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To Those Whose Grave is the Sea
ArticleVBlog ^ | May 25th 2020 | Rodney Dodsworth

Posted on 05/25/2020 2:18:06 AM PDT by Jacquerie

“If you ever want to sleep with a blonde again, you had better shoot down these bastards as soon as they come up” - a destroyer captain motivates his exhausted crew shortly before a kamikaze attack. The sea-battle toll for Okinawa that ended on June 21st 1945 was 36 U.S. warships sunk and 368 damaged. Almost 5,000 sailors were KIA and another 5,000 wounded.

War naturally conjures images of courageous soldiers. Flanders Fields, Charge of the Light Brigade, and not the Coral Sea or Leyte Gulf.

Too often forgotten are the heroic Navy, Coast Guard and Merchant Marine sailors felled at sea. It’s understandable; there are no battlefield memorials, no marked graves, no poppies, no flags. Presidents and dignitaries visit Normandy and not Midway or Iron Bottom Sound. Few are the photo memoirs of engineering room slaughter-by-steam, of those who inhaled fire, of those blown overboard, of those who survived the battle only to die of burns, thirst, or sharks.

Hoses washed the remains of many off their ships. Some had proper burials. Did boot camp recruits know their Navy-issue hammocks did double duty as burial shrouds? I don’t know, but should your Memorial Day weekend find you on an Atlantic, Pacific, or Gulf of Mexico beach, you are graveside. Take time to say a few words of thanks.

(Excerpt) Read more at articlevblog.com ...


TOPICS: History
KEYWORDS: kamikaze; memorialday; okinawa
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To: Redleg Duke

Do those who are buried at sea get a tombstone somewhere?


21 posted on 05/25/2020 6:35:22 AM PDT by mcshot (Prepare for the new meaning of "riding shotgun".)
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To: SMARTY

Uncommon bravery in your uncle.


22 posted on 05/25/2020 7:12:17 AM PDT by Jacquerie (ArticleVBlog.com)
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To: livius

Urban legend.The ship was USS Oklahoma that rolled over at her berth tied up to Ford Island.The navy worked round the clock for days to free those men trapped below decks.Some were unable to be freed and died.There is a book on the recovery efforts IIRC


23 posted on 05/25/2020 7:13:19 AM PDT by HANG THE EXPENSE (Life's tough.It's tougher when you're stupid.)
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To: mcshot

“Do those who are buried at sea get a tombstone somewhere.”

There is a Merchant Marine cemetery at Ft Stanton NM.


24 posted on 05/25/2020 7:22:51 AM PDT by bravo whiskey (Never bring a liberal gun law to a gun fight.)
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To: Jacquerie

The Merchant Marines... Serving on boats that were essentially sitting ducks with a machine gunner or two. My uncle died on he SS Roxby, a ship carrying coal back to Canada from Liverpool on November 7th 1942. He was a fireman (shoveling coal).

Sunk by U-Boat 613, 32 other men were also killed and one died among the 13 survivors who drifted in a life boat on the North Atlantic for five days. U-Boat 613 was in turn sunk by the USS George E. Badger on the 23rd of July 1943 with all 48 crew members going down with her.

Thankfully, there are several internet sites where information is available about our fallen loved ones. One of them is U-Boat.net... They have a searchable list of persons who were aboard allied ships sunk by U-Boats
https://uboat.net/allies/merchants/crews/

If you had a relative who served at sea and they were torpedoed by a U-Boat, information about the boat, the U-Boat that torpedoed it and the crew aboard who died and survived is listed.


25 posted on 05/25/2020 7:34:31 AM PDT by jerod (Nazi's were essentially Socialist in Hugo Boss uniforms... Get over it!)
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To: Jacquerie

I guess traveling around the world like that, he got to be a real scrapper. My brother used to go drinking with him.

Though my uncle was thin and had a slight build, he was a real wild card.

Once a person in a bar got out of line. They both tolerated it for a while but then my brother said, ‘I blinked and the next thing I knew that guy was sprawled out-cold on the floor. I never even saw how it happened.’


26 posted on 05/25/2020 7:36:41 AM PDT by SMARTY ("Nobility is defined by the demands it makes on us - by obligations, not by rights".)
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To: Jacquerie; dsc; SkyPilot; ronnie raygun; Does so; livius; NTHockey; SMARTY; aomagrat; ...
Most people don't know it, but in the battles fought in and around Guadalcanal between August - December 1942, there were three sailors killed in action for ever Marine or soldier killed on land.

These are the six major naval battles in that time frame, but there were dozens of small engagements where ships and men were lost:

  1. Battle of Savo Island (1,077 America and Australian sailors killed in about 45 minutes of savage fighting)
  2. Battle of the Eastern Solomons
  3. Battle of Cape Esperance
  4. Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands
  5. Naval Battle of Guadalcanal (Known as the "The Battle of Friday the 13th, 1,439 American sailors killed)
  6. Battle of Tassafaronga (400 killed)

Respect for those men.

There was a poem written after the Battle of Savo Island that has stuck with me these many years since I first read it. It was written by a Navy Chaplain, and it still makes me shudder to read it:

Iron Bottom Bay
by Walter A. Mahler, Chaplain, USS Astoria

I stood on a wide and desolate shore
And the night was dismal and cold.
I watched the weary rise, –
And the moon was a riband of gold.

Far off I heard the trumpet sound,
Calling the quick and the dead,
The long and rumbling roll of drums,
And the moon was a riband of red.

Dead sailors rose from out of the deep,
Nor looked not left or right,
But shoreward marched upon the sea,
And the moon was a riband of white.

A hundred ghosts stood on the shore
At the turn of the midnight flood,
They beckoned me with spectral hands,
And the moon was a riband of blood.

Slowly I walked to the waters edge,
And never once looked back
Till the waters swirled about my feet,
And the moon was a riband of black.

I woke alone on a desolate shore
From a dream not sound or sweet,
For there in the sands in the moonlight
Were the marks of phantom feet.

27 posted on 05/25/2020 8:24:38 AM PDT by rlmorel (Thinking for yourself is hard work. But it is a lot easier than ignorance.)
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To: NTHockey

Me as well, FRiend.

Me as well.


28 posted on 05/25/2020 8:25:45 AM PDT by rlmorel (Thinking for yourself is hard work. But it is a lot easier than ignorance.)
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To: rlmorel

Profound and moving...thank you.


29 posted on 05/25/2020 8:39:14 AM PDT by Bonemaker (invictus maneo)
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To: livius
USS Arizona still leaking oil.


30 posted on 05/25/2020 8:56:25 AM PDT by Bonemaker (invictus maneo)
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To: Jacquerie

My Father-in-law was a pharmacist mate on a hospital ship. He also served on Guam and Saipan. His time on the AH-5 Solace was in support of the Okinawa campaign. He never talked much to his family about what he did/saw, but he opened up to me. He told me the hospital ships were painted white with huge red crosses painted on them and, until Okinawa, they kept their lights on so everyone would know they were noncombatant. That was until the AH-6 Comfort was kamikazed killing a group of nurses. I once asked him what his duties were. He said, “I was the guy who went around at night giving shots.” I said, “With all those guys coming off Okinawa, he must have gone through a lot of needles.” He replied, “One needle. It was penicillin.” He was a great cross country skier. Gave it up at 94.


31 posted on 05/25/2020 9:59:21 AM PDT by OrioleFan (Republicans believe every day is July 4th, Democrats believe every day is April 15th.for corruptiion)
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To: rlmorel

Superb post. Neptune’s Inferno is a fine read. Yep, about 4,500 sailors KIA v. 1,500 or so Marines.

Great poem too.

Savo was such an unnecessary disaster.

The USN paid for its unpreparedness. The IJN was at its peak and only declined, where the USN improved every day in every way.


32 posted on 05/25/2020 11:48:00 AM PDT by Jacquerie (ArticleVBlog.com)
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To: Jacquerie
Another book I enjoyed was "The Two Ocean War" by Samuel Eliot Morison, and in that excellent book, he closes the chapter on The Battle of Savo Island with this:


"Many lessons were learned from this disastrous battle. Canberra and Astoria might have been saved but for their heavily upholstered wardroom furniture and the heavy layers of paint and linoleum on their bulkheads and decks. All inflammable furniture and bedding was now ordered ashore, and every ship in the Navy was ordered to scrape down her interior to bare steel; day and night for the rest of 1942, sounds of chipping hammers were never still. Improved firefighting techniques and the "fog nozzle", far superior to a solid stream of water, were developed; communications were improved, and officers adopted a more reasonable battle-readiness condition which relieved them and their men from continual tension.

Thus, Savo Island was neither a decisive battle nor an unprofitable defeat, although the cost was heavy - four heavy cruisers and one destroyer sunk, 1,270 officers and men killed and 709 wounded. It opened a bloody and desperate campaign for control of an island that neither side really wanted, but which neither could afford to abandon to the enemy.

As you said, it was a costly one, but as Morison said, it was not unprofitable. We learned a lot of lessons in that single hour of bloody carnage of fire, shrapnel, and flooding. Those were hard lessons and we learned them the hard way.

On this day, when I reflect on that battle for Guadalcanal back in 1942, where the conventional wisdom was that America and American men were soft and weak, we stood up to a hard, fanatical, and capable foe, and we took their best shot. It fills me with pride, and I cling to the hope that is still in us. I am reminded of this famous line from Michener's famous novel "South Pacific":

"...They will live a long time, these men of the South Pacific. They had an American quality. They, like their victories, will be remembered as long as our generation lives. After that, like the men of the Confederacy, they will become strangers. Longer and longer shadows will obscure them, until their Guadalcanal sounds distant on the ear like Shiloh and Valley Forge..."

It applies to all these men, not just those of the South Pacific. You could substitute "Schweinfurt" for "Guadalcanal", and "European Theater" for "South Pacific" and it would mean just the same.

I salute them all on this solemn day.

33 posted on 05/25/2020 2:47:18 PM PDT by rlmorel (Thinking for yourself is hard work. But it is a lot easier than ignorance.)
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To: rlmorel

+1


34 posted on 05/25/2020 4:07:20 PM PDT by Jacquerie (ArticleVBlog.com)
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To: rlmorel

the navy lot more at Okinawa too. took a great class with a friend whose dad was senior NCO of the initial medical clearing station for the 77th INF. they were on Okinawa. working on a SHERMAN plus a few infantrymen diorama for him.
i was born on DEC07 1951. my dad and uncle were in the navy. I was a tanker in the army. I wonder if that is the reason for my interest in history. i teach mostly Russian history now.


35 posted on 05/25/2020 8:41:54 PM PDT by bravo whiskey (Never bring a liberal gun law to a gun fight.)
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To: bravo whiskey

Thanks for serving, FRiend.

I am a history buff, because I have come to realize that there are few things in life that are completely new, and that seeing how they happened and how they were dealt with in the past is not only a great source of genuine drama and contributes to the understanding of human nature and fundamental human behavior, but also helps in understanding current crises.

Russian history is something I am less versed on prior to WWI, I admit. That alone is an interesting facet of history, I am certain.


36 posted on 05/26/2020 7:47:11 AM PDT by rlmorel (Thinking for yourself is hard work. But it is a lot easier than ignorance.)
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To: rlmorel

One more summary of two salient events of Guadacanal:

One Marine, One Ship, by Vin Suprynowicz

http://www.tysknews.com/Depts/Our_Culture/one_marine_one_ship.htm


37 posted on 05/26/2020 3:15:18 PM PDT by DuncanWaring (The Lord uses the good ones; the bad ones use the Lord.)
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To: DuncanWaring

I’ll check that out, thank you very much!

Guadalcanal was a significant event, a land, air, and ocean (both above and below the surface) over a huge square mile area, between Rabaul and Guadalcanal. The first of its kind on that scale.

Seems unknown to many today.


38 posted on 05/26/2020 4:38:24 PM PDT by rlmorel (Thinking for yourself is hard work. But it is a lot easier than ignorance.)
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To: Jacquerie; rlmorel; Travis McGee

Naval training camp, Portsmouth, New Hampshire circa 1917.

To listen, click here:
Eternal Father, Strong to Save

Eternal Father, strong to save,
Whose arm does bind the restless wave,
Who bids the mighty ocean deep
Its own appointed limits keep;
O hear us when we cry to Thee
For those in peril on the sea.



Marine recruits, Parris Island, May 23, 1958

39 posted on 05/29/2023 8:33:33 AM PDT by Albion Wilde (“There is no good government at all & none possible.”--Mark Twain)
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