After The War
Page 2
I was having trouble finding work during the sixties because of my heart problems. I got pretty depressed as I was still in my forties and had four children. I even went down and tried to go back to sea. But I couldn't get the union's approval because I couldn't pass the physical. In the 1960's it was a proper physical, not the joke of a medical examination that I had passed in 1943. Everything happens for the best they say. Had I managed to go back to shipping, I am certain that I would have died at sea as I later had a third heart attack.
Della worked at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston after the war. She was a secretary to doctors who were also professors. She worked for about ten years in the traffic department of the Lipton Tea plant in Galveston before she left to work at the Shriners Burns Institute next to the John Sealy Hospital complex. We moved to Austin in the late seventies and she got on at the University of Texas. She worked fourteen years as administrative associate for Dr. Steven Weinberg, a physics professor and Nobel Prize laureate. Della continued working until her seventieth birthday when she retired from the University of Texas at Austin.
After the war the government didn't have any use for the merchant marine and they just ignored us. The public never knew how many casualties we took or the importance of the job that we did. The public opinion of American merchant seamen never was very good. I blame a lot of it on newspaper men like Walter Winchell and Westbrook Peggler. They wrote we were bums and draft dodgers. They had a lot of negative influence on public opinion.
Of the 215,000 U. S. mariners who served during the World War II, about 9,500 merchant seamen died in combat and more than 12,000 were wounded. The U.S. lost 878 ships sunk and more than two hundred ships damaged, while 1,800 Navy Armed Guards died defending merchant ships. One in every 26 merchant seamen lost their lives, giving the U. S. Merchant Marine a casualty rate on par with the Marine Corps and higher than the U. S. Army, Navy, or Coast Guard. Throughout 1942 and the first six months of 1943 it was safer to be a marine, soldier, sailor or Coast Guardsman than to be a merchant seaman. During a period in 1942 an average of 33 merchants ships a week were lost. The last U.S. merchant ship that was sunk by a German Submarine was the SS Black Point on May 5, 1945 just two miles off the Rhode Island coast and less than 48 hours before Germany surrendered. The Germans still had 128 operational U-boats when the war ended.
In 1988 I read in the newspaper that the U.S. Government had finally extended World War II veteran status to merchant seamen. My wife wrote off to the government and eventually they sent me a U.S. Coast Guard discharge, more than thirty years late the way I see it. Too late to do me any good now. We're all too old to take advantage of any benefits that service men got right after the war and they didn't extend full benefits to us either. Lot of merchant seamen were wounded and crippled during the war, but they never got government medical treatment or disability like the military did.
The War Shipping Administration issued us ribbons during the war, but we had to pay for them ourselves. Della sent off during the war for some that I was entitled to. During the 90's the government authorized regular medals for the merchant marine. My son wrote off and got me all the medals that I was eligible for. I think its a bigger thing to my kids and grand kids now than it is to me. I am a member of the American Legion and the American Merchant Marine W. W. II Vets; but the V.F.W. still won't take us even though I got my military discharge and my combat ribbon. But I am proud of the job that we did and my wartime service was the big adventure of my life.
4,786 Allied merchant ships were sunk by enemy forces during W. W. II resulting in 62,933 merchant seamen, military gunners and armed guard deaths. Several hundred more ships were damaged by enemy action. Hundreds of ships were sunk or damaged by storms, collisions and accidents which accounted for many thousands of additional casualties. Tens of thousands of merchant seamen were wounded. More than fifty Allied merchant ships were sunk or damaged by hitting Axis or Allied mines after the end of hostilities which killed and wounded additional seamen. More men died in the Battle of the Atlantic than in all the Naval warfare of preceding history.