EAST TO THE ORIENT
Part
of the Saga of the U.S.S. WAKEFIELD
(AP-22)
[3
November 1941 to 23 February 1942]
By
Captain Quentin McKay Greeley
U.S.
Coast Guard — Retired
This is the first of several stories of the Wakefield, the largest ship ever manned by Coast Guard personnel…..
Your attention is invited to the article in the
January ’95 issued of the Retiree
Newsletter concerning the U.S.S. Wakefield.
The Wakefield was not bombed in
Bombay, India; the West Point and the
Wakefield, plus the transports added
at Capetown, were in Bombay to put our complements of British troops ashore for
R&R at Poona, India, which is about 35 miles SE of Bombay. The Wakefield suffered a horrific bombing in
Keppel Harbour, Singapore about 28 January 1942. (More later.) The first bomb
fell harmlessly in the water on the port quarter of the Wakefield; the next bomb pierced the weather deck at the port
margin of #3 hatch (open), then through A & B decks and detonated in the
sick bay on C deck, killing six of our men who were patients there. Electrical
power, forward, had been knocked out by the bomb blast but our engineers
quickly restored power forward by installing and starting a spare electrical
generator.
I was Commanding Officer of the USCGC Dione, named for a mythical Greek
Goddess, consort of Zeus. The Dione
was on search and rescue duty and enforcement of neutrality law in Chesapeake
Bay. I received orders in early October 1941 to report to the Wakefield. I phoned CGHQ to question the
transfer; I spoke with the Division Chief of Officer Personnel who advised that
I was the only lieutenant on the East Coast available to fill an existing
vacant berth on the Wakefield. I
complied with the orders and reported to the Wakefield about 28 October 1941. Upon arrival, I found Captain
Scammel in the cabin and was welcomed with open arms, but the Captain posed the
question, “What did you do?”
I made no reply, but later thinking about his
question, I wondered if assignment in the Wakefield
was a late punishment for something that had happened in my previous years of
service! The XO, LCDR Roy Raney, USCG, who was in the cabin, advised that I
would be the Senior Watch Officer, with Damage Control Officer as a collateral
duty.
Four to five days prior to getting underway, seven
U.S. Navy officers arrived on the Wakefield
for duty: a Lieutenant in the Naval Reserve, who held a master’s license,
unlimited, for all oceans (this officer fit nicely into the Wakefield group of deck watchstanders);
a Lieutenant Commander M.D.; a Lieutenant D.D.S.; and four chaplains (a
Catholic Priest, two Protestant Ministers, and a Jewish Rabbi).
We departed New York Navy Yard on 3 November 1941.
When we cleared the harbor entrance, the ship headed on an easterly course,
destination not revealed. Shortly after we passed Ambrose Lightship, the XO used the PA system to advise us that
censorship had been established and was now in effect, and that diaries were
not to be kept. On 6 November, we rendezvoused in Halifax Harbour, Nova Scotia
with five other Navy transports: General
Leonard Wood, Dickman, West Point, Mount Vernon, and Orizaba. The Wakefield,
Dickman, and Leonard Wood were
Coast Guard-manned.
USS WAKEFIELD BRINGING TROUPS HOME – From U.S. Coast
Guard in World War II by Malcolm Willoughby
On 7 November, British transports from England,
with British Army troops of the 18th (East Anglia) Division, arrived
at Halifax; the troops were transferred to the U.S. Navy transports, and we
departed Halifax. Our ocean escort consisted of the aircraft carrier Wasp, two cruisers (Vincennes, and the other whose name I do not remember), and a
division of destroyers. The Wasp had
a Rear Admiral aboard—Commodore of the group of vessels. The admiral often
admonished us to keep closed up, 700-yard interval between ships in column.
The ship ran darkened from the onset of evening
twilight to sunrise; smoking was prohibited on open decks during those hours.
Speed of Advance (SOA) was 10 knots, the best the Dickman and Leonard Wood
could maintain.
After several days steaming south, we arrived in Trinidad
to top-off our water and fuel and put our mail ashore. In my letter to Mary
Nash, my beloved wife, I included my will. In writing the will, I used a sample
from an old Reader’s Digest found
aboard. We departed Trinidad on the 18th of November 1941, and a
Navy fleet oiler joined the escort. After two days steaming south, we crossed
the Equator and started the festivities to make all of us Shellbacks. This was
cut short because of a message from the Wasp
warning of a submarine in the area. Later, this was determined to be in error.
This happened in the South Atlantic; perhaps we were in the Roaring 40’s, four
days out of Capetown, Union of South Africa. During the trip into and out of
Trinidad, the Wasp conducted aerial
searches daily along our projected course.
On 7 December 1941, we received a message telling
of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and ordered to place Plan No.
(classified) into effect against the Japanese Empire.
On arrival at Capetown, the transports put their
troops ashore for R&R. At this time, the escort was detached for other
duties. The Leonard Wood and Dickman were also detached; their
complements were transferred to other vessels suitable for entering Bombay
Harbour. The Leonard Wood and Dickman were too deep-drafted to enter
Bombay. At Capetown, I joined a group of officers from the transports and
escort ships, entertained at luncheon by members of the American Club,
Capetown. When we sat down to eat, we were advised of the loss of HMS King George V and the cruiser HMS Repulse; they were scouting north of
Singapore and were found by Japanese planes, attacked and sunk. Japanese
fishermen operating in the area saved some of the survivors of this debacle
from the sea.
In the Indian Ocean, one day north of Madagascar
Island, a message was received detaching the Mount Vernon. She was to be routed to Mombasa in Kenya. Her troops
were to be landed and transported to the Suez and Cairo area to augment British
forces there. We had the division commander, Maj. General Smyth, on the Wakefield, and he was very angry at this
further dissipation of his division. We entered Bombay on 27 December 1941 and
put the troops ashore for R&R at Poona, a small British army garrison about
35 miles southeast of Bombay. After four days, the troops returned aboard. The
troops discarded their wool blankets to barges brought alongside. It was
amazing to see the piles of blankets grow into mountains aboard the barges.
We departed Bombay for Singapore. At the western
entrance of Sunda Straits, we were met and welcomed by vessels of the English
Navy, whose Commodore apologized to us for the poor showing of vessels of the
Royal Navy in the prosecution of the war to date. As we steamed through Sunda
Straits, I pointed out to bridge personnel the island of Krakatoa, where there
had been a volcanic eruption in 1880; there was great destruction and hundreds
of thousands of deaths. Literature of the present day has described the pall of
debris, which circled the earth for some time.
During our first day in the Java Sea, there was a
message from CGHQ containing serial numbers between which officers were given
promotions. Our commanding officer, CDR Scammel, was promoted to Captain. The
CO of the West Point sent a
congratulatory message to Captain Scammel on his promotion.
Steering was quite difficult in shallow
waters of the Straits of Selat Bangka and Selat Berkala leading to Singapore,
as well as in Singapore. It is believed that we had only two feet of water
under us. We arrived in Singapore and put our troops and their gear ashore. The
following day I relieved the deck (Richard Foutter, a ’31 classmate) at 1150,
saw the Japanese plane approaching and ordered all bridge personnel and others
who were in the open to get inside the ship for safety.
Later in the watch, my signalman, Koch, a USCG
CPO, told me that I was angry that he had not obeyed my order immediately, and
that I had picked him up and thrown him on the deck in the pilot house. (Koch
was about 6’2” and about 220 pounds; I was 5’8½” and weighed about 140 pounds).
After the bombing, the CO and XO went ashore to
make arrangements for the lifting of women and children—243 dependents of
military personnel station in Singapore. One of these women attempted to toss
her golf clubs aboard the ship. The effort failed and she asked our people to
recover them, which were at the bottom of Keppel Harbour. This woman paid no
attention to people of our crew, who were working their guts out, getting the
women and children aboard.
We had one male stowaway who was found among the
evacuees and brought to the bridge by our First Lieutenant, who had welcomed
the evacuees aboard and attempted to meet whatever needs they had. Mast was
held, the stowaway, a major in the Indian Army who was a self-admitted deserter
from his duty station with the British forces at Singapore, was found guilty of
desertion by his own admission, and sentenced to duty in the Wakefield scullery for as long as we
held him.
The Wakefield
departed from Singapore and headed into the South China Sea. During the
2000-2400 watch, the Captain directed the OOD to reduce our speed to bare
steerageway. This was to ease burden of the pallbearers carrying our dead
shipmates. Their bodies had been carefully and completely wrapped in canvas and
weighted with spare furnace bars or scrap iron to ensure their sinking to the
depth of the sea. Eight pallbearers brought the bodies of our shipmates to an
open area of the weather deck (this was the starboard and lee side at the time)
from which burials would be made. Our Catholic priest conducted a funeral
service for each of our dead. The pallbearers, Chaplain, and I witnessed the
burials.
The ship then resumed our SOA, 18 knots, as we
headed to Jakarta, Java. We picked up a man at Jakarta then set a course of
Colombo, Ceylon, where we put ashore the Singapore evacuees, the stowaway, and
the passenger from Jakarta, into the keeping of British army personnel at
Colombo for further, proper disposition. We stayed overnight then headed to
Bombay for temporary repairs of bomb damage. When repairs had been completed,
we headed for Capetown, where we picked up men, women, and children, about 200
citizens of the United States who were most anxious to get home. From Capetown,
we traveled alone, but when we approached the coast of South America, U.S. Navy
planes (from Belize, I believe) provided escort as far as Cape Hatteras, where
a Navy destroyer took over as escort for the remainder of the trip to New York.
In January 1942, we learned of the destruction and
sinking of the German battleship Bismarck,
which had exited from a Norwegian port into the North Atlantic; she was found
by Sunderland planes from shore and planes from the English carrier Ark Royal. English planes and ships of
the Royal Navy sank the Bismarck; the coup
de grace in the sinking was delivered by a torpedo fired by an English
cruiser (whose officers we had met in Capetown on the outbound trip) into the
rudder area of the Bismarck. [Several
years ago, I saw a TV show which covered the finding and sinking of the Bismarck. The lead male actor had a son
in the Ark Royal.] Had the Bismarck
escaped, she would have played havoc with merchant ships carrying supplies to
England for the prosecution of the war.
On arrival in New York, 23 February 1942, the Wakefield was given a heroic welcome by
all the ships in New York Harbor.
I had won the arrival pool of $200.00; the time of
arrival was 1349 when the pilot stepped aboard. I had picked the number 49 only
because the Kansas City Star named its usual area of circulation the 49th
state. As a boy in Fort Leavenworth, I had a paper route for the Star; the pay
was good—$18.00 a month.
Footnote: One of my daughters, Marie Barnes, feels
the title of this saga is poor, reminding me, a much traveled sailor, that
sailors in the 13th, 14th, and 15th centuries
sought a water route to the exotic Far East after the overland route—the “Silk
Road”, in use during and since the time of the Romans—became hazardous for
merchants and their goods when it fell under the control of marauding bandit
gangs. Today’s travelers would find a sea voyage to the Far East too
time-consuming, perhaps hazardous, for initiates; U.S. travelers would jump on
an airplane and head West.
Captain Quentin McKay Greeley is a retired
U.S. Coast Guard Officer. He was in the Academy class of 1931.