Some Unique WWII Memoirs

I really like memoirs and biographies. There are three that I just finished.  I would recommend two of them as really good reads.

The Yeoman

 Wake of The Wahoo by Forest J. Serling is a submarine memoir, something that I am a real sucker for.  It differs from most submarine memoirs in that Sterling was an enlisted man.  As a yeoman, though, he worked closely with the officers and has some very nice words for Richard O'Kane, Wahoo's exec who would later be awarded the medal of honor as skipper of the Tang.  Sterling was an old salt with a break in service having served two enlistments in the thirties reenlisting when the war broke out.  His hard scrabble depression background is an interesting contrast to the officer memoirs, which were written by pretty much straight arrow Annapolis graduates.

As yeoman, Sterling was something of a link between the officers and the men.  He also probably had a better sense of the big picture in that he was the one who typed the patrol reports.  During his first patrol, he didn't have much to do during attacks, but in subsequent ones he was in the middle of things taking notes in real time.

The other sailors sometimes gave him a hard time about being too close to the officers.  Kiddingly defending himself, he indicated that he always got the last words in when speaking with O'Kane - "Yes sir".

Contrasting this with the officer memoirs, it seems that at least in terms of really being off, liberty was better for enlisted men. There is a pretty good account of a week with a naval widow in Brisbane.

(Spoiler Alert)

Sterling had applied for stenography training, but Mush Morton asked him to go on one more patrol. Just before departing, Morton took him to the Squadron Commander and said to the commander that Sterling was a great yeoman and he had orders to Stenography School, could he have a relief?

That set up the haunting ending to the memoir.

"I threw my sea bag on the rough planks and sat down on it.  I lighted several cigarettes and smoked them before Wahoo, a tiny submarine silhouette on the horizon, headed into in a rain squall and disappeared from sight. Forever."

Subsequent reconstructions from Japanese sources indicate that Wahoo's seventh war patrol accounted for the sinking of four merchant ships.  Wahoo is, as they say, still on patrol - declared overdue on 2 December 1943

The Naval Airman

The Miraculous Torpedo Squadron is also a great read. It relates an event which was the critical link in the transition in Herman Wouk's fictional Winds of War and War and Remembrance.  Victor "Pug" Henry's ambition and dream was to command a battleship, but when he finally gets his wish, his battleship, California, is sunk at Pearl Harbor before he can take command.

Pug ends up with command of the Cruiser Northhampton.

The author of The Miraculous Torpedo Squadron tells the story of the sinking of the California.

"Buildings and other structures on the wharf made it hard for me to get down low, but I eventually cleared the obstacles and dropped down to about fifteen feet over the water.  I got the plane completely trimmed and horizontal.  At a speed of 130 kits (?) I closed to within 250 yards of California, held my breath and aimed just below and to the right of the ships bridge."

I do have to say that my bs detector was just a little bit on the alert as I read Juzo Mori's account of exploits as an enlisted naval pilot in the Imperial Japanese Navy. In the introduction it is  indicated that Mori ran a bar called the Cart Driver (slang for torpedo plane pilot) and there is a reason for the expression "war stories".  The other thing about the book that is a bit jarring is that the translator chose to use an informal colloquial style in the translation.  An illustration of this is in one of the most fascinating passage as Mori describes the scene in Tokyo after his carrier Soryu returns from operations in the Indian Ocean.

"We were surprised to see that many of the windows in the houses near the harbor were broken.  When we asked what had happened we were told that enemy bombers had attacked Tokyo."

"The newspapers were filled with stories about the sub-human American devils and other hyperbole, but those were just excuses.  The reality was that they had come in the front door, kicked our butts and got away without a scratch.  Unbelievable!"

In some ways though it seems like the translator made a good choice. Mori, even though an experienced pilot, was an enlisted man and it is reasonable to think that he must have sounded a bit salty.

The story takes us through Mori's brutal training through operations over China, Pearl Harbor, Midway, where Soryu sinks and operations over Guadalcanal where Mori was stranded on short rations from a while. Wounds on Guadalcanal disabled him as a pilot.

It really was interesting reading a memoir of those actions from the other side.  I really recommend this one.

The third memoir is actually not a very good read but it has a lot of very interesting information in it, so I think that Colonel Retread by Carlton Ketchum rates its own post, which I will try to get to soon.

Full Fathom Five - A Daughter Finds The Story Of The Father She Never Knew - Perfect For Memorial Day

I think the best book ever for Memorial Day might be Full Fathom Five - A Daughter's Search by Mary Lee Coe Fowler. It was one of my typical museum impulse purchases.  I bought it at the USS Albacore Museum in Portsmouth NH.

The funny thing is that when I looked at the reviews on Amazon, I found a two-star review that in explaining why the reviewer hated the book so much gives a great picture of why it is so good:

extremely disappointing especially after reading the 5-star raves (which compelled me to purchase the book). miscatagorized as WW2 submarine history this work rather leans toward metaphysical spirituality (reconciling her Quaker pacificism w/father's military career), genealogy (brother sister uncle aunt cousin 3rd cousin, ad infinitum), personal baby boomer memoir (the 1950's under stepfather's regime), with splashes of self-indulgent romance fiction (far too lengthy imagined recreation on how Father met Mother in pre-war honolulu). the WW2 historical background panorama (filler) placing her father in his wartime context, read like something lifted from a high school history textbook....and made for further pedantic mundane reading. what little redeeming feature (for the serious WW2 US submarine warfare aficinado)seen between the pages, namely the WW2 sub veterans' recollections of Red Coe, life on the S-39, USS SKIPJACK, USS CISCO (and myriads of possiblities as to its demise)....simply weren't enough. other aspects including Skipper Coe's toilet-paper requisition (gag) order (and its ramfications) were beaten to death to the point of tiresome redundancy. the audience appeal of this work would be to her fellow AWON (American WW2 Orphans' Network) membership. for the WW2 US submarine warfare student...a single distilled and compressed chapter is all that would have been sufficient.

I don't know if I qualify as a "serious WW2 US submarine aficionado", but the subject does interest me quite a bit and I have read a lot.  US Navy WW2 submarine officers may well have been the most literary military men to have ever walked the earth.  There are a lot of memoirs and related works.  The overall story of the Pacific Fleet Submarine force is fascinating.  They had something like 2% of the manpower of the US Navy and accounted for something like 50% of the Japanese ships sunk.

There are all sorts of interesting aspects to the story.  Early in the war skippers who came from a "safety culture" were weeded out in favor of those who were more daring developing radical departures from pre-war docttine such as the night surface attack,  There was the bureaucratic nightmare that made it so difficult to confront the torpedo problems.  It turns out that the magnetic field of the Earth is not uniform so that magnetic exploders that worked great near Groton, Ct were not so great in the Pacific.  I mean - Who knew?

The typical memoir ( My favorite by the way is Silent Running by James Calvert) will actually recount every single torpedo fired on war patrol by that officer. A skipper was limited to five war patrols and they only had 24 torpedos on board, which they fired in spreads of three, so it doesn't take that long.  There will be some interesting shore leave stories and some other exciting incidents on patrol along with an overview of the big picture.  Besides the detailed logs and after action reports, there will be research in Japan to clarify exactly what ship was being attacked or doing the depth charging.  I love those books.  Can't get enough of them.

And Ms. Fowler actually manages to write that book for her father, Commander James Coe could not write it for himself.  On 19 September 1943, USS Cisco (SS-290) left Port Darwin, Australia with Commander Coe as skipper. USS Cisco is, as they say, still on patrol.On 8 February 1944 she was reported overdue and presumed lost.

That part of the book would be the single distilled chapter that would have pleased the aficionado, but Ms. Fowler's book is much more ambitious and succeeds beautifully.  She was born slightly after her father's boat sailed on its eternal patrol and grew up knowing very little about him.  By the time she was a toddler her mother had married a man who would be a difficult step-father and there was little said of her father.

It was only after her mother died and she found things of her father's, like his bridge coat, preserved that she went on the journey to learn about him.  She did the research that is standard for a submarine memoir and then some.  She interviewed wives of other officers including Roberta McCain, Senator John McCain's mother. She is able to tell the story of her mother and father's romance and the somewhat idylic life of a pre-war Navy wife, whose parents helped support her.  And then there is Ms. Fowler's own story as a war orphan, who must be quiet about it and her journey in later life to uncover her father's story.

Whatever its flaws might be to the aficionado, this is one of the most holistic World War II memoirs you will ever encounter.  It is fitting for Memorial Day, as it reminds us that between those crosses row on row there are more than poppies.  Their are countless loved ones left behind, few who will have the opportunity to engage with the story of the lost one in the way that Ms. Fowler has.

If you are going to read only one submarine book.  Well that's just silly.  Nonetheless, if you are going to read only one.  This is the one.

Peter J Reilly CPA hopes to be the first tax blogger to give up his day job and fancies himself an amateur historian.  He is embarrassed to disclose that his fascination with WWII submarines originates from reading War And Remembrance and watching the miniseries.

He also blames his big brother, who chased Russian submarines in the early sixties and recommended the Wahoo by Richard H. Okane.