elsie item issue 69 - USS Landing Craft Infantry

Feeding the Marines
(recounted to Bob by Marvin Carpenter, S1/C
Runnelstown, MS
It was at Peleliu. One day when we threw
some garbage overboard, the Tuna had a feeding
frenzy. They went after everything. Some
of our fishermen on board threw in lines with
bare hooks and pulled in tuna until we had a
deck full. The feeding frenzy ended just as
fast as it started and the fishermen could not
catch another tuna.
So what to do with all that tuna? We signaled
to Marines on shore and asked they
wanted some. They were on K-rations at the
time.
“No,” they replied, “but if you have some
extra steaks we’ll come out and get them”
Extra steaks? We had forgotten what a
beef steak looked like. We told them so and
evidently they changed their minds, for they
did come out and get some of our tuna.
The Great Storm of October, 1945
(from Bob Martin himself)
We were hit by the big storm on March 25,
1945, when we were on our way to the invasion
of Okinawa. We were going north and
west, heading straight into a 40 to 50 knot
gale. Rain squalls and spray reduced visibility
and made steering laborious. We drank lots of
coffee at night to stay awake for our watches.
After watch and all that coffee we would hit
the sack but our eyes would not close. While
we were in our sacks we had to hold on tight
or we would have fallen out.
The ship rode the storm like a cork and
pitched just like on in the terrible channels.
Sometimes our bow was out of water; sometimes
our stern. We could see the screws on
some of the ships around us when the water
went under their sterns. The waves were
about twelve stories high; so high that we
could not tell where the ocean stopped and
the sky began. It felt like we were always on
LCI crew loading rockets off Florida Island in
the South Pacific.
the edge and could capsize at any time. It
sure gave us a funny feeling to stand by the
railing and look down to a depth of 12 feet;
then to be at the bottom of some of those
waves, looking up at those 12 story waves.
We had one advantage – we had been at sea
so long that only a few of us got sea sick. We
had a pretty tough crew.
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