Grandfathers in the war

[Ishmael]

On Dec, 7, 1941, my father was an able seaman aboard the SS Lena Luckenback about 600 miles east-north-east of Oahu on the run out from San Francisco. About 300 miles to the nor-nor-east of them was the SS Cynthia Olson. My father told me of hearing her distress calls a few hours before the attack began.

This SUP ship was the first sunk by a Japanese submarine on December 7, 1941. The attack occurred a few hours before Pearl Harbor was bombed, so the shock of the doomed sailors could not have been greater. She went down with all hands. The sinking of the Cynthia Olson symbolically represents the final intersection of two eras. Like steam replacing sail many years earlier, the onset of World War II began the replacement of many of the aging coastwise “steam schooners,” a trade that had grown with the SUP since its inception.

As a civilian with a critical job skill, he had a draft deferment for the entire war. His critical job skill was taking troops to invasion beaches and dropping them off. As a civilian, he took part in the Attu, Kiska, North Africa, Sicily, Salerno, Anzio, Iwo Jima and the Japanese Occupation. He was shot at by representatives of all three Axis powers and only used a firearm in the commission of a felony(armed robbery) for which he served a year in San Quentin Prison. He remained a merchant seaman until 1948 when he came ashore to marry my mom.

His brother, my Uncle Emmett was a Lieutenant Commander USNR and was port captain of Noumea, New Caledonia. My Aunt's ex-husband Glen was one of the "Battered Bastards of Bastogne" serving in the 101st Airborne from D-Day to Berlin.


Bill, what was your grandfather's name? As a Scott, Winfield has been an interest of mine and was the most influential and brilliant US general of the 19th century as both the Conqueror of Mexico and Architect of the Anaconda Strategy that secured Victory for Federal forces and preserved the Union. In my hometown of Benicia, both William T. Sherman and Ulysses S. Grant were posted as young lieutenants. Sherman was adjutant to the last military governor of California, Col. Roberts Barnes Mason and was present during the discovery of gold at Sutter's Mill.