense there. And of course, most of us were going to ships in the harbor with the submarine business. First thing goes through our mind—where the hell are the bastards? Of course, coming back they could have done it very easily. Our time on the Boggs was spent largely in towing targets among other things—surface targets. When, of course, we towed the target 1500 yards astern, and the optical sights on battleships was what they were using—were offset so that 1500 yards a stern and they shot. Every once in a while one would get let loose in the wrong direction, but we were not damaged. The closest we came is [chuckles] a ship was scheduled to meet with us sometime in the early morning and we had the target extended waiting to hear from them. The next thing I saw was a mass over the horizon and immediately following that was a crash on the target—a whole salvo went up and destroyed our tow [chuckles]. It turned out to be one of the cruisers—I don’t remember which one. It was a thriller to see that—said we disintegrate. We did make a trip to—I think it’s called ‘Phoenix Island,’ about a thousand miles SW of Pearl Harbor. Enroute there we took a merchant ship and stopped at Palmyra Island, which is several hundred miles south of Pearl. We spent a couple of days there waiting for this broken-down freighter to get its act together and we took it over to I think it was the Phoenix Island—I have forgotten the name of it. All it had on it was a palm tree. At any rate, we were there for a couple of days when they were unloading this tramp steamer. We were anchored outside and could not get into the harbor. We invited the local army folks to come aboard a few at a time—I think we had about some twenty of them each day. They got aboard, we had them strip, they put all their clothes in the laundry, gave them a shower, and feed them a good meal, and hand their clothes back to them. We also gave them access to our ship’s canteen. One way or the other, one of my other duties was being the officer in charge of the canteen. I think after the second day the store keeper who ran it for me, came over to me and said, “you know what? They have run me out of all the hair potions that there are—Vitalis and all the rest of them.” He said, “What the hell do you think they are doing with them?” I said, “I know. You take them ashore and distill them.” Because, of course, there is alcohol in them. I would not have drunk it—because it is not exactly grain alcohol and obviously that’s what they were doing. They cleaned us out. There was not a thing left.
[9:03]
When I was exec aboard the ship the Melvin, I got to know lot of nooks and crannies of the ship and the people who were there and whoever they were, learned there was a little bit of alcohol aboard the ship, which was illegal, of course. I started looking around and learned and it turned out the engineers would take a can of grape juice, or orange juice, or whatever fruit they could get, and punch a hole in the top and put a little fermenting devise in there and then close up the hole and put it in bilge where it rolled around for about two weeks. The result was an amazing brew—I even tried it one day and it was very good. Another thing that would go on on that ship was gambling. Absolutely illegal—can’t do it! Well, it turned out that Chief Makoloso (sp?) –the chief gunners mate—was writing out my ammunition forms aboard the ship to various groups. So I got him one day. I said, “now what happens when we need attention?” He says, “I just open the hatch and bring them out.” “You stand down here all the time?” “Oh, yeh, I’m here.” “Who collects your share?�� “Oh, my buddy—(whatever it was down in there).” He would take a chunk out of every pot. They were rolling the dominoes. At any rate we had some fun here and there—we crossed the Equator and of course we had the ritual for crossing the Equator. They poured fuel oil on us outside and a few other nasty things and then had us crawl through a tank—not too rapidly, I might add. They all had clubs out and probes, whatnot to beat our bottoms as we went through—including me! After we got out we were able to get most of the stuff off with a fire hose. That was my tour of being a shellback.
[11:50]
KWL: Did you have any siblings in your family that also served during the war?
WAR: I had a sister who was six years younger than me, and my mother and father and that was the family. She was obviously too young to join any of the military—I don’t think she would have been very good at it anyway. On the other hand, my cousin on the other side of town had two sisters—the oldest one was a nurse and became a nurse in the navy. The boy (a man who is my age now) was one year, six months—one year older and he went into the Naval Academy the class after me.
[12:33]
KWL: Your family did its bit for service. During the war did you correspond with mail fairly frequently or not, keep a diary or anything of that sort?
WAR: No diary. I wrote letters home occasionally. When I had a girlfriend I used to write to her. The first girlfriend while I was aboard ship—was I used to call her ‘the blond bombshell.” She went to Vassar and—I stole her from a cadet. She came down to the Naval Academy a couple of times, but she invited me to come for New Years, which I did, and I stayed with her family and they were extremely nice to me. Very Polish—with [?] Beverly Hills and we agreed that she’d wait until after the war was over and then we’d get married. Well, [chuckling] I was aboard ship—the Boggs for about three months and I got this sort of strange letter. It was what is known in the vernacular as a “Dear John” letter—so after that, to hell with the females—keep them out of my road! I met my wife Anne—oh, on one of my trips around the country as a midshipman. She was going to school at the University of Texas in Austin. I stopped there on the way to Norfolk from San Francisco. It turned out in the long run that she and Beverly worked in the same office in Paris before the war was over. They worked for the Embassy. Beverly—I didn’t see her again for a long while. Anne came back to get married and I sort of threatened her and I was in San Diego without much to do, and she came back and we got married in San Francisco and came back to San Diego and I left a week later. I went to China for about six months on a global [?] staff member. Anne made herself a couple of trips back and forth. We were married, of course, and probably had four children. We came here—I left the navy in 1966 up here at Great Lakes and worked for Abbott Laboratories for nineteen years. In 1972 Anne died, in 1973 Beverly who lived across town—and I got married in ’73. She had four children. We lived in Lake Bluff and we had eight children with us. She is a great lady—so was my first wife. I first met her when Anne and I were in Charleston, [SC?]. I was aboard the Hamilton at the time—another destroyer—and I went to a community playhouse and Anne poked me and said to me, that’s Beverly Hogue. So afterwards we met her at a couple of parties together. We journeyed back to Washington and I was assigned to the Williamsburg and our paths did not cross again until we came here in 1965.
KWL: Small world.
[16:47]
WAR: Oh, yeah. Amazingly small—at any rate we now have some—the last time I counted them about twenty-five grandchildren. We keep in touch with all of them. Only one lives around here—it’s one of Beverly’s. She lives up the street. She is a nurse—has four kids which we enjoy.
[17:10]
KWL: Are there any other experiences or final thoughts you would have about your WW2 years and then we will talk a little bit about what you did after WW2?
WAR: Well, immediately after WW2, I was assigned to a ship for commissioning in Seattle—it was DD-787. I was in the operation as an exec—it was called the James E. Kyes DD-787. In April I was detached. I went aboard in January and was detached in April and went to San Diego with my bride-to-be—to San Francisco, where we both had friends. We got married. There were eight people in the congregation and we returned to San Diego. After my tour in China, I returned to Northwestern University. I got my master’s degree there.
[18:45]
KWL: What was the area of your degree?
WAR: Something called ‘allied-something or other—it was a master’s degree in personnel. That was the shore duty I was in most of the time thereafter.
KWL: Can you relate a bit about your time at Abbott? [some off subject comments by KWL]
WAR: As you may know today, it is one of the primary pharmaceutical houses in the whole world.
[19:57]
KWL: Back to the Pacific, I haven’t brought up anything about weather. Since you were on a navy destroyer, you certainly did not have sunny weather all the time.
WAR: No, on one of our trips to Japan--the carriers and the whole—we hit a typhoon. I don’t remember when.
KWL: In December 1944 (actually 43), there was a big typhoon and October 1945—there are quite a few.
WAR: Yeah, This was about about May or thereabouts. I don’t remember. I guess we went through the whole thing with Admiral Halsey and his group. Our destroyer leaned over 30-40 degrees. We were lucky to get back up.
KWL: You didn’t join the Seventy Degree Club that some did.
WAR: No, there was another group of destroyers that were refueling further east and they had their tanks empty of fuel and they were trailing astern when the storm hit and somebody wasn’t thinking –they went over one at a time. Your tanks are used as ballast. Fuel tanks just have to be emptied when you go along side to get fuel at a tanker. Other than that, I’d say most of our cruises were very placid in the water. It would get hot sometimes—there was no air conditioning. Oh, I forgot one item. There was one injury on the ship during our whole cruise—on the Melvin. I was on the bridge on the starboard side and a young man who was a [---?] operator standing next to me—we were in the process of getting raided by the Japs and of course with all the ships shooting around there, the Melvin obviously came a little bit low and a piece of shrapnel when right though the breech shield and went right through his knee. I just turned around one time and looked and he wasn’t there. They got him and took him downstairs to sickbay and sent him back to the States. We heard later that this man had a terrible time learning to walk again.
[23:10]
WAR: As I said we had only one injury—I am sure there were others we never heard about. People bring hatches down on their fingers or whatnot.
KWL: It mentioned here for example, there were some that the Japanese at varies time tried to attack some of the operations you were doing—by boat, by swimmers and by air. Obviously, you already mentioned kamikaze that you were able to shoot down.
[24:11]
WAR: These kamikaze, of course relate to just a single airplane. These guys just fell out of the airplane—they were shot down. Or my guess is really—you know they only give them enough fuel for one way. The only place they could land was the water. I am sure of what happened was somebody helped them over the side – or they walked off themselves—I don’t’ know. We went through the logs of the carriers and there was no record of their receipt or their ultimate disposition.
[25:00]
KWL: You mentioned later after the war that you served—you had duty to China. Where in China? What were some of your responsibilities there?
WAR: I was on the staff of a commander before the fourth destroyer flotilla ---? One. We were based in a northern part of China in that old German port—I cannot remember names anymore. It was a big, large port up to the north end—a very nice place and they make beer there known by everybody
KWL: Tsing Tao??
WAR: Tsing Tao. Yeah. We operated out of there for some months. We would tour to Shanghai, Hong Kong and back because we had destroyers in each location. Had no particular incidents during that time, but I did make application to go to Northwestern at that time. By the time we got back to the United States, we returned I think it was January—it was a period of six months that we were there. It must have been 1946. . . .
KWL: Was this ’46, ’47, because in 1949 the communists took control?
WAR: We used to hear them out in the boondocks, someplace—shooting cannons and things like that.
KWL: Any final thoughts?
WAR: No, I really don’t. I have one that I will give you for laughs. I was aboard the Hamilton. We operated out of Charleston. We were a destroyer really. One day, I don’t remember exactly when—I ran speed run off Charleston and then came in and we were running a little bit late I thought. It wasn’t really late, getting late and I was going up the Cooper River—are you familiar with Charleston? [no I am not.] The Cooper River was the main river. I was going up there to the naval base which is up at the far end, making about eleven or twelve knots—I don’t know. At any rate, I got into and moored at the naval base and a message from the admiral giving me a speeding ticket! With that, the crew dubbed me “Hot Rod Robbie”. I still keep in touch with some of them. They had a reunion here three or four months ago at a place in the south—I have forgotten where. I talked with several of them on the phone and one of them got on the phone and said, “Is this ‘Hot Rod’?” And I thought, how in the hell did he know that?
KWL: Did you have any nicknames when you were on the Melvin?
WAR: Not that I know of. My other chap Robbie who was in the war—he spelled it differently—he was a hard-hearted guy. He ran the deck gang—all these people who did the hard work on deck. He had a few names that are unrepeatable.
[29:14]
KWL: Once you retired from the navy did you join any of the veteran’s organizations?
WAR: I went to class reunions. I think I went to a couple of ship reunions, so I figure when I was out of the navy I cut my ties and I did other than my monthly stipend.
KWL: Okay, well, I thank you very much—very comprehensive. It was operational, but you also included other information about your family.
[Interview concluded, when WAR mentioned the Williamsburg ship. Began recording again as a result.]
[29:57]
KWL: Tell us something about the Williamsburg.
WAR: The Williamsburg was the Presidential yacht. It operated from Washington, D.C. [part unintelligible]. We took President Eisenhower and Mrs. Eisenhower on a visit down the Potomac around in the bay and took the river to Annapolis and stayed with them there for several days. Mr. Eisenhower was a wonderful man. I talked with him for a few minutes one time. I was the executive officer on the ship and Mrs. Eisenhower I had no contact directly—spoke to her. When we returned to Washington, I was assigned me to a disabled veterans at Bethesda—the Army hospital there—afternoon cruises down the Potomac—turn and come back. I left there in August of 1953 maybe and I was assigned to naval personnel [rest of sentence unintelligible].
KWL: It must have been interesting also to meet Eisenhower knowing all of his military service to his country.
WAR: He was one of the most pleasant individuals. His aide [?] people were not in the army—in the Air Force. On the morning before we went up the Severn River to Annapolis, he stayed with us until we got [?]. We went up the river in deep fog, up until half a mile south of the Naval Academy—suddenly the fog disappeared. Fortunately we were in the right place or we [would have] went overboard. Mimi—Mrs. Eisenhower left the ship. . . .
KWL: Of course, [Eisenhower] had to rely on the navy to get his Operation Overlord to function! Absolutely vital—no wonder he appreciated you! Thank you. [another anecdote added]
[33:21]
WAR: A pharmacists mate on our ship—Sheckner [?] A sickbay was right in the center of the ship on the main deck so was constructed of very light aluminum siding as well and Sheckner—the man who used to sit next to the supplies. The supply officer had a big safe open to the deck and to the wharf. Scheckner figured out a way for one of the rivets to get loose and whether he helped it or not, he put a beam inside for the safe. And about a week later, the paymaster opened the safe out at sea—what he was doing I don’t know. He found the beam—whew! It went up in smoke of course, how would anybody know it was safe. Sheckner was totally traumatized. We all had to sit around and count his money for him for two days—we had a hundred thousand dollars worth. About a month later Sheckner was discovered drunk [?]—Once again it exploded and we had to count his damn money. Sheckner never admitted who did it or anything—you’d have to know him. He ran a funeral home down there in [?? ]
KWL: The paymaster never knew?
WAR: He never actually figured it out as I did. He was actually the second doctor we had aboard ship. The first one came aboard when we were in Pearl and we went to Bermuda on training and came back. From San Diego to Pearl, the doctor started getting very cold feet about where he was going--and when we got into Pearl, he was transferred off . The police took him off. ?? [too hard to follow]--Emergency rations . . .
KWL: Now you had two different captains at different times—you had Edsel, the first one, and then Barry Adkins?
WAR: Warner Edsel left us I think it was in October, it might have been September—I can’t remember the name of the port, but we were in there getting provisioned and customs?? Barry Adkins was a different man—he believed in “speaking with the enemy, if you will.” He had been in the Philippines in small motor torpedo boat squad and they would catch the Japs going south in their barges and shoot them up. He hid under the trees and all that. He came aboard our ship–it was a square. . . He used to get very excited. His last excitement he was on destroyer duty shooting up Korea and he dropped dead of a heart attack. [phone call ends interview.] That’s it.
[38:49]
