by Kevin Schmitt
On the coast, Dad had to wait for an overseas
assignment along with Jamie and a guy named T.L.Cole. It was the only time in
Dad’s life when he became the equivalent of a straight A student. He just loved
guns, big and small. The training wouldn’t do him much good in civilian life,
but he didn’t care. He was having a great time at the expense of the taxpayers.
He and his friends ended up at Puget Sound
Naval Shipyard where ships were being refitted. He wasn’t there for very long,
but he did have one experience that was worth passing on to me. In the
neighboring city of Bremerton, sometimes drunken servicemen got a bit out of
hand. The shore patrolmen would get paired up with ordinary sailors and patrol
the bar areas at night.. I believe I mentioned that Dad was a heavy weight, so
he didn’t mind it when he got a chance to play “cop.”
That changed forever when he followed an S.P.
into a bar where a drunken marine was most definitely the center of attention.
First thing Dad noticed was the man’s club. It was a crutch. The marine had
half a leg missing and obviously the guy was having a bit of trouble accepting
his misfortune. He kept swinging that crutch at anyone who came near him, and
two service men were already on the floor.
Dad looked at the S.P. and asked, “So---do you
think we could use a table as a shield?”
The S.P. ignored Dad and drew his Colt .45
service automatic. He gave the marine one chance to drop the crutch, and the
marine told him to---well---you can fill in the blank. Then the S.O.B.S.P.
actually went and did it. He shot the marine in his good leg.
It was at that point in his life when two very
important components came together for my dad: Revulsion, and helplessness.
Those were the pieces of bread that would hold the shit that would get served
up over and over again. The world outside of Shakopee Minnesota could get
really ugly, and young Dennis Schmitt had only taken a few steps into that world
so far.
Dad wasn’t trained to be a “yard bird,” but at
that stage of the game, he would do any work that didn’t expose him to
lunatics. He helped re-arm battle damaged ships until he was assigned to a
destroyer, and was pleased to discover that Jamie and T.L. Cole were still with
him. Only one thing happened on that “tin can” that was worth relating. The
destroyer sailed through a pretty bad storm that scared the crap out of Dad.
I suppose all you well educated people know
who John Newton was; the man who composed the hymn “Amazing Grace.” Well, Dad
felt a little like that when a mischievous sailor grinned and said, “Guess what
boys, we just became a submarine.”
Unfortunately my father can’t remember the
name of the ship. He told me the name about thirty years ago, and now I can’t
remember it either. Anyway, he and his buddies became part of something called
“Task Force 51,” which was sent to capture the Marshall Islands at the start of
1944. That Island group is over 1000 miles long and located halfway between
Hawaii and Australia. The Islands of Majuro and Kwajaline had airstrips built
by the Japanese so those were primary targets.
Dad rode shotgun on a landing craft called a
L.C.I. It was 160 ft. long and about 23 feet wide. They carried 200 men and could
sail between 600 and 900 miles depending on their speed and prevailing
currents. Majuro was where they would land, and while it wasn’t as bad as Omaha
beach, that wouldn’t make any difference to the dead and wounded.
Dad didn’t give me any details, he just said
that once the beach was secured, they spent a long time transporting wounded
men to a hospital ship. That went on until the airstrip was secured. Then Dad
was given the job of bore sighting machine guns in the wings of fighter planes
as they were brought in. It was hot work and everything had to be done
“yesterday,” but it was a damn sight better than watching guys bleed to death.
I remember Dad once saying, “If a guy is
yelling bloody murder, he has lots of time. But if he’s being real quiet and
peaceful like---keep an eye on him.”
Yea, that makes sense.
Anyway, eventually it was time to get served
another shit sandwich, so Dad, Jamie and T.L got on another LCI and headed for
the Island of Kwajalein. The invasion was over, but like Majuro, there were
still many things for a gunner’s mate to do. But first they had to get there.
So they put together a small fleet of a dozen landing craft, a few P.T. boats,
and a corvette that broke it’s own trail.
The plan was to land at Kwajalein at daybreak,
but the Japanese sort of messed that up. You see, those boys were really sore
losers. When they would lose an Island or a shipping lane between Islands, they
would leave just a few mines behind, to keep the Allies nervous. At about 0230
hrs Dad’s LCI hit one of those mines. Fortunately it was a small one that had
probably been dropped by an aircraft. It tore open the bow and turned the
landing craft into a crash diving submarine.
About two-thirds of the men went under. Dad,
his buddies, and about fifty others floated clear of it. Somehow they call
grouped together and concluded that no one was hurt bad. The water was warm and
everyone had a life jacket, so all they had to do was wait until daybreak to
get picked up.
Piece of cake.
Then someone felt something bump up against
them. Next time it happened the sailor probed with his hand and felt something
that was like sandpaper. That was not a good thing. But the main problem was
ignorance. Those Midwest farm boys wouldn’t learn anything from Jacques Cousteau
for another thirty years so they were plenty scared of any kind of shark. In
fact most sharks are like vultures. They won’t bite you unless you’re dead. But
there have been many exceptions to that rule, as we all know.
I recall the scene in “Jaws” when Robert Shaw
says, “I’ll never put on a life jacket again.”
You’re in pitch black water up to your
shoulders, and there’s nothing under you except the fear of teeth.
Jamie said, “Wonder if them fish know the
difference between white meat and dark.”
Anyway, the dawn always comes, and when it
came that morning, all arms and legs were still where they belonged. They got
picked up by the corvette and once on Kwajalein, they received some thrilling
news. They would be working with the Seabees. (Construction Battalion) That
meant that they would learn skills that would carry over into civilian life.
Gunner’s Mates were wanted because they had some training with explosives, and
the main job would be to break up the now useless Japanese bomb shelters.
Dad didn’t know it, but it was time for
another shit sandwich.
You see, those bunkers were not empty. Do you
know what happens when you fill a bomb shelter with men, then kill them, then
let them rot for a few days in tropical temperatures? You grab an arm or a leg
and it comes right off. You can’t blow the bunkers while the bodies are still
in them so you gotta get them out the hard way. They gave Dad a gas mask but
after puking in it a few times he decided that he really didn’t want it.
For three days Dad went without eating. (A
miracle for him.) Then things started getting squared away. But that only meant
that Dad would be moving again. This time to an Island called Ebeye, which had
been a Japanese sea plane base, and would also serve the U.S. Navy in that capacity.
The Navy Brass would soon make this small Island their home because a PBY
Catalina (flying boat) is a great way to Island hop if you are an admiral.
Now the trouble with admirals is that they
make junior officers kind of nervous. It’s no fun working under a J.G. who’s
nervous, especially when it’s 100 degrees in the shade. You gotta learn how to
conserve energy in the tropics. Everyone one learned that except Jamie. The kid
from Georgia was an eternal optimist in the sense that he was always looking around
for a samurai sword that some careless Jap officer might have dropped.
Well, eventually he did find something that
the enemy had left behind. He stepped on a land mine and it took every bit of
meat off one femur bone. Dad and a few other guys called for the officer in
charge but got no answer. That’s when a decision had to be made. There was an
open boat on the beach, and an auxiliary hospital ship just a few miles away.
So they put Jamie on the floor of the boat and Dad sat on the wound. As far as they
could determine at the time, there was no way to apply a tourniquet . Dad was
the heaviest guy there, and it just seemed like the only thing to do.
Half the guys took Jamie out, the other half
went looking for the lieutenant. Jamie died on the boat, and Dad and the others
got a lecture from the lieutenant, but no punishment. The thing my dad needed
to remember was that there was no way to save Jamie by keeping him on that
Island, and there were no seaplanes ready to take off at that time.
After that Dad just cleaned and replaced gun
parts until a B-29 known as Enola Gay took off from Kwajalein with a secret
weapon. Dad had been told at one point after the historic bombing mission that
a very important container was being stored in the Ebeye ammunition magazine.
(Which was kind of like a basement with a lot of insulation on top of it.) I’m
thinking that the mysterious container might have been the bomb they tested on
Bikini.
Anyway, the day they celebrated the end of the
war, Dad got one more chance to end or at least ruin a portion of his life.
Everyone was shooting off guns and going crazy. Well, Dad decided he could do
them all one better. He knew about this Japanese anti-aircraft gun that was
about the size of a German 88mm. The action had been taken out of it so there
was just the barrel and the breach block. Dad got his hands on some explosives
and packed it into the rear end. Then he muzzle loaded the front with ten
pounds of pipe nipples.
Pipe nipples are little metal tubes and they
make a shrieking sound if launched into the air with sufficient force. Dad
calculated that he could get them over the Island and they would then fall
harmlessly into the water on the other side. Well----his shot went a bit low.
There was this officer’s tent on the far beach you see. In fact the lieutenant
who gave Dad crap about Jamie was one of the occupants.
Thank God no one was in the tent when the pipe
nipples hit it. All the same, there were a few less smiles after that. You
know, everyone understands that nuking Hiroshima and Nagasaki saved a lot of
American lives, but it also saved the sorry rear end of Dennis Schmitt. The
guys who could have burned Dad had only one thing on their minds: going home.
So Dad lucked out one last time.
Final Note: Dennis Schmitt and T.L. Cole went
to Georgia a few months after returning home. They were house guests of the
Jameson family and learned a little more about the world that Jamie had been
brought up in. It wasn’t all pretty, but a great deal of it was.
