Memorial Day

Yesterday was Memorial Day and I thought of my dad and all the others who have served. He served as a radio man on a destroyer in the South Pacific in one of the largest naval battles ever fought. He never really talked much about the war while I was growing up. It wasn't something that the men of his generaton did.

This all changed right after the first gulf war. This war prompted him (and many other WWII vets I am told) to dip into the memory banks and pen an extensive memior that covered most of his life.

Here is a very short excerpt from the time that he served in the Navy during WWII on the USS Albert W. Grant. Its from June 1944 when his ship was patrolling the straights between Saipan and Tinian shortly after the Marines had taken the Island of Saipan. It speaks to the memories of war that my dad and all combat veterans carried, carry and will carry inside their heads for the rest of their lives.

copyright 1997 - j.h.

"When the Grant was not firing at a specific target ashore, it was patrollling between the islands. Things had quieted down enough so that we could go to the mess hall for our meals. The mess hall was two decks below and could only accomodate a single line. This caused the line to stretch up and down the main deck. Standing in line one evening waiting for the chow line to move, we noticed some dead bodies in the water. Soon the ship was plowing through hundreds of bodies. They were not the bodies of soldiers; the were the bodies of woman and children. We found out later that they had thrown themselves off the cliffs rather than be captured by the Americans. They apparently decided to answer the command of the Emperor. The stench was over powering. I can close my eyes today and see the body of a young child as it floated by the ship, beyond any help I could give."

(Post war records show that 8000 women and children died in this manner)

In October 1944, the Albert W. Grant took several direct hits from an American Cruiser and Japenesese warships during the battle of Leyte Gulf. My dad lost some of his closest buddies and came very close himself. They towed the badly damaged destroyer and crew through a typhoon and all the way back to Pearl Harbour. By the time it was repaired and battle ready again, the war in the Pacific was close to finished.