Peters: The one thing that sticks out in my mind was down in South Carolina, right in this country. The Red Cross was coming through to the various ships that were docked down there. They were distributing doughnuts, candy, and coffee to all the other ships around us, and they skipped our ship. I mean, it was blatant. They stopped and they took care of the ship behind us, and then they proceeded past our ship to the next ship.
Now, I was a very rebellious person. The first time I saw colored and white water fountains, I purposely got off the ship and went to the white drinking fountain. So I was really angry!
Everybody aboard the ship was irate about it. There wasn’t a lot we could do. I just thought, “I will not support the Red Cross. If the Red Cross can act this way toward us, then why should I contribute money?”
Garrison: When we went aboard the Mason there were some petty officers who were white. We never had any problems with them though, except for the chief radioman; he was somewhat hard to get along with. I don’t think there were any problems with the rest of them. There was no such thing as open hostility. I never sensed that.
DuFau: The hostility aboard the ship didn’t come out. First of all there were so many black guys, our world was each other. There were a few white enlisted men; most of them were chiefs. They were supposed to instruct us. Some had an attitude. You just sensed when there wasn’t a calm. Whenever a chief petty officer was hostile to us, you could just feel it. At our age, we weren’t dumb; we knew you don’t have to say everything. It was body language, the way an order was given and all that. We could just feel who was who, but we knew the captain was with us, and that really helped.
Garrison: I really liked the insistence on professionalism, the constant training, always training, drilling, making sure that you did what you did and that you knew how to do it. In the navy you depended upon each other so strongly. It’s teamwork. And that’s why I think we never had any problems, because we realized that if I did my job as I should and he did his, we would all get it done. We were very proud of what we did.
You see, a ship at sea is self-contained. You don’t have a fire department. If a fire breaks out, you have to know how to put it out. We didn’t have a doctor aboard; we had a corps-man, a pharmacist’s mate. The idea was, you had to do everything. Every man knew just what he had to do, and he did his job. You could depend upon each other. That’s what I liked about it.
For some drills they would use stopwatches to see how quickly we could get it done. Sometimes the chief said, “Do it over.” He said he once saw a destroyer just disintegrate in thirty seconds, and only those who were topside survived. If you didn’t get out quickly enough, that would be it.
5
Maiden Voyage
At last the Mason was under way, doing what all the training had been aimed at—escorting a convoy across the Atlantic. These were the first black navy men to take a warship into battle in foreign waters. Racist presumptions about their inability to operate a modern warship while under enemy fire could be dispelled. This voyage was so important to the black community that Thomas W. Young, a black journalist whose family owned the Journal and Guide of Norfolk, asked to make the voyage. He became the first black war correspondent to report from a U.S. Navy warship. His articles were reprinted by black newspapers in every city. Young knew that history was being made, and while his dispatches focus on the specific—individual men, the duties they perform, the family life of the Mason at sea—there is a sense of the momentous. “The USS Mason Goes to War—History Is Made” reads one headline.
As the Mason headed for the open sea, the young men in her crew were not thinking of themselves as symbols or pioneers. Their attention was on present dangers and the excitement of the adventure ahead. They were crossing thousands of miles of ocean in one of the smallest of the navy’s warships. The sea itself was a formidable enemy, and under that sea lurked German U-boats manned by experienced crews dedicated to destroying the ships of the convoy.
Each day at dawn general quarters sounded on the Mason, shaking the young sailors from the tiers of bunks crowded below deck. In the rush topside no man knew for sure if this was the routine morning call or a submarine contact. U-boats favored dawn and dusk for attack. Even if no human enemy threatened, there was the sea itself, which, as C. S. Forester wrote in his story of a World War II convoy The Good Shepherd, “extended for a thousand miles and beneath it the water was two miles deep.” Such figures, he went on, are not “easily grasped by the imagination though acceptable as academic fact.”
The crews of the destroyer escorts knew they were to protect the larger ships at the cost of their own. They were the shepherds, and like the good shepherd of the parable, they were expected to lay down their lives for their sheep. But they were also the sheepdogs charged to round up straggling ships, nipping at the heels of the bigger ships, bringing them into line. Conventional sea wisdom said that thirty to forty ships of different types and capabilities could not be kept moving together at the same speed by the sheepdogs. Yet they were. And if a wolf threatened the flock, the DEs would drive him off, kill him, or offer themselves as a distraction so that the convoy would be spared. The new radar and sonar equipment signaled when a U-boat threatened, and by applying formulas based on the work of Albert Einstein and his fellow physicists at Princeton, the DEs could find out where the wolf packs were hiding. Then a thousand more human calculations followed: How far away was the contact? Was there enough fuel to reach it? Should it be scared away or attacked? Was it one U-boat or a member of a wolf pack? These calculations were made in seconds. Every man had to know his job and respond immediately. Turn the wheel a few degrees in the wrong direction, misread a signal flag, receive a message incorrectly, or misinterpret a sonar contact, and the entire convoy would be jeopardized. These men who took the Mason across the ocean eight times do not inflate their experiences. They see their ship simply as one of the five hundred DEs that shepherded convoys and hunted submarines. They were young. A sense of their own immortality tempered fear and blunted their sense of danger. Now they marvel at their casual bravery. They were “young and foolish, young and goofy,” they say. But they were confident and glad to depend on each other’s skill and ability.
They were taking the Mason out beyond the limitations imposed by segregation and racism into this expanse of sea and sky. This was what the Mason was to them, a ship at sea, and they were her crew. Let the navy worry about studies and experiments and measuring black against white. They were 160 young men who knew they were good at what they did. They respected their captain and could ignore slights from the few white chief petty officers who wished they weren’t there. They were there. The Mason was their ship.
Maybe it was a small ship and maybe escort duty was not considered a glamorous assignment by others in the fleet, but the crew knew if they got the oil tanker across, then tanks could fight and troops could move and bombers could fly. When they brought a cargo ship to port, medicine, clothes, and food became available for GIs and civilians alike. No one better underestimate the Mason or speak against it. A poem written by one of the crewmen sums up the feelings of his shipmates this way:
So when you meet up with the Mason
Please select your chatter well
For if you should use some slander, Jack
You’ve got a home in hell.
War Diary (1 July 1944): USS MASON (DE 529) underway in company with DE’s 187, 188, 528, USS JOHN M. BERMINGHAM (DE 530) comprising task group 27.5, escorting convoy CK-3 via Bermuda and Azores. At present, en route Bermuda to Horta (Azores). . . . Patrolling sector on port bow of convoy.
DuFau: The destroyer escort was really a fragile ship, according to standards of navy vessels. The hull was very thin metal. But they had to get vessels out there to counteract the submarines, to escort convoys. To do it the quickest way, they had to sacrifice certain safety features. The destroyer escort wound up being able to do the job.
Now, I wasn’t crazy about water. I had neve
r seen that much water. The widest body of water I saw was Lake Pontchartrain in Louisiana. I never did see to the other side of it. But then to get on the ocean and be traveling for days and not see land, and then look on the charts and get an idea of how far we had traveled and how far we had to travel before we’d see land, that was an amazing thing, especially knowing how fragile the ship was. That little ship in the midst of all that water.
Divers: I made all six trips with the Mason overseas. I had the privilege of being on the flying bridge, where I could monitor all the information on the TBS, talk between ships, and also the intercoms on board our own ship. I was privy to a lot of information the other guys didn’t have. I would hear the commodore who was in charge of the whole convoy talk to the other ships. I could hear him getting on the other ships about maintaining station. “Maintain station. Get on station.” But we never had that problem. We always were on station. That was Blackford’s doing. He insisted that his officers stay on station.
Buchanan: I knew that when you were going on convoys to Europe you were in dangerous waters. I knew that. But I could survive that. In fact, I was known around the ship as not one to worry about going into the water. It took them a long time to even make me wear a life jacket! I’d say, “I’m up thirty-three feet, forty feet, and if I jump into the water, I don’t want any life jacket on because it will break my neck.” The life jacket will snap your neck right off. I used to tie my life jacket up high on the mast. When I’d get to the signal bridge, during GQ, I could reach up and get mine. But the life jacket was no guarantee.
War Diary (3 July 1944): Patrolling on port bow of convoy. . . . 1213–Sighted empty life raft. 1305–Radar contact, bearing 115 degrees True, 34,000 yards–No IFF. Target tracked on collision course with convoy speed twenty-five (25) knots. At 1325, target visible, exchanged recognition signals and call signs, reporting same to escort commander. Target proved to be H.M.S. BIRMINGHAM. At 1416, USS POWERS (DE 528) report submarine contact. All ships steamed to area. Contact apparently false. At 2028, conducted forty (40) minute battle problem.
Gordon Buchanan recognized the British ship the Birmingham, but the significance of the empty life jacket and abandoned life raft was there for all to see.
Buchanan: In the service school for destroyer escort crews they give you a test to see if you can recognize ships. I got a 4.0 on the test. Not only did I recognize the kind of ship, I could give you the name; I had that much definition. And that was in my records aboard ship, because they made me a recognitions officer even though I was only a petty officer. I spotted the Birmingham—funny the HMS Birmingham passing the USS Bermingham, a DE with us! But we always used to get information in about the enemy’s ships or planes. I had to teach it to the crew. I didn’t teach the whole ship at a time. I’d get several guys down, put all the pictures out and show them, and explain it. If intelligence had found out about an airplane that the Germans or the Japanese had, I would explain that to them. I was recognitions officer aboard that ship only because of that 4.0 on the test. It was all that model building I had done.
Grant: I was the captain’s secretary. I did the reports, the ship’s logs. I took it in shorthand and then typed it out. My office was right next to the captain’s quarters. We had a beautiful relationship. I went on board as a yeoman third class and within eighteen months he had me made yeoman first class. That’s unheard of, to go from third class to first class in eighteen months. This was not because he liked me or anything, it was because of the work I had done. He acted toward us as man to man. We all thought he was a great man. He understood human nature, how to deal with people. He didn’t treat anyone as an inferior.
Gordon: As a sonar operator, I was trained to detect the existence of a target in the area. The targets ranged from a school of fish to bottom return—bottom echoes—and so forth. The sonar equipment sent out a sound transmission, which had a tone to it. The echo coming back would indicate that there was an object in the range of the sonar. Depending on whether that object was moving or not, it would give what was called Doppler. Doppler was the response and the tone of the return echo. With that, you could identify a moving target or a stationary target; you could identify whether it was a solid object or a school of fish.
Whales gave us a particular problem because they were solid enough and big enough to give us a good return. So in many cases we thought we had a submarine, and it would turn out to be a whale. Usually, when you were tracking a whale, sooner or later he blew. And when he blew, then you knew you had a whale.
Watkins: We were constantly changing course, screening, sounding—setting off sonar patterns. In a regular convoy the U-boats were up front and alongside. If you were on a big convoy and you straggled, you were out of luck. They couldn’t afford to slow the whole convoy for one ship. I remember one time when they drove the convoy up in two separate segments, one for the slow ships and one for the fast ships. We had to pick up the guys behind until they’d try to catch up. You couldn’t afford to wait on anybody out there.
Garrison: Remember, the sea is pitch-dark. You have no lights at all. The stars are very vivid because there’s no artificial light. But what amazes me is that with all the ships in the convoy in that pitch darkness, there were never any collisions.
DuFau: The fascinating thing was to go into the radio shack and see on the radar a picture of the whole convoy and see everything in position. You could identify those different locations and, as you say, it was fascinating to see everyone in line, changing course with no collisions.
Graham: Speaking of the dark nights, I used to stand at the fantail on those dark nights and look over the side at the wake, which was white so you could see it. Sometimes you’d see the phosphorus. I’d stand there watching that.
DuFau: Fish would dart through that water and through the phosphorus. It was beautiful, but you couldn’t fully appreciate it because in the back of your mind, you knew you were at war. Still, the sea was beautiful when it was calm.
Graham: But those calm seas . . . I’d rather have the rough seas than the calm seas.
DuFau: A calm sea is too dangerous because you could be picked up too easily by the subs. They could see the wake of the ship.
Graham: In the rough seas you could hear the water whistling by, hitting you in the face—then you’d feel like a sailor. All I needed was a pipe.
Garrison: Did any of you guys get this feeling? When you’re at sea and it’s rough, you almost vow that you’ll never go to sea again. And then when you go ashore and stay ashore for about two weeks, you’re ready to go, you’re eager to go back again.
DuFau: You can understand when people are talking about romance with the sea. You can fall in love with it.
Graham: When we were in those convoys, we’d see the other ships way off in the distance. We were together when we took on oil or passed the mail or exchanged movies. But we might go half a day and never see another ship.
Garrison: But the point is, we didn’t collide. And that would have been deadly.
DuFau: Well, that was the great work of radar and men on watch. The lookouts were important. In case anything went haywire with your radar, your lookouts kept an eye on ships, how close they were. If they noticed any change in the course of a ship, they would call it to the attention of the deck officer. He was always there to relay word to the captain, if there was any danger. But it was for the officer-of-the-deck to decide whether we were in danger. Human lookouts with their field glasses were important, as well as the radar, to hold the position.
Graham: The fear was that German wolf packs would come into the convoy. They would slip in and slip out, and they’d be in the middle of the configuration. Then you’d hear that a ship had been sunk. That was the danger.
The first landfall was in the Azore Islands, the halfway point for the convoy.
War Diary (7 July 1944): Anchored in twenty fathoms of water in Horta Roads, Azores. Fueled to capacity and returned to anchorage. Standing war cruising watches, listeni
ng watch and radar watch. Merchant ships of convoy anchored inshore of escorts. No liberty or shore leave allowed.
War Diary (8 July 1944): Anchored as before. Assigned shore patrol duties for the purpose of rounding up merchant seamen who had gotten ashore in bum boats.
Divers: We pulled into the Azores, a Portuguese possession, which at that time was neutral. They were a neutral colony, just like Argentina in South America. All ships could come in there; they had access to that port. And we came in at nighttime. The Portuguese port authority would meet and make sure that our depth charges were disarmed. This time we came in at night, and we tied up to a buoy. When daylight broke, what did we see but a German submarine.
Watkins: But we never went ashore. They wouldn’t let us go to shore then. Remember?
Divers: No, they wouldn’t let us go to shore.
Watkins: Then they sent some more green bananas over . . .
Divers: We’re looking at the Germans, and they’re looking at us.
Watkins: That didn’t bother us.
Divers: They pulled anchor up and left, and the port authority wouldn’t let us leave.
Watkins: It’s good to be young. You don’t worry. There were the German U-boats leaving port, and we knew they’d be out there in the ocean looking for us.
Divers: They would keep us for a certain amount of time after the U-boats left. We had to keep our distance. They’ve got a very big mountain, Pico, Mount Pico. You could see that mountain a whole day before you could even see the island, depending on how fast you were going. You could see that mountain sticking way up out of the ocean. And it would take you a whole day to get to it, you know, coming into the harbor. That’s where the merchant marine guys jumped ship.
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