Down in the Flyby post below a commenter asked which ship my dad was on in WWII (The USS Fuller), and that reminded me of this bit of memorabilia that I had stashed away. I thought I'd post a copy for it's entertainment value, and for posterity, since nothing ever dies once it's posted on the internet.
It's a Christmas card that the War Department had the sailors send home during wartime, probably to lift everyone's morale. You can see why they sent my dad to the Pacific Theater - his non PC first name!
If I recall correctly, the Fuller was a troop transport, and my dad saw a whole lot of action while onboard, and was very nearly on personal terms with the Kamikaze Zero.
At the beginning of his stint on the Fuller, the captain happened to be an old barnacle left over from WWI, and he had no confidence at all in the newfangled radar that my dad was operating. On a transit of the Pacific one night, the radar picked up something in their path, and my dad reported it and suggested it could be a mine. The old salt captain harumffed and ignored it. The radar noted the object coming closer and closer, dead ahead, and the captain finally posted someone to look out for it. It did turn out to be a mine, one of those big globes with the detonators poking out all over. There was a last minute change of course, and the Fuller barely missed it - so close that they were afraid the backwash would suck it in behind and it would detonate against the stern. After that, the captain had a bit more respect for that modern gadget called radar.
The Fuller was an APA with nine battle stars. As a kid I watched a movie called "Away All Boats' about the USS Belinda, APA 22. The guy that wrote the book the movie was based on had served on an APA and it's a great story of just how important the auxiliary ships were.
ReplyDeleteA great little story. Sounds like you were *this* close never to have been.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I like the first names in your family: Alfred, Adolph and Curt. Good, oldfashioned manly names.
/RAF