WILLIAM STURGESS
...an unforgettable Christmas...
by Joe Hafford

As soon as I got my assignment, I gathered up my seabag and suitcase and struck out for Staten Island where the William Sturgis was located. The Sturgis was another Liberty Ship, currently in a shipyard undergoing strengthening of the hull. It was just in time - I was broke.

A comment about the strengthening process. Liberty Ships were of all welded construction which in and of itself was a highly controversial method of fabrication for ships. The basic problem was that the all welded construction made for a more rigid hull and in heavy seas the hull had a tendency to crack. There were unsettling rumors that some Liberty Ships had broken completely in two in storms. After the war I learned that in fact it had happened although I never heard of any loss of life as a result. Rivited construction made for a more flexible hull that would 'give' rather than break. In order to protect against cracking, heavy steel plates were rivited to each side of the ship up by the main deck. The plates were three or four feet wide, at least an inch thick and stretched across the middle third of the ship. The job was well under way when I arrived and was completed in less than two days. We were then moved to a loading dock in Manhatten.

It was a couple of days before we signed on but I managed to scrounge enough change to take the ferry to Manhatten and the subway to the Music Box every evening. There was always food and entertainment for the service men, and by now I could count on running into some girl I knew. The Music Box had a modest dance floor with a juke box that didn't need nickles. There was an upstairs floor with lounge chairs, some reading material and a ping-pong table. The evenings were always pleasant. After we signed on we were paid for the days we worked while not under articles so I was now fat for a couple of days.

I met Ruth Petersen at this time at the Music Box. Ruth was not of scandinavian extraction as one might infer from her name. She was actually Jewish with a typically unpronounceable Jewish name. She found it to her advantage to pass herself off as other than Jewish in order to get around the anti-jewish prejudice extant at the time in New York. She confided this to me after assuring herself that I couldn't care less what she was as long as we had a good time together. Ruth lived well out of New York with her father in a suburb over the border in Connecticut. I still remember the wonderful restaurant she took me to near where she lived. Very plush to say the least with soft music and excellent food. I dreaded to see the bill but it turned out to be quite reasonable.

We were finally loaded and gathered with a large convoy and headed out to sea. This was late fall and the North Atlantic was kicking up as usual. Being fully loaded helped a lot as far as ship motion was concerned but walking across the open deck was a bit hazardous as it was difficult to tell exactly when a sea would break across the deck and douse one. Normally, only deck hands had to go out on deck regularly, but as an oiler I had to get back to the steering engine at least once a watch. In really heavy seas the oiler had to make his way through the propellor shaft tunnel and climb up the narrow escape tube to the deck. The escape tube was no place for a claustrophobic, or fat oiler.

This time I got on the 8-12 watch with the 3rd Engineer. The fireman/watertender (FWT) on the watch was a young man with the interesting name Hardy Rush. Hardy was a very pleasant companion from the mid-west. I found in due time that women found him particularly attractive. Hardy had been attending Purdue studying Mechanical Engineering when the war caught up with him and he opted to ship out rather than be drafted.

The oilers were interesting people. There was Nick, a Pole from the coal mining area of Pennsylvania and Jake, an inner city escapee from Philadelphia. Nick was college educated as he had been to Fordham on a football scolarship at the time when Fordham was a national power in football. He was about 5'10" and at least 220 pounds, which was pretty big for the times. (A 300 pound lineman was unheard of in those days.) And as the saying goes, built like a fire plug. Nick was very good natured but then no one would ever test him anyway, that is if they had a drop of good sense. Jake was Italian with almost kinky jet black hair and of average size. He was stereotypically voluble, always talking, but saying little. I enjoyed his company as he was very entertaining. He would give chapter and verse about his girl friend back home. How stuck on him she was and how great a lover she was. He had a small snapshot of her he always carried; I must say she seemed rather plain to me. Both of these men were very conscientious in attention to their jobs. We made a good team.

The usual Atlantic crossing would take about a week in peace time for a Liberty, but in wartime the convoy was limited in speed to the slowest ship, plus it had to take a rather evasive route to do its best to frustrate the German subs. Hence in wartime a crossing would take 10 to 14 days.

Our crossing this time was uneventful. The German sub 'wolfpacks' were attacking convoys at this time, but we slipped through undetected. An attack from a wolfpack could be devastating as the escorts couldn't intercept all of them and there were always a number of losses. However, somewhere along this time it seems our forces had captured the German secret codes and were able to predict where the subs would appear and could make their attacks very expensive.

We were dropped off in Glasgow, Scotland. We were there only a couple of days and remained anchored out in the harbor. I got ashore only once. I wandered around downtown Glasgow and found a photographer studio where I got my picture taken in a highlander outfit. Kilt, sash, gaiters and all; not a mockup where I would stick my head through a hole and have some odd picture of a Scot stuck on my face. I still have that picture.

After a couple of days we headed out along the West Coast of England, barreling along at full speed as we had no escort. The Luftwaffe had gotten to the point where they didn't venture across England and evidently the subs were being kept out of the sea between England and Ireland. Our destination turned out to be Swansea, South Wales. It was now into December and close to the shortest day of the year. This was the other side of the coin from when I was on the Henderson. At that time it didn't get dark until near midnight and was getting light again before three in the morning. Now it was dark by four in the afternoon and didn't get light again until 10 or 11 the next day.

Once in port, the oilers broke watches and worked 8-5 like civilized people. Our job then was to work on the engine room equipment. A couple of rod bearing on the main engine had developed a knock and we had to turn to and pull them down and tighten them up for the return trip. As I have described before, it is heavy work. Nick and Jake were excellent men to work with; especially Nick as he had the strength to handle the wrenches almost like toys. He could pick one up with one hand, I needed both hands.

Except on week-ends we couldn't get to town before dark, even so we got a good look at the devastation the blitz had inflicted on Swansea. If anything it was worse than Hull. Entire city blocks were leveled. I don't have any idea how much of the city had been destroyed, nevertheless the morale of the people was very high. We quickly discovered a pub in a small hotel a short bus ride into town. It was on the perimeter of a large area that had been wiped out in the blitz and half the hotel had been blown away. The remaining structure had been patched up and put to use.

The pub had a very warm and friendly atmosphere, the best I ran into in England. A key member of the staff was a very attractive barmaid. She was blond and slightly on the buxom side and drew a lot of attention. The competition was entirely too much for me so I merely observed from the sideline while the patrons tried to make time with her; this included many of my shipmates. My attention was suddenly drawn to the crowd around her when she suddenly set out a small scream and backed to the rear of the service area to the general amusement of the crowd. Hardy was in the middle of the gang and when I prodded him for the cause of the merriment, he looked funny and and said, "All I said was 'all "I" want is a bottle of whiskey!'" I noticed after that, she and Hardy spent a lot of time together. I have no idea how far the romance progressed as Hardy was very close-mouthed about it.

As I recall, the invasion of North Africa was in progress so a lot of soldiers had been pulled out of England. Even so, there were plenty left and as a result the available women were pretty well spoken for. I contented myself with visiting the pub as often as I could with the forlorn hope of a conquest that never occurred. I always settled for a couple of pints (my limit) of strong, warm English beer.

Now English beer had the same effect on my kidneys that any other beer did so I had to answer the call occasionally. The first time I did, I enquired as to the location of the appropriate relief station and was directed out of the pub into the very dark moonless night. Soon my eyes got used to the dark and I detected a doorway off to my right. Standing in the door I could dimly see tbe urinals. The roof of the lav had been blown off but this didn't offer any impediment, so I proceeded to relieve myself accordingly. I turned and was about to leave when a woman stepped into the door; I could see her outline in the doorway. She stepped in a short way and off to the side and squatted down to make use of the floor right there. I was embarressed so I stood quietly waiting for her to finish and leave. Just then a man came to the door, but he just stood there and cut loose not knowing the woman was there. She piped up, "You're peeing on me foot!" The man muttered something and redirected his effort. They soon left and I rather tentativly left and reentered the pub.

I found the people of Swansea to be very friendly and sought to make our stay as pleasant as possible. I didn't really get to know anyone from Swansea myself but several of my shipmates did and visited in their homes. One fellow came back from such a visit rather shocked when he discovered that the family entertaining him used their bathtub for coal storage. It wasn't clear if there was any other facility for bathing. It surprised him as he was accustomed to the American custom of a daily bath. On as ship, the close quarters to which we were restricted made a daily bath a necessity.

This reminded me of stories I heard of seamen whom didn't place much emphasis on personal hygiene and the recourse shipmates were led to on occasion. Such as an involuntary bath with vigorous application of a scrubbing brush. Gleeful reference was made to brush application to tender areas such as under arms and the crotch. A concensus was that such treatment was invariably effective, at least for that particular voyage.

The Sturgis eventually got unloaded and we headed out. Our point of collection for a convoy was Belfast in Northern Ireland. We came alongside but few opted to go ashore. Belfast exuded a gloomy and dismal atmosphere. Rumors were that it just wasn't worth going ashore, so I didn't.

It was almost Christmas when we finally joined a convoy and headed home. We weren't under way a day when we encountered a typical North Atlantic storm. Some of the worst weather I had ever been through. The ship was light except for some water that had been pumped into the holds as ballast in order to minimize the violence imposed by the monstrous seas. As high as we were out of the water, we still took seas over the main deck.

Life in the engine room was tedious as someone had to stand by the throttle at all times. The propellor would rise out of the water every time the bow went down and either the engineer or I would have to frantically crank the throttle. On a Liberty the throttle was a large valve in the steam line to the main engine, about six inches across, located near the top of the engine at the high pressure end. A rod extended from the valve to the floor and had a crank that had to be vigorously turned to close down the steam before the engine revved up too much. It took a good bit of physical strength to turn the crank, which was about a foot in diameter. The throttle was just above the reversing engine, a small steam driven engine used to shift the main engine into reverse mode that was kept ready to operate and thus was very hot and exuded an oily odor from the lubricant necessary for its operation. I was long past getting seasick but four hours of leaning over the reversing engine left me nontheless nauseated. Not exactly a lot of fun.

A peek from a safe place on deck showed the convoy scattered over a tremendous area. We would have been a shooting gallery for a sub if we had been found. Fortunatly, we weren't. The bad weather didn't bother the subs nearly as much as it did the surface ships. When ships were sunk in bad weather, it left the survivors in very bad shape.

One of the inconveniences was the limited menu the cooks could prepare. On a ship, everything that can be is anchored down. In the galley everything is secured and there are bars and rails to keep pots from sliding off the stove, but in really heavy seas such as we were experienceing, a cook was always in danger of being thrown against a hot stove, therefore not a lot of cooking went on. We just made do with what could be put together. Mostly sandwiches with cold cuts. The mess room is also rigged out to survive the pitching and rolling of the ship. The tables and chairs are firmly anchored to the deck. There were usually hinged edges to the tables that could be turned up to keep things from sliding off in bad weather. The chairs were swiveled which somewhat added to the discomfort as in order to stay put a man had to awkwardly brace himself to avoid being thrown out of the chair. As it was we were experiencing rolls of as much as 30 degrees.

We had suffered through several days of the storm when on Christmas morning the seas abated and we thought it was over. The cooks also thought it was over as they happily prepared a fine dinner for everybody. Turkey, mashed potatoes, several vegetables, cranberry sauce, pumpkin and mince pies were all ready to be served. The only thing lacking was soup but there were no complaints. We all had a chance to see the food and in the light of our recent diet, our mouths were well prepared.

The food was placed on a stainless steel table in the galley that was accessible to the messboy for transfer to the messrooms. The galley table didn't have much to restrict sliding movement, just a slight bulge around the edge. Minutes before we were to eat, the storm renewed its fury with a vengeance. The ship heeled over so far I thought we were goners. At least 40 degrees. Every dish slid off the table and smashed into the bulkhead. A horrible mess. Our Christmas dinner was a total loss. An unholy blob of mashed potatoes, broken crockery, green peas, shattered glass - it just pains me to this day.

The galley boy risked a broken leg to snake a case of sardines, crate of oranges and several loaves of bread from the storage room. This was my Christmas dinner of 1943, a slice of bread, a tin of sardines and an orange. For some reason I have never enjoyed sardines again. A most unforgettable Christmas for me.

The weather didn't let up until we were a day or two out of port. New York again, that is Staten Island. We pulled in about noon and secured everything. We were due to sign off the next day, but not being one to miss an opportunity to get off the ship, if even for a few hours, I took off for the Music Box again, perhaps about three in the afternoon. It was a raw and blustery typical January day in New York. I wasn't really well prepared for much outdoor activity, but then I planned to spend my time indoors anyway. Along with my regular jacket I was wearing a tan trench coat and a felt hat I had somehow acquired along the way. A bit unusual as I have never been much of a hat person.

I caught a trolly to the ferry and rode the ferry to Manhatten while sheltered in the ferry housing. It was a short ride to the Music Box where I found the ususal pleasant atmosphere. Time passed quickly and before I knew it, they were closing up and I headed back to the ship. Subway to the ferry, ferry to the trolly, trolly to the pier. Each exchange taking some time and much of it standing in the cold. My trench coat was proving to be only marginal protection. I don't know what time it was when I got back to the pier, perhaps two or three in the morning. To my utter horror the ship was GONE! My inquiries revealed the ship had left less than an hour after I had gone ashore, but no one could or would tell me where it had gone. I was desperate. Someone finally suggested that I go to the central dispatch office of the Coast Guard in the Battery at lower tip of Manhatten Island.

So there I went, back on the trolly, across the bay on the ferry, and finding a subway to the Battery. The wind was really whipping around me now, being fully exposed to the wind off the Atlantic. It took me a while to find the office I needed and fortunatly there were people there at all times. After a lengthy examination to prove I had need to know where the ship was, they finally admitted it was in Yonkers!

Now I had a long subway ride ahead of me. The express trains had long since quit running so I suffered through a multitude of stops while going from one end of the line to the other. At the end of the line there was a trolly that, after a wait, took me a few miles down the road and dropped me off about a half mile from the shipyard where the Sturgis was located. There was a stack of ships I had to cross to get to the Sturgis but I did get there in time for breakfast.

I decided not to make another trip on the Sturgis, so when I got paid off I headed into town with most of my shipmates for a bit of entertainment. Hardy wanted a uniform and since a uniform was a free ticket to a lot of stuff in New York, I got one too. Besides I was tired of being cold. Among my purchases was a heavy coat. This depleted my funds somewhat and as I was saving money for a hoped for post-war school, there wasn't really very much for social life. I opted not to head for the Gulf Coast and went down to the Union Hall and was sent out to a troop ship, the Bienville.

It was evident that the it was on a shuttle to England, so when I packed up to join the ship, Hardy, who was going back to the mid-west for a visit home, asked me that if possible he would appreciate my making a point of looking up his girl in Swansea and telling her that he had written to her and would continue to do so. Obviously he had gotten pretty hung up on her.

So much for the William Sturgis.

CHIPPAWA ...another pleasant tour of the Carribbean, one could get used to this...

BIENVILLE ...an Atlantic ferry boat...