Eternal Father, strong to save,
Whose arm hath bound the restless wave,
Who bidd’st the mighty ocean deep
Its own appointed limits keep;
Oh, hear us when we cry to Thee,
For those in peril on the sea!
If the captain uttered those words in 2020, he would be pilloried by the media and the Navy, demoted, stripped of command, and humiliated.
When my time on Earth is done, I will join them in a burial at sea.
Important to remember. I recall reading that some sailors on one of the Pearl Harbor ships survived the attack but were trapped in the hull In the partially capsized ship. The ship had been beached and for weeks new recruits, when they were training on the beach, would hear the sailors tapping from the inside the ship. They couldn’t be rescued because the hull was too thick and the navy couldn’t divert wartime resources to getting them out. Gradually the tapping stopped but it took a long time.
Just tragic, and I think it’s true that the naval sacrifices aren’t recognized enough. Prayers for them all.
My uncle made 7 trips to Mermansk as a merchantman. SO bad a^%!
I remember my shipmate and friend AW2 John Taylor, rescue swimmer, who died when his helicopter crashed at sea during a search and rescue mission on 04 October 1988.
Bttt
BTW - would it kill Google to include the Colors today in their Google doodle or whatever the hell it's called ? It's just "Google" in gray font. BS !
To ALL of those that fed the tree of Liberty with their blood so that our One nation under God could move forward, I thank thee from the bottom of my heart and I will do my best with your guidanmce to continue what you started. May God bless your souls .
In memoriam:
James Ray Dodson was my late mother’s cousin. She told me that he came by her apartment in Rosebud, Texas in 1943 on his way to the Pacific where he would serve as a coxswain on the submarine USS Grayback. I was born on May 15 of that year so I was actually in his presence for a short while. Unfortunately he and the rest of the crew were sunk by a Japanese torpedo bomber. They are on “Eternal Patrol” at the bottom of the South China Sea - near 25° 47’N x 128° 45’E, south of Okinawa. God bless
his soul.
In reality, the waters of the world are Holy Ground”, sanctified by the sacrifice of so many brave men and women.
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.
These are the six major naval battles in that time frame, but there were dozens of small engagements where ships and men were lost:
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.
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.
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.
