Posted on 05/25/2020 2:18:06 AM PDT by Jacquerie
“If you ever want to sleep with a blonde again, you had better shoot down these bastards as soon as they come up” - a destroyer captain motivates his exhausted crew shortly before a kamikaze attack. The sea-battle toll for Okinawa that ended on June 21st 1945 was 36 U.S. warships sunk and 368 damaged. Almost 5,000 sailors were KIA and another 5,000 wounded.
War naturally conjures images of courageous soldiers. Flanders Fields, Charge of the Light Brigade, and not the Coral Sea or Leyte Gulf.
Too often forgotten are the heroic Navy, Coast Guard and Merchant Marine sailors felled at sea. It’s understandable; there are no battlefield memorials, no marked graves, no poppies, no flags. Presidents and dignitaries visit Normandy and not Midway or Iron Bottom Sound. Few are the photo memoirs of engineering room slaughter-by-steam, of those who inhaled fire, of those blown overboard, of those who survived the battle only to die of burns, thirst, or sharks.
Hoses washed the remains of many off their ships. Some had proper burials. Did boot camp recruits know their Navy-issue hammocks did double duty as burial shrouds? I don’t know, but should your Memorial Day weekend find you on an Atlantic, Pacific, or Gulf of Mexico beach, you are graveside. Take time to say a few words of thanks.
(Excerpt) Read more at articlevblog.com ...
Do those who are buried at sea get a tombstone somewhere?
Uncommon bravery in your uncle.
Urban legend.The ship was USS Oklahoma that rolled over at her berth tied up to Ford Island.The navy worked round the clock for days to free those men trapped below decks.Some were unable to be freed and died.There is a book on the recovery efforts IIRC
“Do those who are buried at sea get a tombstone somewhere.”
There is a Merchant Marine cemetery at Ft Stanton NM.
The Merchant Marines... Serving on boats that were essentially sitting ducks with a machine gunner or two. My uncle died on he SS Roxby, a ship carrying coal back to Canada from Liverpool on November 7th 1942. He was a fireman (shoveling coal).
Sunk by U-Boat 613, 32 other men were also killed and one died among the 13 survivors who drifted in a life boat on the North Atlantic for five days. U-Boat 613 was in turn sunk by the USS George E. Badger on the 23rd of July 1943 with all 48 crew members going down with her.
Thankfully, there are several internet sites where information is available about our fallen loved ones. One of them is U-Boat.net... They have a searchable list of persons who were aboard allied ships sunk by U-Boats
https://uboat.net/allies/merchants/crews/
If you had a relative who served at sea and they were torpedoed by a U-Boat, information about the boat, the U-Boat that torpedoed it and the crew aboard who died and survived is listed.
I guess traveling around the world like that, he got to be a real scrapper. My brother used to go drinking with him.
Though my uncle was thin and had a slight build, he was a real wild card.
Once a person in a bar got out of line. They both tolerated it for a while but then my brother said, ‘I blinked and the next thing I knew that guy was sprawled out-cold on the floor. I never even saw how it happened.’
These are the six major naval battles in that time frame, but there were dozens of small engagements where ships and men were lost:
Respect for those men.
There was a poem written after the Battle of Savo Island that has stuck with me these many years since I first read it. It was written by a Navy Chaplain, and it still makes me shudder to read it:
Iron Bottom Bay
by Walter A. Mahler, Chaplain, USS Astoria
I stood on a wide and desolate shore
And the night was dismal and cold.
I watched the weary rise, –
And the moon was a riband of gold.
Far off I heard the trumpet sound,
Calling the quick and the dead,
The long and rumbling roll of drums,
And the moon was a riband of red.
Dead sailors rose from out of the deep,
Nor looked not left or right,
But shoreward marched upon the sea,
And the moon was a riband of white.
A hundred ghosts stood on the shore
At the turn of the midnight flood,
They beckoned me with spectral hands,
And the moon was a riband of blood.
Slowly I walked to the waters edge,
And never once looked back
Till the waters swirled about my feet,
And the moon was a riband of black.
I woke alone on a desolate shore
From a dream not sound or sweet,
For there in the sands in the moonlight
Were the marks of phantom feet.
Me as well, FRiend.
Me as well.
Profound and moving...thank you.
My Father-in-law was a pharmacist mate on a hospital ship. He also served on Guam and Saipan. His time on the AH-5 Solace was in support of the Okinawa campaign. He never talked much to his family about what he did/saw, but he opened up to me. He told me the hospital ships were painted white with huge red crosses painted on them and, until Okinawa, they kept their lights on so everyone would know they were noncombatant. That was until the AH-6 Comfort was kamikazed killing a group of nurses. I once asked him what his duties were. He said, “I was the guy who went around at night giving shots.” I said, “With all those guys coming off Okinawa, he must have gone through a lot of needles.” He replied, “One needle. It was penicillin.” He was a great cross country skier. Gave it up at 94.
Superb post. Neptune’s Inferno is a fine read. Yep, about 4,500 sailors KIA v. 1,500 or so Marines.
Great poem too.
Savo was such an unnecessary disaster.
The USN paid for its unpreparedness. The IJN was at its peak and only declined, where the USN improved every day in every way.
As you said, it was a costly one, but as Morison said, it was not unprofitable. We learned a lot of lessons in that single hour of bloody carnage of fire, shrapnel, and flooding. Those were hard lessons and we learned them the hard way.
On this day, when I reflect on that battle for Guadalcanal back in 1942, where the conventional wisdom was that America and American men were soft and weak, we stood up to a hard, fanatical, and capable foe, and we took their best shot. It fills me with pride, and I cling to the hope that is still in us. I am reminded of this famous line from Michener's famous novel "South Pacific":
"...They will live a long time, these men of the South Pacific. They had an American quality. They, like their victories, will be remembered as long as our generation lives. After that, like the men of the Confederacy, they will become strangers. Longer and longer shadows will obscure them, until their Guadalcanal sounds distant on the ear like Shiloh and Valley Forge..."
It applies to all these men, not just those of the South Pacific. You could substitute "Schweinfurt" for "Guadalcanal", and "European Theater" for "South Pacific" and it would mean just the same.
I salute them all on this solemn day.
+1
the navy lot more at Okinawa too. took a great class with a friend whose dad was senior NCO of the initial medical clearing station for the 77th INF. they were on Okinawa. working on a SHERMAN plus a few infantrymen diorama for him.
i was born on DEC07 1951. my dad and uncle were in the navy. I was a tanker in the army. I wonder if that is the reason for my interest in history. i teach mostly Russian history now.
Thanks for serving, FRiend.
I am a history buff, because I have come to realize that there are few things in life that are completely new, and that seeing how they happened and how they were dealt with in the past is not only a great source of genuine drama and contributes to the understanding of human nature and fundamental human behavior, but also helps in understanding current crises.
Russian history is something I am less versed on prior to WWI, I admit. That alone is an interesting facet of history, I am certain.
One more summary of two salient events of Guadacanal:
One Marine, One Ship, by Vin Suprynowicz
http://www.tysknews.com/Depts/Our_Culture/one_marine_one_ship.htm
I’ll check that out, thank you very much!
Guadalcanal was a significant event, a land, air, and ocean (both above and below the surface) over a huge square mile area, between Rabaul and Guadalcanal. The first of its kind on that scale.
Seems unknown to many today.
Eternal Father, strong to save,
Whose arm does bind the restless wave,
Who bids the mighty ocean deep
Its own appointed limits keep;
O hear us when we cry to Thee
For those in peril on the sea.
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