After that we went over to the wreck of the USS Utah which is still sitting where it fell when the Japanese attacked.
The trip brought out a few storied I had never heard before. He told me about how he was in charge of the shop on board his ship that made all the canvas covers for their smaller boats they had on board. Once he took over that shop, he convinced the Chief to let him sleep down there instead of up in the normal berthing with the rest of the enlisted guys. So, he pretty much had his own room! He had to hide his cot every morning so the Captain wouldn't know he had his own room. He said he hosted poker games every Tuesday night and talked one of the ships chefs into bringing fresh steaks.
He asked the Chief if he could move out some of the empty shelves so he had more living space in there and the Chief told him no, any changes made to the ships configuration had to be run through the Captain, but if they "disappeared", nobody would probably know. So, he said every night he would take a few shelves up on deck and throw them overboard. Pretty soon, he had a nice big room!!
He also told me about a time they pulled into Guam and had to do a mail run to the base post office. He took his boat in with a few guys and walked the 4 blocks to the post office. There were so many bags of mail they had to end up dragging a couple of the bags. I guess the ship's Captain saw them and gave them a hard time for dragging the mail bags. Grandpa said he told the Captain that this would be much easier if the ship had a jeep to run around in.
Later that night, he was standing watch on the bridge and saw an army Jeep being hoisted over the side and onto the deck. Apparently the Captain had ordered some of the guys to appropriate a jeep for the ship. So, they stole one from the Army and once on board, quickly repainted it blue and put Navy numbers on it. So, mail runs were much easier after that!
Just thought I'd share those stories. I sure enjoy them.
More later,
Greg
No comments:
Post a Comment