Missouri mules and boxes of butter
One year I was passing through Ventura and dropped by to see Dad while Mom was visiting Aunt Trude. We sat down in the den with some of his photo albums, and he started telling me stories of being at sea. I'll tell some of the stories here, and some of them later.
I asked him what the most bizarre thing was that they'd transported... He replied "Missouri Mules". There was a definite pause in the conversation, then I asked "You mean mules like donkeys? Or is that a name for something else?"
Apparently they had transported a load of real live mules, plus mule skinners and everything else you need for mules, for delivery in the South Pacific. The mules and a lot of men and equipment were then dropped by smaller boats onto remote Pacific islands to build rudimentary landing strips, so they could bring in more equipment to build real landing strips.
We were on a roll. He then talked about a trip into Manilla's harbor. It was a very busy harbor during WWII, so they were told to anchor outside the harbor and wait a week or two until there was room to dock and unload. Dad was getting ready to disembark; once near the harbor, it wasn't necessary to have Navy gunners onboard, and he would be redeployed to another ship. Just then, then got orders to raise the anchor and dock for immediate unloading. As they docked, a swarm of MP's with machine guns jumped on board and surrounded one of the holds, and they started unloaded crates marked "Butter". Later Dad learned that they didn't contain "Butter" but booze for the officers club; some ranking officer was unable to get his favorite drink, and found out the supplies were in Manilla but not unloaded, and gave the orders to prioritize Dad's ship!
We did find a few names of ships, and the dates he was on them... Dad was new to the internet, so when I got home, I did some research into the Armed Guard and found they had an active Veteren's association! Dad was pretty effective using the internet as a tool, so he checked out their web site, and later that year met a couple of guys he's served with at a reunion.
More Liberty Ship stories later...
Interesting note on Manilla. It was close to the end of the war after the liberation of the Philippines, in preparation for Operation Olympic, the invasion of Japan. US deaths were expected to reach as high as 1 million in the invasion, because a large amount of the Japanese civilians were being trained for some very effective suicide attacks, like human torpedoes. Dad was well aware that, since he would be on ships resupplying the invasion, hence his support for the atomic bombs dropped at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
ReplyDeleteOne of the war games I played in high school was called Operation Olympic, and dad was a little interested and shared about his role.
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