Navy Armed Guards

This handsome fellow is my dad. He always said that during WWII he thought any guy writing in a journal was a goldbrick. There was always work to be done, and it annoyed him to see guys hunched over writing. So it's ended up his kids have had to jot things down as we heard them. He was in the service for 30 years, first in the Navy, then in the Army, then back in the Navy, and he fought in three wars. That's too damn much information. He should have kept a journal.

The stuff I remember most about is the first part of his service, with the Navy Armed Guards. Even then, there are too many stories.

My dad enlisted at 17 in June 1941, during Lend-Lease. He and his buddy were going to join together, but the buddy chickened out. My grandfather gave dad $5.00 spending money and he hitchhiked 120 miles up to Tampa to join up.

We were already at war before Pearl Harbor. Merchant ships were being attacked, then Navy ships doing convoy. The Kearny, Greer, and Reubin James were hit. The Reubin James went down. The first man from Lee County, Florida to die in the war was Allan Burdick, on September 4, 1941. He was on the Greer.
Dad was home on Exodus at the time and watched Allan's mother from his livingroom window. She was a widow and he was her only son and she did not take the news well. She went up and down the road hollering until some neighbors brought her inside.

Dad became a Navy Armed Guard. These were Navy gun crews placed on merchant ships to protect them. He was just finishing up school in Norfolk when Pearl Harbor was attacked. He pulled the worst duty, the Murmansk Run, many times. You didn't bother about picking up survivors of ships that were going down. The guys were dead as soon as they hit the water anyway. The convoys kept moving. On top of being attacked, he never liked any of the cargo. He'd get on one ship and the whole cargo was TNT. He'd get on another and there'd be nothing but trains strapped down all over the deck and glycerine in the hold. He always wanted to pick up his seabag and try a different boat. Maybe one of those Spam ships.

He's very excited about the WWII Memorial and we'll be taking him to see it next month.
This is just a little post to say "Good job, dad. You rock."