Transcript of Robert Ellershaw

Thursday, May 7, 2001

When my students challenged me to interview my own father for this project, I hesitantly agreed. In all the years I’d known him, I never remembered my Dad talking about the war. In addition, he was in a good deal of pain waiting for a hip replacement operation scheduled for the beginning of July. Somehow, it felt intrusive; but I couldn’t have been more mistaken. The evening I spent with my father, in the living room I had grown up in, listening as he told stories which filled two hours of tape, was one I will never forget. He was on pain medication, and his voice was shaky; but his story telling was fascinating. I came away impressed by my dad’s use of language, his ability to weave together action, setting, philosophy, and often humor.

L: When did you enlist?

R: In November of 1942.

L: OK. Why then?

R: Why then? I just....figured it was time that I get in the service. I had just turned nineteen. My father had hurt himself back in the early spring when I probably had thought I was going in and he had hurt his back and he had been laid up for about six months so I stayed at home because it was only my grandmother and mother at home and then I, ah...decided Dad , you know, was becoming some better. He was in pretty good shape, so I wanted to go in the service...

L: um...

R: ...more or less to, ah, ...because I felt patriotic.. I needed to go and when you're young and eager... you have that feeling, you know.

L: Did you go in with any friends? Where was Uncle Bob? Was Uncle Bob around to help out?

R: He was married.

L: He was married at that point? OK, so you went into the Navy...?

R: Right!

L: Started of as...?

R: I was already an electrician, and I had gone through electrical trade school and I worked for a little while in a factory, so when I went in I went in as an Electrician's Mate 3rd Class, in other words I was graded already when I went into the service.

L: So, Electrician 3rd Class?

R: Right.

L: Where did you go first thing?

R: Well, the first step I went to was, ah, ... well, of course, boot camp.. everybody goes to boot camp.

L: Where was that?

R: That was Newport, Rhode Island. And you get your clothing and you go through your initiations and you get your inoculations and basic training in Navy procedures.

L: Right!

R: And then I guess I graduated from that and I went to New York. When I was in New York I had a very unique experience of being assigned to the Port Directors.... which I didn't know too much about because it was only myself that was going to the Port Directors at this time from this transfer station. And I got dumped off by a truck in front of a big 35-story skyscraper. And I said, "What's this?" And the guy drivin' the truck says, "Buddy, that says 17 Battery Place, and that's where I'm dropping you off. I haven't got the slightest idea." And there I was, this little hick from the country, dropped off in front of this skyscraper in New York. So, I saw some sailors walking into the building and I asked them about the orders that said "Port Directors," so they said something about the 14th floor, so I went up there. And the officer up there says, "I want you to go into the radio shack and help these boys on the radios." I says, "I don't know anything about radios. I'm an electrician, see." "I want you to go in and help them with the radios!" "I'm an electrician." "GO IN, and HELP them with the radios!" "Yes, sir." [laughs]

I couldn't believe it. I says, "Where's my ship?" So, we went there, and where we were, we were in and out of this building, and you lived on your own just like a civilian. You bought your own meals, you set your own rules, you...traveled around the city just as you wanted to...whatever...and your only restrictions were, of course, you came to work in the morning and you went home at night. We didn't have any set hours...just be pretty ambitious towards the end, when I left, we were putting in a lot of hours. What this radio was...was a ultra-high frequency radio that was used in convoy work. And why I was attached to the Port Directors was because the Port Directors were assigned to put the convoys together that were going overseas. And these radios were used in the convoys. And they were [strictly?] the only radio that the commercial ships could use for communications between themselves because it was a radio that the submarines could not pick up from any distance. [unintelligible]

L: Now, once you got in there, did you know how they worked?

R: What's that?

L: Once you got in there, and they were radios...

R: ... huh... I know a little bit about radios...but, because it was one radio set, you got to know it. You know,... it wasn't a variety. We just had this one radio and we got to know it...and we...uh...issued the brand new ones to the ships as they [built?] these convoys....they would come in and pick up the radios [unintelligible]... and we trained some people how to run 'em....and then they'd break down and they'd bring 'em in and we'd repair them for them and so forth. And uh, by the time I left we had a thousand radios in operation. So, we had quite a few... quite a [unintelligible] under our jurisdiction... got to quite a [unintelligible]. I don't know if you wanted me to go on to my naval career that quick, you know.

Then I wanted to go to sea duty. It was just one of those things that when you're young and eager you just have to get out there to see what it's all about. One of those you say, "I would not feel right if I sat my whole career in New York just repairing these radios." And I ...ah... got involved in some other things there. They... ah....these code machines that were there... I was a repair man for the code machines. I went to school and I became the repairman for the code machines. And while I was there, they had a new code machine came out, and there was one in Washington and one in New York. And ah, so I played around with the one we had in New York, and I came up with a few renovations and so forth and so on. And the people in Washington thought this was great and they wanted me to go to Washington, be transferred to Washington, to the Code and Signal Laboratory, but I wouldn't go. I said, "No, I want to ... I gotta go to sea." And I've already had my application in. And the first time, they sent another man in my place, and ..ah, so I said I'd just apply over again. So, I applied over again. So I guess they decided they just better let me go to sea. And, ah....

L: How much time had passed? At this point?

R: That was a little over a year.

L: So you were a year in New York? A little over a year in New York?

R: Right?

L: Where did you live when you were in New York?

R: What's that?

L: Where did you live?

R: I lived in...ah...two or three different places I moved? We just had a room that's all... a small room. And you bought your own meals on the outside. And I traveled the subway back and forth to work. And from then, I was transferred to.. ah...to the Destroyer Escort that I was on for the rest of the war... that's a Destroyer Escort 181... and uh, from then my naval career, of course, was out at sea. If you want the particulars about what we...the first trip we made, we pulled out of all strange things, on Christmas Eve we pulled out of New York, and took a convoy, and we ran a convoy... No, I take it back...I'm sure we didn't run a convoy, we went down to South America. And we got involved in what they call "Killer Groups," which were a baby carrier (air fleet carrier), and three or four Destroyer Escorts. And we just cruised around the South Atlantic looking for submarines. We didn't...I wouldn't say we were spectacular at it... well, we got one submarine, and had a few encounters with a couple more, but we didn't have no... ah, any...proof that we ever had a kill on...any...only one that we did get. The submarine we did get, and we picked up 23 survivors.

L: This might sound dumb, but whose submarine?

R: What's that?

L: Whose?

R: German. We picked up 23 survivors. And we transferred them over to the baby carrier because we were too small to take care of those prisoners for any length of time.

L: What does "baby carrier" mean?

R: It's a small...it's not quite as big as a full-sized carrier. Kind of a merchant ship that converted to an aircraft carrier.

L: OK.

R: Very small...and, they didn't carry that many planes. But, ah, they did their job. And, ah... they're a little bit trickier landing on them than it was on the big carriers because they weren't that big. But the pilots did a good job on it. Well.... [indicates do I want to keep going?]

L: Yeah....yeah....yeah

R: OK, we operated out of Recife, Brazil.

L: Out of what? Where? Re -- ceef? OK.

R: And, ah... we come in two or three times we came into port and went out with the escort group and then finally we came back into New York. And ah... we had an overhaul in New York, and then our next trip after the overhaul, was, ah...I should go back on that. Excuse me. So our next trip was, right... another trip to South America. And this time we went down, and we, ah, this was close to the end of the war, and the allies... ah, the...Uruguayan....Uruguay joined the Allied Forces at that time. It was March, I think, of 1945. So, we went down to Montevideo, Uruguay, and had an Admiral on board, came on board our ship. And we welcomed them into the Allied Forces, which was just a formality, as they didn't, they really didn't have much of an army or a navy or anything like that. But, er welcomed them, and we stayed there for a week, and had a very wonderful time. It was a beautiful country...Uruguay. Especially Montevideo. Very clean, neat, city. Ah, hard to believe that a city outside of the United States was that far ahead of us, but they were. They were ahead of us....in actually...in their city. Almost every store had fluorescent lights...which, we look back now, and ah...we had very few fluorescent lights on our stores. And yet, all the stores down there had fluorescent lights. It was just one of those things you notice. The stores were very neat, clean, everything was in its place. There was none of this jumbled up affair... with the clothes just thrown on top of each other or anything. [unintelligible] ... everything was beautifully laid out. Downtown...you never saw a woman downtown that wasn't dressed. I mean dressed like she was going to church. Dressed right to the... all....everybody in the downtown area...

L: What country was Uruguay associated with? Was it France?

R: Uruguay....Montevideo...was a big city.

L: Was it French originally? I'm wondering where the culture came from?

R: I don't know...it was Spanish.

L: So what did you do there for a week?

R: Well, this was a Good Will Ambassadorship for the welfare of the service. They had two big meat-packing places -- Armor and Swift, I guess, maybe. And they put on steak roasts and cooked big fancy meals for us everyday. When were there, they put on these outside barbecues and so forth and they really... we were the first servicemen they had ever seen. And so they really treated us fairly, really high hog.

And they we came back and we were supposed to pull back into Rio de Janeiro which we had stopped in before on some of our cruises ...and somehow we got a radio message to head right to Boston and we went to Boston and stayed for a big overhaul on us and get us all equipped for the ..for when we went back through the canal and were heading for Japan, which was coming up in the future. And ..uh...we put into San Diego and refueled and so forth and they we hit Hawaii and Pearl Harbor and we cruised out there. We took some maneuvers and so forth around Pearl Harbor for maybe about a month and then I guess the war ended in that period. And seeing as though we were brand new and had just had a nice brand new overhaul, they decided we should go on a weather patrol. And this was somewhere out off the coast of Japan but out into the ocean, the Pacific Ocean, and it was a really rough area where we were and we hit some really, really bad storms. And one storm we hit, they say, the ship rolled enough so that we should have tipped over, but we didn't do it. It was just a streak of luck! But the ship didn't roll over, and it got real bad. Our ship got awfully, awfully beat up on the top side from the rough weather.

L: What was the purpose of this?

R: It was a weather patrol, we were scanning for the weather because all the ships were coming back from the, OK, the, armed forces, and now they were coming back to the states. So they have to have somebody really kinda watching the weather so they didn't run into any bad weather, if they could help it, you know? And so that was us; we got elected somehow. And it was really bad duty, because it was awful rough. All the time it was rough, rough, rough. And what would happen to an awful lot of people...your stomach would hurt after awhile, because normally, on the ship, you'd rock back and forth, back and forth, and the muscles in your stomach were constantly moving back and forth as you'd go with the ship. And after, oh boy, about six or eight days, it really was something. Boy, it got to be a real nuisance, and people had problems with it, some of them. I had problems myself, but not bad. But some of them had problems where they'd have to strap them to right their bunks for awhile.

L: So that there's....

R: ... almost strap them to the bunk, because it was so rough you'd bounce up and down all the time.

L: Oh really, wow...

R: It was really rough, yeah.

L: But, you didn't have problem?

R: No...

L: Were you seasick ever?

R: What's that?

L: Were you seasick ever?

R: Ah, well, you get seasick the first few times... a little bit when you first go out, and after that you get used to it.

L: So, a storm doesn't make you more seasick than....?

R: No, no, even a bad storm, no. You get used to it.

L: So, what were you doing? OK, the ship is out there. It's transmitting its weather, what are you doing during this time?

R: Well, running the ship, that's all. We had 12 other men on board. So we're taking the weather watch. We're releasing these balloons every day, fill them up with ... you know, 3 or 4 feet around...a balloon. They had these little radio transmitters on them, and they'd ...people...the weather and so forth. I don't know exactly what they did, but they....

L: And then somebody radioed it somewhere...

R: Yeah, and then they radioed back with it.

L: And so you're just keeping the engine room running?

R: What?

L: You're just keeping the engine room running while they're doing that kind of stuff? Now, what do you do with all those people in their bunks?

R: After awhile they get over it. Two or three days... you know, a couple of days and they'd be ...their stomach would be a little better, you know, and then they'd be around. If it didn't, when your stomach is feeling so bad, you know, they still had the roll. So it was one of those things that you couldn't get away from unless you're tied right in the bunk practically.

L: Yeah. What happened the night you almost rolled? Were you aware of it? Or...

R: What happened was... if you look at the ocean you have these big high swells. It's like a wave, but they never break out there like they do at the seacoast. So there's these high waves, and what happens is that they peak at the top. And one of the things you always notice is, the wind was so strong, that it would take the top five feet right off of that peak of the wave. But, since they were high... now these are probably forty or fifty feet high, so you're looking up at 'em on an angle. Not straight up, but you're... And we tried to turn around; why, I don't know. So, when you get sideways, you have to realize that that big wave, you know, it's on a pretty good angle, and we're sideways on it. And the wave went out from under us, and we hit the top of the wave and it went out, just before we would have tipped over.

L: The winds blew it out? Or?

R: If you picture that, how you're on the side of something, but our ship was so small, and that was so big, that it had our whole ship sideways.

L: Yeah...

R: And then, of course, then it went out from under us and we flopped back in the wave.

L: Flopped back up just at the right time

R: Just at the right time.

L: Now, were you aware of it? Could you tell you were on you side?

R: Not until afterwards. Afterwards.

L: Do you know where you were? I mean, were you sleeping? Or?

R: I happened to be on watch at the time.

L: Yeah, but you couldn't feel the ship tip over like that?

R: Oh yes, I felt it tip over. We were 'whaaat happened?' Because I was on what they call a [forward?] motor room; you have to control the screws. And, ah, the minute that happened, and we rolled, that we got the signal that, ah, full speed ahead, and of course I hit it full speed ahead right then. And, of course, we straightened out real quick. And, ah, when you're in a storm, you either have to take 'em "forward", ]...or uh, "bow to" or "stern to." You can't take 'em sideways, because they'll tip you over.

L: Well, how did it get turned sideways?

R: Because, whoever the man was up there on the deck, decided he wanted to turn around and go the other way. I don't know why, and we never did get the idea as to why he wanted to turn around....maybe we had a perimeter we were supposed to get and this leg we were supposed to take, and so he wanted to turn it, but he should have waited until it got a little bit calmer, and so forth, before he tried to turn it regardless. Because [unintelligible].

L: Yeah.

R: .. and what could happen?

L: So were people panicky? Or calm?

R: No, it happened ...just... that's it; it's over ...I mean...

L: It happened so quickly and it's over, yeah.

R: ... two or three seconds...that's it, that's it.

L: So, nobody knew that he was trying to turn it, and so, like, commented, "Oh, we're headed the wrong way."

R: Maybe, up on the bridge they did. But we didn't know it.

L: You didn't know it, OK.

R: The only people who would know were your weather handlers, the ones on the bridge. Now, down in the engine room... where [unintelligible] the engine room ...you'd know how fast we're going, because we control that. We control it... by rpm's of the propeller -- you know, 500 RPM's, 600 RPM's, and that's how you'd control your speed. You can control it really down to a precise speed -- only you could get it down to 610 revolutions or 615 revolutions. This was a lot of times, when you're running with another group, where you want to keep a formation, then you'd wouldn't have a precise setting. Other than that you just kept it lose, you know, half a knot, and so forth.

R: But, we never saw much action...ah, as far as that was concerned. We never saw any...any action from airplanes. Just the submarines. We had one little encounter with a submarine where it did fire torpedos at us, but they missed by quite a bit. They didn't come too close. And we had another bad situation ...well, I take it back...we had two bad situations. One when we were picking up the ...ah, survivors off the submarine They were just dark ...

L: The German survivors?

R: The German submarine...and we didn't know there were two submarines there at the time, and the other submarine fired a torpedo at us. And that caused a little bit of a panic situation....and [?] ah, with the survivors. And so we left them for awhile. Well, we had to... I mean we're not gonna risk our ship just...well, with their ship firing at us. And ah... probably about six or seven hours later, before we came back and picked up the survivors this time; we were very, very careful about how much light we put on them. The first time, we didn't figure this would happen so we had quite a few lights on them, just to see what was going on. The second time we were very, very careful about the lights [?] that we needed to pick them up.

L: Now, when you picked up the 23 men, how many men were on the submarine to begin with?

R: I don't know.

L: A lot more than 23? Or only a few more than 23?

R: [?] We picked up 23 live ones and one dead one.

L: OK. OK. [I found myself wanting to ask, but not wanting to at the same time. My father didn't seem to want to talk about the killing of some of these German sailors. And I could hear in his voice how matter-of-fact he felt about the rescue of them...it was, of course, simply the right thing to do.]

L: So, does that mean that most of them got on....

R: Now, there was more that we didn't ...No, there was more that we didn't get. Yeah.

L: OK, there's more that you didn't get.

R: But, that's all we...we, ah...got. There was... ah...right.

L: And the reason you got fired on was because you were using too much light to pick up the survivors?

R: Well, the lights gave a signal to the ship. They...they saw the lights, you know? When you're running at sea, there is no lights at all....exposed on the ship.

L: Now, OK, now... I don't know if I'm being naive or not, but the reason you would pick up the survivors is because the goal is to get the submarine, not the men, right?

R: Well, yeah, the goal was the submarine....but...

L: I mean, you're in war, why pick up the 23 survivors?

R: What would you call it? The Good Samaritan Law...to pick up the survivors.

L: OK...OK... Is that...

R: They didn't have anything to pick them up.

L: Is that typical practice? Most people would have picked them up?

R: I guess so. Yes.

L: Now, what did you do with them once you picked them up?

R: The next day we transferred them onto the carrier. The carrier had facilities for secure the prisoners...we didn't. We had 'em in a little, little room that was [so small?] they had to stand on top of each other because a destroyer wasn't that big. [laughs]

L: So they, were all in one room?

R: Right. And of course we're out at sea, and we were going to stay out there for awhile.

L: Were you like, in the engine room, or did you see them getting picked up?

R: No, I happened to be on one of the repair crews, or whatever you want to call it, at the time. I wasn't on watch. So, I was one of the ones that helped pick up the.... We dropped a cargo net, and you climb up it like a rope ladder, because it's wide, and probably about three or four people can climb up this rope ladder at a time. And then, they climbed up the rope ladder and they came on the ship.

L: It must have been odd. I mean, they're coming on, and they don't speak the language...

R: Well, yes, well, well ... of course, because of the fact, I told you, we had very little, very little light allowed, what we did, we immediately stripped them. Once they hit the deck we stripped them. Because we couldn't take a chance, I mean... you didn't know... and let's face it, you're kind working with a little flashlight ...and ah, well, you just stripped them right there, and then took them down and put them in this one room. And after we give them the clothes... I don't know [?] clothes whose is whose. But it's the only thing you could do, because of the fact that in the dark you couldn't take any chances.

L: Now, were they scared?

R: No, they didn't seem to be. In fact, they seemed to be... most of them seemed to be very happy, because they were out of it. It's one of those things...I guess they, ah, they had some pretty rough duty on those submarine. And they seemed to be pretty happy.

L: So they were almost glad they survived the loss of the submarine and got captured.

R: Right! Their captain was a kind of an arrogant person, but the...

L: Did they speak English?

R: Yes, the Captain did, and a few of the men spoke pretty clear English.

L: Did he say anything? That you remember?

R: The Captain, of the submarine, said, ah, this was rather annoying, he says, "I.." I don't know which way he put this, "I demand whiskey and I demand to see your Captain." Those were the first two things he said, and I happened to be right with him and we stripped him anyway, because we didn't know who he was. And, he wasn't too happy about it. He made a few couple of remarks, maybe swear words, and of some sort, and we couldn't pay attention to him at the time because we just didn't have time. You can't play games with them. And then of course, yeah, afterwards, we took him up to the Captain, where they could communicate, I don't know what the [?] was then, but...

L: Did you ever go back after that other sub? Or, it just went away? Or...

R: It got away.

L: It got away.

R: Right!

L: So, it would have just left the 23 men there? Technically...?

R: It might have come back...right, if we weren't there. It might have come back. Yes, I don't know. It might have come back, yes... the next day.

L: So they would have spent the whole night in the water, then.

R: Now, one other episode we had was just at the end of the war. We happened to be tied up in New London, and a German submarine sunk a coal barge [unintelligible] off the coast of New Jersey

L: A German submarine... did?

R: A German did. So we went out after the German submarine. Now, this was just about the end of the war.

L: And it's off the coast of New Jersey?

R: Off the coast of New Jersey?

L: How far off?

R: Not very far off. I don't know. Maybe fifty or a hundred miles. And we chased the submarine and we had some pretty good bearings on it. And, in fact, one time I think we went over the top of the submarine, but we didn't drop any charges see? We were a little bit skeptical and we don't know the exact details, but we didn't drop any charges. And the submarine was in very very poor shape. In fact the batteries evidently were just about gone, because they couldn't stay under very long. We kept spotting them on the top even in the daytime. And uh, this dirigible one day dropped their sonar buoys and saw the submarine and dropped the sonar buoys and these were buoys to pick up the propeller noises. And we stopped in the water to see if we could pick up the propeller noises from these sonar buoys so we could knew where the submarine was. The exact location. And we never did get the exact location of the submarine, and but we kept getting this [unintelligible] more nervous and more nervous. And finally they ran into Guantanamo Bay and surrendered. They were about, we were just behind them [unintelligible] and I guess they knew we were going to get them within a certain period of time if they didn't surrender.

L: So, they knew you were going to get them, you just didn't know you were going to get them.

R: And the end of the war was right at that period, and in fact, we knew the submarine was in such bad shape that we already had a boarding party rigged for going on that submarine [unintelligible] in case they might give up. And I know there was a few of the men lined up to board the thing. This other fellow and myself, [possibly a name] were down in the hatch and dragged a chain from one end of the submarine to the other. Now why we took a chain was, all the doors were watertight doors, and they sealed very tightly. So if the chain was in there, they could not close the door. So, in other words, they could not seal off any hatches on us. So, once you get the chain through there, they ... they could not close the hatches on it, so then the submarine would be wide open, and of course... I remember I was one of the ones that .. this other fellow and myself...had the chains and they showed us how we were supposed to go through the submarine.

L: So was that something you had to do quickly?

R: Well, yeah. Quick as we could, yeah. Once they stopped.

L: Now, where the sub... sub... submarine men at that point?

R: They would be down there.

L: The Germans were down there? And they had already been captured? They had already given up the whole thing?

R: No, no, they gave up, see ... supposedly! Now, when they say we give up ...

L: You don't trust them.

R: They give a white flag [unintelligible] but you're still not happy about going on an enemy submarine even though it does say, "We surrender."

L: Yeah. So long did it take to drag this chain?

R: Oh, only about three minutes.

L: Oh, I didn't know how long it was.

R: It's not that big. Probably about a couple hundred feet, that's all.

L: So, it goes out one door and then in another door. So who was with you?

END TAPE #1