2007 KWVA Election Results - Korean War Veterans Association

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I went down the port side weather deck
to midships and entered the passage to the
engine room hatch. It was scalding hot
from steam impinging on the underside,
so I didn’t open it! We connected a headset
and made contact with the engine room
talker to find that several of the engine
room crew had been scalded. One, John
Walton, had been badly injured. He had
been cut—as if by a knife—by the superheated
steam streaking from a gap in the
pipe when he tried to climb the ladder out
of the engine room hatch. My forward fire
room crew, Graf, Savoie, Thierfelder and
Sherry, were all killed and now probably
part of the boilers in the fire room, which
was fully flooded.
There were no further problems with
the engines, since the valves on the steam
lines in these spaces (now full of sea
water) had been secured and my Chief
Boiler Tender, on watch in the after fire
room, had been sharp enough to close the
main steam stop on his boilers. So, we still
had 350 pounds of steam available to get
underway on the one operable engine, aft.
We fired up the after generator for lighting
and got underway again at five knots on
one screw.
Now was when the extra shoring I had
brought aboard in Norfolk came into play.
The forward fire room was completely
flooded, and we had to brace the bulkhead
between it and the engine room to the
machinery to keep it from bucking. There
was leakage into the compartments forward
of the fire room, too, and an eductor
had to be set up to dewater those spaces.
In the morning, a salvage tug came
alongside. Her divers went down next to
us to examine the hull. We had a twentyby-thirty
foot hole in the center of the fire
room compartment hull which extended to
within six inches of breaking the keel.
They approved of our shoring job. It took
us four days to steam slowly back to
Sasebo, Japan, where we were ushered
into a dry dock.
I was on the bow as we entered the drydock.
There was a chalked message on the
concrete wall: “USS Walke (DD723).” We
were DD722, and I asked the “talker” to
ask the bridge if it was possible to warn
the DD721, whoever she was, to be careful!
I telephoned Fran, my new bride, from
the town to let her know I was alive after
the action and how much I missed being
with her. The battle had been reported in
the newspapers, and we bawled together
for most of the call; it was important relief
for both of us, even at 5 dollars a minute.
Barton spent a month in dry dock in
Sasebo. The Japanese welded a hull over
the mine damage and cleaned the double
bottoms, steam lines and forward turbine
of saltwater to make us ‘good to go’ on
what remained of the ‘round the world’
trip planned to rotate the squadron out of
action when relieved by another as the war
continued. The other three destroyers in
our squadron had seen no direct action and
Soley was selected to stand by us in
Sasebo until we were ready in all respects
to join them on the trip. Pierce and Strong
went on with the trip as originally
planned, stopping in Hong Kong and
Shanghai, Singapore, and Bahrain while
we were in for repairs.
We stopped with USS Soley in
Singapore for a delightful two days. The
Raffles Hotel on the hill was famous and
served as our daily haunt. We found out
there that miniscule British cucumber
sandwiches didn’t really go with a beer
party.
We rendezvoused with Pierce and
Strong off the entrance to Aden harbor.
When we had a chance to meet with their
crew, we learned of the fantastic stop-over
we had missed in Bahrain.
When they told us their stories about
that visit, it made the mine hit even more
of a problem to us: we had missed a wild
experience! Their ship’s officers had been
invited to a gala affair in Bahrain, where
they sat around a feast in a tent with the
Emir. The meal was roast lamb (the whole
lamb, head, legs and all) and rice. They
were instructed in the proper way to prepare
(wash both hands but reserve the
right hand for eating, the left for wiping
your bottom after defecating.), and to eat
(tear the lamb flesh off to eat and then
grasp a handful of rice with the thumb
tucked under it and pop the rice plug into
the mouth.).
One of the lamb’s eyes was for the
Emir; the other was offered to the commodore
who, thinking fast, turned to
Commander Arbogast, his First
Lieutenant and a reserve officer lawyer
from Pittsburgh, as if “Arbo” were his
taster. The commodore told Arbo to eat
it—and he did! I would love to have seen
Arbo gagging down that mouthful.
As we approached Aden from the sea,
the landscape looked like one large cinder
- no sand visible, but no vegetation whatsoever
either. As we moved into the harbor,
the benefits of the oasis in which
Aden stood were apparent – lush vegetation
everywhere.
The British were in charge here, and
they had a bash set up for our crews, and
a party and a dance arranged for the officers.
They loaned us their wives to dance
with.
It was a gay evening, just like you see
in the British movies: some officers in
short-pants white uniforms, others in formal
dress with medals; wives attired in
ball gowns - frilly ‘50s vintage; waiters
shuffling around with drinks and canapés.
The band was military but managed
everything from Lester Lanin to the oilpaper
waltzes. I never was much for dancing
and so had wonderful conversations with
participants …“Jolly good, you know?”
I was invited to one home and was surprised
by the simple structure and decorations,
much like the bungalow community
in which I had grown up in its summer
appearance. I had imagined the Raj living
to be much more sumptuous.
You had to appreciate the lengths to
which the Brits went to make us comfortable,
though an ulterior motive might have
been to take the opportunity of our arrival
to relieve the boredom which surely settled
over this kind of duty…stuck in an
oasis in the desert for years.
The next day, after the party with the
Brits, I had taken a donkey cab ride with a
guide who wore a fez. Inadvertently, now
as I sat in my office in South Carolina, I
turned and glanced at the old fez which
had been one of the saved treasures from
my excursion into the Korean War. Its
black tassel and red felt material were
much the worse for the fifty years since I
had bought it, cooties and all, from the
head of the donkey-cart driver.
As I look back, I believe my stay in
Aden was much more enjoyable than was
that of the crew of the USS Cole, although
we all shared one thing in common: we
had come under fire serving our country—and
preserving our freedom.
May– June 2007
The Graybeards