Letter to the editor

During my tour of duty as a torpedoman in the navy I served on a destroyer escort, riding shotgun on convoys carrying troops and supplies to Oran, a port city on the coast of North Africa. Since our ship did not carry torpedoes I was assigned to the maintenance and operation of Kguns,devices upon which rested depth charges which were barrel-like objects containing 750 pounds of TNT. They were designed to blow up and sink submarines before they could attack and sink the ships in the convoy that we were escorting, There were four torpedomen on board our ship and we generally stood watch to-gether on the fantail (the back deck of the ship) We had become a close knit unit and were very much comrades in arms. So close in fact that we had formed a barber shop quartet or, to be more accurate, a bar room quartet, harmonizing old tunes, singing our hearts out in weather fair and fowl, in seas rough and smooth. In actuallity we were dreadful. The rest of our ship mates stayed well clear of us when we were in full voice. The singers were" Sal Salinetro Of New York, Mouse Iwanowski of Bayone, N.J., Hershel 'Swabhead' Brown of Alabama and myself, the only Connecticut Yankee on the ship. One stormy night while the four of us were hiding under the tarp on the rear gun mount, our sonar picked up the prop sounds of a Uboat lurking close by. German Uboats usually travelled in wolf packs of seven or eight. We proceeded to follow the beeping sounds until we were fairly sure we were within striking distance of the Uboat we had picked up on the underwater detection sonar unit, and proceeded to fire off the depth charges. These charges were set to explode on impact or when they were within 50 feet of the steel hulls of the submarines. We couldn't tell if we had made any hits, because nothing came to the surface to indicate that we had. No oil, no debris and no body parts, consequentially we ceased operations and returned to our position in the convoy. The next day the four of us was summoned to the captains quarters.

He proceeded to inform us that he was contacted by the captain of the Uboat we were attempting to destroy. The German captain said that prior to our engagement, his radio operator had picked up what sounded like singing from our ship. He went on to say that if he ever encountered our ship again, he would gladly surrender his boat rather than endure another minute of such horrible screeching. Our captain cut off contact with the German skipper and stared at us for a minute. Then he said, "boys, far be it for me to consort with the enemy, but if I ever hear a sound coming from you four while you're standing watch other than "thar she blows", I'll have you court marshalled and thrown in the brig for the duration of the war." We decided that in the interest of our careers and self preservation that we disband and terminate the "Singing swabbies" quartet post haste.

War is Hell.