LEON’S  WAR  DIARY

1943 - ARD 10 - SAN FRANCISCO TO PERTH, AUSTRALIA VIA SYDNEY AND MELBOURNE

HOOKED UP TO TOW THE ARD - 10 IN MOORES SHIPYARD, VALLEJO, and CALIF.

Left out of the beautiful Golden Gate Bridge, out the channel past the Farrillon Islands headed south to Sydney, estimated time for the first leg was 42 days. We had food and provisions for about 60 days.

I noticed the entire superstructure of the ARD 10 was stripped down. All the towers, cranes and masts had been laid down in the deck of the dry-dock. It also contained a large cargo headed for Melbourne, Australia.

We were routed south of Fiji so as to be well out of the apparent range of Japanese Submarines which were roaming the Pacific and sinking a lot of shipping.
As we were traveling alone and without convoy or protection, we were on our own.

We went south and crossed the Equator. We had a lot of fun with the ceremony of the Ancient Order of the Deep (crossing the equator) with King Neptune's Rex, Regina and the Royal Baby.

Only about 10 men of our crew had ever been to sea, and especially crossed the equator. The rest of us were “shellbacks”, first time going to sea and crossing the equator. They had a lot of fun at our expense with the hazing which want on all day. We got a beautiful certificate as a testimonial that we were now “Shellbacks”.

We had full drills almost every day. The Captain, Lt. Hayes, explained that he wanted every man aboard ship to be able to do everything automatically without waiting for orders. They became a real drag with the constant repetition.

Drills included signal practice, flag practice and semaphore and blinker signaling. The Navigator Lt. (jg) T. R. Hardman constantly schooled Pee Wee Eaves and myself on charting, navigation, shooting stars, calculating star and sun sights and celestial as well as dead reckoning navigation. He was a  wonderful teacher and gentleman.
He was a retired quartermaster that had been brought back into service and given a commission of Lieutenant (jg).

Our Skipper Lt Hayes was a retired Bo’sn Mate who had come up through the ranks  (Mustang)  and was now a full Lieutenant.  Our Executive Officer was Lt. (jg) Streeter. He was third year at the Academy who didn't make it through to graduation (He was bounced on too many demerits). When the war started they brought him in and gave him a commission. He was very smart and a lot of fun to be around. He was wealthy and always wanting to party. The other officers loved to go ashore with him he always bought the drinks.

Typhoon season set in. We were in three typhoons on the way over.  Two of them were very rough. We did our best to always avoid the center. By keeping the wind on our bough we kept going away from the eye of the storm.

Our Navigator, Lt. Jg. T. R. Hardman, another Mustang who was pulled back in after retirement calculated we lost 4 miles that one day because the storm blew us backwards while we were towing the ARD-10. (One shipmate said he heard the Navigator say it was 14 miles. In any event, it was a rough storm, probably approaching 100 knot winds)
Many times the very heavy steel two-inch towline would be straight, completely out of the water. I was constantly amazed at the engineering of the huge towing winch and the 1000 feet or so two inch towing cable. We prayed that it would not break.

During the storms, we could not see the storm or sun. It was only our best calculations and dead reckoning that we made these estimates. All of us made our separate calculations and based upon the wind, the sea and the current charts we made our guesses. The navigator and skipper took each of our guesses and often averaged them. It was great training for Pee Wee and me.

    SUBMARINE CONTACT

Ping -----thump. CONTACT.  The best guess of the Sonorman was it was a submarine. It could only be enemy sub, our sub would have surfaced and identified themselves. Our subs had no business or excuse of being in that area; it could only be a Japanese sub. It circled around us for several hours. Needless to say, we were very anxious and scared.

We could hear the sub pinging on the dry dock. We never did see a periscope. However, the dry-dock with all their superstructure laid down and sunk down where there was only six or eight feet of freeboard, it looked like a large barge at periscope depth. I am sure that was the guess of the commander on the dry-dock. They had a small crew on it, I don't know how many.

The skipper was guessing that the sub, being so far away from its home base, would not waste a torpedo on a “barge” and a tug.

However, the sub kept circling us. Finally, the skipper could not stand it anymore. He ordered the dry-dock to drop our towline. We would in the cable and attacked the sub. We had some depth charges on the ship. I don’t remember how many, but not too many. When we got the sub lined up with our sonar and estimates of their course and speed, the skipper would make a run on the sub, roll one  or more depth charges and come around again. We made about three runs on the sub as best we could. The sub then apparently left. At least we lost contact.

Thank God, he never surfaced. He could have blown us out of the water with his deck gun.

When we ran low on fuel oil, we would have the dry-dock drop our towline. We would wind in the towline and then make a landing on the dry-dock to refuel, hook back up and go again. We refueled several times this way.

We got another sub contact a few days later. It circled us a couple of times but left in about an hour or so. We didn't try and attack that sub. It sure kept us on our toes all the way to Sidney.

Around 60 days out, we were way behind schedule; we started running out of supplies, food and such. Our Chief commissary Steward, cook and purchasing agent had thought he was loading plenty of supplies. Seemed like we were out of just about everything by the time we reached Sydney, ninety-two days later. We were down to rice and beans, with no sugar for the coffee. I think we were just about out of cigarettes.

We were mighty happy to come into Sydney harbor. It was the most beautiful harbor I had ever seen, and I believe since.

We pulled into Woolamuloo docks, where all the American ships docked and took on new provisions, fuel and supplies. It was right down below a big beautiful park, Queen Elizabeth Park, I believe it was called.

The dry-dock had been taken off our hands by a yard tug and brought alongside the peer.

We secured the lines, made arrangement for provisions.

We broke out our dress blues and eagerly prepared to go ashore for the first time in a long time. We had party in mind.
 

SIDNEY, AUSTRALIA

    KINGS CROSS

We had heard all the way across the Pacific about Kings Cross, Sidney, one of the roughest places in the world according to the old sailors. I guess we did not pay much attention to the tales.

My friend Fleetum dressed and went ashore. We decided to walk up to the main part of town and see what we could see on the way. What we did not realize is that right off the docks and between there and town was the tenderloin area called Kings Cross. We were in it before we realized it.

Most of the buildings were two stories with balconies overhanging the street. Seemed like on every balcony there was two or more girls signaling us to come on up and party.

When Fleetum and I saw a lovely pair we decided to accept the invitation and investigate. We started up the stairs, Fleetum leading, I following. As we reached the top of the stairs two English sailors stepped out of the door and pasted Fleetum right in the face, knocking him down into me. We both tumbled down the stairs.  By the time we got up at the bottom of the stairs they were all over us. Not only these two sailors but a crowd of English (Limey) sailors, Aussies, men and women, all trying their best to hit us from every direction.

Fleetum and I stood back to back to back trying to protect each other and keep from getting killed. It seemed like everybody within 20 feet was trying to get their licks in.

I felt my arms getting so tired I could hardly left them. I knew both of us were in real trouble.

Then, to our astonishment, here came a stake truck with about ten Aussi cops and SPs. They jumped out of the truck, waded through the crowd and grabbed both of us and literally tossed us up in the truck, climbed aboard and took off up the street.

It was one riot we were glad to get away from.

They took us up on the main street, about a mile away, stopped and let us out, lecturing us to stay the hell out of Kings Cross. We told them we would gladly oblige.

We found a café that had a friendly rest room (The Loo) so that we could clean up.

We washed up, went in Café and had a nice meal for a change. First ice cream we had in a long time. We indulged ourselves.

We walked down the main street for a while and came across a movie theater. We decided to go in, as the movie was about to start. It was the “Life of Amelia Earheart.”

Before the movie started, the crowd arose and they started playing and singing what sounded like our song America the Beautiful. That was rather perplexing to me until I was able to understand a few of the words at the end; they were singing “God Save the Queen”! That was the first time I had ever heard the song. It was very beautiful. The crowd was singing it with much tender reverence.

The movie we saw that night was none other than the story of Amelia Earheart, her life and the search after she was lost. It had been very big news before the War. I remember that every plane and ship we had in the Pacific was searching for her. So were the Japanese, their ships and planes. (We could not understand why they were so interested. We found out later in spades.

Many of the charts we were using in the South Pacific later were made from the aerial pictures taken on that search expedition. Until that time, I understand, we had almost no charts for the South Pacific Islands. It turned out to have many benefits for the navy and the marines fighting in the islands of the South Pacific.
 

SYDNEY TO MELBOURNE - February 2 to 18, 1944

We left Sydney with a full stomach and loaded with fresh supplies.

About 10 days into the trip, I developed a severe toothache, both jaws. At first we thought I might have caught the mumps (which I had never had) abut it turned out to be wisdom teeth, both sides. I was in real agony. About the only medication we had was APC pills and ice packs.

Finally pulled into Melbourne. I went over to the military hospital to a dentist. He pulled both wisdom teeth and ordered me admitted to the hospital. Sent me back with a corpsman to get my sea bag.

I knew I would miss the sailing of the ship. I went aboard, talked to the Exec and Chief Corpsman. Chief thought he could take care of me if I wanted to chance skipping the hospital. Lt Streeter discussed with me the problems of finding the ship later. I decided to take a chance and stay with the ship. I sent the corpsman on his way and stayed aboard. Ice packs and APC pills. All we had mostly was ice packs. I seem to be okay in a few days.
Melbourne was a great liberty city. We had to unload the cargo of the ARD-10 dry-dock. They had a lot of cargo bound for Melbourne.

The first night I went ashore, Pee Wee and I went to Spencer Street Station, where all the light rail trains came into Melbourne from all points. It was a very large building with large Grecian columns and mirror revetments between columns.

We notice there seem to be hundreds of women parading around the Station, which was a large square block. All the men were either in North Africa, or Northern Australia. They expected to be invaded at any time by the Japanese. (We later know that the Marines, Army and Navy at Guadalcanal stopped them. We weren't so sure about anything at that time. Girls were probably 20 to 1 (or better) in Melbourne. We were not unhappy about that.

We were standing in one of the revetments talking to an Australian (‘digger’) veteran with a peg leg. He had been wounded in North Africa and only recently been released from the hospital. He was a very interesting fellow. However, our main interest was making a nice pick of a couple of girls with the proper looks and size. (Pee Wee was very short and did not like to go with tall girls.)

A couple of good-looking Shelia’s came sauntering down the sidewalk, giving us the eye, and we they. They appeared just right, one tall, and one short. We swung out on an intercepting course, and as we did so, the Digger says to us, “Give them a go Yank, give them a go, they look free, white and eighteen (18).” (You have to imagine this with an Australian accent)

We met up with Pat and Sheila, her older sister. They were good looking the perfect size for us. We spent a delightful evening with them. They really showed us around and we had a good time while we were in port. We dated them every day, and some nights as long as we were in Melbourne. It was one of the nicest times for me of all the times I was in the navy.

March 6, 1944 arrived in Perth (Free mantel) Australia, towing the ARD - 10, the floating Drydock. Very nice weather and the trip was uneventful. The Sub base was very glad to see us. They really needed a dry-dock to repair the submarines and destroyers stationed there. The submarine based there prowled the Indian Ocean, Indonesian and Malaysian islands and shipping lanes going to Japan. They were really sinking a lot of Jap shipping.

There was a large repair ship there and we very much needed an overhaul of our engines and a lot of repair work.  They debated whether to take down two engines at a time, leaving two engines to be able to get underway if we needed to move out, or take all four down at the same time and get us underway much quicker. They finally decided to fix them all and tear down at the same time. (This was a forward area at that time)

As soon as they got the engines torn apart, we got the word that a large Japanese task force with one or more carriers was headed our way to knock out our base. All ships that were able to sail was ordered to put to sea. This included the repair ship. We were the only ship left in the harbor. We were really sitting ducks.

The bases was lined with 40 MM Ack-Ack guns crewed by women WRENS, the Australian Women Armed Forces.

The Capt. Ordered our gun crews to stay aboard ship (I had a secondary gun station aboard) and all the rest of the crew to go out into the fox holes and help the women man the antiaircraft guns. Can you imagine how unhappy some 50 members of our crew were for the next 10 days? (I will leave that to the reader’s imagination!)

Our Submarines intercepted the task force and got in their licks. I am not sure what happened, but the task force never attacked us. They reversed course and left. We had a very anxious few days, waiting and watching. Not the best of times, nor the worst of times.

When the repair ship returned to base, we continued working on our engines. We were in Freemantel for 26 days. Port/Starboard liberty and we had a great time in Perth, about 15 miles from Freemantel. Met some very interesting people and enjoyed it very much.

Left Freemantel heading for Melbourne. We had rain and clouds all the way. Our Navigator, Lt. T. R. Hardman proved himself a great navigator in dead reckoning navigation. We saw no stars, sun or moon all during the trip, navigation all dead reckoning. We picked up the Melbourne lighthouse within about 10 minutes of his estimate. (I was over 30 minutes off. Pee Wee was about 20 minutes off. We had fun trying to out guess each other.

Arrived in Melbourne and made contact with Pat and Sheila. We had a good time. We expected to be in there overnight I believe, but somehow the evaporator boiler “blew up”.

The skipper was certain that it was a little bit of sabotage just to stay in port for a few days longer for repair and parts. I seem to remember that he restricted the entire black gang to the ship all the time we were in Melbourne. We felt sorry for them, but the rest of us really enjoyed liberty there. (We were forever grateful to the friendly “explosion” which gave us that few more days.)

12/11/01

Gentlemen:

I ran across this ad about an interesting cruise of some of the battle sites in the Pacific in WWII. We believe we are going to take it. Would love to see some or all of you on the cruise. We could enjoy some sea stories of old times.

We will be going through Joanna Mates of Stevenson Asher Travel, near here.
She can be reached at (562) 598 2424, or, (714) 821 8880. Please let me know if you are coming with your significant other.

Sincerely

Leon Emerson