World War Two History

[Mjoelner34]

Awesome thread guys! I don't venture over to Scatology often and just now saw this thread.

My dad was in the navy from toward the end of WWII to the end of Korea. The closet he said they ever came to action was in WWII when a lone Japanese bomber got to within a couple of miles of them but then turned and went the other way. He was on a liberty ship hauling naval ammunition. If you've ever seen the Henry Fonda movie Mr. Roberts, that was his ship except Mr. Roberts was hauling toilet paper. Daddy told me that it had to have been one of his shipmates that wrote that story. Boring duty, a tyrannical captain....... He said "We even had a damn palm tree!" He ran the laundry on the ship and said that he had it made. He'd sleep on a table in the laundry with a fan blowing fresh air from the deck on him to keep the mosquitoes off of him. He would let the officers come take hot baths in the tubs in exchange for liberty papers when the captain wouldn't give the crew liberty and he'd let the cooks come take hot baths in exchange for special food privileges. He told me "I never ate with the captain but I ate what the captain ate." One time during Korea while re-arming the Missouri, they rammed it and ripped the railing off from bow to stern on one side. A call from the Missouri, which had an admiral on board, came in requesting to send the captain over. They strapped him in the chair and sent him over and never saw him again. I asked daddy if he thought the guy steering the ship rammed it on purpose. He said "It wouldn't surprise me a bit."