Hug a Veteran Today

Macho Guy and I drove to the Battleship Alabama Memorial in Mobile, Alabama, several years ago while vacationing in Gulf Shores. In addition to the battleship USS Alabama, the memorial park hosts the oldest WWII-era Gato-class diesel-electric submarine museum in the world, the USS Drum SS-228. Although the sub was still being restored, the public was allowed to tour it. I couldn’t wait to climb aboard. I was going to get a first-hand look at the kind of vessel my dad served on during the war.

 

The moment I went below, I got goose bumps. It wasn’t cold down there, but something about the sub gave me the chills. There were candid photographs of the crew at various stations, and I perused every one. It eventually occurred to me that I was looking for a specific face. My dad’s. To my disappointment, I didn’t find him in any of the photos, but I expected to and wasn’t sure why.

Once we returned home, I went through Dad’s papers to see if I could discover anything relating to his naval service. One item I found was a torn, fading but still legible NOTICE OF SEPARATION FROM U. S. NAVAL SERVICE. Dad served for three years, two months, and seventeen days, and received an honorable discharge. The notice listed four submarines Dad served on during the war. I got goose bumps all over again. One of the subs was the USS Drum.

When Dad was drafted, he elected to serve in the Navy. Why the Navy, I once asked him. He chuckled and said because it was well known that the Navy had better chow than the Army, especially on the subs, so Dad chose the submarine service.

So typically male—putting his stomach ahead of other considerations. Never mind that he would be crammed into what amounted to an underwater sardine can with about seventy or more other guys, with occasional air conditioning when they weren’t running silent, and without enough fresh water for the men to shower. Living under those conditions really took guts. I gag just thinking about the pungent aroma that must have permeated the length and breadth of those subs. It must have been cause for celebration whenever they surfaced.

Dad passed away in 2000, never having spoken a word about combat when asked what the war was like. He would steer the conversation in a different direction. He readily informed me that he started out as a Seaman Second Class, and the reason he was eventually promoted to Yeoman First Class was his typing. He could hunt and peck more rapidly and more accurately than the others on the subs he served on and so he snagged an office job.

That was the most he ever said about his wartime experience in the Navy. I couldn’t get anything else out of him. Like so many veterans, he didn’t want to talk about the war, although his ears perked up whenever he would watch Victory at Sea on TV. He had no problem discussing the incidents and battles featured on the show, but he remained silent about his own experiences.

I don’t have many details about my dad’s naval service. While his papers listed the names of the four subs he served on, the dates when Dad served aboard them were not included. I was curious so I searched military websites to discover what I could about all four subs.

For two of the subs, the information was chilling. The USS Argonaut sank with all hands on January 10, 1943, following a depth charge attack in a battle with Japanese destroyers. The USS Runner was reported missing and presumed lost on July 1, 1943. Fortunately for Dad, and for our family, he was no longer serving aboard either one when the losses occurred. My guess is he was transferred to a different sub each time he was promoted—thank goodness.

While the USS Flying Fish survived the war, it did not survive obsolescence. It was scrapped in 1959.

Fortunately, the USS Drum escaped the ignominy of the scrap heap and became a submarine museum, an added attraction in the USS Alabama Battleship Memorial Park. The Drum did itself proud during the war. It was officially credited with sinking fifteen enemy vessels (a total of 80,580 tons), and it earned a total of twelve battle stars. It was heavily damaged in a depth charge attack, survived to limp back to port for repairs and an overhaul, and then went back on patrol again.

A fun bit of trivia—Walt Disney created the submarine’s emblem of the octopus banging the drum.

A fun, sort of Navy-related memory of Dad and me—When I was a teen still in high school, I had trouble coming up with a costume for a Halloween party to which I was invited. Dad (and the Navy, in a way) came to the rescue. From the back of his closet, Dad pulled out a uniform–his Navy dress blues. I could sense the pride he still felt for that uniform when he explained his rank insignia and the various patches and emblems.

He weighed a lot less when he was a sailor—only 155 pounds. I tipped the scales at about 115 pounds that Halloween, so the uniform wasn’t terribly large on me when I tried it on. The bell-bottom trousers were a tad long but actually fit me at the waist, which came close to sending me into a deep depression. The blouse was baggy at the shoulders and its sleeves were so long I had to push them way up. [Men’s arms are at least a hand’s length longer than women’s. Maybe that’s why we women sometimes refer to them as knuckle-dragging Neanderthals.]

Dad still had his sailor hat too. My hair was long, so we put it up and covered it with the hat. Voila. I was a sailor for Halloween. On to the party!

As luck would have it, that is to say my kind of luck would have it, another of the party guests showed up dressed as a sailor—except he wasn’t wearing a costume. He was the real deal, and he was on leave. He groaned when he spotted me. The last thing he wanted to see on leave was another Navy uniform—and with a teenage girl in it, no less. Worse yet, my uniform outranked his. I teased him about it, suggesting he would have to take orders from me, but when I told him it was my dad’s old uniform from World War II, the sailor threw a scare into me by telling me it wasn’t legal for a civilian to wear a Navy uniform and impersonate a sailor. Uh-Oh. Fortunately, he didn’t turn me in.

Last week, with Veterans Day approaching, I felt moved to visit the USS Drum’s website, www.drum228.org, that was created in 2008. I was elated to find and view a forty-minute video combining a tour of the Drum and interviews with Drum crew veterans and the Drum restoration crew. It’s an amateur video, rough around the edges, but the submarine tour portions with explanations of the sub’s design, how the crew existed in tight quarters, and how the equipment and weapons aboard worked, are pure gold. The video brings home what these sailors willingly endured and the extent of the sacrifices they made to preserve our freedom and way of life. Their generation is considered to be “The Greatest Generation,” and with good reason.

See for yourself. Have a look at the video, Submarine USS Drum Unsung Hero of WWII, on the Drum’s home page: drum228.org

After you watch it, you’ll be so grateful, you’ll want to rush right out and hug a veteran.