Chapter 7

My final Days in the US Navy

I was back only a short time when I was assigned duty to travel to San Diego and help ferry another ship back up to Bremerton for repairs. Too many of her crew was discharged to get her underway. This was thought at the time to be a very pleasant cruise back, plus the pleasant train ride down. This was not to be. This ship was almost the same as the LAWS, which was a Fletcher Class 2100-ton destroyer. I can't remember and I have no records of the name of this can. Even my copy of my service records does not have this cruise listed.

The trip on the train down to San Diego was a good one even if we did not have deluxe tickets, just coach. The men with me were good companions and we had a lot of good card games. I don't recall how many were on this trip but there were several.

The first night on the cruise back up the coast I drew the midnight to four watch on the after generator, just like my duty aboard the LAWS. The entire first three hours, like on the LAWS, were routine, although the indicator lights for several circuits were out and I knew that they were working. One was for the after steering motors and they had to be on. Well, I finally decided to trouble shoot the fuse box behind the switchboard for these circuits.

We always used a 110 volt lamp in a pigtail socket to check 110 volt fuses. The fuse box I was checking was in the same place as on the LAWS and the cover was off, so I made the mistake of assuming it was the same. I proceeded to place the leads across the circuit input to see if the lamp would light, before actually checking for an open fuse. This lamp was laying right close by so I had assumed that some one else had been working on this. I will never know why all this was set there for me to get into this trouble I had.

The instant I laid the leads of this lamp on the terminals the most brilliant flash occurred! These terminals were 440 volts to the after steering and the bulb, socket, and lead wires instantly vaporized. My vision was impaired from that bright flash, but I had received no electrical shock! Of course the ship was still under way but without any steering. This had also tripped several breakers on the front panel. I knew what to do but I had difficulty in seeing where I was going and which breakers I needed to reset.

One of the other fellows came to my aide and I told him what to do and which handles to pull back up. Thank the Lord this put the steering back on line and by having another person check the motors aft all came out OK except for my hands and eyes. The backs of my hands felt as if they were on fire and my eyes felt like I had sand in them. I was taken to sick bay where a medical corpsman was all we had aboard. He looked at me and decided to apply some flash burn cream on my hands but was not sure what should be done with the eyes, so he did not do anything for them. I later was told that was the best thing he could have done for me.

I was incapacitated for the next day but the eyes started to recover and I was able to stand my duty watches for the rest of the trip. The indicator lights were never repaired while I was on the ship. No one else would even try to figure out why this was different than it was supposed to be. I was never reprimanded for this accident either so I guess I was lucky nothing worse happened.

The rest of this cruise was uneventful and we were soon back to the same routine at the LAWS. We had some duty but mostly liberty every evening until the LAWS was taken out of dry-dock and floating free alongside a pier.

Not too long after that we set sail for San Diego. We found that this was where the LAWS and hundreds of other ships were tied up and being decommissioned. This was a real work order for all hands. The boilers and all bare metal had to be coated with cosmaline (oily grease). All gun mounts and topside instruments had to be enclosed in a fiberglass cover that was sprayed on. This was to prevent rust from forming as I suppose no one knew for sure if and when these ships would have to be used again.

It was soon after this procedure was underway that I had the required number of points to be discharged. I was given train tickets to Minneapolis, MN where I was discharged on June 6, 1946, 14 months after my induction. From there I was given bus tickets to Storm Lake, IA, the nearest bus station to my home of Alta, IA. I guess this is about all that is left of my memories of the Navy years. If I had the foresight to get some of these experiences down on paper before all these years passed by, maybe it would have been more coordinated. I was of course, glad to be home and did not want to relive some of these memories that soon.

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