Choices

 

“How about joining the gun crew? You’ll be quartered with us—the Armed Guard—in the after deckhouse in the stern, next to the gun. You’ll sleep and eat with us.”

After being gassed in basic training and narrowly escaping death in a jeep accident, this was welcome news. Ted happily accepted the offer. Somehow word had gotten out that he had anti-tank training, and the Armed Guard was short a man. There were 1,000 soldiers densely berthed below, all like Ted destined for Liverpool, England, and ultimately the beaches of Normandy. It was June 1944.

 

“It was a hell of a lot better than F- deck”.

 

Assigned to protect merchant sailors, and ships,  members of the U.S. Naval Armed Guard were unsung heroes of World War II. The Armed Guard was a special branch of the U.S. Navy assigned to defend merchant ships and troop carriers against enemy attack. They were the Navy’s stepchildren. The men in the Armed Guard knew the odds were against them, and many believed theirs was indeed a suicide mission. Representing this were two signs posted at the training center. The first declared, “Ready—Aim—Abandon ship!” The other, playing on the signal “Sub sighted, sank same,” read, “Sub sighted, glub, glub.”

Armed Guard personnel were trained to engage the enemy until “the decks are awash, and the guns are going under.” Only after taking every opportunity to destroy their adversary could, they abandon ship.  They were the last to leave a sinking vessel  and they did so fully aware  that another convoy ship would not stop to pick them up. Stopping a ship dead in the water made it an easy mark for a U-boat attack. 

 

Ted would later recall coming ashore on Omaha Beach. “They used debarkation nets draped over the sides of the boat. Someone would whack you on the ass when the landing craft pitched up. It was the signal to let go and jump into the landing craft. U.S. Coast Guard and U.S. Navy coxswains steered the boats to shore. Everyone was scared, and the coxswain of my Higgins boat didn't pull up close enough. He dropped the gate in eight feet of water. Try swimming with 80 pounds of combat gear and an M1. The guy behind you cut off my backpack with his bayonet. I hit the beach nearly drowned, with only my rifle, and the beach was hot.”

Ted rarely spoke of what he encountered fighting five major battles during WWII, but his medals, Bronze Star, Purple Heart and others, his sister’s yellowed newspaper clippings and the book Aachen speak for themselves.

 One day, a man came to see him. It was his former commanding officer.

“Look,” he said. “They didn't give me back my belly button.”

He took a machine-gun burst to the midsection during a river crossing. Rather than think of his own safety, Ted chose to go back and pull the wounded officer from the water while they were both under fire. Ted got him to a medic.

He had come back to say “Thanks.”

Ted was my dad.