Let me guess, he ate a Mauser round on his second day in the field.
-Penguin
No, that was one of his older brothers on the first day of the Normandy Landings whom he had little contact with since great Gma and great Gpa seperated and him, as one of the older of the two eldest boys, went with her to help support her, you f!@#$ng socialy rejected spaz. Not that your head has any interest in becoming more intelligent than your mouth, but he's actualy been written about in a book as he played in the '41 Army-Navy football game for the Army, right before Pearl Harbor happened. He lived and recovered, eventualy retired from the army as a Colonel.
My grandfather though almost went into the Marines where the batch of draftees he was drafted with went imediatley to Iwo after boot camp and didn't fair too well. Luckily the Navy CB at the Navy/Marines desk noticed his occupation as a welder and slipped his aplication as the first one for the day into the Navy pile. Through training some of his instructors had known about or were friends with one or more of his older brothers, so he was just finishing submarine training and getting steered to an eastern front outfit to fight the germans like most his brothers when, as the battle for Iwo came to a close and the remnants of the German Navy scarcely to be found afloat, he got assigned as a welder with limited german literacy and connections because of his brothers to dissasemble a captured German U-boat. That bought him enough time on the east coast to last him through VE day the shift of manpower to the pacific in preperation for the invasion of Japan. Just as he had been reasigned to a brand new sub that was set to sail within a couple days to Panama and into the Pacific, the war ended. His sub's deployment was cancelled and he loafed around on the east coast for a few months. Finally he was picked to be part of two sub crews that were assigned the two oldest and least sea-worthy pre-WWII diesel subs in the yard. The crews spent over two months getting these subs preped for the trip from the east coast to panama and onward to pearl, the mission was top secret, but a bit of a joke to them because of the state of the equipment they had been assigned for this "top secret" mission.
The deployment date came and they set sail for Panama. Being old stinky diesel subs and the war just ending, both elected to sail in formation to pearl together while surfaced as much as weather would possibley permit. As they came around the Florida panhandle on the way to panama they got hit by I think two hurricanes. The first they set cource straght through, planning to simply submerge a few meters and sail unscathed through. This in effect broke communication and formation between the subs as they submerged below the surface.
On my grandfathers sub, their old sub's conning tower had portholes so an observer could see through. During the two (relatively shallow) test dives back at port there was no problem with them. An hour or two after initialy submerging through the storm it got signifigantly more violent top-side, and the sub was forced to dive deeper than it had before during the test dives. Two of these portholes seals failed imediatley upon diving to the further depth. Their sub, submerged and under notable pressure, started to take on water at an alarming and uncontrolable rate for the sub's bilges, and with battery power failing and a raging huricane above they had no choice but to surface. This storm was violent, it picked up their sub and kicked it around like a tin can, flipping it, spinning it, twisting it over end for end. My grandfather swears on his life that this first storm picked up their sub into the air and spun it around a few times at least twice. It knocked out all 4 diesel engines, they were without power now and at the complete mercy of the sea for hours on end. The damage to the porthole seals earlier was still leaking in water as the tower would go under water more than it would be right-side up and dry in the storm. This would turn out to be a godsend though as the sea water flowing into the sub would regularly rince the men of the battery acid now swilling around inside with them all.
The first storm passed after a long while. Damage was extensive and many men were injured. The sub, arleady operating with skeleton crews and few spare parts given the simplicity of the mission, was lucky to be afloat. For the next two days my grandfather worked as the only trained welder on the sub to repair as much as he could, starting with the ballasts so they could keep their leaking conning tower up and out of the sea, giving the men manualy pumping the bilges a break. The one uninjured mechanist and navigator barely got one of the four diesel engines to fire up. The radios were out, they got soaked, their only hope was to dry them out and hope one would work later.
A second hurricane came, it was milder than the first, it only rolled the sub a couple times. It's major drawback was knocking out their power again and sole working diesel engine, and also setting back progress to a second engine which would of allowed them to begin under way again on their own power. This second storm injured the mechanist, and disabled him. My grandfather and another man worked together under the mechanists direction and by the end of the day had two engines up and running.
They were now, very slowly, sailing onward to panama. Another day or two passed where they were essentialy trying their luck with the radios. Luckily, suspecting they may be broadcasting operationaly, they left those in the best shape on. This allowed the second submarine they were traveling with to locate them. They took on their wounded and towed the limping sub to panama where they arrived a week late but everyone accounted for.
While transiting panama, still under tow from the other sub, they recieved all the replacement parts they needed and were back in shape, with spares, within a few days as they entered the pacific and had their crews beefed up a little as well. My grandfather, electing to stay with the old stinking sub and see the trip through, was rewarded with two aditional welders to do all his duties for him and the skipper allowed him and anyone else from the first leg of the trip all the deck time he wanted to fish or sunbathe on their last leg of the trip to hawaii, which went without incident or any need to submerge.
It was during these days of blissful sailing in the pacific and his time in hawaii that my grandfather decided he liked the big blue ocean a lot more than the Atlantic and after his service to settle with my grandmother and move out west to live by it.
On their remaining way to Pearl the skipper divulged to my grandfather that the subs "top secret" mission was to partake in something the highest brass was all gitty about and was calling Operation Crossroads which was to be some nuclear tests. That once they got to pearl they were to simply twittle around in port preparing the subs with test equipment before the still undetermined date they were to get towed to the secret location.
Luckily and thankfuly for my grandfather his time ran up just a month or two before the Crossroads tests took place after being repeatedly delayed. Poor soul was stuck in post-war Hawaii with all that time to kill.
