The Chief had a cigar box full of photographs taken on his destroyer, the Lansdowne, during WWII. The Executive Officer would grab his camera every time they went to General Quarters and snap some amazing shots. I remember going through them like they were a treasure. There were a lot of shots of the crazy ceremonies involved with crossing the equator...they had some wild traditions, enough to rate a separate post later.
My favorites were the action shots. Sometimes the Chief would tell me the stories connected to certain pictures... and sometimes he said he would tell me when I got older. I accepted that because I knew if he said he would, he would. He beamed with pride as he showed me the pictures of the Japanese surrender party. The Lansdowne was the ship that picked them up at the pier and took them out into Tokyo Bay and transferred them to the Missouri for the ceremony. He laughed at a picture of a Japanese Zero flying so low over the bridge of the Lansdowne that you could count the rivets on the wings. He told me that during the "Mariannas Turkey Shoot", so many of the Destroyers were in screening positions to protect the carriers and cruisers from torpedoes that they couldn't shoot at the enemy planes without hitting the bigger ships. His battle station was a 20 millimeter anti-aircraft gun and the only way they could shoot was straight up and the 20 wouldn't do that.
It was only after watching a news report one evening on the My Lai "Massacre", and a few more beers, that he became so agitated that he finally started raging about the things normal people have to do in war...things no one should have to do. He wasn't condoning the shooting of civilians, but he was upset at the coverage and the tone of it and the fact that it looked like one lone lieutenant was going to take the rap for the whole chain of command. The stories started coming as he unloaded about the unfairness of it: guys have to do what they have to do.
He told about the Skipper of the Lansdowne being so upset because they had had to drop depth charges on a Japanese submarine while there were American sailors in the water. But if the subs had gotten to the South Dakota, or one of her cruisers, there would have been a heck of a lot more sailors killed. The Chief's memory of the effects of a depth charge on the human body never faded. (They got the sub.)
Neither the Skipper, nor any of the crew, were upset about racing through a bunch of Japanese sailors in the water, who had been blown off of THEIR destroyer as the two sides battled for the "Slot"...the Chief had an unforgettable look on his face as he described how they had been churned up in the screws.
The Chief had been the loader on his 20mm until the first action he saw. The gunner was killed; his body still in the harness, his lower half blown away...right next to the Chief.
There was a series of three photos that I had asked about many times, but kept getting put off. This night seemed like the time to get the story. In the first photo, a Zero float plane was upside down under water, the float on the surface. One of the Zero's crew was sitting on the float waving to the destroyer. The other crew member was in the water behind the float. In the second photo they had changed places: the guy in the water had gotten up on the float and the waver was in the water. In the third photo, both Japanese were in the water and the float was full of holes. The story is in between the photos. The Japanese frowned on surrender...in fact, they HATED the very thought of it. The guy in the water in the first photo had climbed up on the float and shot the waver. He had then turned his pistol on the Landsdowne. The Exec had then told one of the 20mm crews to take him out, and they did. I am pretty sure I know which 20mm was tasked for the job.
These images and much worse that our vets brought home with them were hard to bear but bearable so long as they had the support and the acceptance of a "grateful" nation. But when people started to investigate and court-martial and scorn the actions of soldiers in the field, many of the older vets began to get uncomfortable...angry...and maybe a little worried that they would have to evaluate the things that THEY had done. Many of them had secretly harbored guilty feelings about the actions they had been involved with already.
The Chief was the best man I ever knew. But I know he carried a lot of baggage around with him and some of those images were no doubt in his mind the day he died.