Sub vets to honor their own - 52 elm trees for the number of undersea craft lost in World War II

Sailor buddies don't get much tighter than Leyman Dennis and W.E. “Charlie” Russell.

In the summer of 1944, their commander offered them a choice: One could stay on the Swordfish with a fast track to promotion, while the other could head to New London, Conn., to help build and commission new submarines.

The pals, both 24 and first class petty officers, flipped a coin. Dennis lost and landed in New London. Russell won and went to sea.

On Jan. 12, 1945, the Swordfish and its 89-member crew disappeared near Okinawa, perhaps sunk by a floating mine or Japanese depth charges. It was one of 52 submarines lost in combat during World War II.

“As to what happened,” Dennis, now 86, said softly Thursday, “no one will ever know.”

Dennis swallowed his grief and stayed in the Navy until 1969. He retired in Spring Valley, and today he's a member of the San Diego chapter of the U.S. Submarine Veterans of World War II.

The group's dwindling membership is zealously dedicated to preserving the memory of more than 3,500 World War II submariners like Charlie Russell who, say the surviving sub veterans, are “on eternal patrol.”

At 10 a.m. Monday, the veterans will gather for Memorial Day services at Point Loma Naval Base. And soon, perhaps, they'll hold their annual service at a permanent memorial to their lost buddies.

Next year, Dennis and the chapter's other members plan to dedicate what will be the largest monument ever to subs and submariners lost in World War II. The project, already approved by the City Council, has been in the works for more than a decade.

It will be the centerpiece of a 40-acre harbor-front park in Liberty Station, a new mixed-use development taking shape on the grounds of the former Naval Training Center at Point Loma, said Douglas Smay, 65, a club member who is leading the memorial campaign.

Fifty-two American Liberty elm trees will shade two parallel footpaths on either side of a wide lawn.

Beneath each tree, the veterans will place a monument to a submarine lost in World War II. A photo of the sub and its story, along with the names of its missing crew, will be etched in bronze.

The chapter's members will kick off a community fundraising drive during the Memorial Day weekend.

Smay said they will run newspaper advertisements and solicit donations from local businesses and large defense contractors. The group plans to inscribe the names of those who give $100 or more on a donor-appreciation plaque at the memorial site.

Smay is the son of a World War II submariner and himself a Cold War-era sub veteran. He hatched the idea for the project in 1995 while walking through Mission Bay Park. He noticed a grove of 52 trees in the park and wondered if it had been a memorial to World War II subs.

Then Smay found a small plaque that said the trees had been planted in honor of the 52 American hostages held in Iran from 1979-81. He liked the concept and asked city officials if the submarine vets could do the same.

Politicians and park planners embraced the proposal, but suggested it be part of a future park at the former training center, which the Navy had shuttered in 1993 following a round of base closures. “We said, 'That's perfect!' ” Smay recalled. “We couldn't think of a better place.”

He attended a dozen planning sessions in the late 1990s and was thrilled at the memorial's prominent position in the blueprints for the park.

In 2000, the Navy deeded the training center to the city. The submarine veterans contributed about $30,000 of the $250,000 they would need to construct the monument.

A year later, they spent $9,600 to buy the elm seedlings, which were specially bred to resist the Dutch elm disease that nearly wiped out the species in North America 30 years ago.

Smay put the one-gallon pots in the backyard of his Bay Park home, expecting they would soon be planted at Liberty Station.

Little did he know that San Diego would run into a major financial crunch that would slow the park's development.

“The deadline has slipped and slipped again,” Smay said. “We've been ready to go, but the park hasn't.”

Since then, the trees have been transplanted four times. Now they are 20 to 30 feet tall and weigh a quarter of a ton each. Smay has installed a drip irrigation system and tends to them every day.

City officials recently reassured the sub veterans that the park and the memorial will open next year. Smay hopes that projection holds true. The surviving World War II submariners are in their 80s and 90s.

“My fondest hope is that some of the veterans will still be alive to see it,” Smay said.

Veterans everywhere consider it a duty to honor their dead, but no one is more dedicated than submariners. Numerous groups have built monuments to individual boats, and there is an impressive memorial to the 52 subs next to the USS Bowfin Museum at Pearl Harbor.

At Monday's memorial service, “I'll be thinking about all our friends who are out there on patrol and never came back,” said Jim Northrop, 81, a survivor of five World War II patrols aboard the Queenfish. “We can only bring them back in our thoughts.”

Sub veteran Ralph Bulmer, 83, of Santee will remember Jack “Ding Ding” Ehlerding, who was barely 20 when he died in the sinking of the Trout. Eight of the 12 men in Bulmer's December 1942 submarine school class didn't survive the war.

And Leyman Dennis, undoubtedly, will think of the happy-go-lucky Russell, the “fair and square guy” with whom he worked hard side by side in cramped, dangerous conditions aboard the Swordfish, then played and drank hard with during liberty time in Hawaii.

He'll think about the fate that allowed him to live a long life, while his young buddy remains forever young and on “eternal patrol.”

LAURA EMBRY / Union-Tribune

Douglas Smay, who is heading a submarine veterans' memorial campaign, looked over some of the 52 elm trees in his Bay Park backyard. They are to be planted at the former Naval Training Center for the memorial. The two met in 1940 while serving aboard the submarine repair ship Holland, and later transferred to the submarine Swordfish to fill the Navy's aching need for sub crews during World War II.

For more information E-mail the submarine veterans at sandiegochapter@san.rr.com, or write to San Diego Chapter, U.S. Submarine Veterans of WWII, P.O. Box 81984, San Diego, CA 92138

Thanks!

All my fighting WW2 family&relatives were landlubbers.

God bless those who slipped beneath the waves in defense of our nation and way of life.

"SWORDFISH, under Cmdr. K.E. Montross, left Pearl Harbor on December 22, 1944, to carry on her thirteenth patrol in the vicinity of Nansei Shoto."

Some Swordfish history here.

NavSource Online pictures.

Let's not forget USS Thresher, Lost April 10, 1963, with 118 on board. I know it wasn't WWII, but my uncle John and Uncle Ben Shafer were on board. They died serving their country and doing what they loved. They were my mother's brothers.

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