landing. The Japanese launched an air attack, which began right after the Marine landings. The Brownson and the Daly and the Laffey were diverted to screen for the air attack. The U.S. had P-38s in the air dogfighting with the Japanese Val dive bombers so the destroyers had to hold their fire so as not to hit the U.S. planes during the melee. The air forces were evenly matched with about 60 planes each. Two of the Vals slipped down and began a run on the Brownson from the aft quarter.The Brownson’s 20mm and 40mm guns fired away on the two bombers. One Val was diverted after dropping one bomb which barely missed. The second Val dropped one 500 pound bomb and two 100 pounders from just 500 feet above the Brownson. The 500 pound bomb landed just aft of the #2 exhaust stack, went through the 1/2 inch steel deck and exploded in the after engine room, which exploded the boilers and killed all but one sailor there. LP would normally have been there as he served as a water tender and a fireman, but with his diesel training I think he must have been in the auxiliary diesel steering room during battle stations. Otherwise he would have been killed in the blast. (The only two things LP told me about the sinking were he had just won $800 in a poker game and he didn’t have time to get it from his locker below decks and that he was stuck below deck when an unknown sailor managed to open the hatch and reached in to give him a hand getting out.) The official record shows the Brownson snapped into two pieces amidship and sank 8 minutes after being hit. LP was in the ocean and I cannot imagine what he may have been thinking. 109 Brownson crewmen died that day. LP was rescued by the USS Daly.
LP was soon on his way home for survivors leave and re-assignment. He was sent to a naval facility on the Ohio river where the LSTs were manufactured. Once an LST was completed LP and a crew had 2 weeks to go down river and basically do a shakedown cruise, down the Mississippi to New Orleans where other crews sailed them to the Pacific.
The crews stopped overnight in Saint Louis and that was where LP met his wife to be. On Christmas of 43 his ship was sunk, on Christmas of 44 he was married. Shortly after getting married LP was transferred to Chicago pier where he was a crewman on one of the two aircraft carriers that sailed lake Michigan training navy pilots for takeoff and landings onboard ships. The invasion of Japan was on the horizon and the navy knew they would need a lot more pilots. The war ended in August of 45 and LP was discharged on October 12, 1945. He and his wife moved in with her parents in Saint Louis because the city was still short of rentals because the excess of factory war workers had yet to filter out of town. His first daughter arrived in November of 1945.
In July of 1946 LP and his bride secured a VA loan to buy a new house in a subdivision north of Saint Louis. Her father called it a cracker box that would not last a year. His bride sold it in 1974 and it is still a there in 2016. LP worked at a liquor store owned by his brother-in-law for a while and in May of 1950 he took a class in aircraft layout and manufacturing in Saint Louis and got a job at a place in Saint Charles Missouri called Leonard's’ metal works I believe. LP designed and built a postage stamp vending machine like the ones in post offices today. The company went to patent the machine, but arrived at the patent office 2 weeks too late. The one LP designed and built ended up on display in Lenard’s president’s office as a display of what the company could do. The ones seen in post offices today are by the company that beat them to the patent office.
LP’s later assignment was making parts for the Apollo space capsules. He developed a pain in his side during that time and thought it was damage from working in cramped spaces on the space capsules. When the pain lingered on he went to a doctor who could not figure it out. He went to a chiropractor who put lifts in his shoes. Neither one did a simple chest x ray. Had either done that they would have found cancer. The doctor just kept prescribing more and more pain pills. The downward spiral led to an afternoon when he picked up his bride from her workplace and headed home. His pain was so horrible he had forgotten how many pills he had taken and on the way home he sideswiped a car on the street and didn’t even realize what happened. His bride screamed at him to stop and he did. Police showed up and wanted to arrest him for driving intoxicated. His bride convinced them he needed a hospital instead. The emergency room xrayed him and found his lung cancer had spread to his brain. He never left the hospital.
In late October of 1967 I was stationed in San Diego and getting ready to go on cruise in early November. My mother called long distance and said LP was dying. I, my bride and daughter flew back to Saint Louis to see LP in the hospital. We headed home a week later and left our daughter with my mother so we could get my bride ready to head back to Saint Louis to be with her mother during her mother’s upcoming tribulation. One of the last things LP got to do was hold his 5 month-old granddaughter before he passed away the day before his oldest daughter’s birthday.
The End
No comments:
Post a Comment