Greetings, Robb. No kudos for me--just my dad. It was his war. Mine was
Korea.  Now to the story.  W.G. Kirkland, Jr., aka Dub, of Bamberg, SC,
had already served a hitch in the USMC, from 1934 to 1938. In 1940 he
decided to enlist in the USN, and after his recruit training was
assigned to the USS Chicago, CA29, as a machinest's mate. On Dec. 7,
1941, he was about three days out of Pearl Harbor serving as part of an
escort group for the carrier USS Lexington when general quarters
sounded. My dad told me his battle station was in the aft emergency
steering compartment which, if my memory of a diagram of the ship is
accurate, was at or just below the waterline.  The group searched the
waters to the south of Pearl, but made no enemy contact.  When they
entered Pearl on about 13 December, my dad told me the sight of ruined
and sunken ships amidst a harbor full of thick  bunker fuel made just
about everyone sick to their stomachs. While they hastily put provisions
aboard, they could watch the cutting torches of crews trying to free men
trapped below decks on several ships.  Everyone was fearing a Japanese
invasion or sabotage, at the least, and perimeter guards would not
hesitate to fire on anyone slow in answering a challenge. When
reprovisioning was completed the group shoved off, eventually stopping
off at Australia for fuel and other supplies. My dad told me he got
heartily sick of mutton and tapioca in the ensuing months as they had to
take what the Aussies could provide. During the Coral Sea battle, he and
his shipmates in the aft emergency steering could feel the ship vibrate
and shake from the firing of their own guns and the explosions in nearby
waters caused by torpedoes and God only knew what. It was during this
time they considered the unpleasant thought that they were dogged down
tight in the compartment with the only way out being by way of a very
small escape hatch to the deck above. So, according to my dad, they
acquired a couple of shorthandled sledgehammers and crowbars, just in
case the Chicago took a hit and the main hatch jammed. With those tools,
he told me, they felt they had a fighting chance of forcing the hatch
open to escape. The ship returned to Sydney, Australia, and tied up to a
bouy in the harbor. My dad told me that he was working one of the
ship-to-shore boats at about the end of May, 1942, when late one night
as the boat was approaching the gangway landing platform, the boat crew
heard a loud CLANG! and all of a sudden the harbor lit up with gunfire
from several ships. He told me they went dockside under full power.
Later he found out some Japanese midget subs had entered the harbor and
fired torpedoes. He said a check of the hull a few days later revealed
what appeared to be large scrape on the hull indicative of a glancing
strike of a torpedo...only a few yards from where his craft had been. By
August, '42, the Chicago was off Guadalcanal as part of an
Aussie-American surface force to protect the USMC beach head. My dad
told me that early on the morning of August 9, the whole ship seemed to
jump out of the water and heel over, a deafening sound of explosions
reverberated through the ship and he was flung against a hatch to bounce
off and down to the deck. He said the general quarters alarm wasn't
necessary, for the whole crew was racing for their battle stations
before the ship stopped its shaking.  It was found that about 30 feet of
the bow had been blown off by torpedoes launched by a Japanese strike
force that had penetrated the harbor. A temporary bow was put on the
Chicago and she made her slow way back to San Francisco for permanent
repairs. In January of '43, my dad said his ship rejoined the force off
the 'Canal. On January 29, 1943, the group came under attack by enemy
aircraft and the Chicago received hits that knocked it out of power.
Down in the aft emergency steering, the men had assumed manual steering
as the bridge steering was out of action. Dad told me it was as hot as
the hinges of hell, the men straining to muscle power the rudder. When
the ship's screws stopped (something they could hear quite well) he and
the others with him, lacking communication with the bridge and feeling
the ship settling down at the stern, decided to get out of Dodge, and
swarmed up the small ladder leading to the escpe hatch. When they
unfastened the first hatch dog, he said someone on the deck above would
relock it. This went on for several minutes, my dad using the small
sledgehammer to knock a dog clamp loose, someone above locking it back
down. When they finally forced the hatch and gained access to the next
deck, they cussed the men of that deck out and asked why they had kept
slamming the dogs shut. "We didn't want the compartment flooded!", they
said. A riot nearly broke out when my dad and the others pointed out,
not in a civil manner, that all the damned fools had to do was open the
inspection vent cap to find out if the aft steering was flooded! Dad
told me that late the next afternoon, he and a buddy lookrd up to see
several Japanese planes drop torpedoes aimed at the Chicago, which was
under tow at the time...a prime sitting duck! The Chicago was mortally
wounded and began to settle by the stern. Dad and his buddy made their
way to the stern and just stepped off the deck into the water, avoiding
the mistake he said he saw several men make...leaping off the higher
positions nearer the bow, landing on men already in the water. After
being picked up by the escorting ships, the crew was taken to an allied
port, cleansed of the thick coating of bunker fuel and issued a set of
basic working duty clothes. The smooth process almost broke out into a
mutiny when it came to reconstructing the ship's records, dad said. The
officers would tell the bean counters they had had, say for example,
$324 riding in the ship finance book. "Okay, sir. Here's a voucher for
that amount. Take it to the finance officer and you'll get your money"
When it came to the common Bluejacket, dad said, it was a different
matter, indeed. "You say you had five months pay riding on the books?
That's a laugh! You get one months pay and so much for personal gear!"
When the crew discovered the U.S. Navy was paying $30 for the loss of an
electric razor, every crewman was suddenly the owner of an electric
razor now on the bottom of the Pacific. The paymaster suspiciously
granted the razor allowance for a while, then stood up and shouted to
the crew that if everyone who claimed to having owned an electric razor
was telling the truth, the Chicago would have needed another boiler to
supply the electricity necessary to power the razors. Dad told me the
paymaster then came up with the 1943 version of Catch 22. "I'll pay for
an electric razor if you have a sales receipt!" End of claims. My dad
was then assigned to destroyers, serving aboard them until his discharge
in 1946. He passed away March 11, 1992.   (ROBB, FYI. My father said
Cpt. Bode was relieved of command an issued a letter of reprimand for
his actions before and during the first action at the 'Canal. He said
the later scuttlebutt noted that Bode, his naval career practically
destroyed, was transferred to the Panama Canal Zone where he later put a
handgun to his temple and pulled the trigger. I would hesitate to use
this as it would serve no purpose except to bring painful reminders to
his survivors.)  Regards, John