Page 128 - Anthology

I had never been to school to be a gunner’s mate. An officer started asking if we had any first loaders in
the group. No one raised their hand, so I did. Remember, I am a small guy. Most first gunners are six
feet tall, so they can reach the breach to load the rounds. Anyway, I became a first gunner even though I
had no formal training. I would learn as we went along. During one training demonstration at
Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, there were officers up on a hill watching as we did target practice on these
socks that airplanes would pull behind it. Well any way, they radioed to my Lieutenant asking who he had
as a first loader. They had watched as I loaded three rounds in less than fifteen seconds. He told them I
was just a little feller, but I could load that breach. So, on that day I became a First Loader for my ship.
We went through the Panama Canal on the way.

Once in the Pacific it took us a little over thirty days to arrive in New Guinea; we were just about twenty
miles above Australia. We shuttled up and down the coast of New Guinea, Guadalcanal and the
Solomon Islands all of 1944. We also made four trips to Australia during that year to take on fresh water
and supplies.

On one of the trips we met several Army guys on leave from the jungles. They would come up to the
ships asking if anyone on board was from their hometown. What they were really doing was looking for a
free meal. They’d been eating K-Rations and C-Ration and such; they wanted a real meal. Well, anyway
one ole boy asked if there was anybody from Paintsville, Kentucky. Some of the guys pointed me out. I
met him and invited him to dinner aboard ship. He ate steak and gravy and mashed potatoes; you never
seen a boy eat like he did.

He appreciated that meal so much; he had a weapons carrier checked out to him and he drove me all
over the place that afternoon. He had what they called a jungle juice jug. They would steal things out of
the kitchen to make their own juice. It was a five-gallon glass jug. That stuff had a kick to it, and you had
to hold your nose to drink it. I brought some of that jungle juice back to the ship and everybody was hitting
off that jug.

1940-1945 Dodge Weapons Carrier

The only actual combat we ever saw was when the Japanese would drop bombs on the nearby airfields.
Sometimes shrapnel would hit our ship, but I don’t recall anyone ever being wounded. I can tell you that
we had more problems, injuries and deaths related to weather and equipment problems than we did with
fighting the war. When the war was over I was in Okinawa. My father was listed as a “B” dependent; that
gave me an extra 12 points for discharge. Those extra points were enough to get me discharged about
two months early.