RICHARD M. JOHNSON
...unknown crisis points looming...
by Joe Hafford

I signed on the Johnson on May 14,1944 as a fireman/watertender. The job is rather critical to the operation of the engine room. If a boiler gets too low in water, the tubes would burn out and leave the ship unable to operate. Too much water would carry over to the engine with essentially the same end result. Modern ships, I am sure, have automated these duties, but on a Liberty, constant attention was required. Also, proper air to fuel mixture had to be monitored and adjusted as needed. Efficient operation was essential if for no other reason than to minimize the smoke effluent from the stack. No small matter in wartime.

Another duty of the fireman is to control the rate of fuel fed to the boilers in order to maintain the proper steam pressure. Fuel oil is injected to the furnace through jet type burners mounted in front of the furnace. The oil is heated before injection to the furnace and is controlled by adjusting the pressure in the lines to the burners through pressure controllers. The number of burners on line depends on the steam generating needs of the ship, a maximum of four burners per boiler.

The Johnson had just returned from a trip to Murmansk! A fact I was not aware of when I took the job. In order to make the run, the entire living and working areas had been heavily insulated. The outer walls were all covered with about three inches of insulation. When the ship hit the dock in New York on its return, the entire crew scattered. We got little feed back from the previous crew on the problems of a trip to Russia. Of course it was no surprise that they all departed as they had been gone for almost a year, from the Captain on down except for the lone fireman who had the misfortune of being on watch when they tied up. Traditionally, the fireman on watch must stay until relieved. The poor guy stuck it out for 72 hours, keeping awake by setting the pressure on a rise and letting the safety valve release wake hinm up. He then would hold a wrench in his hand until the pressure dropped to a point where he could set it on another rising ramp. If he dropped off, he would drop the wrench which would wake him up again. Finally, one time he didn't wake up when the wrench fell and when he woke up hours later, everything was dark as the generators had quit. He went to bed.

I had a chance to talk to him briefly as he was taking his leave. They had gotten iced in in Murmansk and had to stay over the winter. Women did most of the longshore work, including some very heavy stuff, but they were strikingly plain and unfriendly. The stay in Murmansk was decidedly unpleasant. In addition, German planes would raid on a regular basis so the ship was heavily camoflaged and covered with snow. At least half the ships that started out with them never made it back as they had to run a gauntlet off Norway where both planes and surface warships as well as subs attacked them. To say I was a bit tense about the thought of a return to Murmansk is quite an understatement. There was added compensation in extra pay for hazardous duty, a gross understatement, as it was damn near suicidal. Pay was of course doubled and each attack from a German plane or sub would add $100 to the payoff, if you lived to collect it. The men paid off with what then constituted an astronomical payday, i.e. $3000 or $4000 for almost a year. Not very much by today's standards, but multiply by at least a factor of 10 to get a current comparison.

I was on the 4-8 watch this time. Not bad at sea, but a nuisance in port as the corresponding port watch was 4-12 in the evening which shot to hell any social activity. My only choices were a movie and an hour or two at the Music Box. I didn't have much time to get annoyed as we were loaded shortly and headed out for England, not Murmansk thank goodness.

Once more the crossing was uneventful. The weather was about the best I ever encountered on the North Atlantic. We even had a lot of sunshine and the days were getting quite long. We pulled around the north of Ireland and down into the Irish sea to a little bay with a small town by the name of Milford Haven. We just sat there at anchor for several days without any information as to our destination. We weren't allowed to leave the ship as no knew when we would have to move. Finally we pulled out and headed north for Glasgow, deja vu!

It turned out, as we discovered later, that all hell was breaking loose a couple of hundred miles away at Normandy and we had been held ready for backup if needed. That is how close I came to being directly involved in D-Day even after leaving the Bienville. Today, I am convinced a that I was living a charmed life.

One of my fellow firemen was a little fellow from Massachusets. The three firemen shared a cabin (the cabins were about 6 by 10 feet) and we had time to get very well acquainted. His name was Richard and he was from a small town by name of Gardner. Richard had a well developed sense of humor that made him a very pleasant companion. He was about 5'5" and 130 pounds soaking wet so he didn't take up much space in our limited quarters. He had two passions, his motorcyle and his girl friend (I was never sure which came first.) He talked incessantly about them. His enthusiasm for his motorcycle was contagious. I determined that some day I would get one and tour the country. I did get a motorcycle while a student at Auburn, but I never got to tour the country.

Richard was deeply devoted to his girl friend. Before she entered his life, he admitted to being a woman chaser not caring for any consequences. Both he and his girl friend were Roman Catholic so when they got engaged, he had to go to confession. He laughed at how exercised the priest got at his recounting his escapades. It wasn't so funny when his girl friend had to wait for him to do his penance. Of course, he had to promise not to repeat his offenses and do an inordinate number of rosaries. I know now what that entailed, but not then so it didn't mean much to me that the girl had to wait for him to do them and get highly disturbed about the time it took. Richard used his favorite term to describe her annoyance, "Boy, was she bull s---!"

There were far fewer American Servicemen around than I had seen on previous trips. We were still unloading when it became obvious why - they were all involved in D-Day. Which brings me to think about the way we were supplied with news. Much of what we learned was from verbal reports from the bridge. About half the ships I was on had considerate wireless operators whom made up a one page daily news summary that got circulated around to everyone, and then it was only highlights. Much of what happened during the war was unknown to me until after when I could get hold of wartime stories and memoirs. Only between ships was I able to keep up. Aboard ship there were virtually no stories from reporters in the field. I developed a sort of indifference to what was going on except as it pertained directly to me and what risk I was under. My second interest was in where we were going (we seldom knew until we were at sea) and what were the chances of good shore leave.

To ease matters of shore leave, the firemen agreed to stand 12 hour watches so one could have a full 24 hour stretch off at a time. Richard and I and an AB pal of his from his home town, Tony, took off to see the town. Glasgow seemed quite somber compared to my earlier visits. We made our way to the dance hall I had been at before and found much less competition, but then not many girls. Richard was being true to his girl and just sat around and watched but Tony and I enjoyed ourselves.

Richard had to get back to the ship to go on watch by midnight. Tony disappeared later and I never could find out what he had done, but I am sure he did OK as he had been very attentive to one of the local girls. Being left to my own devices, I didn't recognize promising situations. Hindsight tells me I missed some opportunities, but I was too timid to pursue matters. That night I found a small hotel with a room and spent the night there rather than return to the ship. Could have used Russell's help. I got back to the ship in time for breakfast and to take the watch from Richard. I never did admit that I had struck out.

The most notable thing about the return trip was the fog we encountered. I have no idea how the ships managed to stay in some kind of order. The fog hit us just north of Ireland and stayed with us until we were a day out of New York. One day, about noon, I went out on deck and the fog had lifted briefly. The convoy was scattered as far as the eye could see. There was no semblence of order. The ships could 'communicate' by means of the steam whistle (radio transmission was prohibited) giving a coded blast every few minutes so the nearby ships would know we were there and vice versa. The ships whistle was of course operated with steam. Condensed steam would collect in the steam supply line and had to be blown out before the whistle would sound. The mates enjoyed just opening the valve a crack to let live steam bubble up and produce all manner of weird sounds. We were constantly being entertained by the mates' efforts to outdo each other's sound effects.

We reached New York about the end of July. It had been a relatively long trip for a shuttle to England, almost three months. I headed straight downtown as I wasn't on watch and managed a date with Lydia. I remember picking her up for dinner and a show that evening and having her put on a small concert for me on her Baby Grand Steinway. It was an overwhelming experience to listen to such an instrument in the hands of such an expert, in the confines of a somewhat small living room. I still remember her playing the Firedance for me - sight reading, as it was the first time she had ever played it. She was very good!

We had paid off on August 2, 1944 and as it had been almost a year since I had been home, I caught the first train South I could find. It was a bit less crowded than some other trips I had made. At least I didn't have to sit on my suitcase again. During this period, Mary, my older sister, had been attending Auburn so I arranged to break my trip there as the route passed through the town. I fell in love with Auburn and determined that I would go to school there after the war.

When I got home to Montrose, there was a letter from the Draft Board asking me to fill out another form. I still hadn't been classified. I must say they never gave me any trouble throughout the war. Not like some other seamen I knew who actually got draft notices while in foreign ports. The Baldwin County Draft Board had a good understanding of sea duty and knew I was serving my country and I always made sure they knew where I was at all times.

It didn't take me long to get tired of Montrose and catch a bus to New Orleans. I received my usual welcome from Mom McArthur. This time Chris Berg was now out of the military and in town so we got together a couple of times, but he was now married so there wasn't much for us to do but reminisce. I think I mentioned earlier that he had been on ships early in the war but had gotten his feet injured in an accident. Later he was drafted into the army, but his feet never fully returned to normal function, so he was given a discharge. While in the army, on one 14 day leave, he married his girl friend on the last day of the leave. It seems she thought she was pregnant. It turned out to be a false alarm, and as his family had been stongly opposed to the marriage, he was pressured into agreeing to an annulment. I never did understand why he didn't fight it, but it was a moot point as they promptly remarried as soon as he got out of the army.

I dated Pat Doyle several times during this layover and came as close to a commitment as I ever had but what turned me off finally was a sort of hardening I detected in her manner. She had gotten married and divorced while I was gone and had taken up smoking, rather foolish I thought in view of the shortage of cigarettes during the war, (at that time health questions had not fully surfaced and smoking was viewed as a harmless habit.) It was obvious that she was interested in more than just a show and dinner and dancing, but at the last second I backed out. Again, I just wasn't ready for any sort of commitment which was obviously implicit; not to mention that she made it plain she wanted to start a family immediatly, which plainly didn't fit in my plans for the future. After I left New Orleans this time, I never saw or heard from her again.

I had been off for almost a month and my money was gone. I headed down to the Union Hall.

BIENVILLE ...an Atlantic ferry boat...

CHARLES BRANTLEY AYCOCK ...unknown crisis points looming...