My son has recently returned to Ft. Bragg from his fourth deployment in Iraq (2 w/Marines...2 w/Army 82nd Airborne). It is good to have him safely back in the US and in the company of his wife and 2 boys.
I recently lost multiple family members from WWII. There are now fewer Pearl Harbor Survivors and an Iwo Jima Army Sargent survivor joined him on their trip "home".
My father passed 5 years ago but served in the Navy in the Pacific between the Phillipines and Guam as a Mine Sweeper Captain (O-3). I used to love to sit and listen to him talk about finding uncharted submerged pinacles that were then marked for the Australians to blow up.
One afternoon a Destroyer, the name of which I do not remember, steamed into port. It is typical for small boats to hail the larger craft with Morse Code signal light. The larger boat watch-standers read the lights but rarely return the signal.
On this occasion my Dad instructed the Mine Sweeper Signalman to Hail the Destroyer. Failing an acknowledgement, Dad instructed the Signalman to send this in the blind, "You are steaming into 9-feet of water." and to continue to send until acknowledged.
It is well known when a ship's Captain grounds his ship he is ruined for upwardly mobile command and especially when the number of ships in the Pacific was at an all time low following Pearl. Momentarily, there was a subsequent stem to stern shuddering of the Destroyer, black smoke billowed from its stack, water boiled beneath its keel in Full Reverse, and upon ceasing its forward motion, the Destroyer's Signalman relayed, "Please direct to deep water!"
Later that afternoon, the Destroyer's Launch was sent to escort my Dad to dinner with the 0-6 Captain aboard the Destroyer. Real cool!
Some days were not as fortunate and he steamed adjacent to and watched as his best friend, another wooden hulled mine sweeper Captiain (O-3) and its crew become entangled in the steel cable of a Japanese mine just released from its moorings by the towed vanes of that sweeper, which mine then surfaced under their boat and blew it up killing all aboard.
I put four years (74-78) in the USCG and two of those years plying the waves between the Arctic and the Antarctic and a lot of places in the Pacific in between. The USCG Ice Breaker, Burton Island, WAGB 283, was called home. Recently someone purchased the Buoy Tender, Madrona, on which I was first stationed to outfit for a private yacht. It is now berthed in the Indian River outside of my home. I want to find that owner and recount some of those days.
