LP was the greatest man I never really knew. I met him in the summer of 1963 and married his oldest daughter in January of 1964. LP never spoke much and since I was in the navy I wasn’t around much to get to know him. LP came into being in 1921 and left this earth in 1967 while I was at sea. The only way I know about him is through our brief conversations (perhaps two hours or less in total), family stories and mainly naval records I have obtained.
LP was born in Indiana and his mother died not long after his birth. His father could not care for him and his older sister so they were placed in an orphan’s home that was also a working farm. LP started to work as soon as he was old enough to walk and help with chores. The children grew their own food, lived on a rigid schedule and ate their meals in absolute silence. I got the impression that the home was not an easy place to live. The furniture in the home was made by convicts in the Indiana state prison system. I suppose there weren’t enough cars to keep the convicts busy making license plates back then.
LP grew tall and slender, head and shoulders above his peers. He was a quiet man and even more so as a child and teenager. One of his peers in the home mistook his quiet, calm demeanor for cowardice and began taunting him. This went on for weeks until LP exploded into fighting mode. That bully was a quivering, bloody, pulp by the time an ambulance arrived to take him to the hospital. He was never seen again and LP often wondered if he killed the young man.
LP only had one year of high school, which was not uncommon in those days during the great depression. He left the home at 14 and went to work on a farm nearby. This sums up his early life and stories I heard from family members.
Here begins the story gleaned from naval records. In June of 1942, LP received a nice letter from his uncle Sam, inviting him to join the navy and fight the good fight. He went to Great Lakes recruit training center, same place I went 21 years later. In October of 1942 he went to Diesel Mechanic school in Little Creek, Virginia. It was an amphibious training camp, but somehow the navy had a diesel school there too. LP told me Little Creek was such a horrible place that even the chaplain went AWOL.
LP was assigned to the USS Brownson, which was just commissioned in early 1943. The ship was in New York harbor when LP arrived. The ship went on its shakedown cruise off Guantanamo Bay, before heading to Casablanca in May. Upon return the ship was ordered to the Pacific, crossing through the Panama Canal enroute to San Francisco. In July the ship departed Frisco for Adak, in the Aleutian Islands where they assisted in the retaking of those islands from the Japanese. After spending three months bobbing like a cork in those frigid waters, they departed that area on November 29, 1943, headed for Pearl Harbor, where they re-provisioned and then received orders to the south Pacific. (It should be noted here that many sailors never cross over into the south Pacific. I was sailing all over the Pacific for 10.75 years and only came close to crossing one time when we pulled into Singapore.)
On December 14, 1943 the USS Brownson entered the south Pacific at 00 degrees latitude and 175 degrees west longitude. In the navy it is a big thing crossing the equator and ceremony must be done. Here below is LP’s personal orders upon crossing:
USS Brownson DD-518 on entering the domain of Neptune Rex notice and listen ye landlubber
I order you and command you to appear before me in court on the morrow to be initiated in the mysteries of my empire. If not you shall be given as food for sharks, who will devour you for entering my domain without warrant.
You are charged with the following offence:
Claiming to be a diesel man on a destroyer and that he was shanghaied to sea.
Therefore, appear and obey or suffer the penalty.
Registered: Davy Jones
Secretary to His Majesty
(note these initiations were harsh and basically what we now call hazing. They involved, among other things, being dipped in garbage, hosed off by high-pressure salt water fire hoses, running a gauntlet of shellbacks (sailors who have been initiated into the realm of the deep) with wooden paddles and crawling up to the biggest fattest chief on board ((who posed as King Neptune)) and kissing his fat belly which was greased up thick with grease from the engine room. It wasn’t like meeting the pope or a king where you kneel and kiss their ring.)
End Chapter 1.
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