Proudly We Served
The book has been brought to publication with the generous assistance of Marguerite and Gerry Lenfest.
Naval Institute Press
291 Wood Road
Annapolis, MD 21402
© 1995 by Mary Pat Kelly
Foreword © 1999 by the U.S. Naval Institute, Annapolis, Maryland
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
First Bluejacket Books printing, 1999
New Preface and Acknowledgments published in 2015.
ISBN: 978-1-61251-818-3 (eBook)
The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows:
Kelly, Mary Pat.
Proudly we served : the men of the USS Mason / Mary Pat Kelly.
p.cm.
1. USS Mason (Destroyer escort) 2. World War, 1939–1945—Naval operations, American. 3. Afro-American seamen—History—20th century. 4. United States—Armed Forces—History—20th century.
I. Title.
D774.M36K451995
940.54’5973—dc20
94-23820
Print editions meet the requirements of ANSI/NISO z39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper).
232221201918171615987654321
First printing
Unless otherwise noted, all photos are taken from the collection of James W. Graham and are used with his permission.
Frontispiece: Silhouetted against their ship and the snow are two of the Mason’s 160 enlisted black crewmen on commissioning day, 20 March 1944. (National Archives)
To the men of the Mason and their families
and Gary Salt,
who always steered a
true course
Contents
Foreword, by John H. Dalton
Preface
Acknowledgments
Prologue
Chapter One Signing Up
Chapter Two Boots
Chapter Three Rated
Chapter Four Commissioning and Shakedown
Chapter Five Maiden Voyage
Chapter Six Convoy NY-119
Chapter Seven Contacts
Chapter Eight Steaming as Before
Chapter Nine Moored
Chapter Ten Aweigh
Epilogue
Appendix A
Appendix B
Appendix C
Index
Foreword
Pride and gratitude are the two emotions that come to mind when I think about the USS Mason and the men who served in her. I also feel this way when contemplating the important work Mary Pat Kelly has added to the annals of naval history. The story of the Mason quite possibly would have been lost among many from World War II had it not been for the tireless efforts of the Destroyer Escort Sailors Association, the USS Mason Association—and Mary Pat Kelly. Speaking for the Department of the Navy, I can say that we are grateful for their efforts—and we treasure the result.
Thankfully, times have changed for the better, though not without struggle. I am proud of where our U.S. Navy and Marine Corps are today in equal treatment for people of all colors, religions, and ethnic backgrounds. There will always be room to improve, but today’s forces are strangers to the obstacles that faced the men of the Mason and their contemporaries. I have been particularly struck by the reaction of young African American midshipmen at the Naval Academy to the story of the Mason. Many were shocked. Such circumstances seem incomprehensible to them based on their own life experience. This is both good and bad. It is a positive development in the sense that the oppressive environment in which the Mason sailors served is gone and unknown to today’s service members. The downside is that until recently the Mason’s story had not been told. Mary Pat Kelly’s work goes a long way in correcting this injustice.
I hope that the Navy Department, in some small measure, contributed to righting this wrong. I had the distinct pleasure to issue a commendation to the crew of the Mason in 1995. That commendation was originally recommended in 1944, but not delivered. I felt the power there, of these quiet men of dignity, men who proudly served and excelled in combat—despite the way in which they were shunned. I saw the grace with which they received the commendation, so many years later. A piece of paper does not go very far in righting the pervasive injustice that was done so many years ago. I do know, however, as the men of the Mason viewed the graduation and commissioning of the U.S. Naval Academy Class of 1993, they realized that their pioneering service had paved the way for the men and women of color who were crossing the stage to accept their roles as the future leaders of the naval service. It is my hope, also, that by naming one of our newest destroyers USS Mason (DDG 87), we can propagate the proud heritage of the original USS Mason well into the twenty-first century, passing on to future generations the importance of her example.
I hope that you enjoy Proudly We Served as much as I have—it is both an enjoyable read and an important contribution to our naval and American heritage.
JOHN H. DALTON
Secretary of the Navy
Preface to the 2015 Paperback Edition
“Ossie Davis playing me in a movie about my ship?! What a blessing! Just meeting him made me feel like a little kid,” said Lorenzo DuFau, ninety-five, one of the 160 men of the USS Mason DE 529, the only African American sailors to take a U.S. Navy warship into combat during World War II. After all, DuFau explained, Ossie Davis wasn’t just a great actor, writer, and director, but an activist who had worked with both Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X. He understood the significance of the USS Mason story in the struggle for civil rights.
“Remember the Navy was segregated when I enlisted in 1942,” DuFau said, “with a whole separate branch for black men. We could only be cooks or stewards or laborers; even had to wear a different uniform. But then the Navy needed manpower to fight a two-ocean war and the seaman’s branch was opened to us. I was in the first class at Great Lakes of black man to get rates. I was a signalman. But we still weren’t allowed to go to sea and fight. Then came the USS Mason—an experiment. Could black men measure up?”
They did—escorting convoys of vital troops and materials across a North Atlantic teeming with Nazi U-boat Wolf Packs. But while the commodore of Convoy NY 119 recommended the crew for Letters of Commendation for their heroism during what has been called “the storm of the century,” the honor was never awarded. The war ended. For fifty years it seemed as if the Navy had forgotten its black pioneers. But the men, led by Radioman First Class James W. Graham, never stopped trying to get their story told.
This book, published in 1995, was a first step. The PBS documentary Proudly We Served: The Men of the USS Mason, winner of a CINE Golden Eagle, was a second step. Still the Navy resisted awarding the men the Letters of Commendation, even after the original recommendation was found in the Navy’s archives. “Then the Secretary of the Navy, John Dalton, learned about the USS Mason and got things moving,” DuFau recalled. “In 1995 we finally received our commendation. But were we reaching young people? They were the ones who needed to know that the USS Mason was an important part of American history.”
Shortly after September 11, 2001, Mr. DuFau met Tommy Hilfiger. “Mr. DuFau and his shipmates are real American heroes,” Hilfiger said. “After 9/11 I felt we really needed our heroes, and movies are the way to reach a large audience.” He set up TH Entertainment to produce Proud. His daughter, Ally, acted as producer, long-time associate Sheila Cox was co-producer, and I was the writer-director. Ossie Davis headed a cast of talented young actors, with Oscar nominee Stephen Rea playing the Irishma
n who welcomed the crew to Northern Ireland, their first foreign port. “Where we were treated like Americans for the first time,” DuFau said. Proud was shown at festivals and in theaters, and it is still being broadcast on television. “Our dream was coming true,” DuFau said.
Then Lonnie G. Bunch, founding director of the Smithsonian Institution National Museum of African American History and Culture, became a champion of the USS Mason story. “As a historian, I am drawn to stories that though little known have helped to transform a people or a nation,” Bunch said. “The USS Mason—one of the earliest World War II naval combat vessels crewed primarily with African Americans—is such a story. By countering the prevailing notions of black inferiority, the men of the Mason helped to win both the battle against the Axis powers and the battle at home against racism and discrimination. As a nation, we have been made better by the determination and skill of the crew of the Mason.” For this reason the story of the USS Mason will be featured in the museum.
“And the Navy named a ship for us!” DuFau said. “So now the Mason sails again.” The USS Mason (DDG 87), the only ship ever named for a crew, is carrying the story of these African American sailors into the new century, where the diversity of the Navy reaches all the way up to the commander-in-chief. “Growing up in New Orleans,” DuFau said, “I knew elderly people who had been slaves. Now I have lived long enough to see us advance so much as a nation that we have elected a black president. It’s wonderful to see Barack and Michele in the White House and to think that the men of the USS Mason had some part in helping America live up to the promise, ‘One Nation Under God With Liberty and Justice For All.’ ”
Acknowledgments
All of us connected to the USS Mason wish to thank President William Jefferson Clinton. That’s how he signed his name on the declaration he presented to the USS Mason Association at a ceremony held on September 16, 1994, to honor African American World War II veterans. The congressional black caucus had convened the ceremony, where Congressman Charles Rangel, a Korean War veteran, presided, assisted by Ron Armstead, a Vietnam War vet. President Clinton spoke specifically of Eleanor Roosevelt’s efforts to open all ranks of the U.S. Navy to black sailors, and in acknowledging the pioneering work of the Mason’s crew, he crowned her efforts.
I would like to say thank you to the men of the Mason and their families for inviting me to play some part in their story. I am grateful for their guidance, support, and sustenance, especially the wonderful meals after every session. Which brings me to James Warren Graham and his wife, Barbara. Their faith and determination created this book. Lorenzo and Terry DuFau, and Gordon Buchanan, have joined them in devoting themselves to telling the Mason’s story.
The crew also found an early supporter in Dr. Martin Davis. I wish to thank him, as well as John Cosgrove, Art Filete, Sam Saylor, and the members of the Destroyer Escort Sailors Association, for their help in completing this project. Capt. William Blackford’s presence was felt through his son Mansel Blackford and the entire Blackford family. Thank you, Manse.
I am grateful to the staff of the Naval Institute Press—especially Linda O’Doughda, Mary Lou Kenney, and Susan Artigiani—but my greatest appreciation must go to Mark Gatlin, whose energy and vision brought this book to life. The “luck of the Mason” led us to Capt. Eugene (Gene) Kendall, who by connecting the Mason crew members to the new generation of African American navy officers, confirmed the worth of all of their sacrifices. Thank you to Adm. Frank Kelso, Adm. Thomas Lynch, Adm. James Miller, Adm. Mac Gaston, and Adm. Bill Thompson, all of whom hosted the crew at various functions. I am grateful to Paul Haley and all at the U.S. Navy Memorial.
Special thanks to Edward Moraldo, Regina Akers, and Kathy Lloyd of the Naval Historical Center’s operational archives branch and to Professor Morris MacGregor for the helpful suggestions. Similarly, the staffs of the National Archives were most cooperative. As always, independent researcher Bonnie Rowan was invaluable.
I want to thank those who helped me assemble this book. First, Willia Osby and William Francis Osby, who were always there. Then, Carol Forget, Ted Pankin, and, as always, Louise McKeown. Thank you to Jack Gallant, Carolyn Allison, Laura Freeman, and Lynn Kurkal of the U.S. Navy World War II Commemorative Committee. I appreciate the help of Steve Harris, Don Gold, Delores Edwards, Louis Cubillo, Eddie Panian, and my partners Oshun Mugwana and Onkiwa Bill Wallace in the production of the documentary that grew with this book.
I am grateful to Frank Price for his early encouragement on the feature film. Ian Henderson, David Boyce, Maebeth Fenton, Sheelagh Wylie, Gordon Glenn, and Stephen Doherty of the Northern Ireland Tourist Board have renewed the Mason’s Irish connection in a very happy way. Bob Kline’s wonderful prints enhanced the book.
I wish to thank the officers and crew of USS Mason (DDG87) for their hospitality to the World War II veterans and myself over the years. Special thanks to the first captain, Rear Adm. David J. Gale and succeeding captains John Fuller, Addan Cruz, Commander Wilson Marks, Commander Mikal Phillips, and Command Master Chief Ray Kemp.
I am so grateful to all who helped make the impossible dream of the dramatic feature film Proud a reality. The on-screen thank yous contain hundreds of names but I especially want to mention Tommy Hilfiger, Ally Hilfiger, Sheila Cox, Patty Harte, Susan Kelly Panian, Margaret Murphy, Thom Marini, Gregory M. Royals, Charlie Panian, and Eddie Panian. We were blessed with an amazing cast headed by Ossie Davis and Stephen Rea. Thank you to all of them and to Carole Hart as well as Julian Schlosburg and Mel Maron of Castle Hill Films.
My family has been supportive, as always, and I appreciate the interest too of Mary Gordon and Pat Hume. Always there is my husband, Martin Sheerin, who has had as much fun at the Graham household and the Mason reunions as I have. I appreciate the contribution his National Archives photographs made to the book, but his love and encouragement are truly beyond reckoning.
Prologue
Yeoman Mel Grant tapped out the terse sentences of the war diary: “Screening starboard bow as before. Wind and sea rising. Many breakdowns reported by small craft and increasing difficulty with tow wires. Some alarm noted in TBS transmission.” The ship rolled again. He waited, clutching the table. “Some alarm”; that understated the case. Some alarm. They had spent the past thirty days trying to drag a convoy of unwieldy yard tugs, leaky barges, massive car floats, merchant ships, and the huge oiler Maumee across the Atlantic. Nineteenth-century sailing ships had made the passage in a week. The Queen Mary had passed them four times. The convoy was averaging less than five miles per hour. Any man on the ship could walk faster than that.
The USS Mason, with her four sister destroyer escorts (DEs), circled the slow-moving ships, prodding stragglers, patrolling their sectors, listening for the sonar contacts that could mean U-boats, keeping station, protecting their ungainly herd. The weather had been terrible, but that was the norm in the North Atlantic in mid-autumn: winds of twenty miles per hour, seas from ten to twenty feet. Then, on October 10, the velocity increased. Winds were thirty to forty miles per hour, and the crew measured gusts of ninety miles per hour. Seas ran at forty to fifty feet. Now the barges themselves became agents of destruction, swinging wildly from their tows, fraying the lines, dragging down the small craft that pulled against them. Two had capsized. The Mason’s crew joined the other DEs in the scramble to rescue the men trapped in the sinking ships. They pulled most of them aboard, but others went down to the sea bottom.
The men in the radio shack heard the screams of the men trapped aboard picked up by the TBS as they went down. The DEs themselves were in danger. Barely three hundred feet long, they were heavily armed but had been hastily constructed. They were “throwaway” ships designed to last long enough to escort a few convoys, seek out the subs, and, if necessary, take a torpedo to save a larger, more vital ship.
They had fought their way across three thousand miles of rampaging seas. All signs now pointed to worsening weather. In charge of the convoy, Comdr. Alfred Lind
faced a decision. Should the convoy huddle together and try to ride out the storm as a unit, or should he detach the twenty small manned vessels and let them make for the “shelter of nearby land at their best speed”? He would be asking the small craft to struggle to shore without adequate escort protection or service vessels, but to keep the small ships at sea meant almost certain disaster. They could overturn, and in such seas how could he count on a successful rescue?
James Graham waited in the radio shack for the message that would reveal the commodore’s decision. Meanwhile, in the wheelhouse, Charles Divers watched the inclinometer, which measured the degrees the ship rolled. Divers had heard other DE sailors brag about their ships taking forty-degree rolls; as he watched a huge wave hit, the inclinometer read seventy—seventy degrees! Ninety degrees was flat over. A DE couldn’t come back from seventy. “We’re not going to make it!” Divers thought. But the Mason held. She held and then lurched. Finally she came back up, water pouring down into the engine below decks. Albert Watkins and the rest of the “Black Gang” in the engine room struggled to cover their switchboard with canvas to keep the water from the electricity.
Lorenzo Dufau and Gordon Buchanan stood by their signal lights. Arnold Gordon manned the sonar equipment. Merwin Peters and Benjamin Garrison joined Graham in the radio shack. The message came. The Mason would form a new convoy with twenty vessels: the oilers and the independent tugs, plus the HMS Pretext, a Lend-Lease tender, and HMS Astravel, a Lend-Lease “A.P.C.” (coastal transport). If the Mason could get these faster vessels to Plymouth safely and then return with ships from Plymouth to help the rest of the convoy bring in the tugs and barges, perhaps they all could reach a safe harbor.
On October 18 the Mason sighted Bishop Rock. The weather had gotten much worse. The wind increased to forty knots, with gusts of fifty. Still they pushed on, against the sea, shepherding their charges toward port. As the war diary reports, “Section began scattering badly with the danger that some vessels might be swept on past the harbor entrance.” The Mason urgently requested assistance from local escorts. None came. The wind increased to sixty knots; visibility dropped to zero. “The HMS Pretext had no charts of Falmouth,” the official navy report noted later, “so it was necessary to lead the section from buoy to buoy and between buoys and to run back to the end of the column about seven miles astern to guide in possible stragglers.”
Proudly We Served Page 1