Naval Aviation Technical Training Center in Chicago

Chapter 33

NATTC, Chicago – 1943

When I arrived back at the Naval Aviation Technical Training Center at 87^th and Anthony ins South Chicago, the first man I encountered was an old shipmate from VP-11, J.P. Byrd.  With him was another VP-11 man, Rineman.  We checked in together and were assigned adjacent bunks in the second story barracks level of the huge training complex.  We would be in the same class.

J.P. Byrd was (and still is) quite a character.  He had a tall, spare, long-legged, but footed frame and shambling gait.  He was easy going and a shock of tousled brown hair topped an ever-present friendly grin on his lean face.  He was soft spoken with a sort of southern drawl and hardly ever spoke without a pun or a joke.  In his tight-fitting tailor-made dress blues with the badge of an AAM1/c, “J.P.” projected the image of the typical absent-minded professor dressed up as a sailor.  J.P. was not actually lazy, but professed to be an advocate of conservation of energy—save it because you never knew when you might need some!

Bob Rineman was a shorter man with black hair above a pleasant face.  He was also an agreeable shipmate and the three of us were to be frequently liberty companions with our first class petty officer “crows”, aerial machine gunner emblems, and campaign ribbons identifying us as veterans of the Pacific theater of war, we were accorded some degree of deference by our fellow trainees.  More often than not, they also resulted in civilians in bars insisting on buying us drinks or driving us in their cars wherever we wanted to go.  It no doubt made us a bit cocky but, with sarcastic humor, we kept each other in perspective.

Since we were, indeed, real veterans and the memories of war were still fresh, we were to be a bit embarrassed the first morning at NATTC.  Barracks were the wide open second floors of the two or three large buildings.  At each end there were large double doors leading to large landings at the wide stairways.  The three of us were assigned bunks not far inside the entry doors.  It seemed to be a convenient location but we were to find one bad flaw in it.

We did not know that first night that reveille at NATTC was held by what amounted to a small drum and bugle corps.  About six musicians, three drums and three bugles, would assemble outside the entry doors.  On the stroke of six, the doors would be thrown open and the band would cut loose while they marched the length of the long barracks down a wide central aisle way.

We were sleeping in blissful ignorance that first morning at reveille.  When the drums and bugles cut loose it was such an unholy din that shattered our slumbers that both Byrd and I thought we were in the middle of a Jap attack.  Before we were awake we hit the deck and were ten yards down the aisle ahead of the band running for cover when we became aware of where we were.  We went sheepishly back to our bunks to get our clothes to the laughter and kidding of our bunkmates.  After that episode we would hear the sounds of the band assembling outside the doors and could prepare ourselves by buying our heads under our pillows when the loud music started.

Although I continued to have ambivalent feeling about my engagement to Shirley Mills, shortly after my arrival in Chicago I decided that if it were to stand it should be formalized with a ring.  I rode the El to the loop, found a reputable jewelry store, and although my savings was dwindling, spent two hundred dollars on a small diamond rind.  (That was in 1943 dollars.  It was, I think, something less than a half carat and would probably be worth ten times that today.)

After a few drinks on the way back to 87^th & Anthony I decided that the ring should not simply arrive in the mail.  I gift-wrapped it and mailed it to my brother Rex with the request that he hand-deliver it with some flowers.  He did so.

Despite the urgency of war for more trained men as the might of the United States began to flex its muscles, our classes at NATTC were on a five-day week and we had liberty every weekend.  Byrd, Rineman, and I found the classes relatively easy after our training at North Island and our two years of practical experience in VP-11 and the engine change shop on Ile Nou so we made the most of liberty in Chicago.

During our first liberty weekend, we explored the Chicago Loop area in the city, but other than movie houses and two large ballrooms, the Trianon and the Aragon, I believe they were, downtown had little more to offer than the South Side.  One weekend we did go to a professional football game at Soldier Field.  In the main we made liberty at an area of small night clubs, movie theaters, and bars at 63^rd and Cottage Grove.

In the days of World War II, The Chicago South Side was still thriving.  We could walk a few blocks east and catch the train that ran between the Chicago Loop and through Gary to South Bend, Indiana.

Our favorite watering hole was a small night club on Cottage Grove called “Crown Propeller Lounge”.  (The sign outside was a neon airplane propeller.)  It was run by a retired Irish cop and featured a small live combo.  Sometimes there was a small “floor show” by an aspiring singer, magician, or standup comedian.  The waitresses were friendly, the drinks relatively cheap, and the owner always bought every second or third round for men in uniform who were veterans of the War in the Pacific.  The bandleader soon learned our favorite songs and would stop a piece and shit to one when we came in and took a table—more often than not “Sentimental Journey” which I liked and often requested.

We felt comfortably at home at the Crown Propeller Lounge and knew that we could always count on getting back to the barracks at 87^th & Anthony.  On the occasions that we celebrated too much and the staff of the lounge thought we might run into a Shore Patrol or have trouble finding our way, the Irishman would call a cab at closing time and make sure we had enough money for the ride back.

Although we never got into trouble that might land us on report or in the brig, the three of us “old salts” had some high old times.  There was on chubby little waitress called “Dutchy”, a brown-haired woman about thirty, who took a liking for me.  Sometimes at the midnight closing time for bars, Dutchy and a friend would take us to one of the many illegal after-fours bars in the city.

I recall one after-hours joint in particular.  From the outside the place appeared to be nothing but an abandoned ice cream parlor.  Behind the counter the door that once led to a kitchen opened into a draped anteroom and then into a very nice nightclub with a bar, dance floor, and very good band.  Dutchy liked to dance and it was her favorite place to relax after work.

The Big Mistake

Leave in Vancouver—Spring 1943

"It was only in later years that I came to the conclusion that I had made one of the dumb decisions of my young life.."

The world that I returned to after two years in the South Pacific was, in a sense, an entirely different world than that which I had left behind in July 1940.  Then, the economy was just coming ouf the Great Depression of the Thirties, spurred only by the pre-World War II Lend Lease program for embattled Great Britain.

The Japanese sneak attack on December 7^th 1941 had unified the nation overnight and the war machinery of the United States had finally gotten into full swing.  One of the Henry Kaiser shipyards to build escort aircraft carriers (CVEs) was being built on the Columbiar River waterfront east of the Interstate Bridge across the river to Oregon.  (When it was in operation, my father quit his job at the DuBois sawmill and went to work at the shipyard as a machinist.  In later years, Dad was very proud of the fact that he helped send nearly fifty of the “jeep carriers” down the ways and off to war.)

The Vancouver Barracks Army post, successor to old Fort Vancouver, was at capacity with Army recruits in training and awaiting orders overseas.  Across the river past Hayden Island an entire temporary town of housing units called “Vanport” was being built to accommodate the influx of workers for the shipyards on both sides of the river.  Once sleepy Vancouver was busy and booming.

It was a joyous reunion with the family.  Rex had grown to match me in size and would be graduating from Vancouver High School that spring.  He had a job waiting for him—my old job at the CC Store.  Little Sandra was now a lively affectionate six-year-old and would be starting school the following fall.  Mother hand Dad were both healthy and happy.

Unexpectedly, I was also reunited with Grandpa and Grandma Stanley from the Ozarks  They had retired, sold the Bona store to Tom Humbert across the road, moved to a house a block off the courthouse square in Greenfield, and had come to Vancouver for a visit.  It was a memorable homecoming and a delightful change from the long months of war and austere living condition at Ile Nou.

In one respect, my homecoming from the Pacific was anti-climactic as had been my Christmas leave from San Diego in 1940.  After a day or two of visiting with the family, answering their many questions, and telling my sea stories of life in the Pacific, I set out to find old friends.

I was not very successful.  Elaine Eberle was away in her freshman year at the University of Washington in Seattle.  I went to see Patty Cross and delivered the grass skirt that I had picked up for her at Bora Bora.  Patty was now a senior at VHS and was very much a young lady.  Something seemed to be missing from our old relationship.  She had new friends and new interests and was planning to go to the University of Washington the following year.  We had one evening date and that was it.  I was simply a good friend from the past.

I telephone Elaine in Seattle.  She was as happy and bubbly as always and in a few minutes in her inimitable rapid-fire fashion filled me in on classes she was taking and her life at the university.  I considered hopping a train to Seattle to see her but felt that my short leave should be more directly with the family and my grandparents.

I also went back to the old hangout at Gearhart’s Drug Store.  I found none of the old gang there except little Ariel Mansfield who was now Ariel Davis, having married one of my classmates at VHS, Buster Davis.  The rest of the old group were either in one of the services or had moved away.

Although I had written her a “dear Jane” letter form Kaneohe more than a year previously, I finally telephoned Shirley Mills.  She was delighted and immediately invited me to visit her.  She was still the same full-figured, platinum-haired blonde with legs similar to Betty Grable.   She artfully arranged that our first meeting was when she was home alone.  She had dressed carefully and had soft music playing on the phonograph.  (I should have realized that “the tender trap” was set and baited when I realized that the song she had selected was “It Started All Over Again” but I was still the naïve old country boy and was simply flattered.)  I took her out a couple of evenings and accepted an invitation to go skiing at Government Camp on Mount Hood with she and her parents.

On March 18^th I left Vancouver on the Great Northern for Chicago accompanied by my father.  Dad had quit his job at the sawmill and waking taking a short vacation to re-visit our old home and relatives in the Ozarks before he started his job at the new Henry Kaiser shipyard in Vancouver.  We travelled together as far as Casper, Wyoming, when he changed trains for Kansas City and I continued on toe Chicago.

Dad never concealed the fact that he like a drink now and then nor did I hide the fact that I drank occasionally.  Before we left Portland, I bought a pin of bourbon for us to have a few belts together on the train.  Dad saved the day for me when a roving Shore Patrol on the train found us in the smoking lounge and I had the bottle in my hand.

When the SP nailed me (uniformed military personnel were not allowed to drink in public and in transit) and started to take the bottle, Dad interceded.  He reached out and took the bottle and said to the SP, “Tain’t that sailor boy’s bottle, boy,--it’s mine.  I just offered him a drink.  Look at thos ribbons he has on—he has just got back from the war!”

The SP issued a warning to me and went on his way.  We waited until he crossed into the next car before we laughed, had another drink, and went back to Dad’s tales about his short time in the Army in 1918.

Upon arrival at the Naval Aviation Technical Training Center at 87^th and Anthony in South Chicago, I found that the next advanced aviation machinist mates class was not due to be formed for more than two weeks.  I knew that I would be put on special work details in the meantime; therefore, I talked the division officer to whom I reported into allowing me an additional fifteen days leave.  When I told him that I had had only two weeks leave totaling less than three weeks in more than two and a half years that I had been in the Navy, the lieutenant was sympathetic and issued me leave orders for fifteen days. 

I debated going to visit our relative in the Ozarks or going back to Vancouver for two weeks.  Since my grandparents were still Vancouver and I thought “What the hell,--there I can always go out with chubby and affectionate Shirley,” the latter won out.  (It was only in later years that I came to the conclusion that I had made one of the dumb decisions of my young life.)

Back in Vancouver, I spent relaxed days with the family.  I tried going out in some of my old civilian clothes but felt alien and uncomfortable and was afraid that people would think me a draft dodger.  I went back to my familiar uniform with its AMM1/c badge, aerial machine gunner’s badge on my lower left sleeve, and the campaign ribbons.

I dated Shirley Mills several times and she became increasingly affectionate.  It bothered me at times that she also exhibited an increasingly possessive air but I enjoyed her company and her willingness to neck a bit in the old Chevrolet after a movie or dance.  I was flattered, I guess.

On the final evening of my leave, I believe I took Shirley dancing at the big band ballroom at Jantzen Beach on Hayden Island.  We probably stopped at Waddle’s for a coke or something and it was after midnight when I parked on “F” Street near her house.  She was compliant up to a point for some heavy necking.  I recall that she was wearing a mink dyed-skunk fur coat that she had bought with savings from her wartime job with a housing office.

It had been a fun leave and with her cuddled in my arms I impulsively asked, “Will you wiat and be here the next time I come home?”

She drew in a breath, went silent for a long minute, then said, “Did you just ask to marry me?”

I was momentarily stunned.  Marriage had not been in my mind.  I believe I stuttered and stammered and must Have made the mistake of not simply saying, “No, that was not what I meant.”

The next thing I knew, Shirley was talking excitedly as if it were an accomplished fact that we were engaged.  She had obviously given marriage a lot of previous thought (with me or someone else) because she knew just what church the wedding would be in, her china and silver patterns, and she already had a well-filled camphorwood carved hope chest.  She was so happily excited that the dumb old country boy simply went along with it.

I was leaving for Chicago the next evening.  IN a sort of daze, I took Shirley in the afternoon to my parents’ house and introduced her to them and to my grandparents as my future wife.  They were shocked, to say the least, but they received her graciously and said they were happy for us. J (Later, in privacy, my mother would ask me seriously if I was sure it was what I wanted to do.  When I assured her I thought it was, she just smiled wryly and said, “You are a grown man.”)

That same day, 4 April 1943, I was scheduled to leave for Chicago at 6:30 PM from the station in Portland.  Shirley and her parents, Chapin and Ruth Mills, drove me across the river and came to the platform to see me off.  The Mills seemed very happy with the engagement.  I recall feeling very awkward as we stood and chatted until the conductor called, “All Aboard!”

Shirley moved toward the door with me while Chapin and Ruth waited where they were standing.  Short of the loading steps, she pulled me to a halt, hugged me, and whispered in my ear, “I love you, Conrad.”

I was speechless.  No one but my mother had ever said that to me and I had never used the words and they would not come to my lips then.  I finally muttered, “I guess that goes for me, too.”

My ears were burning so I knew that my face was red with embarrassment as I pulled away and boarded just as the porter was ready to move the steps and close the door.  When I looked back Shirley was standing there, plump in that fir coat, smiling happily.

As that train pulled out of the station then chugged up the grandeur of the Columbia River Gorge in the fathering darkness, I felt no elation.  I soberly thought, I didn’t really ask her to marry me.  I knew, however, that I had effectively given my word by going along with it and telling the parents that we were going to get married.  It was deeply ingrained in me that a man did not go back on his word.  She was from a respectable family (her father had served in the Washington State Senate) and her apparent liking for heavy necking boded well for the marital bed.  What the heck, I thought, if she can cook and keep house I could do a lot worse.  Her full curves were nice to feel and I gave no thought to the fact that her mother was quite a heavy woman and that Shirley would have a weight problem all her life.

I cogitated also about what Shirley had said to me on the platform, that she loved me.  Did I love her?  I did not even know what love was or how one should feel in love.  I had read somewhere that if you were in love your heart would beat faster at the sound of her voice or the sight of her and that you should have a protective feeling when you looked at her.  Nothing had made my heart beat faster since that grim Sunday morning when the Japanese had come out of nowhere, laid waste in fire and explosions our airplanes and our hangars, and had caused that bloody row of bodies of my good friends under the wing of that bullet-ridden airplane.  I wondered again if I was capable of real love.  Did I have a protective feeling about Shirley?  I did not know.  Had I “gone off halfcocked’ because she was the first complaint white woman I had been with in more than two years?  I did not know.

The whole thing seemed beyond me.  The majesty of the gorge had passed unseen in the twilight outside my window and we were rolling into eastern Oregon when I mentally shrugged and stretched out to get some sleep.  My Chicago adventures lay ahead.  This time no door closed behind me, however.  I reckoned I had sort of left it propped open.

Treasure Island

The next morning, I woke, of course, with a lovely hangover.  After muster and morning chow we headed for the one great service of the Treasure Island base—a real barber shop.  I settled myself into a chair and told the barber, “The works—shampoo, haircut, singe, and shave—the whole bit!” then I promptly fell asleep as he went to work. I was to regret falling asleep.  I dimly recalled later that the barber touched my beautiful handlebar mustache and asked, “You want that trimmed?”  I do not recall my answer but when I woke he was finished and he turned me to face the mirror I saw to my horror that he had indeed trimmed my mustache—to an asinine thin line on my ussper lip!  I did not look like either David Niven or Clark Gable.  The few haris he had left on my upper lip were so sun-bleached that they hardly showed.

My temper asserted itself.  I read him off royally—informing him that I had not even had time to get a photography taken.  He had ruined my mustache and I was not going to pay him one damned dime for what he had done!  He insisted that I owed seven dollars for the shampoo, haircut, singe, and that he would not charge for the mustache trim.  I acidly told him what he could do with his bill, that he could fine me at the transient barracks, and I stalked indignantly out of the barber shop.  (I heard no more about it.)

It was that night and the next morning that Oscar Hook repaid me in full for the long ago night that I got him back to Ford Island from Waikiki.  After noon chow, we packed our toilet kits into our ditty bags and headed for San Francisco.  There we got a double hotel room then headed for the fabled Barbary Coast.

In retrospect, we started drinking too early and the entire night and the following twenty-four hours are a bit of a blur in my memory.  I vaguely recall that there were several bars and night clubs in some of which, when the patrons learned that we were returned veterans from the South Pacific, they would not let us spend any of our money.  (We were well heeled.  I had four or five hundred dollars that I had no sent home.)

There was music and dancing.  At some point there was a table and some women.  One brunette, quite a good looking woman as I recall, was particularly attentive to me.  I told Hook that I was going to need the room for a couple of hours and took her thee.  Later, I could only dimly recall that I called room service for some drinks and the next time I was aware it was the next morning and Hook was holding me up in formation for morning muster.

As best I can reconstruct it, when Hook came to the hotel room in the wee hours of the morning he found me passed out on the bed, obviously the victim of a “Mickey” slipped to me by the brunette and the room service waiter.  I was dead to the world and mu wallet was empty.  I was still fully dressed.  Hook got me into a taxi and back to Treasure Island.  His debt for the night in Waikiki was paid in full.

After muster our orders were distributed.  Mind were to NATTC in Chicago with eleven days delay enroute.  My problem was that I had been foolish enough to go ashore the night before with all my money in my wallet and now I was broke and could not buy a train ticket to Portland.  Still have comatose form the drugging, I took my baggage and went to the Market Street office of Western Union in San Francisco.  There I called my mother and asked her to wire some money from my bank account to that office, then I sat down and went to sleep.  They woke me when the money order arrived and I managed to find my way to Oakland, buy a ticket, and board the next train for Portland.  I slept most of the way up the coast and was finally halfway back to normal when I arrived home.

Reflection and Return

USS PYRO - American ammunition ship

"I contemplated the events of the past two years and how they surely must have changed me as I passed from youth to manhood."

Now the long part of our voyage on SEA VITCH began.  It would take us twelve days to cover the vast expanse of the pacific between Bora Bora and the Golden Gate.  After a little more than a week we were getting out of the tropical latitudes and the nights became cool to those of us who had been two years in the warmth of Hawaii and the South Pacific.  Our deep tans began to show goosebumps.  We dug into our sea bags for navy blue wool jerseys and peacoats that had rolled and stowed for two years.  We also dug out, brushed and ironed our dress blue uniforms and flat-hats in anticipation of liberty in San Francisco.

As the prospect of being back in the states neared, I often thought of all that had happened in the past two short years.  On my birthday on 3 March 1943 when I turned 21, I sat alone on the fantail as darkness fell and watched the ships wake that led off toward the last vestiges of sunset.  I contemplated the events of the past two years and how they surely must have changed me as I passed from youth to manhood.

All of a sudden, so it seemed, I was a Navy petty officer first class and a “blooded veteran” to whom laughter still came, but without the abandon of before.  I was an “old salt” and had been informed at Ile Nou that I rated three campaign bars—the American Defense ribbon with a gold star for having been in Hawaii on December 7^th, the Asiatic ribbon with battle stars for Midway and the Solomons, and the American theater ribbon.

Now, I thought, I am almost phlegmatic—I seem to take things as they come and almost as a matter of course.  I wondered again just what is was that seemed to have died during that bloody hour on December 7^th, 1941.  Oddly, it crossed my mind that perhaps I had lost the capacity to love.  My physical needs were still there, but there was something in my emotions that seemed to be lacking.  The thought of sailing into San Francisco in the next few days did not increase my pulse.

I still had occasional nightmare about that bloody hour when the Japanese attack came out of nowhere.  Even awake the images of the row of bloody bodies under the wing of the shot-up PBY, the grinning face of that Japanese pilot who had circled overhead looking down ast the fires of burning airplanes, the head-on view of enemy Zeros diving at us with wing guns winking fire and streams of bullets walking across the concrete ramp toward us were all too clear in my memory.  It would be a long time before the snarl of diving enemy airplanes, the chattering of machine guns, and the dull “WHUMP!” of exploding bomb could almost be heard.

Then, unbidden, the rather corny words my father had said to me at the bus depot when I left for the Navy came back to me—“A man goes where the hand of the lord leads him,” Dad had said, “and he does what he has to be done when he get there.”  I suddenly felt very proud of my brother Dick and myself.  When the chips had gone down, we had not hesitated.  We did not run for cover and hide as a few had done.  We got a gun and fought back as best we could.

It was not bravery.  We were just a couple of mad old country boys that were dumb enough to get into that airplane that the Japs would be strafing trying to set it on fire.  The Lord had led us there, we did what had to be done, and He looked after us as the enemy shot that airplane to pieces around us and left us unscathed.  Fear?  Yes, we felt fear for our lives, but we knew what had to be done.  It was after the battle was over that the reaction had set in and we went weak in the knees.

I was saddened by a sense of loss that I was no longer a part of, and probably would not be gain, Patrol Squadron Eleven.  The spirit of VP-11 is difficult to explain.  It went far beyond the normal camaraderie of shipmates.  In fact, it was almost as if we were a “family” and were all brothers.  That bloody Sunday had a large part in drawing us together, I suppose, but somehow it went beyond just that.  I longed to be back there with them once more on a combat flight crew; however, that was not to happen.  I sighed and flipped my glowing cigarette butt into the wake of SEA WITCH.

(The spirit and sense of family of VP-11 did not die in the war.  Today, fifty years later, we have regular reunions of those old VP-11 shipmates and many always attend.  We retell the old sea stories and often there are new ones—sometimes confessions of long ago midsdeeds or mistakes that once were idle scuttlebutt.)

It was full dark and the stars were bright overhead with the glory of the Southern Cross having slipped for the last time below the horizon when Hook touched me on the shoulder and said, “Hey, sober-sides, let’s go get a cup of coffee and hit the sack.  It’s getting pretty cool.

The most noteworthy event of our voyage on the SEA WITCH occurred on the morning of the day 8 March 1943, still an hour or more out, somewhere west of Seal Rocks we were in a solid fog bank.  The fog was so thick that it was not possible to see form the bow of the ship to the stern.  Unfortunately, the SEA WITCH did not have radar and we were traveling alone.

Since it was chilly and damp in the fog on deck and our mess cooking duties were over for the lat time, Hook and I were at a table in the mess compartment playing a few hands of cards.  I was just dealing when there was a sudden violent jar in the ship and what sounded like a dull boom forward.  An alarm started going on the loudspeakers.

Our first thought was “Torpedo!”  The cards went flying as we came up from the table.  My lifejacket was on my bunk tow compartments away on the mess deck.  I shot through the hatches, snatched up my life preserver, went up to ladders and out onto the main deck in a matter of seconds—probably the fasted I had moved in my entire life.

We had not been torpedoed.  SEA WITCH had collided with another ship in the fog.  I moved fast enough that I got a glimpse of the stern of the ship we had hit just disappearing into the fog off our starboard bow.  I saw the name of the ship in black letters on the stern as it vanished.  Of all the ships in the United States Navy the one we had to hit was the USS PYRO, at that time the largest ammunition ship in commission!

We found later that PYRO was loaded to the Plimsol marks with every high explosive in use.  If the collision had set it off, there would have been bare fragment of the two ships and all souls on board drifting to the bottom of the ocean.  Such an explosion would have wiped out a good share of that convoy.

The bow of SEA WITCH had hit PYRO just at the port five-inch gun platform aft.  The big gun had been ripped loose and two men died on PYRO.  Inspection of SEA WITCH revealed a hole in the starboard bow about six feet vertically and fifteen feet long; however, it was well above the waterline so we were in no immediate danger of sinking.  SEA WITCH lay dead in the water until the foghorns of the convoy receded then we proceeded at a reduced speed.  The fog started to lift as we passed beneath the Golden Gate Bridge.  Two painters on a scaffolding beneath the great span waved welcome.

USS SAN FRANCISCO passing under the Golden Gate

We docked in San Francisco bay in the early evening of March 8^th.  All of we Navy passengers were on deck in our dress blues and with our baggage as the ship eased alongside the pier.  There was no brass band to greet the rusty freighter; however, there was a USO coffee stand on the pier tended by American girls—the first we had seen in two years.  I recall that Hook said to me, “Migawd—look at those wahines!  They are all as white and pale as if they just got out of the hospital or something!”  In comparison to the brown girls of the South Pacific to which we had become accustomed they did, indeed look a bit sickly, however, it did not take long for us to adjust to that!”

We did not get to talk to the USO girls.  A boat laid alongside SEA WITCH and we Naval personnel were transferred to the Navy Receiving Station on Treasure Island.  It was after dark by then and everything on the base was secured; however, as soon as we had been shown to a barracks, Hook and I dropped our seabags and headed for the ODD’s office.  It took some talking to the officer, but soon, armed with special liberty passes, we were headed for the Oakland Bay Bridge to catch a trolley into Oakland (it was a bit nearer than San Francisco).

As I recall, it was by then around ten o’clock.  We simply headed for the first bar we saw to celebrate our return.  By the midnight closing time, both Hook and I were gloriously drunk.  We weaved our way out to the street, singing bawdy songs.  Hook insisted on treating us to a taxi back to Treasure Island.  We decided that the next night would be our real return celebration.  We would go into ‘Frisco, get a hotel room, and really live it up.

Tongatabu and Bora Bora

There were fifty-odd passengers on the SEA WITCH and we were a very mixed bag indeed.  Sailors such as Hook and me being transferred back to advanced schools were less than a dozen.  The balance of the passenger list included misfits and foul-ups from Carlson’s Second Marine Raiders that had taken Guadalcanal (some of who had been court-martialed and some who were awaiting court-martial), a mixture of Marines and Army combat fatigue cases, and one young Marine who had made it to the South Pacific only to be found regularly sleeping with his fellow Marines.  He talked openly of the trunks of dresses he had stowed at his mother’s and the life he intended to lead when he got out of the service.  It was something I found foreign and unsettling.

That afternoon we Naval personnel were mustered on the fantail by a young lieutenant junior grade, the officer in charge of the Navy gun crews that manned the few guns on the armed transport.  He informed us that we would be considered temporary ship’s company and would be assigned duties.  In other words, we would work our way to San Francisco.

USTA SEA WITCH

Both Hook and I were first class petty officers.  We were at first indignant when the JG informed us that we would be on mess cooking duty.  Since the ship had but a small civilian crew, troops in transit had to furnish their own galley crews.  Like the little French waiter in Noumea, however, we shrugged and said, “c’est la guerre”—it is war—and reported to the galley where we were handed white aprons.  Hook was assigned to the steam table and I was assigned to help the bakers—I sliced their crusty bread at the head of the chow line.

Actually, the light duty we had in the mess hall helped to break the monotony of the voyage home.  The SEA WITCH, like the old TIPPECANOE, wallowed along at a sedate 12 to 14 knots and the tip was estimated to take more than two weeks.  We had more leisure time than we wanted to lounge on the deck and watch for flying fish or to sit for almost endless hours in our bunk compartment playing “coon can” (a Navy versing of gin rummy).  The threat of Japanese submarines had eased and we travelled without convoy.

In the end our voyage on the SEA WITCH actually took three weeks because we made two stops enroute to pick up salvage materials to carry back to the empty cargo holds.  I sailed from Noumea on the morning of February 13^th.

On the 16^th we dropped anchor in the harbor of Tongatabu, the “forbidden island” of the Friendly Island group, to pick up empty gasoline and oil drums from the small Navy station there.

Tongatabu was then a classic south seas island that could well have been used as a movie set.  It consisted of one green mountain peak surrounded by coconut palm covered level areas with white sand beaches.  The harbor was protected by a coral reef so the blue water in the anchorage was flat calm.  Frm the ship we could see only what appeared to be a small village with a church (old-time missionaries did not miss much in the South Pacific), three or four other whitewashed buildings with corrugated tin roofs, and a scattering of palm frond thatched houses.

We were informed by the lieutenant that Tongatagu was then (and I guess still is) the last remaining true monarchy in the world and was ruled by a queen.  When the U.S. Navy made arrangements with the queen to install a small patrol base on Tongatabu she agreed; however, she took an unusual precaution.  She had heard the stories about sailors and local native girls so (as the story went) she built a secret village somewhere in the jungles of the mountain slopes and moved every unattached female over the age of eight to it for the duration.

Hook and I were intrigued by Tongatabu and, when we found that the SEA WITCH would be there for three full days loading, we talked the lieutenant into letting us go ashore to see the village one afternoon.  It did not amount to much.  Besides the church there was a small school building, two large houses, and a square white building that was the local general store.  The rest was a motley collection of small houses, some of which barely qualified as a “little grass shack”.  The small Naval station was a quarter of a mile from the town.

We believe that we did confirm the story About the queen hiding the eligible females in a secret village.  On our walk around the village, we saw only very young girls or very old women, but there were several husky young males.  At one point we saw a road leading toward the interior of the island and started walking along it.  We did not get far.  A hundred yards or so beyond the last house two burly native men stepped out of the underbrush, one on each side of the road.  Each was carrying a bamboo spear.  As we approached they stood facing us.  One held up a hand and said in English, “Stop—go back—is taboo.”

We did not argue, but turned meekly around and went back to the town.  There we found a sailor attached to the local Navy station.  He confirmed the story about the secret village and said that their small patrol planes had flown over every part of the island, but failed to fine the fabled village.  They spotted only known settlements long the coast of the island.

The weather continued to be tropically perfect as we sailed from Tongatabu early on the morning of February 20^th, bound for Bora Bora in the Society Islands.  The calm sea sparkled in the sunshine beneath a blue sky studded with white cumulus clouds.  In our plentiful spare time we would lounge under the sunshade on the fantail and watch the flying fish skipping across the foaming white line of the wake of the SEA WITCH.  Once in a while someone would yell, “Thar she blows!”  On those occasions we were treated to the magnificent sight of a huge grey whale broaching, then crashing back down into the water.  Afterward the big flukes would appear as the whale sounded.

On the morning of February 24^th I watched in delight as SEA WITCH sailed into the harbor at Bora Bora.  It was without a doubt the epitome of south sea islands.  High green hills were on each side of the harbor entrance.  When the anchor splashed down we were a quarter mile off a beautiful curving golden sand beach lined with tall native village was beyond outrigger canoes drawn up o the sand.  The village included several thatched huts, one large house with a veranda, and the inevitable small church.  This one was clapboard painted green with white trim.  It was a scene of total peace and, for a little while, the war seemed very, very far away.

The outrigger canoes did not stay on the beach long.  People came swarming out of the village and piled into the canoes.  They came paddling across the blue lagoon and literally surrounded the ship.  They made no attempt to board but called out to us in mellifluous Polynesian for barter—grass skirts ornamented with waistbands of cowrie shells, carved model outrigger canoes, tapa cloth paintings, and ripe coconuts.

 Was obviously not a perfect Eden.  Several of the natives had pock-marked faces and, immediately below my position at the rail, an old man had feet swollen with elephantiasis that he could not put them side by side in the bottom of the narrow canoe.  He held up a beautiful grass skirt with a waistband of golden shells four or five inches wide. I thought it would make a perfect gift for Patty Cross when I got home so I held up a fresh pack of Lucky Strike cigarettes.  The old man flashed a toothless grin and nodded vigorously.  I tossed down the cigarettes and he handed up the grass skirt on the tip of his pointed paddle.

In a little while a small barge loaded with empty oil drums came alongside SEA WITCH and a cargo boom was rigged out.  At the same time a whaleboat carrying a doen brown-skinned strapping native men came to the boarding ladder and the natives swarmed aboard followed by an older white-haired man clad in a white lava-lava who was obviously in charge of the work party.  The ship’s crew removed a cargo hatch and the natives started transferring the oil drums into the hold, stacking them with those we had picked up at Tongatabu.

As the natives worked, one of them started to sing in the Polynesian tongue.  The other workers, one by one, joined in until the ship resounded with the sound of a melodious chorus.  The song was tantalizingly familiar and I finally realized that they were singing the old hymn “Onward Christian Soldiers” with Polynesian words.  It was beautiful.

The old white-haired man was sitting on a hatch cover watching the progress of the work.  I approached him boldly, hoping that he understood English.  “Excuse me, sir—I want to tell you how beautifully your men sing.”

He turned unusual hazel eyes on me and fingered a strand of shells that was draped about his neck.  “That is not real singing,” he said scornfully.  “You wait until this evening and listen to the music that comes from the church—then you will hear real singing!”

Unfortunately, we did not get to hear the real singing from the church.  Shortly after noon chow the loading was finished, the hatch cover closed, the native crew left the ship, and SEA WITCH weighed anchor.  We were now bound directly for San Francisco.  As Bora Bora faded on the horizon near sunset, the music haunted me and I vowed to myself that one day I would return.  (I never did and now I do not care.  I have seen recent color photographs of that Bora Bora harbor and it is now the milieu of tourists in droves with a Club Med and many high-rise resorts replacing he waving palm trees along that beautiful beach.  No doubt the village and the little church are long gone.)