Tin Can Sailor

by Charles R. Calhoun

  After several hours of feverish work, a British diver removed the chain. We got safely away at last, caught up with our companions, and settled down to the familiar routine of providing antisubmarine protection to the Wasp. It had been a humiliating day, an illustration of how easily a little carelessness in mundane circumstances can tarnish an otherwise outstanding performance in hazardous circumstances. I am certain that Jess Coward felt badly about the fiasco of our departure, and Commodore Warlick made his displeasure quite obvious with a couple of blistering expletives. But it did not seem to cloud the skipper’s outlook for long; after all, it was a highly successful strike, and we were justly proud of our small part in it.

  Back in Greenock for a couple of days, we moored just a few yards astern of a pair of British destroyers, the HMS Icarus and the HMS Escapade. The skipper of the former, in a hand-written message that I still have today, invited us to a cocktail party aboard his ship: “The Captains and Officers of HM Ships Icarus and Escapade request the pleasure of the Company of the Captains and Officers of the United States Ships Wilson and Sterett to cocktails at 1800 this evening. It is suggested that numbers may be signaled so that suitable arrangements can be made for your comfort.” Appropriate numbers were signaled, and late that afternoon a small contingent from our host ships came aboard to escort us to the party. Every officer from both the Wilson and the Sterett who was not actually on watch attended the get-together. It was an event I will never forget, because it exemplified the camaraderie that seemed to blossom every time officers of the Royal Navy and the U.S. Navy met.

  By this time my roommate Bill Scharbius had already established himself as a character, and the two of us had become fast friends. He was popular with everyone on board, and on this particular afternoon he paired off with his Royal Navy counterpart, the doctor of the Icarus. As we walked over to the British ship Bill and his partner took the point position ahead of us and exchanged uniform caps as a gesture of friendship. The British doctor’s hat size must have been at least 8½: his cap came all the way over Bill’s ears, and only by setting it on the back of his head was my roommate able to see where he was going. Meanwhile, Bill’s cap looked like a fly on a billiard ball, perched on top of the British doctor’s head. The two of them walked arm in arm down the pier, and the tone of the party had been set.

  We boarded the Icarus and found that she was a former French ship that the Home Fleet had acquired after the fall of France. Most of her signs and all of her instruction pamphlets were still in French, but her British officers and many of her crew were fluent in the language. Besides, as her gunnery officer said to me, “After all, a gun is a gun, whether French or English”—and I suppose the same could be said for a destroyer. The cocktail party proceeded amid a hubbub of friendly voices and a continuous exchange of sea stories. We talked about our leaders, Roosevelt and Churchill, about the conduct of the war, about where our ships had been, and about what we thought would happen next. Our hosts did not want us to return to our own ships, and even turned back their wardroom clock an hour in an effort to prolong our visit. Finally we returned to the Sterett and the Wilson for dinner, inviting them to come aboard for pie and coffee. They accepted with obvious pleasure (an indication of their appreciation of the superior quality of U.S. Navy food as well as their good-fellowship), and after partaking of generous helpings of both they insisted that we return to their ships to continue the party. Most of us accepted, and when the flow of Scotch whiskey resumed they involved us in a game designed to separate the men from the boys. The participants gathered in a small circle and drained their glasses. In turn, each man was required to stand in the center of the circle, place both hands on top of a walking stick held upright on the deck, bend from the waist, place his forehead on his hands, circle the stick three times, and walk out the wardroom door. The winner of this insanity was the last individual who could still walk through the door. When one of our hosts had to drop to his knees and crawl to get through the door, Jess Coward wisely declared them to be the winners of “the Battle of Greenock,” and we retired to the safety of our own flag and our own bunks. Our British brothers in arms certainly played as hard as they fought, and as we departed we felt a closer kinship with them.

  Bill Scharbius was already much more than the ship’s doctor, although that role was large enough on any ship let alone a destroyer. He was an early Tom Selleck in appearance, with black hair and a bushy mustache. His medical ministries earned him the sobriquet “One Shot” because it appeared that one shot of whatever elixir he dispensed from his little sick bay always cured the common cold, which was the most common malady aboard the Sterett at that time. He interested himself with every facet of shipboard life and frequently stood deck watches with me. He had excellent eyesight, and I found him to be a great junior officer-of-the-deck until the skipper heard of his interest in operational matters and suggested that he be made a part of our regular watch list. Then Doc took refuge behind the Geneva Convention, which exempted medical personnel from military duties. Most important, he was a very creative individual with a completely independent and innovative viewpoint, and he did not hesitate to question old procedures and traditional attitudes—all positive attributes that the wartime influx of reserve officers contributed to the Navy.

  At dinner in the wardroom one evening, Doc addressed the skipper: “Captain, why is it that the other ships in our squadron are making ten thousand gallons of fresh water a day, while we are only able to make eight thousand? I thought, for example, that the Stack was a sister ship. Well, sir, she’s making over ten thousand gallons a day, and as I look at our crew I see that they need that extra water. They really aren’t keeping themselves as clean as they should, and when I complain to them about their poor personal hygiene they tell me that they’re on water hours, and can’t take baths except at very odd and inconvenient times. I’m really concerned about their welfare, captain, and I wonder if there’s anything we can do about it.”

  The skipper turned to the chief engineer and said, “Chief, that’s a question for you, and I’d also like to know how the Stack makes more fresh water than we do.”

  Clearly embarrassed and annoyed, the chief replied, “Well, I can assure you that the Stack is not making more water than we are, and the doctor is wrong about our rated evaporator capacity. Our plant is designed to make eight thousand gallons a day, and we’re doing consistently better than that.”

  “Well, Doc, I guess you’ve just been misinformed,” said the captain. “I too wish we could make more fresh water, but that’s just part of destroyer life, and we have to make the best of it.” Doc nodded in agreement, and the conversation turned to other things.

  Once my roommate and I returned to our stateroom, I remarked that I had spent several months in engineering and knew the chief’s figure of eight thousand gallons was wrong. I offered to ask him to check the figure the next morning, so that he could have a chance to correct a bad mistake. Doc responded that this was his problem, that he had already decided to check the manufacturer’s instruction manual to confirm the capacity figure, and that if he found that the rated capacity was in fact ten thousand gallons he would confront the chief engineer with that information in the captain’s presence. He added that the chief had been less than cooperative on several occasions regarding minor alterations he had asked for to improve morale, and that perhaps this was a good opportunity to impress the chief with the fact that considerations of the crew’s welfare deserved a higher priority than he appeared to give them.

  The next evening at dinner, Doc again called down to the skipper: “Captain, this afternoon I went over to the Stack and talked with their chief engineer. He showed me the Griscom-Russel Evaporator instruction book, and it definitely indicates that the rated output of our plant is ten thousand gallons, not eight thousand. And furthermore, they are making about eleven thousand gallons daily by using a newly recommended procedure, employing boiler-water compound in some way that I didn’t quite understand.”


  “Chief, I want to see you in my cabin immediately after dinner,” said the captain. That was the last time the subject ever came up at the table. However, the chief engineer spent the next day aboard the Stack, and within two days the Sterett was also making eleven thousand gallons of fresh water daily. Our crew suddenly became cleaner and healthier, and for that Bill Scharbius deserved most of the credit.

  In the letter he wrote almost eighteen years ago in response to a notice about a Sterett reunion, Bill penned this description of his service aboard DD 407:

  I’m sure you all remember that crossing to Scapa as vividly as I do. My orders seemed to read destroyer duty, but this was submarine stuff, as we always seemed to be more under than above the surface of the angry seas. As a fully qualified surgeon with a hell of a lot of expensive and hard-earned training behind me, I felt ashamed to take Uncle Sam’s money (not that I ever refused any actual offering from the paymaster), for I think the Sterett had the healthiest damn crew in the entire Navy. I couldn’t even make headlines like some of the pharmacist’s mates on other ships who were taking out appendixes with bowie knives and bent spoons. A few residual cases of gentlemen’s diseases left over from glamorous Norfolk, an occasional runny nose, and a bit of seasickness were about all that ever came my way. And even those poor patients I soon learned to leave to the tender ministrations of my worthy Chief O’Briant, who had twenty years more experience behind him, and knew more about medicine as it is uniquely practiced in the Service than I shall ever know in a lifetime of civilian practice. O’Briant dispensed pills, drops, advice, and torpedo juice, with the practiced skill of a circus magician. My head swam with admiration, and with a resigned sigh I quickly gave up and let him run the show, always secretly hoping that someone would break a leg or develop a rupture, but I suppose he would have taken that over as well, with his customary dexterity.

  By great coincidence, not many weeks ago while on a visit to England and Scotland I drove down through the western Highlands, past Glasgow, and found myself along the waterfront in Greenock where we once put in briefly on our way down through the Irish Sea bound for Gibraltar and the Med. The town looked exactly the same, and the beer was just as warm, some thirty years later. But I thought of our old ship, and here I am, for some crazy reason, writing about a few of my old reminiscences. Maybe I’ve forgotten the bad parts, as one does with time, but I loved that old ship. Most of you guys are just a blur now, though a few faces and a few names stand out, but there wasn’t one man, from the lowliest boot up to and including the skipper, that I didn’t like. I sound like Will Rogers, who said much the same thing and which I always thought was a lot of crap, for I sometimes almost enjoy disliking some people.

  In mid-May came orders directing most of the squadron to return to the States. Aboard the Sterett we were ecstatic. But aboard the Wainwright everyone was unhappy except Commodore Moon, who had chosen to fly his broad command pennant there and who had volunteered for duty with the Murmansk convoys. His request had been approved, and now as the rest of the squadron was headed home the men of the Wainwright discovered that they would be on escort duty in the coldest, nastiest sea traversed by the Allied convoy system. I doubt that there was a coward among them, but no one in his right mind could have looked forward to such an assignment with much pleasure. The Sterett was directed to transfer the rest of her 5-inch ammunition to the Wainwright as soon as possible. We would be able to replenish our stock when we reached New York, but the Wainwright would find few such opportunities—and where they were headed the German Air Force, operating from its Norwegian bases, could subject them to almost continuous air attacks for several days.

  The Wainwright’s gun boss was my Academy roommate, Vern Soballe. The Sterett moored alongside the Wainwright to expedite the ammunition transfer, and I climbed over the lifelines to shake Vern’s hand and wish him well. He predicted that he and his shipmates would soon be salt-encrusted, frozen heroes. When I told him that by off-loading our entire 5-inch inventory we would be giving him three more projectiles than powder cartridges, he said, “No problem. If we get down to those last three bullets, I’ll throw the damn things at ’em.” There was not much that could upset Vern, and when we backed clear a short time later I was sure that he would prove to be a formidable foe against anything the Germans could muster. Meanwhile, the Sterett was homeward bound.

  CHAPTER 4

  GUADALCANAL LANDINGS

  ONCE AGAIN WE CROSSED THE STORMY ATLANTIC. Our companions on the way back were the Wasp, the cruiser Brooklyn, and the destroyers Lang, Nicholson, Trippe, and Ingraham. It was a bruising and tiring ride, and the fog was so thick that I was constantly amazed at how well the ships were able to keep station despite the poor visibility. We made extensive use of towing spars to avoid collisions as we moved through the fog in closed-up formations: dragged by each ship a specific distance astern, the spars sent up a plume of spray for the next ship in line to follow. We held a good speed of advance, and although I am sure there were plenty of U-boats along our route, none got a decent shot at us. We reached Norfolk on 27 May and immediately entered Portsmouth Navy Yard for repairs and the installation of our first radar.

  Shortly after our arrival the captain encountered me on the pier, where I was supervising the unloading of our 40- and 20-mm ammunition. “What are you doing here?” he asked. “I thought you were going on leave to Winston-Salem.” When I told him that I thought it was my responsibility to get the ammunition off-loaded first, he said, “Well, I agree with you, but I hereby relieve you of that responsibility. I’ll supervise unloading of the ammo. You shove off and get on your way home. You don’t have much time.” I thanked him and left, aware once more of his compassionate concern for his shipmates.

  On 5 June we left Norfolk and headed south for the Panama Canal. There was little doubt that we were headed to rejoin the friends we had left behind in the Pacific the previous year. Most of us felt that we would see our fair share of combat there, and we had determined beforehand that when our chance came we would prove ourselves equal to the challenge. Our fire control technicians solved the mysteries of radar operation and became proficient in its use. We had received only air-search and fire control radars, which showed targets as small blips on a straight line. We did not have a plan view of the water’s surface like that provided by the more sophisticated surface-search model. Still, the fire control radar was a godsend because it enabled us to determine positively that there was a target out there, that it was on a specific bearing, and that it was a precise number of yards away. Against an enemy who did not have that capability, it was a tremendous advantage. Chief Fire Controlman Chapman was a major factor in our capacity to exploit this new equipment. As we headed south I held routine drills on tracking targets by radar for our director crew. We found to our delight that we could track surface as well as air targets using only the fire control radar. Cross-checking our radar readouts with the visual rangefinder, we quickly gained confidence in the accuracy of the radar ranges: they and the visual ranges were almost identical most of the time. Jack Shelton, our “first team” rangefinder operator, became very radar-proficient, and within weeks we learned to shoot as well at night as during daylight.

  Our companions on this trip were the Wasp, the battleship North Carolina, the cruisers Quincy and San Juan, and the destroyers Lang, Stack, Wilson, Farenholt, and Buchanan. Tom McWhorter described our return to Pacific waters in his “Stand and Fight”:

  It was with some pleasure that we again felt the slow swells of the Pacific under our feet, and we thought back over the long days and nights in the Atlantic, when there was no respite from violent rolling and pitching; when thirty-five-degree rolls were commonplace (and even some of forty-eight degrees); of green water, freezing cold, beating against the bridge and spraying in sheets high over the director platform; of balancing our plates on our laps as we tried to eat in the wardroom while hanging on by our legs; of the struggle it was to try to stay in our bunks at night, let
alone to get some sleep; of the U-boat alarms in the middle of the night that sent us running to our battle stations as we fastened up our life jackets—with a subconscious thought of that cold, black water. We were glad to be back in the Pacific where the real naval war was—but also where you could see what you were fighting, and where the water was warm enough that a man would have a fighting chance of survival if his ship was shot out from under him.

  Quartermaster Tim Cleere’s diary entry for 12–18 June reads: “En route San Diego. Weather is swell. Each day we are given a taste of what an air attack looks like with the planes from the Wasp doing their stuff. Fueled at sea from Quincy on the way up. It could never have been calm enough in the Atlantic to do that sort of thing.”

  On 18 June we arrived in San Diego. Several former U.S. President Line ships were at the piers. It seemed likely that they were preparing to carry troops somewhere, and that the Sterett would be asked to escort them. No one officially confirmed our conjecture, but when we saw that Marines were going on board we concluded that they were the assault force for an amphibious landing. Two other facts stand out in my recollection of that visit to San Diego: I was promoted to the grade of full lieutenant (a block promotion of the whole class of ’38), and Doc Scharbius left us for Pensacola and a course in aviation medicine. “One Shot” had contributed much to the “soul” of the Sterett. A group of us took him to one of San Diego’s nicer clubs for a hilarious final fling the night before his detachment. The new doctor (and of course my roommate) was Lt. Harry C. Nyce, a quiet, unassuming guy from Philadelphia’s Main Line. He was a graduate of Duke University, a surgeon with more than two thousand major surgical procedures under his belt and an excellent sense of humor.