They also served

Troy Messenger ^ | November 16, 2008 | Jaine Treadwell

[mdittmar]

They also served, those men of the Merchant Marines.

Much is written and said about the service of the Army, Navy, Air Corps and Marines during World War II. Less is known about the service of those who wore the uniform of the Merchant Marines.

Grady Motes served in the Merchant Marines and he is proud of his service to his country and of those who served with him.

Motes was a Shellhorn farm boy who registered for the draft in 1943. He was deferred for a year to work on the farm but then was classified 1-A.

“I knew about the Merchant Marines and thought that would be a place that I would fit in real well, so I joined up,” he said.

Motes, laughingly, said he’d never been farther from home than Montgomery and he’d only been there a few times.

“There I was out in the big world and it was kind of exciting for this little ol’ farm boy,” he said.

And, as it turned out, luck was on the side of the Merchant Marine from rural Pike County. After, learning what he needed to know to be a seaman, he and fellow Merchant Marines awaited their assignments.

“It came about that four seamen were needed to ship out from New Orleans to Guam,” Motes said. “All of us wanted to go and we settled it with a deck of cards. I got lucky -- or maybe it was unlucky -- but, anyway, I drew a King and I got to go.”

The commander of the FS-228 (freighter small) was Fred Ellis, a well-known figure in the motion picture business.

“He had been in the service and came back in,” Motes said. “He was a celebrity and we were kind of impressed by him.”

Motes didn’t stay impressed too long. He spent a lot of his time sailing the Gulf of Mexico with his head hanging over the side of the boat.

“I got seasick and that’s about as sick as you can get,” he said. “And, that wasn’t the only time. When you’re out on the water and it’s choppy, you can look out.”

The freighter sailed across the Gulf of Mexico, through the Panama Canal and joined a convoy in San Diego to the North Pacific.

“What the Merchant Marines did was move materials to the front,” he said. “We were in an 180-foot boat and we were unprotected. We didn’t have anything to fight with. We had Marines assigned to protect us but we had no way to protect ourselves.”

Motes said Guam had a deep port and materials would come in there and the smaller boats like his would have to transport the materials from there to the smaller surrounding islands.

“The Japanese had taken those islands and we had to take them back,” he said.

“A lot of ships had been sunk and you could see parts of them sticking out of the water. When we were going from island to island, they’d be shelling all around us. I spent a lot of nights with my head under a life preserver because that was the only protection I had. But I wasn’t scared that I was going to die. When you’re 19 years old, you just don’t get scared about things like that.”

On the home front, there was a girl thinking about Motes and praying for him.

“Our families were real close and so Grady and I’d been friends for a long time,” Mary Motes said.

Her husband said, for him, it had been love at first sight.

“But I don’t know about her,” he said with a smile.

Mary Motes knew about war and the dangers that it posses for those who are called to duty. She had brothers who fought and a brother-in-law who lost an eye.

“When letters would come from them, Mama would sit down and read the letters to all of us,” she said. “We couldn’t wait to hear what they said. We wanted the war to be over so all of the soldiers could come home.”

Motes, like most all “soldiers,” was anxious for the war to be over and he was proud to do whatever he was asked to do to help bring it to a close.

He remembers vividly the day that word came that “a super bomb” had been dropped.

“When we heard that Japan had surrendered, soldiers started ‘burning’ up their guns -- shooting them again and again to celebrate the end of the war. But those guns would shoot a long way and some soldiers were killed in the celebration. That was real sad.”

Motes wouldn’t take anything for the opportunity that he had to serve his country. He considered it an honor. And, he knows that he was blessed to come home and to have a “special” girl waiting for him.

“Every day I thank God for the blessings he has given me,” he said. “For my family, friends and for living in the greatest country on earth.”

[Emmett McCarthy]

It seems that the average citizen has no idea how big a role the merchant fleet has played in every conflict. Somebody has to “get the stuff there” and that’s what they do. Many were lost during WWII. I made one trip to Vietnam during that war and people think it means that I had to have been in the service. The loss of life there among merchant seaman was far less because the enemy lacked serious naval capabilities, but still a number died by way of rocket attacks and such.

[JimC214]

A high school friend of mine, his father was a Merchant Marine in WW II. He is deaf in his left ear from when his ship was torpedoed. The explosion blew out his ear drum. He also spent some time in the water before being rescued as his ship went down.

[tiredoflaundry]

Mark Levin does a salute to our troops quite often. The Merchant Marines are always included in that salute!

[Betty Jane]

My father-in-law joined the Merchant Marine when he was 16. He worked in the radio shack on a liberty ship until WWII was over. He swore until the day he died, he heard a distress call from the USS Indianapolis. He had alerted the commander but nothing was done.

He was drafted to go to Korea because Merchant Marine Service didn't count towards Military Service at the time.

[Jacquerie]

The allies came dangerously close to losing the Battle of the Atlantic. When the effectiveness of the U-Boats was at its peak in 1942, it took large and brass cojones to sign on with an Atlantic convoy ship.

IIRC, over 75,000 German sub sailors rest on the bottom of the north Atlantic. There must be many more Allied Merchant Seamen.

[ChiEs]

Thank you MARK LEVIN for your musical salute to all the branches of the military on your program every Friday! I sing along loud and clear to each and every one of those anthems played. Here’s to all you military men and women, past and present, who deserve our heartfelt thanks.

[JimC214]

Yes I heard about how they were drafted after WWII as they were told it didn’t count as service to the country. Which is a crock as a lot of the Sailors on those liberty ships were killed in what should be considered a combat situation.

[ladyvet]

My father was a Merchant Marine. He never lived to see them finally honored.

[tiredoflaundry]

BTTT!

[eeman]

To get an idea about the sacrifice our Merchant Marines paid during the early months of WWII, read a brief synopsis of Operation Drumbeat. This describes German U boat offensive off the Atlantic Coast in the early months after US entry into the war. There is a good Wikidpedia entry as well. Finally, if you want to read an excellent book on the subject, one is available from Amazon

From my reading on the subject, the American Navy's incompetence in dealing with the U boats made the losses far worse, since they did not adopt the even minimum protective measures, such as blackouts of coastal cities and use of convoys, that the British recommended. Admiral Kimmel was cashiered after Pearl Harbor. However, the loss of life and merchant ships (609) was greater than from Pearl Harbor. Nonetheless, no officers careers suffered from this monumental failure by the US Navy