In the spring of 1943 I was assigned to the S.S. Robert Morris as a merchant marine cadet and was able to observe America's Merchant Marines as an insider. We waited in New York for three days while a 60-ship convoy was formed, bound for Africa.
The convoy was escorted by a "free French" destroyer, a British frigate and a "free Netherlands" destroyer. The U.S. Navy was busy elsewhere. An hour out of New York, the convoy was attacked by German U-boats.
Escorting destroyers, sirens wailing, began making runs outside the convoy lines releasing depth charges at a rapid rate. We could see the nearby geysers of water erupting from the explosions and feel the concussion as the shock waves struck the ship. All hands were at battle stations, which meant that those without specific assignments were at the lifeboats.
It was there that I noticed the crew was an assortment of men, many of whom could not have passed the physical exam for entry into the armed services. Others were too young, 16 being the required age for going to a maritime service seaman's school. Some were foreign.
They were sailors from torpedoed Allied cargo ships and had been rescued by the Navy. The cooks and messmen were too old to have been drafted or taken as volunteers in the services. And some commissary staff were African Americans working in an unsegregated environment, unlike the segregated services.
These, then, were the men of the Merchant Marine. Most did not have to go to sea but they did and they performed their work with e'lan and expertise under the most trying conditions. World War II cargo ships were not today's container ships, operating alongside mechanized port facilities. Shelter from the sea at many wartime ports was marginal, and rigging cargo booms and manning steam winches in a rolling seaway while being strafed by enemy planes was not a job for the faint of heart.
There were other hardships, not the least of which was the indifference, if not the actual hostility, on the homefront. A young seaman home after a dangerous run in icy waters to the Russian port of Murmansk, a voyage of several months during which the danger of a torpedoing and immersion in freezing water was ever present, often arrived home to be confronted by a gimlet-eyed draft board.
The draft board only knew that he was home. The details were unimportant. The board wanted him back to sea as quickly as possible or in the Army. I know about this one from personal experience.
My parents displayed a small banner in a street-facing window. It was red, white and blue, emblazoned with the words "son in the service." Several neighbors went to great pains to point out to my parents that I was not really in the service; I was in the Merchant Marine! It was not a kinder, gentler age.
Later in the war I accepted a commission in the Navy. As a junior officer aboard an escort aircraft carrier, the USS Anzio CVE 57 operating in the Western Pacific, my experiences were entirely "other." There was an esprit de corps. I knew the folks at home were avidly following the news, that there was genuine concern for my well-being, that I was part of a winning team and not a "draft-dodging, money-grubbing merchant seaman."
To this day I have the feeling that the folks at home have never understood that whether or not their sons and daughters on the battlefront lived or died was in large part dependent on the ability of the Merchant Marine to deliver the fighting hardware, and they did so, splendidly.
President Roosevelt, during the signing of the GI Bill in 1944, said, "I trust Congress will soon provide similar opportunities to members of the Merchant Marine who have risked their lives time and again during the war for the welfare of their country."
It never happened. Roosevelt died and the Sailor's Bill died with him.
Chances of dying in the services during World War ll were 1 in 34 for the Marines, 1 in 42 for the Army, 1 in 114 for the Navy and 1 in 26 for the Merchant Marine.
After the war, the merchant seaman received no low-interest home loans, no lifetime compensation for war injuries or disabilities, no use of VA hospitals, no priority for state, local or federal jobs, no paid educational benefits, no Social Security credit for wartime service. The list goes on.
Some 243,000 merchant mariners served in World War II and the nation has yet to redress the wrongs done them. There are only about 10,000 alive now.
So, it's a bit late for Congress to take corrective action. It is not too late for the nation to say a belated thank you or to include the gallant seamen who delivered the goods from Normandy to Okinawa in any tribute to veterans. But, as with the Japanese-American citizens wrongfully incarcerated during World War ll, our nation finds apology and redress a painfully difficult process.
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* MARCEL RODRIGUEZ, Lt. USNR (Ret.) was an engineering officer on cargo ships after the war. He now lives in Springville and is a seasonal interpretive ranger at Zion National Park.
