Charles E. Ruble
[b. 12/20/20]
[00:00]
Today is September 27, 2008. I am Brendan Tannenbaum and I am interviewing Mr. Charles Ruble at Clarksburg, Indiana. Mr. Ruble is eighty-seven years-old and was born on December 20, 1920. Mr. Ruble served in World War II and was in the U.S. Navy and held the following rank: GM Gunner’s Mate 2/C.
[00:59]
BST: Basically, what I am going to do is talk about your early life and experiences during the war and life after the war ended. We will start with where were you drafted or did you enlist?
CER: I enlisted.
BST: Where were you living at the time?
CER: I lived at Greensburg, Indiana.
BST: Why did you decide to enlist?
CER: Well, my dad and my uncle was in the Army during World War I and I had another uncle that was the youngest of his family – we were more like brothers. We decided we would enlist in the Navy because it would be a cleaner life and so that is why we decided we would make a change enlist and join the Navy because it would be cleaner – all them foxholes and dirt and mud, we just didn’t think that would be the thing, so that is why I enlisted in the Navy.
BST: Do you recall your first days in the service?
CER: No, I went in the reserve and when the point system was up, well then my time was up and I got out then.
BST: What did it feel like making the decision to enlist?
CER: Well, I tell you for me I was a homeboy. It was a lonely life. I was homesick quite a bit. Fact of the matter is we talked to a lot of them. We were homesick and it just wasn’t a very pleasant thing to do, but we had a job to do and I did feel that I was going to have to go into the military and that was why I went in like that.
BST: Tell me about your boot camp and your training for going in.
CER: I went to Great Lakes, Illinois for thirty days and was in boot camp there and, of course, the discipline end of it was the main thing there to get you ready for military purposes and from there, we went to Mare Island, California, and the USS Helena, a light cruiser, had been damaged in Pearl Harbor and they was in there for repairs and to put the latest radar equipment and fix it up to send it back out, and I went aboard right away from Mare Island, California. It was sometime in February that we were shipped out and went right on out to the South Pacific on the USS Helena CL50, a light cruiser. It would be that our first engagement was October 11th and 12th and we come out of that one alright.
BST: What was the training like? What kind of events and things did you do to prepare for?
CER: Well, the thing we did in boot camp was you went out and you marched just like they would in the Army and they had some rules and regulations as to when you would go to bed and when you would get up and some of those things were preparing – again, it was discipline as to whoever was in charge was to teach you and then it would check you out as to what you would be qualified for after you went later on out on a ship somewhere.
BST: In the beginning when you were shipped out, do you remember arriving and what was that like?
CER: Well, we went from Mare Island on out underneath the Golden Gate Bridge and right on out to the South Pacific and New Caledonia and around the New Hebrides was our place that we operated in and out of to begin with. We started already. The ships were coming in for a task force and already we were put into a striking force against the Japanese and, of course, the date – I would have to look at dates as to how long maybe we would be in port, maybe a couple of weeks, and then we would go right on out and have an engagement somewhere. But the three major engagements, eighteen of them total, and three major, was my career. Three years and ten months that I was in. We would bombard the beach and land the Marines or the Army. Sometimes it would be the Army and sometimes it would be Marines and a landing craft. Then, the next night or so, you would know that you would have to fight one of the Japanese fleets somewhere. They would come in and want to bombard our men and so we would go out and patrol and wait for information to when we would have to meet the fleet somewhere, and so October 11th and 12th was our first one and then sometimes we would be on patrol through the day and there would be an aerial attack and it was that way for three years and ten months out of forty-six months sea duty. We would sometimes come in and may be in for two to three weeks. We would take on supplies and then we would go back out on patrol again, but I was in a striking force all the time we were out there. I’ll get the names of the ships if we need them. I answered your questions. I don’t want to get too far away and at the same time answer them without having to write a whole book on it.
BST: What was your job assignment? What were the things that applied to that job?
CER: Well, when I first went in and went aboard ship, I was a Seaman Second Class. Well, after being in four months, I automatically become Seaman First, but to make a raid you had to take a test and so I was a deck hand, but I had one of the fellows, a gunner’s mate aboard, that kind of took me under his wings and wanted to know if I would want to be a gunner’s mate. Well, I said, “yeah, that’s alright.” So then in the first year that I was on, well until the ship went down, I made Third Class Gunner’s Mate and then from there on, why then on the second ship, I made Second Class, so I was a gunner’s mate. You took care of guns, kept them clean, and took care of the ammunition and checked out the different guns for cleanliness and made sure that they were operating, clean them. You spent time out there in the South Pacific, you had a little salt water and you had to clean them guns just about every other day or so cause they would rust on you. You had to keep them clean. So, my job was a gunner’s mate all the time I was in.
BST: Why were you in the Pacific, not in the Atlantic?
CER: Well, that’s a good question. I suppose when I went to Mare Island and got on board the USS Helena, that’s where they sent us. It was out to South Pacific and I never asked for any transfers. I just went where they sent me.
[09:27]
BST: You talked about fighting the Japanese. Did you see lots of combat, like maybe all the time, or was it off and on?
CER: It was off and on. We would go quite awhile. We would go on patrol a lot and we may get word that there was even submarines, but a lot of the time it was on patrol and they might even send planes in. Sometimes they would be attacked, but sometimes they wouldn’t. If we would bombard the beach, then we might have to not only fight the ships, but they might send planes over, torpedo planes over, and dive-bombers. When we was around Guadalcanal, that was a lot of our activity, and, uh, so then the first phase – now on Friday, November 13, 1942, we run into the Japanese fleets. Friday, November 13th, there was thirteen ships and we went in against eighteen to twenty-six. I never knowed for sure how many, but we had them on both sides of us, and this was at night. Our radar system was the best. The reason why we got as far as we did during World War II was because we had the best radar system. The Japanese had the best torpedoes, but our radar system was what got us by because we could see at night when they couldn’t. But that was supposed the first phase. The Guadalcanal was the first phase of the South Pacific naval engagements. The next morning, I’m a gunner’s mate topside and I don’t have anything to do at night only just maybe wearing the phones and receive something to somebody else on the guns. But anyhow, the next morning come daybreak, I got to looking around and all I seen was four ships – us, the San Francisco, and it was the Fletcher and the Juneau, and I guess there was supposed to be two destroyers that would break silence and they left convoy to break silence with the dignitaries in Australia is what happened. Cause our ship officer, the captain of our ship, was the senior officer present and we lost two admirals and we lost two captains in that engagement. So our ship brought the other three out and I got to looking around the next morning and we were staggered back and forth. Pretty soon, it come over the phones to stand by for a torpedo attack, but we had enough time to make a turn. When they fired that torpedo, they fired at us and we had enough time to turn seventy-degree target, but not nearly as big as 610. So we ended up turning and I was looking over the side cause I’m right close to the side on a twenty millimeter and we had enough time to make a turn and that torpedo,
you could see the wake of it, passed our stern, the San Francisco’s bow, and hit the Juneau and, when the smoke and everything cleared up, there was nothing there. Between 700 and 900 men, I’ve never known just exactly how many, but they claimed there was something like fifteen to twenty that was floating around and two to three days later, planes had spotted them, so they did tell me that there was some, just a handful, that they did pick up, but between 700 and 900 men and that’s it for Juneau. I seen the Juneau go down and there are just some things that I have a problem with even today, but I would have to flat out tell you that the good Lord helped us during World War II. And, then, this was Friday, the 13th of ’42. Well, we took five hits and we lost one man and so in our cleaning up and getting ready, we came back and, of course, naturally when you went out, you took on supplies, you had to come back and take on ammunition and take on supplies. And I don’t know how far to go with that.
[14:19]
BST: You can go on.
CER: And we were still on patrol and facing a lot of other times when there would be aerial attacks, but I would have to tell you in one of these engagements that we come out of that – this is at night, they said stand-by for an aerial attack. Well, here come the Japanese planes over and at night. They would come over and then pretty soon there was squall of rain and the good Lord sent a squall of rain and they couldn’t pick us up. So that went on, I would say, about an hour or something like that. They would go over and come back and then they would go over and they would come back, but after awhile they left. Their radar wasn’t good enough to pick us up in the rain. And when they left, the rain lifted. Now you tell me the good Lord didn’t help us in that situation. There was another time we was in a smoke screen and so they was going on from that from out on patrol, we was in what they call the striking force, back and forth, sometimes it would be us and then there was another where a couple aircraft carriers, the North Carolina and the North Dakota. This is another time that I saw. I had felt – you had this premonition whenever something, usually, when something was going to take place. Well, we was out there and I began to feel like, well, we had a little break and I’m going to go get me a haircut. We did
have a barber aboard. So I went below decks and I just didn’t feel right, but I thought, well, I didn’t have nothing to do and somebody else had taken my place on the gun and I just thought now is a good time for me to get a haircut. Well, I go down and just as I got in the barber chair and he started cutting on it a little bit, the general quarters sounded. Well, I beat it to topside and here the North Carolina had already been torpedoed and here the Wasp was listing. Already, they had fired in that length of time that the USS Wasp was listing. So we kind of patrolled around a little while. Well, the North Carolina made it back to get repaired, but the Wasp – Our planes finished sinking the Wasp on the four to eight watch. It was dead in the water, so we took on – they would send a destroyer out to pick up some of the survivors and they would bring them over, so we took on some of the survivors off the USS Wasp. And I’ve got dates if we ever have to need them over there. I don’t remember. There are some things I don’t remember the detail of. But, this in the evening and at night and it was still afloat, but they didn’t want to leave it without – and after they took off all the men that was on there, then they tell us our planes finished sinking it. So that was another incident. Then, going on from there, still back and forth. Every day we would be doing something, but then it was on July 5th, which is the 6th out there. You know you gain a day in the South Pacific. So it was July 5th. July 4th we bombarded the beach and I don’t remember whether it was the Marines or the Army. Sometimes it would be one and sometimes it would be the other. So they told us in [unintelligible], now this is going to be the most crucial of any of the things that we had ever been in because we went into a cul-de-sac. You know what a cul-de-sac is?
BST: Yeah.
[18:04]
CER: So we went in there and we wasn’t in there but a little bit. What you did, we was going to go in and bombard and they were already in there and they had torpedoes, destroyers, and all at once they just fired torpedoes at us and there was two or three of us and they shot our bow off and broke it and it floated. The next day our planes sunk it. But then the next ones, they fired and broke us in two at midship. Well, I could see right away. I helped cut a life raft. This was
at night and the only way you can see if a flash of guns and so I’m standing there right at mid-ship [unintelligible] in between the two stacks when you look at the ship and I could see what it
looked like. The next two that hit from midship, I thought that I was blowed over the side, but what it did, it blowed me right through the passageway on the other side about thirty feet and water came crashing coming over the top of me and I thought I was over the side, but when I kind of come to a little bit, I was standing up and I could get my bearings. Then I seen where I was at. Well, then I went back over and I got to looking and I could see part of the bow up here and the stern up on this side. Well, I helped cut a life raft through and I got to looking over the side and I wasn’t but just a few feet, four to five feet, and normally you are about twenty to twenty-two feet from the water from the deck where we was standing to the water. Well, it couldn’t have been over four to five feet that I could see. Well, I didn’t have sense enough to take my helmet off and I jumped in and I just didn’t dive in, I jumped in [laughing], and when I did that I wasn’t thinking and that helmet did this, you know, and I had a stiff neck for two to three days after that. But I jumped over the side and I finally made my way out away from the ship and I could look back and it looked like that I was getting closer and closer by the suction. And, I finally got away from it. Well, I swam probably, oh, for about a half hour getting away from it and then I could hear somebody hollering and they said “over here, over here.” Well, there was a little bit of light that you could see and finally when I heard these voices. So I finally made my way to a life raft. Well, I got a hold, but it was already filled. They had one fellow in there that was injured. Well, I grabbed a hold of the life raft and I had this hand loose and then when this one would get tired, then I would do this, and that was way till the next morning, between five and six hours. I never knowed exactly just when, but between 1:30 and 6:30 the next morning. So then the next morning I began to look up and you could see a ship that we wasn’t sure what it was. It was still dark, but you could just barely see it. We didn’t know for sure, at first, whether it was Japanese or whether it was one of our’s. And, lo and behold, it was one of our’s. The USS Nicholas was the one that picked me up. They come toward us and I let loose of the raft then and made my way toward it. When I made my way to the USS Nicholas,
they had lines, ropes we call them, but they were lines over the side and knots tied about every foot apart and they had these things that you had over the side they picked up supplies in. They had them over there, so that we made our way to the ship and I didn’t have much strength to pull myself up, so they pulled me in. But there was two destroyers, the USS Nicholas and the Radford that they sent back to pick us up, and I guess we lost somewhere between 1,000 and 1,100 men because when they shot the bow, when they broke that in two, it floated the next day. That was the Marines. We had an attachment of Marines, twenty-five or thirty Marines aboard and they manned turret one and I guess it killed a lot of the Marines, but they was at least 200 men, from 190-200 men I’ve always heard, that we lost. But the rest of them, we survived that. So, then I made it back to the states and went to Portland, Oregon, and put that minesweep in commission, the middle one. This first one over here is a CL50. It is a live cruiser with five turrets, triple mount, fifteen six inch thirty-eight guns and I put that mine sweep in commission in Portland, Oregon, and went back in the same area for about eleven months and wound up was in charge of the gunnery division on that. I made second-class on there. The first class transferred off and I don’t know where he went, but it left me – well, that was 180 foot, about like a rowboat now to look at, and I didn’t particularly care about being on a small craft. On December 15, 1944, we was in a typhoon on that. My respect is for the weather, 130-knot wind. We sometimes would list sixty-two degrees on that. Do you know where sixty-two degrees ends? This is zero, forty-five, and ninety and between forty-five and ninety. You can’t stand up and we was in that for I guess two hours or better. I finally made it down below decks. I was topside. I didn’t have nothing to do that night and I was sleeping in the clipping room. It got to be where I thought, boy oh boy, this seemed like I was almost standing on the head [unintelligible] was where I was sleeping on the clipping table, and I got to thinking about that. I thought it’s getting pretty bad. I’m going to have to get down below decks. So I crawled out of their and two magazines, twenty millimeter magazines, on the bulkhead, they dropped off on deck. Well, now that is self-destructive and I got scared. So I put the rest of the magazines down on deck and crawled over to the door of the hatch and, as I looked out, it had just begun to
lightning and thunder and the boatman’s mate was getting ready to lower the hatch that goes down. You tilt it this away instead of opening it up the other way and I hollered at him, something about, I said, “Hey, I want to go down below.” He said, “Well, come on.” Well, I crawled out of there and put the dog on that hatch that was on that clipping room table and I crawled over there and went down below decks and I go down there in the mess hall. It cushions you. When you get in the center, it’s not quite as bad, and I was sitting on a mess table with my feet propped over here and holding on like this and the coffee pot right here in front of me, they always had one of them strapped down, but it broke loose and an old colored boy down at the other end of the mess table, that went down there, it slid down there, and hit him right in here and he was leaning back against the bulkhead and why in the world I ever said this, I don’t know, but I said “Sammy, it looks like me and you are going to go down and see Davey Jones.” “Nah, sir, not me,” he says [laughing]. And, so we survived that typhoon. The next morning, they had told us that – they gave us a lot of K-rations. They had overloaded the Army and some of us fellow – and the only good thing that come out of that was [unintelligible] washed over the side. So, I finally decided I wanted off that minesweep and I kept looking at the dope sheet on the board and, before I could make first class, I was going to have to know something about electric hydraulics. Well, I thought I was going to see if I couldn’t get transferred off of that. I knew after being on a bigger ship, I didn’t like that anyhow. So, I finally found out that in Washington, D.C., there was an opening for a gunner’s mate for electric hydraulics. Well, I put in for it and I don’t know, it was a couple of weeks maybe, why they told me that that went through and that I was going to be transferred. Well, by the time I got to Washington, D.C., the quota was filled and they sent me over to Dahlgren, Virginia, to the proving grounds. So, I went over there and going through the things that we did there in the school, one of them was that they run you through the gas chambers and another one was that they run you back in like an old deck of a ship and you was standing on the grate up here where down in the hole, they set that on fire and you had a hose and you fought your way out of it. You had no door or anything. You just fought your way out. And, so, the school I got, I am going to try to eliminate all I can, but in the schooling I got, I come out a seven out of sixty-three with the highest grade and they said you could have your choice of new construction. Well, I had been on that minesweep somewhere between eleven and twelve months and, in the meantime, they had built a new Helena, the CA75, on this side, the same name as the old one. Well, they told me that you can have your choice of new construction. When I found that out, I put in for it and got it. Well, then, that was over in Newport, Rhode Island, so I put in for that and they sent me over there and I was on that two months and I was in charge of the armory. Then the point system got me out and they come around one day. I had been in the reserves. When I enlisted, it was two, four, or six years. Well, they did away with the two years, so I would have had to enlist for four years and, of course, when the war was over with, we won’t get into all that, but I know where I was at when that was over with. I put in for that, but I said no, I’m done. So they discharged me on November 5, 1945. The point system got me out and I was discharged from the Navy after three years and ten months. And, I tried to be as brief as possible. There was a lot of things in there that [laughing] – there is something else and I’ve got some proof on that. They talk about abuse today. You know, abuse. It don’t seem like, you know, everywhere you turn, there is somebody being abused. Well, I want you to know I was abused when I was in the Navy. And this thing, initiation, when you went in, you had never been in before and you crossed the equator, you was a pollywog. And after you had been across, you was a shellback. Well, they spent one whole day. When we found out we were going to cross the equator, this was on the Helena, they began to get ready for it and they run up that morning and they was getting ready and that morning, they run up under the flag the cross bones and I‘ve got pictures of that where they run up the Jolly Roger and the cross bones. And they spent all day and they got these what they call shelalies. They were a piece of canvas about that big around that they sewed together and about thirty inches long and stuffed it full of rags. There was six men on this side and six men over here and just all I had on was my shorts, and they made you put your hands up here so you wouldn’t break your fingers. When I got through that, they was far enough apart that they hit you with that and when I got through there, I had twelve welts from the back of my neck down
on my legs. I don’t think they do that anymore. What that was supposed to have been, they told us back there then, they said it was an old Spanish custom that when they got through with you through the day for the initiation, that if you survived that, your health was good enough to go as a seaman to do what they wanted you to do. And I’ve got pictures when I went through. Now I’ve got pictures when I went back on the minesweeper, I was a shellback and I was on the giving end rather than the receiving end and I’ve got pictures to show for that, and I will show them to you after while.
[31:50]
BST: Tell me, what was one of your memorable experiences during your service?
CER: Well, I would suppose – there is a lot of them, but the one that really stands out [crying] is the Juneau going down. When I went in down here to the store one day after 911, you know, in New York, Pete Connolly, the manager of this store. I walked in there one day and he said “What do you think about that televising that 911?” Well, I had to stop and think for a minute to see where he was coming from. I said, “Pete, I want to tell you something. You will retain a whole lot more of what you see than what you hear.” I said, “The reason why that it is televised and you are seeing it now is that they are squawking about it.” But I said “ I’m going to tell you something. I stood on the deck of the ship and seen between 700, I’ve never known for sure, I’ve heard 700 and I’ve heard 900, men that went down and I said when the smoke lifted, I stood right on the deck of the ship and seen every bit of that.” And I said, “You just don’t ever forget it.” And probably that is the most memorable thing that I can remember. I have to go back and tell you. I don’t ever want to forget this. Even after I got out and began to look back, I spent two months in the veterans’ hospital. I didn’t know what I wanted to do. I was a nervous wreck. I got to the place where I was getting away a fifth a day part of the time. I still found a job to work. When I went in, I was twenty-one. I had been working – anything an honest nickel I could make. I mean I worked ever since I was a kid. I got to thinking about that and in my going back and thinking about all them things – I am beginning to lose my train of thought for a little bit. But, as a kid, I got to thinking about the things that I did and after I got out and I got to
doing all them, I found a job and spent that time in the hospital, but yet I still wasn’t satisfied, but, one day, just like I’ve heard others say and this fellow here in this paper where he repented what he did. One day, I got my call. I remember that the good Lord spoke to me and said – I had come out of the hospital on a weekend pass and went to see my aunt. I lived in Milroy and my aunt lived a block away and I went over to see her on a weekend pass and as I walked in the door, she said, “well, how are you?” And I said, “Well, I ain’t very good.” She said, “Maybe you need to pray.” And it was then, the first time in my life, that I remember God Almighty said if you don’t repent now it will be too late. And I got right down on my knees and the Lord saved me and then I got to looking back and changed what He had brought me through. And that, today, is what I am trying to get across. It’s not what I done during World War II, but it’s what the good Lord had to do to me to get my attention, just like some of these other fellows that have testified. And you will find out when you study and read these, a lot of men has repented and a lot of men prayed when they wouldn’t have done otherwise. But that’s the way the Lord helps. He has got to get us to a place where we see our need before we do anything about it. And why in the world I didn’t see some things, I don’t know, but I can see mercy as I never seen it before and it’s been down through that way – and, then all these times that I’ve been talking about this, I seen a lot of things, but that’s what gives me hopes for others. We’re facing things today that people don’t know what to do about. We don’t have any business being in Iraq. And the thing
that really bothers me is that I am reading in the papers where some of these boys are coming back. Their homes are busted up. Some of them are mental cases. And I’m seeing all that and I’ve had them to ask me “Where is God in all this?” He is right here. If the good Lord could get our attention today as a nation – I’m glad I’m American. I want that understood and I don’t have any ill feelings toward the Japanese, but none of the foreigners don’t have any need to be here. I say that carefully. I don’t know if you know what I am talking about or not. It’s just one of them things I guess I have to be careful about what I saw. I don’t have no ill feeling toward anybody, but I know one thing that we are in trouble today because we tried to take credit for World War II and it just don’t work. One of the carriers, it’s the first one, that had this what they
call this proximity fuse. That was another thing, a self-destructive fuse. When they brought the ship back to Pearl Harbor to refurbish it and fix it all up, we had the latest equipment on there. So we had in one way the best system along that line, but the Japanese had the best torpedo. The good Lord helped us during World War II and that’s a settled issue. And now we’re trying to take credit for all these things that we ain’t – we’re losing these men over there and they don’t need to be here. We can’t police the world. We ought to be an example where even now the thing that really troubles me is that we have probably made mistakes, that we bombed places where there were civilians thinking that we was doing the right thing. I get kind of weary of reading the newspaper because of things we done. But, that’s the dark side and I could paint real dark. I mean I could paint a dark picture for our nation today. Becoming a laughing stock in a lot of areas. But, at the same time, the good Lord has always been merciful, but He’s always had to do a number on the people, whether it was an individual like me and my problems. He’s had to do a number on us to get our attention. Then He can use us to win somebody else. This is all about – Ole’ Abraham said I’m just a sojourner. I’m just passing through. He said this world wasn’t his home at all, that he was just a passing through this life. So I’m trying to make it plain that all the things that I saw is nothing in the world but the good Lord trying to get my attention and He’s doing others the same way. It may not be in the military. It may be something else. So, then, I don’t want to overdo your questions and I’m trying to be –
[39:12]
BST: You’re doing well. Now tell me about your awards. What do they mean to you and how did you get them?
CER: Well, let’s go over here and look at this. This ribbon here. We was the first ship to get the first Navy citation. They called me out when I was over at Dahlgren, Virginia. I don’t know how many. There was at least 2000 men on the base and they called me out one day and called me in and told us that our ship was the first one. I was the only one on the island that was off the Helena. They told that what they was going to do is that I was to be awarded that and began to talk to me then. And there was an officer who had raided some kind of, I don’t know what it was
and they told that he would be on the right hand side. Dahlgren, Virginia, had this uphill and a big podium up here and all these dignitaries were up here in a single circle and we all marched out and this date is set aside for all that. Something like 2000 men. They had them out in companies and so they told me when I marched out in the group that I was in the barracks and they said when my name was called out, I was to march out and this officer would be on the right hand side. So we marched up to the podium. I faced the commodore of the base and he said “Son, where’s you ribbons?” And I said, “I don’t have them, sir.” I had promised God Almighty that if He let me get out I would never wear my bars, my glory bars that we called them. That’s what we always called them. And I didn’t have them. Well, in the first place, I didn’t have the time. But he pinned this ribbon on me. So that’s how I got that. And then this is the American Theatre. This is a World War II Veterans’ thing and then this over here, I have to stop and look at them anymore, the Asiatic Pacific and this is the Navy. I don’t know what that ribbon there is for. It’s something I got. Anyhow, and, of course, that’s my dog tags there.
BST: Now, which one means the most to you?
CER: Well, I would say really I kind of like this one here. The first Navy unit. We were the first ship that – In this book, they claimed that we were the only ship. We fired more rounds than any other ship in the Navy, according to this book right here. More rounds in a short period of time than any other ship that’s ever fired. Oh, there are so many things that we can get involved in. I hope I don’t talk – I’m guilty of sometimes talking too much.
[42:57]
BST: You’re doing well. Thank you. Now, during these times, what was the pressure and stress like?
CER: Well, the pressure and the stress, really. What it is. We would be out there on patrol and another thing, since you mentioned that, another thing that we would look. Of course, they kept the information. We never knowed when we was going to be into an engagement. Just any time you got where you would get gun shy after awhile. And they would tell when we would start out on a patrol, if we would pull into a dock and take on supplies and stuff that we may be there for
maybe a couple of weeks at a time. And then when we pulled out, we didn’t know what we was going to do. Whether we was just going to be on patrol or whether we was going to run into a task force somewhere. And the first thing you did when you went out so far, you looked at the Southern Cross. And when we seen the Southern Cross and knowed if we was heading in that same direction –you know what the Southern Cross is? Well, you got a star here and one over here and another one down here. And it would be pointing. This one here would be a little closer and you could tell it was like a cross. If we was sailing toward the way the Southern Cross pointed, we just knowed we was going to be heading into something. And we would meet and talk and even down in the lounge whenever it got to be – then we would begin to think and the tension began to build. But I’m going to tell you something. After awhile, when they finally told us that we were going to be running into the Japanese fleet and the tension would be tense. I would be on my twenty millimeter. I could watch and when even at night when I was sleeping topside, sometimes I didn’t go below decks. I would go crawl under one of the five inch mounts and whenever you heard that turret bell ringing, I got out from under there real quick because they were pointing it out. And it was either a submarine or a task force and they wouldn’t tell us until almost the last minute. And you can’t describe the tension. But whenever it come your time to do something, if it was an aerial attack – our mount got credit for knocking down a torpedo plane at that time. At that time on that minesweeper, all I was was just an ammunition passer for a while. What you do, you would relax and your mind –you could gain control and you could do what you was supposed to do without any problem. But, before that, you would just be so tense you can’t believe the things that run through your mind and you were just a nervous wreck. But you could release that tension and do what you was supposed to do.
BST: Do you have any photographs or memorabilia from the times that you were in the service or after? When was this picture taken?
CER: This was taken in Honolulu. We were there for a little while. I’m twenty-three years-old in this picture.
BST: What was your job when you were in Honolulu?
CER: We were just there passing through. Maybe talking on some fuel. Sometimes we could pull in those places and take on fuel, but a lot of times if we was out, they would send a supply ship and take on fuel right at sea. That was another interesting thing. They would send out a ship to take on fuel, a fuel ship. You wouldn’t be along side. When we was out on patrol, we couldn’t pull in somewhere, it would get too risky. And they would send them along. They had a gun that would fire a small rope to the other ship and then they would drag these lines across and take them on and then they would take on, well, not on a refuel, but you would take on supplies if you needed them. But there was times when there was no place to pull in. It was just too risky and we would be out on patrol just all the time and, of course, you got to take on supplies and fuel after so long a time when you got that many men.
BST: What did you think of your officers and your fellow soldiers?
CER: I would say overall they wouldn’t be over maybe two or three of them that come to my mind. They just didn’t have the personality that you would like for them to have. But, overall, I
would say that the biggest part of them were alright. After you was out there a little while, you might get a little grouchy. There would be times when maybe somebody finally got word from home that something went wrong and he would be a little hard to get along with. He couldn’t talk to nobody. You stayed bottled up a lot of times. There would be a lot of things you just wouldn’t say. But, overall, as close as you’re living together as long as you did, I would say on a bigger ship you got along a little better. Of course, you had a wardroom. You had books and things. But on small crafts, we had around ninety-six men on that 180 foot minesweeper and you get pretty close and it gets pretty [laughing] – you are in one another’s way.
[48:55]
BST: Describe the day that your service ended. What did you feel and what was on your mind?
CER: It was just hard to believe and then I got to thinking about what will I do. You have been used to the Navy doing your thinking. This is another thing that even then you begin to wonder about after being in there all that time. You couldn’t think for yourself. It was that way all the
time. And then here I am about ready to be discharged. What in the world will I do? I began to wonder about it and even began to wonder, is this real? Is this really over with? And I forgot, I would have to look again, when I was on liberty off of this Helena CA75. The time that they said that the thing was over with, I’ll have to look and see, but I was on liberty and – no, I will tell you what I was doing. I was on shore patrol that night that they sent us. Some of us went over and they had a club. They sent me over on shore patrol. And they said the war was over with and I’ll tell you that town was – people was just plumb crazy. They just run and shouted and were drunk and it was just a mess when they said the war was over with. So when I got to thinking about that, I thought, boy, oh boy, what will I do? Is it really over with? So then when I come home, I began to have to stop and think and then I was reliving all this stuff and it was for five years that I had a problem. This was another thing. I had lived in Clarksburg, when we were home and I remember my wife living down here at the end of this street. She lived back up in the house on the hill and they had a gate. Her dad worked for Les Emmert, the mill up here. I remember when we lived here and seeing her on that gate swinging and that was as far as she was allowed to go. In the meantime, I moved to Greensburg, and got to working down there as a kid, you might say. There was almost eight years difference between us. Then, in the meantime, I had gone into the military and when I come back out and come home, my sister lived down on Anderson Street there in Greensburg, and I was there one day and here come my wife, my girlfriend then. She wound up being my girlfriend. She was babysitting for my sister. Well, the first thing you know, we got to going together and the first thing you know we got married and that was ’46, a year after I got out. We got married and then I found me a job and got to working. But, for five years though, it was 1950, when the good Lord saved me and helped me out and give me a job. I didn’t know what I wanted to do ‘cause I had been used to doing odds and ends and piddly jobs as a kid. I worked at Reed and Lynch’s when I went in, so I finally wound up – I got a job working for a contractor and had done a little carpenter work and he got to helping me. And then, again you’re going to hear me say, after the Lord saved me, he gave me an incentive and helped me mentally to fix up and I got to doing carpenter work and the first
thing you know, the contractor said “now I’m going to put you to laying blocks.” And I got to doing that and it wasn’t just too long here I was doing – well, we won’t get into all that, I guess.
BST: Did you make any close friendships while you were in the service?
CER: Yeah, we did. There is one especially. A lot of those fellows are gone now. I have been to three ship reunions. One on that minesweeper and one on the Helena. Now, on both Helena’s, they had that down in Nashville, Tennessee and I only knowed about seven men because I wasn’t on the second one long enough. Now, on the bigger ship, all you ever really know is the ones that’s in your division. That’s maybe twenty-five or thirty. Believe it or not, in wartime, you just don’t run all over the ship and visit. They have a ward room to where you can go and read and get your mind relaxed, but it’s surprising at how many of them fellows you don’t ever really know. So, there was about seven out of that one. But, the minesweeper was different. You get so you get acquainted with quite a few of them. In fact, McPherson who lived up at Downers Grove, Illinois, he’s been here two or three times and I’ve been over there to see him. But, now they tell me a lot of these fellows are gone and McPherson – the last time I heard from him, his wife has got Alzheimer’s and he’s not in very good shape. But he went in, in fact, he was big for his age, and he got in there at fifteen. When I got acquainted with him, the first thing you know, he was wanting to be a gunner’s mate. So he learned how to be a gunner’s mate, or he was studying it, and then after I got transferred, why he didn’t like that anymore. Him and I was real close and he liked me and he wound up as a signalman. But he’s been here and I seen him. But anymore, we used to write and send cards and call, but it’s been a good while since then. It’s just that way with our age and that’s the reason you want all this information from World War II. The World War II veterans are gone and one of the fellows that I was real close to wound up – I forgot what state it was, but he wound up as a policeman, but we don’t send cards anymore. We are scattered here and there and we just get too old and some of us are not in good enough shape to even write. So, that’s the way that is.
[55:51]
BST: What did you do after your career in the military? What did you go on to do?
CER: After we got out? Well, I guess the first thing that I did – I did go in the shop. I did work in Rushville, at the furniture factory. In Greensburg, I worked at the fertilize factory for a little while. And then I got into construction work. That’s when I really liked it. I didn’t like shop work. I just didn’t like it. I worked at the D&M in Connersville, for four years not too long after that. Well, we had two children and carpenter work in the wintertime was kind of slow and then I would then go to the shop. And then I worked at the old Rex for two years. But all the other time, what I’ve done is work in construction and I just liked that and I done that ever since. When I first got out, it was just little piddly jobs that didn’t amount to too much. So now, they’re calling me the handyman around here. I do a little wiring and plumbing and what have you. They’re talking about working on a roof [laughing]. I patched a roof. I built this house. That’s another story and maybe we don’t want to hear it. Back there, when I started going to church over here at the Pilgrim Holiness Church up here, the preacher that lived next door, he had these two lots – this one and this one over here he had bought off of the woman that lived up on the corner. He sold me this one. I was going to speculate on it. Sometimes in the wintertime it would be kind of slow and I thought that would be a good time for me to do that. This was in ’57. So I thought I will speculate on it. Well, I wound up going and getting credit. I went down to the grocery store and the gas station and got three months credit. I got material. There was an old hardware store over here that they tore down. This has all got building material in it and is all out of used lumber and the framing. So I got this up and got it framed up and I got a temporary loan on it. When I finished it, it looked like maybe that I would have to live in it and, you know, before it was over with, I got a GI loan on it and moved into it and it’s been paid off for a good while. I don’t owe nothing on this house.
BST: Did your military experience influence your thinking about war or about the military in general?
CER: There is a lot of things I thought out that I have used since then. As an example, in my relationship, there have been a lot of things. For instance, and I would have to say I would use them religiously, there has been times when I said this. When I was on that minesweeper, when it was moving around and in that storm, when I made my way down and got to the center of the ship, it kind of cushioned it. I said the closer we can get to the Lord, the better off we are. I said whenever you are way out here and the storms are really raging, you are way out here and maybe not even thinking about God and it gets pretty rough. But the closer you can get to the Lord and get down to the center of that ship – I’ve used a lot of my experiences in a religious way. Maybe some people don’t like that, but it works for me.
BST: How did your service and experience affect your life after the war? Did you do things different than you would have if you weren’t in the war?
CER: That would be a good question. I don’t really know what I might have done. If I hadn’t of went into the military, I don’t have any idea.
[1:00:55]
BST: Is there anything you would like to add that we have not covered in the interview about your experience or life before or family?
CER: I would say that in my experiences over the years the storms of life is only the things that cushions us. When I really stop to think about it and going back now. When I was a kid, I was pretty close. I got homesick when I got away from home for overnight. I couldn’t stay overnight. When my dad passed away with me going on fifteen years-old, I was a nervous wreck and didn’t know what I wanted to do. I can look back and see that the good Lord has been with me all the way through. When I was trusting in somebody else, just like being home, well, the Lord is preparing us. Everyone of us has got situations that we face, if we could just see it, maybe our lifestyle is different. I don’t hardly know how far to go with this. You could go forty-five different directions. But I remember that one day – I’m the oldest of six, and one day my mother said – my mother was one of those kinds that she was real easy-going and if we would get into trouble, my mother would never correct us. But, one day after my dad passed
away and my sister got to the place where she was little out of hand and my mother said “Son, you will have to take charge.” Well, I am placed right out in the front to begin with. Well, then I quit school to help out. I may be getting out of line here, but I quit school because we were in pretty bad shape. We were living off welfare. I quit school before I was sixteen and went to work at a Western Union to help out at home with the finances. So I had been pushed out to do these things and as I look back as you get older, you kind of wonder as you’re going through some things, what is this all about? But, as I look back now and see, the good Lord was trying to get my attention. That is what gives me an incentive for people today. I am in sympathy. They are knocking people around. The people across the street – you see how they are living over here, and other areas. Already, they have had the law around here after them and when I figured out how I grew up and how the Lord helped me and then give me an incentive to work and give me an incentive to even live, and I thought instead of hardening my heart and getting out here and not accepting responsibility, I can’t see that. And I’m seeing now a lot of our young people and a lot of our children are getting in trouble in school. A lot of these boys here don’t know how to do anything. They never been taught. The boy here don’t even know how to mow a yard and he’s old enough to be mowing a yard and it gives me an incentive to when I see how the good Lord helped me do the things that I did back there then and all the way down to now, instead of me running somebody else down, the reason now that I want to talk to you the way I’m doing – if the good Lord is the controlling interest partner in our affairs, then it gives us an incentive to do something and do it right and then sympathize with others. We are living in a society to where people today are just knocking one another around and – well that’s his fault and how come he gets in a jamb like that or what’s the matter with him. And we’re in trouble today for that reason. It’s the heartaches and the sorrows of life that soften us and get us ready for whatever it is instead of getting critical and bitter and sour and, you see it, and people are in trouble. Just like I made this statement when we first met. When my daughter, Marsha, and my wife were sitting there at that table, they was talking about getting the best doctor in the world for my knee problem, and I made this statement. I don’t know if you remember or not, but I said
I prayed for you ‘cause the best doctor in the world, if the Lord don’t anoint him, I don’t care how good he is, it could fail [laughing]. I want to answer your questions without making a book out of it too.
BST: What was life on the ship like when you weren’t at war, or fighting? What did people use their time doing?
CER: Your lifestyle is different. This is another thing that I use in a religious manner. You consider the other fellow. You’re close enough that you’ve got to consider the fellow next to you. You are living in there where you’ve got these lockers and your bunks. You have got three
bunks stacked up here, and instead of you getting in there doing what you always want to do, you got to consider – the first thing you learn is the other fellow, consider him and his feelings and how he’s doing. Does he want the bottom bunk or does he want the this one, but no, I want that bunk, that’s mine. You’re not selfish. You learn not to be selfish right away. That’s the way you’re supposed to do it. You will find out once in awhile, a fellow goes in there. When he was out, he was spoiled. He had his own way and he had a hard time getting along. This is the reason why that sometimes, and I say this carefully, sometimes in families – children are taught to respect one another, so you do that when you’re in the military. You respect the other fellow and his feelings and what he’s got to put up with. When mail call comes, if he gets a box of crackers, he may not get ‘em though. Somebody else may get them before he does [laughing]. Did you ever hear that one? If he gets something from home, but you’re always glad to hear from home, and if you get a letter and the other fellow doesn’t, he likes to hear what you’ve got to say about home. You’re considerate. To boil it all down, you’re more considerate of one another when you’re all in a group and living that close together. And I mean when you live to where you’re in an apartment to where there may be fifteen in a room about like this here and you’ve got all these bunks and all this. You’ve got to consider the other fellow walking around.
BST: What was the food like and what was the frequency of the food? Did you, some days when you were at war, not have food, or did they feed you enough when you weren’t fighting?
CER: Well, this is one of the things that being in the Navy was another thing I really wanted was the very fact that you always had food. In the Army, they might have to go a good while before sometimes they might have anything, but we always managed, that was another thing I liked about it, they could pull along side of a ship that would give supplies, but some them supplies – well, you didn’t always like the cook’s eatings, but then you still had plenty of food to eat. And even when we were in our battle stations, we might be there for forty-eight hours. Every mealtime come along, there would be somebody bring it around. If you was there and you couldn’t get away for all them hours day and night, at mealtime, they would bring around an apple and a candy bar. Now, that was our’s. I don’t know what they did anyplace else. But we always had plenty to eat. One time we was out there and one thing I couldn’t handle was this Australian mutton. When we would gather in for chow time and you’d gather in a line and you got so close to the chow hall, I could smell that stuff and it was just something about it. We called it Australian mule, but it was mutton and we absolutely couldn’t handle that and I just didn’t eat. So if I didn’t eat, it was because I didn’t want to.
BST: Do you have anything you want to show us?
CER: Yeah, some of them you can take with you. On December 15, 1944, there was a time at night when we entered that certain tropical storm. I got this out of my ship log and you can take that along and read that. Here we listed sixty-two degrees part of the time, rolling sixty-two degrees, and 125 knots. The wind would change. Then it got down her – the barometer dropped to 2790 at one time. That’s the reason why I get a barometer. You know, when we had that storm here awhile back and it tore this house and the tornado come through. It got down to around 2800, and so you can have that. This is where I got my citation. I copied this where the ribbon was and you can take this with you. This is a notice of Separation from the Service [unintelligible], American Theatre, Asiatic Pacific Good Conduct Ribbon and Five Stars. You can have that one. This is where the commanding office, executive officer, got this from all hands, from Admiral Halsey, Tisdale, and different ones, and this is the three major engagements
that we was in that it pertains to and you can have that. Then this come out of the Greensburg Paper. This one here, I didn’t get a copy of this one, but here was where the sinking of the Wasp and it was called the “fightingest ship” by James [Horstall?]. If you wanted a copy of that, I guess I could. I didn’t do it. [unintelligible] There is no end to these.
[1:12:56]
BST: Thank you for letting me interview you.
CER: I hope without talking about things that don’t make any sense – I had to be careful with that. There is the skull and cross bones they run up underneath the flag. This is where they give you a can of beer and this is the way we would rest a lot of times. There is the Guadalcanal and I don’t just show this to everybody, but if you was to look real close, the fellow don’t have a stitch of clothes on where they just jumped off of a dock. I went swimming in [unintelligible] Harbor and had an ear infection, had a fungus infection for a good while. I mean it just wasn’t a good place to go swimming. They ain’t no end to the things that we could talk about today. This is what the flag looked like after two hours and forty-five minutes after it come through the storm. See what it looks like there? This is where I was on the giving end of this of crossing the equator. Now, you have to stop and think a minute. Can you imagine in eighty or ninety degree weather dressing up like this? These officers – this was our executive. He had never been across before. On that minesweep. This is our Captain here. He had never been across before. These were the ship’s cooks and these men, see how they are dressed here? He is supposed to be looking for the International Date Line. Of course, you don’t really see it. He is supposed to be looking for it up on the searchlight. Now, this is me right here. They made a pill. Had quinine and there ain’t no end to the stuff they put in it that you could taste for two to three days. I’m not exaggerating. You could taste it for a good bit. You just couldn’t hardly handle it. We would make them take that pill and then chew it. See where he is trying to spit it out and we are holding his jaw. Now, this is me here. I wasn’t that kind of a fellow. This thing here now. This is the way we run them through there. We took a swab and we run them through a manual
of arms. This right there – there is a platform here. You would back this fellow up here and push him and shove him around and they had this thing made up and there would be three or four
guys down in there. When they pushed you over in there, you didn’t think you was going to make it. They would hold you under and hold you there. You had to hold your breath. So this is what they are doing. They are splashing him around and they are really moving him around and, of course, there you can see what we made them do there. So, I’ve got all kind of pictures. This here was the Queen. King Neptune come aboard, but the Queen came with him. They got a swab here for hair. There is me right here. See, there is the shelalie I was telling you about that they fixed up that they would hit you with if you didn’t do what they – and it hurt. Now, that’s a better picture of me right there. I made up one of them, but it wasn’t my nature to be beating around on people. I was too little. I bluffed a lot of my way. There’s the clippers that they had. When I first went across, they run the clippers right down through the middle. Of course, your hair wasn’t too long anyhow in the military. And these are pictures of fellows after they come out and would come and visit us we was in the service with. These are all on that minesweeper. This is the fellow here that I was real close to. He has been down here. It happened to be I saved everything. Menus prepared. Here is the cake that they baked. The next picture here – my daughter in Florida, she’s pretty handy with this kind of stuff. I like this one here. This was taken at the commissioning at Portland, Oregon. See, the dock is way up here. This is on that minesweeper. This is me right here. This is where I was speaker at one of the churches. A letter that I had sent my mother. Our daughter, she’s pretty much for fixing up things. This is the CA75 and this is the CL50. This one here is supposed to be – they had newsmen. They would be on this other ship and this is supposed to be where we went down – a picture of us going down. This is survivors. I wasn’t on this one here. This is another one, but they took survivors. They would pick them up and then they would transfer them on a bigger ship and bring them up back to the base. This was our band. As far as I know, we was the only ones that had a band on board out there in the South Pacific. They transferred before the ship went down and they brought them back and they sold war bonds. But, I will tell you, that was something else. When
you came out of an engagement and pulled into port and would break out the band, it just made you feel a whole lot better. They would get back on the fantail and get going. Me, I had a job that I did like – being a gunner’s mate. I had to sit back there on the back tail. What they would do, they would pull into a port and you start them bands, you could see them outrigger canoes, those natives, you know, they would come up and they would want to get real close to here. But if they got too close, you couldn’t trust them and I remember [unintelligible] a sub-Thompson machine gun, and I hated that even then. There was just something within me that I just couldn’t – you know, I wasn’t cut out to be mean. Boy, when they started playing the music, you just felt real good. They called that “shipping over” music, ready to re-enlist again. This is an application for [unintelligible]. This is a picture that I did put it in here, but there is something wrong with that. They made it look good, but they was trying to sell us that picture, some company here. It looked real, but the thing that is wrong with it is the bow is not on there when they did this. I put it in here, but then I can see it and I never did send for the picture ‘cause I knowed what happened. I don’t never want to exaggerate and there is a lot of things told and a lot of things said where they exaggerate and, to me, I can’t see that. But that looks good and there would be a lot of fellows say that was the one I was on. See what happened to me? When I know the bow was shot off first and our planes sunk it the next day. In fact, I knew more about it the next day by being – we always said that they knowed about the ship getting sunk before it ever got sunk because you gain a day out there. See it’s the 5th when it’s the 4th here. So on the 4th and the 5th when people are having a lot of fun here, we bombarded the beach on the 4th of July out there which would be the 5th and the 6th. This is Lugar’s thing here. Then Max Niemeyer at North Decatur High School, that was over there. Then this was a veteran’s history class project. I got this one and another one from Dick Lugar. And this boy here, him and I were pretty close. The funny thing about that. His brother worked down here for Voland Nursery when they lived in the house that belonged to Voland Nursery and I did some work for them and one day they invited me to eat with them. I went there and, lo and behold, here was one of the boys that was on the ship with me and I had forgot all about that, and I didn’t know
about it, but here I met him down here at Voland Nursery at a dinner table. Bob Jackman, he’s saying congratulations.
BST: Thank you again for showing us and letting us interview you. It’s been great.
CER: I hope that this would be what your project or whatever you are supposed to do and I hope you can learn from it that one of things that we need to do – and my Bible says seek the Lord while He may be found and call upon Him while He is here. How many times did you want to get to the place where you wanted to talk to somebody and couldn’t? And that’s it. I get up in the morning and my devotions, even now, Lord I need your help today. He has to be the controlling interest partner in all of our affairs and I want it to be known that I have come through over the years, the good Lord has helped me with it for the simple reason that He is trying to get me ready for another world. But I’ve got to make a living, so I’ve got to get out here and do these things that He to do a number to get my attention. So that’s what it’s all about. [End of interview 1:25:47]
