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.)

Getting PBYs Back into the War, Thanksgiving, and a Chance Meeting with Admiral Halsey

"One such emergency we had was one afternoon when one of the new PBY-5As (the amphibious version with retractable landing gear) arriving from Hawaii on the way to Esprito flipped over on landing. "

Airplanes for overhaul came with enough frequency that it became necessary to augment our crews and work two shifts, first shift from 0800 to 1600 hours and a second shift from 1600 to midnight.  As the leading petty officer, I continued to receive flight pay since each PBY was test flown after overhaul before it was turned back to the combat flight crew.  I was the test crew plan captain.  I was also the final inspector of the engine build-up and installation and the fact that I would be flying in the airplane made me more than me more than meticulous.  I was known to blow my stack at the unfortunate mechanic that failed to safety wire a propeller governor or had improperly installed an oil strainer!

In extreme emergencies we would turn out all hands regardless of shift and work all night if necessary.  One such emergency we had was one afternoon when one of the new PBY-5As (the amphibious version with retractable landing gear) arriving from Hawaii on the way to Esprito flipped over on landing.  Fortunately, none of the crew were seriously injured.

Apparently what happened was that the 5A made a water landing to come to the ramp at Ile Nou.  When the hull contacted the surface, the uplock on the big main wheels failed and the main landing gear fell out of the wheel wells in the side of the fuselage.  The wheels tripped the airplane over on its nose, the nose landing gear doors failed, and the nose wheel blew a spout of water upward between the pilots that peeled back the cockpit canopy like an opened sardine tin.

Barnes and I considered it an extreme emergency because we wanted to salvage the precious engines that were submerged beneath the upside-down 5A in salt water.  The ordnance people wanted to salvage the guns.  Every shop needed spare parts and this had been a brand new airplane.

The accident happened in the late afternoon at the end of first shift.  In less than an hour a crane on a barge had righted the PBY-5A and it was brought up the ramp at Ile Nou.  I had both port and starboard crews standing by.  We wanted to get the engines off, stripped down to the crankshaft, flushed down, and pickled in oil before the saltwater corrosion ruined them.

No one stopped for evening chow.  It was a race between the two engine crews to get the engines off and disassembled.  It could have been some sort of record as both engines were completely disassembled and the parts in an oil bath before 0200.

We wound up with a lot of spare parts but not with two usable engines.  We saved every major part except for the supercharger sections of the engine crankcases.  They were the only parts of an R-1830-92 made of magnesium and salt water corrosion had already set in on the metal when we got the cases off after 0130.   The insides of the blower section were already chalky with corrosion and were beyond use.

We had another “extreme emergency” shortly before Thanksgiving.  The Navy was making every effort to provide us with a traditional Thanksgiving dinner and some break to the monotony.  They wound up flying in turkeys in some BPY-2s—the big four-engined version of the PBY that was called a “Coronado”.  In the meantime, it was decreed that every man should have two cans of beer (there was no beer garden at Ile Nou and none was available in Noumea) for the holiday.  The beer shipment made it through “Torpedo Junction” off the Fijis and a consignment for Ile Nou was barged to our small dock.

The emergency came when the beer barge came in late and was left moored to the pier, still loaded with our beer, overnight.  The barge had a leak and, come morning, the beer consignment was on the bottom in fifteen or twenty feet of water!  The word went out and there was no lack of volunteer divers to recover the beer.  We managed to salvage enough that everyone who wanted beer got at least a can and most of us two.

The salvage operation was a tribute to loyalty to the shipmates.  To my knowledge, not one can of beer was smuggled away from the dock or consumed during the salvage operation.  The beer was put into a waiting truck and on Thanksgiving Day was dispensed at the mess hall during an afternoon “happy hour”.

The Thanksgiving turkey dinner turned out to be too rich for most of us.  After weeks of becoming accustomed to a bland and monotonous diet, we scoffed up great quantities of turkey, mashed potatoes, dressing, and all the trimmings.  Our stomach rebelled and there were more people lined up at the community privy that evening than there were sitting in poker games!

The infrequent beer was not the only source of alcohol available to us at Ile Nou.  We found a source of “Old Soldier” 150-proof Australian rum in Noumea and the base mail orderly made considerable money smuggling in bottles of rum in the mail sacks.  We could also occasionally buy a bottle of good whiskey from flight crews just arrived from Hawaii or back from R&R stints in Brisbane or Auckland—at quite inflated prices that did not deter us because we were not spending much money on liberty in Noumea.

There was also other black market alcohol to be had.  It was primarily medical alcohol filched from supply shipments.  It was straight grain alcohol and required a mixer.  When it was available (which was not often) we would bum a half-gallon of grapefruit juice from the galley and a mixture of one-half grapefruit juice and one-half alcohol became known as an “Ile Nou Cocktail”.  We would have preferred orange juice but none was to be had.

One evening we had just started a crap game in hut C-4 when a sailor knocked on the door and offered to sell us a quart jar of medical alcohol.  After Pappy Berridge had sampled it and pronounced it good alcohol and, being ahead in the game at the time, I bought a quart.  We sent Amuchustagi to the galley to scrounge the grapefruit juice and went on with the game.

A half hour later there was another knock on our door.  I was the shooter at the time and backed p to the door with the dice in one hand and a wad of greenback in the other.  When I pushed the door open, there stood the JOOD (Junior Officer of the Day) and the PO of the watch.  Oh boy, I thought, he’s got me dead to rights. Shooting craps (all gambling aboard was against Navy Regulations) and the rest of the bottle of medical alcohol was in plain sight on the deck under my bunk!

Apparently the young ensign was just going through the motions to follow orders.  He ignored the dice and the money both in my hand and on the blanket-covered table and said, “Sailor—there are five gallons of medical alcohol missing from sick bay and we are informed that someone is out selling it.  Haw anyone been around offering to sell you some?”

I edged slightly sidewise hoping to be between the ensign and the bottle under my bunk and answered with a straight face, “No, sir, nobody like that been by—but,” and I grinned at him, “I hope I see him before you do, sir!”

The JOOD smiled slightly, still trying to keep his eyes away from the dice and the money.  “Well,” he said solemnly, “just remember it is your duty to report it if you become aware of anything against regulations.”

He and the grinning petty officer of the watch turned away and headed for the next hut as I said, “Yes, Sir, we’ll sure enough remember that!”

We waited until the JOOD would be out of earshot before we poured another drink and went back to the game.

There were many regulations “honored in the breach” down there in the backwaters of the war where leave and liberty were almost non-existent and entertainment was limited to movies, most of which we had seen before.  Our officers not only looked the other way, they participated in the same activities.

One had to do with shaving.  Some men grew full beards (our young squadron photographer, Kofoed, who had a cherubic face grew a magnificent full blond bear) and others grew mustaches.  I was one of the latter.  I had always admired my Grandpa Stanley’s handlebar mustache and resolved to grow one.

A handlebar mustache requires no trimming and it became a nuisance when it got long enough to curl over my lip. But was not yet long enough to brush to the side and curl the ends.  It got in the way when I was eating especially if we had soup when it became downright messy.  I stayed with it, however, and by the time I got back to San Francisco early in March of 1943 it had a span of over five inches with beautifully curled ends.  I used beeswax to control it since I could not find mustache wax in Noumea.

Admiral Halsey while in New Caledonia

In either December or January, I had occasion to meet Admiral Halsey and had arrived at Ile Nou in his personal plane, one of the PB2Y Coronados and remained on the base for two or three days.  On the second morning of his visit I had gone to the shop early and had a pot of coffee going in our blowtorch-heated pot when Chief Barnes stuck his head in and announced that Halsey was going to inspect the base right after muster.

Normally, preparation for an admiral’s inspection required a couple of days and we had, at the most, an hour’s time.  All we could do was scramble around and clean up our work spaces and I sent those with the most disgraceful dungarees to their huts to change and get clean white hats.  We made it with bare minutes to spare while the admiral and his party inspected the adjacent shop.

When we fell into ranks outside the shop door as the inspection party approached, the chief poked me in the ribs and whispered, “Frieze, did you turn off the coffee pot?”

I was chagrined—the blowtorch was still going on the desk in the office and I could smell the coffee outside the door.  I turned but it was too late.  Admiral Halsey was standing in front of me.  He looked us over then, as he started to enter the shop, he halted and turned back.  “Sailor,” he said, “is that Navy coffee I smell?”

I gulped and cold feel my face turning red, “Yes, Admiral,” I managed weakly, “I am afraid it is, Sir.  I forgot to turn off the blowtorch we make it with when we got word of the inspection!”

Admiral Halsey grinned and said, “Well, sailor, how about a cup?”

“Yes, Sir!”  I darted into the office corner, got the cleanest mug in sight, and poured a cup of the strong black coffee.  Halsey carried it and sipped at it while he strolled around the shop and listened to the chief’s description of our procedures.  When he returned to the door, Halsey handed me the mug with a “Thank you, son—pretty damn good coffee” and went on his way.