A Marine's War
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The huge red ball blossoming under the plane's wing filled the porthole as the fighter banked and climbed for altitude. And war had begun for the young Marine, a member of the USS Pennsylvania Marine Detachment, and the United States as Japanese planes swarmed to the attack at Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941. |
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He brings the attack to life for the reader with a vivid eye-witness description, as seen from his battle station high on battleship Pennsylvania's mainmast. He watched as battleship Oklahoma capsized, and torpedo and bomb attacks on West Virginia and Helena. And, the most-inspiring sight he saw during the war as Nevada fought her way toward the open sea, with guns spitting flames and projectiles at a swarm of Japanese planes trying to stop her.Pearl Harbor Attack! Book excerpt.USS Pennsylvania Prewar, after the attack, and later modifications.USS Pennsylvania Captain Cooke's Pearl Harbor Action ReportHe worried that the civilians in San Francisco would accuse the crew of turning tail and running from the Japanese when the ship arrived there for repairs and modifications.A later transfer to battleship USS New Mexico took him to the South Pacific, the Fiji Islands, New Hebrides and American Samoa.Off seagoing in March 1943 and short hitches at Marine Barracks, Navy Yard Pearl Harbor, Palmyra Island and Stateside, he joined one of the first two Marine amphibian truck companies formed – DUKWS (ducks). He helped pioneer the first use of Marine DUKWS in the Pacific Ocean and on land during the invasion of Saipan, followed later by Tinian and the last major land battle of the Pacific War, Okinawa.The DUKW company had boarded LSTs at Maui and with other units sailed for battle, with a stop in Pearl Harbor. While there, and on a Sunday, a fire storm in the invasion fleet killed or injured 559 men and destroyed nine vessels crammed with men and invasion supplies in West Loch – one of World War II's best-kept secrets.The object of jokes about their vehicle/craft before they witnessed its great contribution in invasions, other Marines referred to DUKW personnel as "The Quack Corps."Some of his battle and other tales are interspersed with quotes from letters he wrote while trying to convince a girl to become his wife at war's end.The preceding gives only a hint of the hundreds of battle, foxhole, humorous, and other tales in The Quack Corps, A Marine's War – Pearl Harbor to Okinawa.
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Pearl Harbor to Okinawa
