Tin Can Sailor

by Charles R. Calhoun

  Perry Hall was the junior officer-of-the-deck when the engagement started. Sensing that he could be of greater help at his damage control station on the main deck, he asked for and was granted permission to go below. This is his account, written in 1977, of what transpired from the time he arrived on the main deck after our encounter with the battleship:

  First I checked my 20-mm crew, who were watching intently the havoc around them. As we stood there, the starboard torpedo tubes released two torpedoes at a ship only a thousand yards away. The 5-inch battery commenced firing at the same ship. Then what had been a ghostly gray shape became a brilliant orange ship from stem to stern. It was as if a huge star shell had burst and illuminated the sea. It was like noon on a bright sunny day.

  The next thing I knew, I was thrown to the deck violently, landing in a sitting position and momentarily blacking out. I got up, dazed but with no apparent physical damage, except cuts and bruises. I realized that we had been hit. There were fires aft of the torpedo tubes, the number three gun had been hit, and I could see men jumping over the side with their clothes ablaze.

  I dashed forward to the wardroom . . . looking for the first lieutenant, Tiny Hanna. Tiny was assisting Doc Nyce with the wounded. I asked him what he wanted me to do. “Take charge of the after repair party,” he ordered. As I turned to leave, he noticed that I had been cut and asked if I needed attention. It was only minor compared to the carnage around us, so I just left.

  By the time I got out on deck the repair party had hoses playing on the fires. Unfortunately, shrapnel had pierced a number of the hoses topside, and pressure wasn’t all it should be. The decks were slippery with blood, and potatoes were scattered about—plus the ship was turning to avoid gunfire and other ships—so maintaining footing was a problem. The screams of the wounded pierced the night and mingled with the orders directing the fire fighting. I continued aft.

  The number four handling room was a near holocaust. Bits of burning bedding smoldered on the bunks, burnt bodies were scattered about the deck, and water poured into a shell hole just above the waterline whenever the ship heeled over. A 4- or 5-inch shell had passed through the ship and, miraculously, had not exploded. But the stench of burning flesh and powder made breathing difficult.

  Men appeared, and we started to stuff mattresses into the holes and used shoring to hold them in place. A fire hose was put into action to extinguish the burning materials that had fallen into the powder room and to cool the 5-inch powder cans. By this time water was streaming over the hatch coaming and helping to flood the magazine. Bodies, mattresses, and other debris sloshed back and forth with the movement of the ship. Footing was difficult, and battle lanterns provided the only light. I had no idea what time it was or where the ship was. I knew we were maneuvering with the screws because I couldn’t hear the rudder.

  Finally the fires were out and the holes were plugged. I made my way topside. The sudden burst of fresh air into my lungs made me feel almost faint. I suddenly realized the battle was over and I was still alive. The horror of the last hour hit me like a punch in the stomach, and I retched. As the luminous water rushed along the side of the ship I glanced up and looked aft to the scene of the battle. Flaming hulks blazed like sacrificial altars to the gods of war. I felt strangely detached, as if I were on another planet surveying the earth in miniature. I stumbled forward to the bridge and made my report to the captain.

  I arrived back in the pilothouse at 0345, in time to relieve Tom McWhorter as OOD (he had relieved Herb May shortly after we retired from the battle). We had made our way up to Florida Island, skirted its shoreline, steamed south toward Guadalcanal, and were about to turn to the east into Lengo Channel when I said, “I relieve you.” Tom immediately went below. Ahead were the first faint streaks of dawn. To starboard was the dark outline of Guadalcanal, only a mile or so away. On our port side, in the dim distance, was Florida Island. With no gyro and a magnetic compass that was behaving erratically, navigating that narrow channel was no easy task. Somehow, Frank Gould managed to feel his way through to safety.

  Until we entered Lengo Channel we had every reason to believe that we were the sole surviving ship of the task group. However, just as we turned east we intercepted voice radio broadcasts that revealed the existence of five companions somewhere ahead of us, still moving under their own power: the cruisers Helena, Juneau, and San Francisco and the destroyers O’Bannon and Fletcher were in Sealark Channel to our north and east. The Sterett was the last U.S. ship to steam away from the battle area. We reported our presence to the Helena—admirals Callaghan and Scott were both killed in the first few minutes of the action, and Capt. John Hoover of the Helena was now the senior officer present afloat (SOPA). We were directed to join up with the rest and take the screening station on the port bow of the formation. Captain Coward went to maximum speed, and we moved to our assigned station. As we steamed past the port side of the San Francisco, I counted twenty-six shell holes in her side. The Helena and the two destroyers in her screen, the O’Bannon and the Fletcher, appeared to be undamaged (we later discovered that the Helena had been hit but had suffered only superficial damage, while the two destroyers had not been hit). I could not help wondering about the fate of the other eight U.S. ships that had steamed into action with us just a few hours before.

  Now we started to piece together a more comprehensive picture of our condition. Eleven shell hits had caused extensive material damage topside, but compared to our personnel losses it seemed negligible. We had lost a total of thirty-two men—twenty-eight killed and four missing. Fourteen more lay critically injured with severe shrapnel wounds and third-degree burns. Others (such as those in the director crew) were also hurt and in need of medical treatment and in some cases hospitalization, but they are not included in the casualty figures. The loss of shipmates who had become close friends over the past three years tempered any elation we might have felt over the damage we inflicted on the enemy. We were a somber crew.

  AFTER RED HAMMACH WAS SHOT IN THE SEAT OF THE PANTS, he followed Peter Grimm’s instructions and reported to the wardroom. He was the first of the wounded to arrive there. Doc Nyce asked, “Where are you hit, Red?” When Hammack told him, Harry responded, “Drop your pants.”

  As Red loosened his belt, someone—probably Tiny Hanna—came through the wardroom door carrying Hawkins, a young torpedoman 2/c, in his arms. One of his legs hung from his knee by a shred of flesh, and he was bleeding profusely. As soon as Red saw Hawkins, he pulled up his dungarees and decided he had better do something else, like help with the fire fighting. Harry Nyce sensed Red’s reaction at once and said, “Hold it, Red. I need you here more than they do back aft. They have plenty of people to help with the fires, and I’m real shorthanded here.” Red was one of the fifteen people who had received Harry’s advanced first-aid training, and he stayed in the wardroom to help with the wounded. Recalling this experience, Hammack wrote:

  I have thought about Doc Nyce many times since then. . . . He was the calmest man I ever saw. I can see him now, quietly standing there as they brought the wounded in, some on stretchers, some in their arms. From time to time, Doc would point and say, “Take him out.” These were the ones who had died, or were so far gone he knew he couldn’t save them. I remember J. E. Robinson, from Dallas, lying in a wire stretcher. I said, “Robbie, what are you doing down there, goldbricking?” He smiled and said, “Yes, but don’t tell Stu” (the chief commissary steward, who was his boss). I said, “OK, I’ll give you just five minutes.” Robbie smiled again. “That’s about all it will take, Red.” Just a little while later Doc nodded for him to be taken out. I helped carry him out on deck, in the dark, on the starboard side of the uptakes. As I put my end of the stretcher down and straightened up, I looked aft over the midship deckhouse. I could see the reflection of the fires in the after part of the ship, and there in the light above gun number three, flying defiantly in the breeze, was Old Glory. The shadows danced back and forth as she waved, and the firelight
showed the familiar red and white stripes, and the blue field with its forty-eight white stars. I was suddenly filled with thoughts of home, and a feeling of pride and exhilaration swept over me. Thrilled by the sight, I shouted, “She’s still flying! We’re not through yet, you bastards.” And I thought, Francis Scott Key, you don’t have anything on us. We know that feeling too.

  Robbie died just a few moments later, as Red held his hand.

  Hammack returned to the wardroom and found “a whole bunch of guys, in stretchers, on the deck, or just sitting and waiting until Doc Nyce could get to them. Some were full of shrapnel holes, some were gut-shot, and some were badly burned. They were a great bunch of patients. There wasn’t a whimper from a single man in that wardroom, or for that matter from any man in the whole damn crew.”

  After I relieved Tom McWhorter on the bridge he made his way down to the wardroom. He was thinking about how good it would feel to get some sleep. Then he opened the wardroom door and saw the bloody assemblage of the wounded. Tom was aghast: in the stress of the moment he had forgotten the casualties. His gaze came to rest on three members of his torpedo gang who only minutes ago had performed so well in striking the enemy. All three were seriously wounded. They lay on the deck, seemingly in high spirits. Rhodes called out to him, “There’s that man from Texas!” Shrieves said, “We sure gave ’em hell, didn’t we? Did you see us get that tin can?” Rhodes added, “Yeah, and we sure knocked the hell out of that battleship!” But Hawkins was ominously silent. Tom replied, “You guys were wonderful.” Then he asked Harry Nyce how he could help. Doc handed him a jar of sulfathiazol paste and told him to use it. Tom’s first patient was a youngster with multiple shrapnel wounds. This is his description of what followed:

  I managed to get him to my bunk by some means, laid him out, and started cleaning his wounds with warm water, spreading sulfathiazol over them and bandaging them up. A radioman came in to help me, a man named Janzen.

  When we got that man fixed up we went back into the wardroom and got another. Some were suffering from shock, some from burns, and they had horrible wounds of all descriptions. There was not a whimper out of one of them.

  While giving first aid, I told Harry Nyce that if he needed me I would be available and then went about my work. I met Solloway in the passageway, and he told me that Jackson, Smitty [M. E. Smith], V.R.E. Martin, and almost the entire crew of the after guns had been killed. This was the first indication I had of the extent of our casualties.

  After a while Harry sent word for me to come back to sick bay. I finished up the man I was working on and hurried back. It was the first time I had been back near the heaviest damage, and because the sick bay was within ten feet of the number four handling room there was a putrid odor all about, the result of a combination of fire, burned flesh, blood, and death. It was unbearably hot. In sick bay, standing by the operating table, was the doctor, stripped down to his shorts for the heat. I followed suit.

  Hawkins was brought in and laid out on the operating table. . . . His right leg had to be amputated. . . . Doc stuck a hypodermic needle into Hawkins’s wrist, then gave it to me. “If he starts to pull out of it before we finish, give him another cc, Mac.” Hawkins quickly passed out as the sodium pentathol entered his bloodstream. He also had been hit by a metal fragment in his left eye, which had seemingly pierced the cornea. He had a deep wound at his left cheekbone, and numerous other wounds all over his body. The doctor patched him up as best he could and called for the next patient. We were very apprehensive about Hawkins. He could well have died, but some spirit held him on.

  Next came Shrieves, with a shattered leg but still in good humor. “You’re not going to have to cut it off, are you, Doc?” he asked, anxiously. “I don’t know, old man,” Harry said. “I’ll do all I can to save it.” But this was just small talk, because the doctor knew it was hopeless. “I’ll keep my fingers crossed, Doc.” And as Shrieves passed out from the anesthesia, his fingers were still crossed in a futile little gesture. They remained crossed throughout the operation. . . . His leg had to be amputated.

  Shrieves had just fired his torpedoes at the Jap destroyer when two 5-inch shells struck the port torpedo tube and exploded. Large fragments were thrown across to the starboard side, shattering the metal seats that he and Hawkins were sitting on. In danger of bleeding to death, Shrieves stayed on his seat until he saw the torpedoes strike home. Then, from out of nowhere, Chief Gunner’s Mate Hodge appeared, applied tourniquets to Shrieves’s and Hawkins’s legs, and helped carry the two wounded men up to the wardroom.

  The next man on the operating table was L. A. Martin. He was on a morphine jag, and in spite of his multiple wounds he was singing out that his name was “L-A-A-A Martin.” He had a shattered left leg, injuries around his head and chest, and some ominous shrapnel holes in his abdomen. We got to work on his leg first. . . .

  Doc and I were smoking one cigarette after another during all of this time. They helped enormously. The doc was doing a masterpiece of first-aid surgery—not a slack or hesitant motion throughout the ordeal. He was fighting hard for the lives of our shipmates. There was an incident. . . that did cause him to stop temporarily: he spilled some alcohol on the front of his shorts, and the stuff flowed down to his crotch. He howled with pain and danced around before he washed it off and cooled down with water. None of us could keep from laughing at him at the most unfunny time of our lives.

  Red Spaulding was brought in next. He was in such bad shape that the doc held him until almost last. . . . Red was one of the most unforgettable men of my life. He was a red-headed, freckle-faced kid that I had known ever since he came aboard as an apprentice seaman; he was courteous and hard-working, with a personality that made me want to “run” him as I would a good plebe at the Academy. . . . But there was no doubt that I liked him and he liked me. I had personally given him his semaphore and blinker tests a couple of months before, when he was going up for his rate of coxswain. A little coaching and he made it in a breeze.

  Back in the wardroom, when we began carrying men back to sick bay for surgery Red had remarked, “I wonder why they don’t take me now?” Then he thought a little while and said, “Well, I guess those other fellows need it worse than I do.” Though he was being given large amounts of blood plasma, he did not realize that the real reason was that his case was hopeless. . . . When he was carried in and stretched out on the operating table, he was still conscious and in good humor. Just then we dropped some depth charges in an embarrassing barrage on a submarine. The ship shook as the big charges blasted away. It was unexpected, and since we were jittery anyway from our recent surface action I was afraid that it would disturb Spaulding. To reassure him I remarked, “We’re just kicking the hell out of their submarines now, Red. Just routine. Nothing to worry about.” He might well have been trying to calm me down when he replied, “Sure, Mac. We’ll get ’em the same way we did last night.” Then we passed a few more remarks. When I was trying to get a morphine serrette through his skin, he said, “That arm is a tough one, Mac.” I agreed—“Just like iron, Red”—and I wasn’t just talking, either. “When old Doc Nyce gets through fixing you up, you will be like a new man, Red.” “I hope so, Mac.” Then the anesthetic took effect, and Red passed out with a faint smile on his lips. It was the last thing he ever said.

  Harry Nyce began the hopeless task of doing what he could for Spaulding. . . . I was holding Red’s hand with the hypodermic needle still in the vein of his wrist all through the short operation. Then I felt his pulse stop and told Nyce. He confirmed it; Red had bled to death internally.

  During this time in the operating room, Red Spaulding had paid me the greatest compliment I have ever received; courteous to the letter and always respectful, . . . Red had repeatedly called me “Mac” while he was dying, with a naturalness in his voice as if he had always called me that. . . . Harry Nyce patted him on the arm and said solemnly, “You were a great boy, Red.” And those were the sentiments of all of us.

&nb
sp; WHILE TOM AND HARRY ENGAGED IN THEIR LIFE-AND-DEATH STRUGGLES in sick bay, the Sterett chased after the Helena, San Francisco, O’Bannon, and Fletcher. We caught up with them at 0600. It was comforting to be in the company of friends again, instead of being the lone American ship. As the day gradually dawned, we felt more secure. By this time we had a fair idea of the fates of our other companions who had not been able to retire under their own power. We already had surmised that the Cushing and the Laffey had been lost because we had seen the punishment they had taken. We were saddened to learn that the Atlanta was also gone, along with the Barton and the Monssen, and that the Portland was badly damaged and had to remain behind to lick her wounds in Tulagi. The Aaron Ward was also banged up and would have to be fixed in Tulagi (Watso would soon steam up there in the Vestal to repair both ships).

  We also discovered that not only admirals Callaghan and Scott but also Capt. Cassin Young, skipper of the San Francisco, had been killed in the first few minutes of the engagement. Rank provided no protection: the battle had taken its toll of officers as well as enlisted men, mute confirmation of the fact that we were all in it together. As to Japanese casualties and losses, we knew that the battleship we had targeted was the Heie, that she was dead in the water at daybreak, and that our planes continued to work her over. We wrote her off as a kill. We were also certain that one destroyer had been sunk and one light cruiser damaged. Beyond that, we would have to wait for our intelligence reports. Most important, we knew that our task group had completely thwarted the mission of the Tokyo Express on 13 November 1942.