A Firsthand Account from a World War II Veteran

After calling the bridge and seeking medical advice, and barely able to see through the smoke around them, Bill and the other seaman in the room administered morphine to their injured shipmate. Then they poured sulfur powder into the wound, packed it with “about thirty small cotton pads” and taped it over, while also following orders to operate the ship’s emergency sprinkler system. The injured man survived.

There are other parts of Bill’s story I cannot forget: Gathering the bodies (and body parts) of the deceased, cleaning the blood and viscera from the deck once the fire was out, and the mass burial at sea the following day.

The burial date, October thirty-first, was Bill’s mother’s birthday. While Bill has never remarked about the fact that he narrowly escaped injury or death that day, he recently said to me, “Wouldn’t it have been horrible if my mother leaned that I had been buried on her birthday?” (In fact, Bill was able to return home to Bridgeport, Connecticut, for a brief family visit two months later. He arrived at his mother’s doorstep at 9 pm on Christmas Eve.)

Remarkably, the story of Bill’s time in hell has a spectacular happy ending. Following the attack, the Belleau Wood was sent to San Francisco for repairs, and while walking on Market Street on leave one day he met Margaret Ehlert, the woman who would become his wife seven months later. They celebrated their sixty-second anniversary this year.

Bill never returned to sea after the attack on the Belleau Wood. He was transferred to Alameda Naval Air Station outside of Oakland, California, where he served until the end of the war in August 1945. He left the service with nine battle stars, a Presidential citation, a Philippine Liberation Medal with two stars, a Philippine Independence Medal, an American Area medal, a Victory Medal and a Halsey’s Commendation Bar (the latter for saving the life of the injured man on the ship).

When I marveled at all of the awards he had received, Bill smiled and replied, “They never put food on the table.”