Tin Can Sailor

by Charles R. Calhoun

  Daylight was accompanied by a growing awareness of the death and devastation the enemy had wrought upon our shipmates and our ship. The natural reaction to long hours of tension started to show in faces, and those men who had lost close friends were especially touching to see. One sailor in particular, who had known Jackson for many years, just sat and stared into space, saying over and over, “They got Jack.” All of us looked the worse for wear, particularly Jeff: a shrapnel wound in his scalp had spilled blood all over his khaki shirt, and his left trouser leg was stiff with blood from the laceration in the seat of his pants.

  I had climbed in and out of smoldering compartments strewn with debris, dead bodies, and soot and awash with seawater from the fire fighting. I needed a shower and clean clothes, but I said many prayers of thanksgiving. I was all in one piece. My main concern was over the welfare of Tiny Hanna. He was the only officer (with the exception of Harry Nyce, who I knew was all right) whom I had not seen since the action started. Viewing the two after gun mounts from the bridge, I recalled how they had looked up close when I inspected them earlier. I knew that Tiny’s battle station was in that general vicinity, and I did not see how he could have escaped injury. Yet I could not bring myself to ask specifically about him; I was afraid the reply would be that he had been killed. So I just kept quiet and waited.

  At about 0930 I heard someone climbing the ladder to the bridge, and when I turned around there was Tiny, big as life—which was plenty big. He smiled and took my hand in his big paw. “Damn glad you made it, Cal.” I responded in kind and said another silent prayer of thanks. Later I learned that Tiny had almost single-handedly removed the wounded from gun number three after it had been hit. He had been standing alongside a stack of potato crates, and when the shells landed on the other side of the crates the hundreds of shrapnel fragments that would otherwise have hit him lodged harmlessly in the potatoes instead. After helping to remove the wounded from the gun mount, he stood down on the main deck and, without assistance, took each stretcher as it was passed down to him and lowered it to the deck. Others then joined him to carry their wounded shipmates to the battle dressing stations for first aid. When I saw Tiny that morning his uniform was torn and covered with blood, and he was still working at the most gruesome task of all—removing dead bodies from the gun handling rooms. Some of our sailors had started the grim work of sewing the remains of their lost comrades into canvas sacks, readying them for burial.

  Harry Nyce had performed his duties in superb fashion. His foresight-ed preparations were a blessing. He had distributed well-selected first-aid equipment to each of several subdressing posts and outfitted the wardroom as the main battle dressing station in a thorough manner. As the wounded began to arrive he received, evaluated, and administered emergency first-aid treatment to them in the wardroom. Then, when it became apparent that he was going to be overwhelmed by the number of casualties, he transferred his base to the little sick bay. Had he begun surgery too soon, the fate of many of the wounded would have rested on judgments made by the pharmacist’s mates as to which man was in greatest need of a skilled surgeon’s services. (I am confident that their judgments would have been sound, but they could not have compared to those of a veteran of several thousand operations.) His first anesthetist was Coleman Conn, signalman 1/c, who, although inexperienced and thoroughly sickened by what he observed, deserved the highest praise for his work. He stayed with Harry until relieved by Tom McWhorter at about 0400. It was 0930 when the doc finished with Red Spaulding and proceeded to the officer’s staterooms. The Sterett’s builders had not provided beds for the care of critically wounded men, so we put them in the officers’ bunks. Thank heaven there were exactly enough bunks to handle them! Harry continued his treatment of those in critical condition in the staterooms until we were able to transfer them to a hospital ship on the fourteenth.

  IT MUST HAVE BEEN 0930 WHEN I LEFT THE BRIDGE. I went below to the galley and fixed myself a sandwich. Then I walked through the wardroom to the stateroom I shared with Doc Nyce. In Harry’s bunk was a young machinist’s mate 1/c named Parkis with nasty shrapnel wounds in his right leg. Below him in my bunk was Hawkins, who had lost one eye and had had his leg amputated. Parkis was cheerful and talkative, but Hawkins was only semiconscious and was barely able to ask for water. I had just walked across the passageway to look in on some of the others when the general alarm rang again. “Oh, God,” I thought. “Not now!” Then I raced back to the gun director.

  As I passed the bridge Herb May told me that one of the cruisers had reported an unidentified plane astern of us. We all remembered that two Japanese carriers were reported to be somewhere in the vicinity, and enemy aircraft were especially unwelcome at that point—we had no fighter cover and would barely be able to defend ourselves with our damaged guns. The director crew all reported at their stations despite their wounds, and there we waited. I perched on top of the director and scanned the northern sky for approaching aircraft. Through my binoculars I could see the crews of the three cruisers at their gun stations. The Helena was two thousand yards away on our starboard quarter, and behind her were the San Francisco and the Juneau, each about seven hundred yards apart. A few scattered clouds did little to block the hot sun. On our port side some twenty miles away (but looking much closer) was the large island of San Cristobal. Behind us and still clearly visible was Guadalcanal, some fifty or sixty miles distant.

  I noted that the O’Bannon was absent from the screen and remembered that she had been dispatched to take a position sufficiently removed from the formation so that she could send a summary of the previous night’s action without the Japanese plotting her location (and thus ours) by radio direction finder. That left only the Fletcher and Sterett to provide antisubmarine protection, and the Sterett was little help because our sonar control circuits had been damaged. But we were making good speed, and it occurred to me that a Japanese sub would have to be sitting right on our projected track to get a shot at us.

  I examined the cruisers again. The San Francisco looked like the battle-scarred veteran she was. She was badly damaged near her bridge, where she had absorbed heavy shell hits, and in the vicinity of her after conning station, where she had been hit by the Japanese plane the day before. Also plainly visible were the twenty-six holes I had seen earlier in her port side. The Helena had reported being hit in the area around her aircraft crane, but I could not see any sign of damage and wondered how she could have sailed through the thick of it (and I knew she had—I had seen her) without an apparent scratch. Then I turned my glasses to look at the Juneau. I knew that she had reported being hit with a torpedo just a few hours before. Again, I could discern no visible sign of the damage. She kept up with formation speed, and I watched admiringly as she steamed along with a bone in her teeth, looking very much like an overgrown destroyer. I examined her bristling armament, her multitude of 5-inch guns, and thought, She’s beautiful. One of her signalmen started to send a message. I put my binoculars down and continued to stare her way.

  Without the slightest warning, she exploded—disintegrated—in a tremendously violent blast. I watched with horror as whole 5-inch gun barrels flew hundreds of feet into the air. Huge pieces of the ship’s superstructure were hurled sky-high in lazy parabolic curves. A gigantic column of black and gray smoke went up for thousands of feet. Yellow and orange flames flashed at the center of the explosion for the first few seconds, but soon there was only an immense cloud of smoke, which seemed to hang motionless for minutes. Slowly, the bottom of the cloud started to rise off the water’s surface. I put my binoculars to my eyes, anxious to see what was left.

  Nothing appeared in the space the Juneau had occupied only a few minutes before. There was not a stick, or a spar, or a boat, or a life buoy; nor was a single man visible. I strained to see a head, or a body; but as the smoke cleared, I could see absolutely nothing. Only then did I look at Jeff, and both of us mouthed the words simultaneously—“Jesus Christ.” No words, then or now, could pos
sibly express the shock and the despair that we felt over the loss of the gallant Juneau. It was the most horrendous tragedy I have ever witnessed.

  Still utterly incapable of comprehending what we had just seen, those of us in the director simply looked at one another, speechless, for several minutes. The Juneau was gone—completely and entirely—within the space of a few seconds. As far as we could determine, she had taken every one of her heroic sailors with her when she went.

  A submarine attack seemed like the most logical explanation. But I began to wonder if the cause of the explosion could have been aboard the ship. I knew that she had been torpedoed during the night engagement, and I thought of our own damage and our many severed electrical lines. I wondered if the Juneau had suffered similar damage to a magazine, which then exploded due to a short circuit. I turned the director over to J. D. and (after a stop on the bridge to get Jess Coward’s concurrence) went below to order our shipfitter to reflood the magazine. I had told him to pump it out an hour or two earlier, but now I countermanded that order. I did not want the Sterett to risk a similar explosion.

  By the time I returned to the director our lookouts had seen two explosions on the starboard horizon. We concluded that they were the self-destruct detonations of two or more fish from the same submarine that had fired on the Juneau. Obviously that sub had been at the right place at the right time (or the wrong time, from our perspective). We had probably gone right over her. Still, we left the after magazine flooded. The formation was zigzagging radically now, and a B-17 showed up to cover us. Even that one Flying Fortress provided a much-needed sense of protection.

  We secured from general quarters, and I went below once more to visit the wounded. All were in critical condition, but their spirit and determination were inspiring to us all. In the stateroom next to ours were three casualties. As I walked through the doorway the first one I encountered was Shrieves, who had lost a leg. He turned his head to see who had come in. “Hello, Shrieves,” I said. “How do you feel?” His face was pale, the result of shock and loss of blood. He smiled and said, “Pretty good now. The only trouble is that damned fly that keeps walking around on my foot [pointing to his stump] and tickling me—chase him away, will you?” I patted his shoulder and walked over to the lower bunk to check on Richard Skutely (seaman 1/c), who had suffered severe burns on his face, shoulders, arms, and hands. “Skute” was one of the most likable youngsters on the ship, and one of the most capable seamen. I leaned over and spoke to him, and although he could not see through his swollen eyes he recognized my voice and said, “Mr. Calhoun? Oh, I feel swell. We sure did give those bastards hell, didn’t we?” I assured him we had and went on to look at the others. Many were still unconscious, but without exception those who could speak voiced concern over nothing but the ship, their shipmates, and how much damage we had inflicted on the enemy. I knew that the Sterett could not take full credit for anything but the destroyer, but I vowed that when these kids went over the side in their stretchers they would see the painted silhouettes of a battleship and a cruiser on our bridge as well as the destroyer that had already been put up there as our legitimate “kill.” We could erase the other two later.

  The Sterett had only two pharmacist’s mates and would have experienced a sad shortage of trained first-aid personnel if not for the far-sighted program started by Doc Scharbius while we were in the Atlantic. Harry Nyce kept it going, not only giving general instructions to the entire crew but also conducting the special, advanced course for fifteen particularly well qualified men that was mentioned earlier. Their long months of training paid handsome dividends. In addition to their invaluable first-aid work during the battle, these men administered continuously to the needs of the critically wounded for the seventy-two hours when their lives hung in the balance. One of these specialists was a youngster named Seymour.

  Stationed in the number four 5-inch gun mount, Seymour received severe burns on his hands and arms when ready service ammunition caught fire. Despite this, he was able to train a hose on the fire, minimizing the damage. Not satisfied with that performance, he devoted himself to the care of his wounded shipmates. For three days, with little if any sleep, he helped to feed them, brought them water, and in general rendered the most valuable sort of assistance without any thought to his own painful injuries. Others in the special advanced program included Hiram Hodge (who saved the lives of Hawkins and Shrieves by applying tourniquets to their injured legs), C. E. Conn, W. R. Hammack, C. R. Lovas, and F. A. Boudreaux. All of these men were officially cited for their outstanding performance in the captain’s action report of 20 December 1942. There must have been ten more who deserved special commendation, but unfortunately I do not know who they were.

  AFTER THE LOSS of the Juneau we noted that the SOPA, Captain Hoover of the Helena, did not detach a ship to return to the scene and search for possible survivors. From Captain Coward on down the line, we all felt that Hoover’s decision was sound. In fact, it seemed like the only logical course: most of us were sure that there were no survivors and that any ship sent back for rescue purposes would also be lost. The Japanese sub that got the Juneau was no doubt waiting there, hoping to get a shot at the rescue destroyer.

  After lunch Captain Coward, Frank Gould, and I gathered in the wardroom to begin the task of compiling a meaningful action report. The first thing we discovered—though it came as no surprise to us—was that no member of the bridge watch had recorded the times of events as they occurred. If one imagines for a moment what the Sterett bridge was like during the battle—shells flying in every direction, the ship darkened, our own guns firing just a few feet in front of the bridge windows, and the torpedo gang scurrying from one side to the other to reach first one target and then another—it becomes apparent that keeping an accurate log was an impossibility. As a result, the log and the action report were constructed later. We tried to make reasonable estimates of precisely when things happened, but I am certain that we achieved only a modicum of accuracy and completeness.

  The three of us agreed on the sequence of events that is laid out in this narrative. We were also in agreement on what we saw when we encountered the battleship, the cruiser, and the Fubuki-class destroyer. All of us were absolutely sure that we had observed the Sterett’s 5-inch gun shells hit the cruiser, the battleship, and the destroyer with telling effect; the many fires in the Heie’s superstructure; enemy shells strike the Cushing, Laffey, Atlanta, and San Francisco; sailors dive overboard from the battleship; the violent explosion of the enemy destroyer; and two huge, red underwater explosions in the vicinity of the battleship’s after and midship areas at the time when we expected our torpedoes to hit.

  Our action report reflected the careful consideration that took place in that post-mortem session. I assume it was the best summary Captain Coward could put together in the time that was available to him. But I should point out for the benefit of historians who seek to document specific details (and especially to reconstruct the movements of each participant in the Third Battle of Savo Island) that the accuracy of at least some of the written official records is doubtful. Given the circumstances that prevailed on all but one of the ships of Task Group 67.4 (the Fletcher, which was the last ship in the column and thus may have avoided the center of the melee), I question whether any of them was able to record events with sufficient accuracy to provide the requisite data for such an analysis.

  Although we first conferred on the preparation of the report on 13 November, it took the skipper a full week to write it, have it typed, and sign it. Even then, it contained many typographical errors. I note this not as a criticism but as an indication of how hectic a period this was for him. I did not see the report until after it was delivered, but I was given a chance to contribute recommendations for awards based on my own observations. I made such recommendations for six people:

  • Jeffrey, J. D., Lt, USN: For his cool and efficient performance of duty as assistant gunnery officer, when, after being struck in the back and
head by shrapnel, he remained at his post until relieved by the gunnery officer during a lull in the action. Silver Star.

  • Hall, Perry, Ens., USN: For his courage in personally supervising and engaging in the fire fighting below decks. Silver Star.

  • Hodge, H. J., CGM: For his immediate, courageous, and efficient action after the ship was hit by enemy shells. He assessed the damage, took charge in the vicinity of the number three and number four handling rooms, fought the fire, removed the wounded, and personally removed ready service ammunition that was on the point of exploding. Navy Cross.

  • Keenum, L. G., CTM: For his assistance in fighting the fire on gun number three and in the number three handling room, and for his heroic action in entering the flames from this handling room in order to operate the magazine flooding valves, an action that may well have saved the ship. Navy Cross.

  • Shelton, J. W., FC 1/c: For his cool and efficient performance of duty as rangefinder operator, when, after being painfully wounded by shrapnel, he calmly identified silhouettes as they appeared, gave target angles and speeds, and ranged under the most trying conditions. Silver Star.

  • Byers, R. O., BM 1/c: For his cool and efficient performance of duty as director trainer, when, after being wounded by shrapnel, he stuck to his post until ordered by the gunnery officer to leave during a lull in the action. Silver Star.