Jack Today

Jack in The Fez

The Fez

I was watching the news on television that day in October, 2000 when there was a report that the day before, the 12^th, there had been an attack on one of our destroyers, USS Cole, in the Port Of Aden in Yemen -17 sailors killed and 39 injured by the action of two Muslim suicide bombers in a small boat; the rules of engagement had prevented Cole from firing first at the suspicious small boat.

I had been in Aden years before and a multitude of memories flooded into my consciousness. It had been the last eastern hemisphere stop for our squadron before we were to move on through the Suez Canal for a final set of liberties in the Mediterranean and the crossing back to Norfolk, Virginia as we rotated out of the Korean War Zone. The stop in Aden had been one scheduled for our Destroyer Squadron Two as part of our circumnavigation of the globe when the four ships were deployed - we had traversed half the globe to the war and would travel the second half on our return. My ship was USS Barton (DD722) and the other three in the squadron were John R. Pierce, Strong, and Soley: all 2100 ton, Sumner Class Destroyers, each with six 5 inch, 38 caliber guns in three mounts of the main battery; six torpedo tubes; supporting 40 millimeter mounts; and depth-charge racks on the stern.

I was a reserve officer ‘plucked’ from an embryonic business career and recent marriage to the love of my life, and I had been certain the Navy had lost all trace of me except my reserve pay record. I had graduated with a license in the merchant marine and a Navy commission from New York State Maritime Academy, one of six such schools established in 1875 to train mariners after the Civil War, during which five Confederate ‘raiders’, built by the British for the South, had sailed the world and decimated the U.S. Merchant Fleet and its sailors.

Barton had received my orders aboard ship in the same mail as those discharging their chief engineer, and Barton’s Executive Officer, Lieutenant Commander Denniston, assumed I was a seasoned mariner and was to be the chief’s relief. So he kept the chief’s cabin vacant for three months; he did not permit the Damage Control Officer, the chief’s logical replacement, to move up. When I reported aboard to the Exec his first question to me was, “What ships have you served aboard, sir?” His face dropped when I reported Barton was my first - when I graduated there were few at-sea billets available since the merchant fleet was severely shrunken at the end of WWII.

Many of the reserves aboard resented being taken from new positions ashore to serve, but I figured I was to be aboard for a while and might as well dig in. Besides, when the damage control officer didn’t move up as he should have, he had spent the entire quarterly allotment of the engineering department on the Shipfitters’ Shop, the base of the Damage Control Department, and I inherited this well-equipped facility as my fiefdom. As it turned out, it was an important job, preparing the ship to be ready for repair in case of battle damage.

As I was getting acclimated with my new life, I met one of my classmates, Bob Hoffman, who had just returned from service in Korea on a tanker. He suggested that I “get as much shoring aboard as possible” and I had metal brackets mounted under all the weather deck over-hangs to hold it; shoring is 4 by 4 inch and larger boards which are used to brace damaged areas against collapse. This suggestion from Bob became life-saving for us later in action overseas.

We left Norfolk in spring. Our theme was the then-popular ‘September Song’ -lyrics, “Oh, it’s a long, long time from May to December”- the term of our overseas tour. We transited the Canal and refueled in Pearl Harbor and Midway while crossing the Pacific, landing in Yokusuka, Japan in June. On the way I was asked to look over the plant to find the source of lubricating oil that was showing up in the bilges. I localized the trouble to the main reduction gears and requested a repair ship inspection to find and repair the leak, and when we arrived in Japan, we moored alongside the tender, USS Yellowstone. A crew came aboard under the command of another of my classmates, Steve Long. Steve and I had a few good liberties together in Yokusuka, but Barton only had a few days to taste the wonders of Japan - the enemy only a few short years earlier.

The Navy, like all the military services, takes time to train, and we were first sent to sea with a small carrier and two submarines to practice action against submarine attack. After two days of this, we moved into the harbor of Hakodate in Hokkaido, the Japanese northern-most island. The complement of our ships was three times the population of this small town and, with men from many other ships, I spent the time on shore patrol to help keep the peace. We returned to Yokusuka, and after a few days during the next week topping off ammunition and provisions, the squadron was off to the ‘bomb line’- the war!

Barton and Pierce were assigned to spend 45 days inside Wonsan Harbor on the Eastern coast of North Korea. Since we were always within range of enemy units on the shore there, we never stopped moving in the harbor and only the ‘covered’ general quarters stations - the main battery, bridge, engine rooms, etc. - were manned so the men would not provide easy targets. But we regularly provided bombardment for Marines somewhere ashore and I learned to sleep while the two five inch guns in the after mount, 30 feet from my bed, fired every night answering ‘call fire’ missions from them.

As senior ship in the squadron, we had a commodore and staff aboard, displacing everyone from our captain down from their normal quarters. He was assigned as Commander, Eastern Coast Blockade, directing Soley and Pierce in offshore work, and operating spies sent out from Yodo, an island we owned in the harbor. The spies came aboard every afternoon at 5 PM from an LCM, dubbed ‘the barroom express’, to report to the commodore. This led to my meeting another school mate, John Intorcia, who had not finished at The Maritime Academy and went to Fordham University where he joined ROTC and received a commission in the Air Force - John had been on Yodo for a year, attending to spies and captured North Korean prisoners. I met him one afternoon as we slowed off the island as we did every day to take spies aboard. John had a handlebar mustache, but we somehow recognized one-another when he passed by on the way to report to the commodore. He lived in a tent on the island in primitive conditions, and he requested he be able to take a shower when he came aboard every day. I told him he was welcome to shower so long as I could hold the sidearm he carried with one in the chamber because of the prisoners on Yodo. We had a deal, and in repayment, some time later I went ashore to his quarters and enjoyed espresso laced with Rye whiskey, which wasn’t available aboard ship.

The carriers of Task Force 77, operating off the coast, sent planes every day to bomb the city of Wonsan, and one afternoon the Battleship Iowa fired on the town from a position a few miles off the coast. Three-round sets of 16-inch projectiles from Iowa’s main battery could be easily seen flying overhead - they were only a bit smaller than a Buick and reported to each cost as much.

Then, one afternoon our action really began. I was on the way to use the head when the ‘gong-gong-gong’ of general quarters sounded, and I was determined to ‘hold it’ until the action was over so I could avoid the obvious thought my crew would have that I had panicked. Grabbing my helmet and life jacket I ran to convert the midships Purser’s Office to Damage Control Central, and we set up the reporting stations around the ship.

The North Koreans had mounted some captured 105-millimeter howitzers in caves around the harbor, and had opened fire on Yodo Island. USS Pierce was deep in the harbor, unable to bring her guns to bear, and recognized that if she moved up she would be a hazard to us as we made figure eights at 27 knots, avoiding the splashes of rounds when the enemy shifted fire from Yodo to us!

Half an hour into the action the bridge reported seeing a hit aft on the 01 level and it was my turn to go into action - I had to inspect the damage and report to the captain. All I could see when I stepped out onto the weather deck were the splashes of enemy shells close aboard. I climbed the ladder to the ‘01 level’ and could hear the rattle of shrapnel as it skittered off the deckhouse. Reaching the deck, I saw that the blast had been against the base of the forward stack; it was made of thin sheet metal and the blast had dissipated itself in minor damage.

But there was a small hole in the deck where the shell had burst and, when I climbed back down and opened the hatch to the Torpedo Shack below, I found BM2 Gray, acting Torpedoman, dead from a piece of shrapnel which had hit him in the back of the neck as he slept on his bench during the action. His general quarters station, at the tubes on the open on the upper deck, was not to be manned in the harbor, so he went where he thought he would be safe. I notified the forward battle dressing station about the body and climbed to the bridge area.

I reported to Captain Seim and found him on the open bridge, seemingly nonchalant as he leaned his back against the pilothouse while calling out rudder changes at 27 knots. He was a great, natural ship handler.

We fired 600 rounds of 5-inch ammunition during the action and silenced the enemy guns in 3 hours. When it was over, I went to the wardroom to relax with a cup of coffee. Our South Korean translator, Che, was there and asked me, “Where is dead sailor?”

I told him the body had been prepared and was in the refrigerated compartment to send home to his family. I could have decked him when Che burst out laughing,

“What good dead sailor?” he asked. “In Korean Navy we throw overboard!”

And, indeed we had seen many bodies floating in the harbor; both North and South Korea felt the same way about death in the ranks.

We were relieved from Wonsan and returned to Japan, and after another short stay and refitting, the squadron was assigned to Task Force 77. This force, comprised of the Battleship USS Iowa, four carriers and some cruisers, was protected from submarine and surface attack by a ‘screen’ of 32 destroyers. Barton was senior in this screen and our commodore was in charge of them.

I was now main propulsion assistant, in charge of the engines; we had two screws driven by engines in two separate engine rooms, each of which was fed steam from a separate fire room. Each space was separate and ‘waterproof’, except for the piping to each engine room from its boiler room. These were major compartments, extending from keel to main deck and the construction was to minimize flooding in case of battle damage.

We had joined the task force on September 16, 1952 at 1700 hrs. Movies were scheduled at 2000 hrs in the crew’s mess (an oater) and wardroom (Scandal Sheet with Broderick Crawford). The first reel was over and we received word that the admiral had called for a course change into the wind to launch planes, and for an increase in speed to 25 knots. All department heads reported to stations to be certain the changes were properly carried out. I had my chief boilertender in the control fire room aft, and I reported to the forward fire room to oversee the conversion there to superheated steam and the opening of all burners to get maximum steam flow to make the increased speed. By the time I went back to the movie the circular screen of destroyers had shifted due to the fleet course change and we were now ‘tail-end-Charlie’ in the formation of ships.

Five minutes into the second reel of the movie, Crawford had a bum in an alley, meaning to kill him. Just as he pulled back his fist to belt the guy, all hell broke loose - a floating mine had come through the entire fleet and struck us on the starboard side at frame 88, in the center of the forward fire room hull; I would have been there 30 minutes later on my way to bed after the movie.

It is not possible to adequately describe the chaos that followed - lights out, superheated steam, 650 pounds pressure and 750 degrees, screaming out of holes in the piping below, people stumbling and yelling. We headed for the doors; the passageway aft was full of steam, so everyone moved toward the bow. The commodore transferred to Pierce and the fleet left us, thinking we had been torpedoed by an enemy sub. I went down the port side weather deck to midships and entered the passage to the engine room hatch; it was scalding hot from steam impinging on the underside and I didn’t open it! We connected a headset and made contact with the engine room talker to find that several of the engine room crew had been scalded and one, John Walton, had been badly injured, having been cut as by a knife by the superheated steam streaking from a gap in the pipe when he tried to climb the ladder out of the engine room hatch. My forward fire room crew, Graf, Savoie, Thierfelder and Sherry were all killed and now probably part of the boilers in the fire room, which was fully flooded.

There were no further problems with the engines since the valves on the steam lines in these spaces (now full of sea water) had been secured and my Chief Boiler Tender, on watch in the after fire room, had been sharp enough to close the main steam stop on his boilers; so we still had 350 pounds of steam available to get underway on the one operable engine, aft. We fired up the after generator for lighting and got underway again at five knots on one screw.

Now was when the extra shoring I had brought aboard in Norfolk came into play. The forward fire room was completely flooded and we had to brace the bulkhead between it and the engine room to the machinery to keep it from bucking. There was leakage into the compartments forward of the fire room, too, and an eductor had to be set up to dewater those spaces. In the morning, a salvage tug came alongside, her divers going down next to us to examine the hull. We had a twenty-by-thirty foot hole in the center of the fire- room compartment hull and it extended to within six inches of breaking the keel; they approved of our shoring job. It took us four days to steam slowly back to Sasebo, Japan where we were ushered into a dry-dock.

I was on the bow as we entered the dry-dock, and there was a chalked message on the concrete wall: “USS WALKE (DD723).” We were DD722 and I asked the “talker” to ask the bridge if it was possible to warn the DD721, whoever she was, to be careful!

I telephoned Fran, my new bride, from the town to let her know I was alive after the action and how much I missed being with her. The battle had been reported in the newspapers and we bawled together for most of the call; it was important relief for both of us, even at 5 dollars a minute.

Barton spent a month in dry-dock in Sasebo. The Japanese welded a hull over the mine damage, cleaned the double bottoms, steam lines and forward turbine of saltwater to make us ‘good to go’ on what remained of the ‘round the world’ trip planned to rotate the squadron out of action when relieved by another as the war continued. The other three destroyers in our squadron had seen no direct action and Soley was selected to stand by us in Sasebo until we were ready in all respects to join them on the trip; Pierce and Strong went on with the trip as originally planned, stopping in Hong Kong and Shanghai, Singapore and Bahrain while we were in for repairs.

We stopped with USS Soley in Singapore for a delightful two days. The Raffles Hotel on the hill was famous and served as our daily haunt - and we found out that miniscule British cucumber sandwiches didn’t really go with a beer party. We rendezvoused with Pierce and Strong off the entrance to Aden harbor and when we had a chance to meet up with their crew, we learned of the fantastic stop-over we had missed in Bahrain.

When they told us their stories about that visit it made the mine hit even more of a problem to us - we had missed a wild experience! Their ship’s officers had been invited to a gala affair in Bahrain where they sat around a feast in a tent with the Emir. The meal was roast lamb (the whole lamb, head, legs and all) and rice. They were instructed in the proper way to prepare (Wash both hands but reserve the right hand for eating, the left for wiping your bottom after defecating.), and to eat (Tear the lamb flesh off to eat and then grasp a handful of rice with the thumb tucked under it and pop the rice plug into the mouth.). One of the lamb’s eyes was for the Emir, the other was offered to the commodore who, thinking fast, turned to Commander Arbogast, his First Lieutenant and a reserve officer lawyer from Pittsburgh; as if Arbo were his taster, he told him to eat it. And he did! I would love to have seen Arbo gagging down that mouthful.

Approaching Aden from the sea the landscape looked like one large cinder - no sand visible but no vegetation whatsoever either. As we moved into the harbor, the benefits of the oasis in which Aden stood were apparent - lush vegetation everywhere. The British were in charge here and they had a bash set up for our crews, and a party and a dance arranged for the officers; they loaned us their wives to dance with.

It was a gay evening, just like you see in the British movies: some officers in short-pants white uniforms, others in formal dress with medals; wives attired in ball gowns - frilly ‘50s vintage; waiters shuffling around with drinks and canapés. The band was military but managed everything from Lester Lanin to the oompapa waltzes. I never was much for dancing and so had wonderful conversations with participants …“Jolly good, you know?”

I was invited to one home and was surprised by the simple structure and decorations, much like the bungalow community in which I had grown up in its summer appearance. I had imagined the Raj living to be much more sumptuous. You had to appreciate the lengths to which the Brits went to make us comfortable, though an ulterior motive might have been to take the opportunity of our arrival to relieve the boredom which surely settled over this kind of duty…stuck in an oasis in the desert for years.

* * *

Next day, after the party with the Brits, I had taken a donkey cab ride with a guide who wore a fez. Inadvertently, now as I sat in my office in South Carolina, I turned and glanced at the old fez which had been one of the saved treasures from my excursion into the Korean War. Its black tassel and red felt material were much the worse for the fifty years since I had bought it, cooties and all, from the head of the donkey-cart driver.

FINIS

Jack Hayes is in his eightieth year, a retired businessman, cum Mariner living in the Shangri-la that is Beaufort, South Carolina, with his wife of 55 years, Frances. Their only child, a son, John lives in New Jersey with his second wife, Mary, and their four kids – hers and theirs – while his first child, a daughter, lives with her mother. Jack and Frances often visit Yankee land.

Note: Since Jack’s participation in CWS 4, “The Fez” was published in Korean War Veterans’ Magazine. Congratulations, Jack!

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