Draftees or Volunteers

Prologue

Author invites your comments

1939-1945 Revisited; Why Now (1997)?

A reader might well ask why a person would wait almost 60 years to tell a personal experience story. The first part of the answer is simple, though it takes a few words to convey. Our marriage was blessed with eight children. It took three careers to get the children launched. There has been a career in the Navy, a second career in industry, and a third as a self-employed technology consultant and writer. The second part of the answer involves later-life motivation factors and is a bit more involved.

The Smithsonian Institute mounted an exhibit in commemoration of the 50th anniversary (1945-1995) of the dropping of the atomic bomb on Japan. A section of the Enola Gay, the B-29 aircraft that dropped one of the two atomic bombs on Japan, was re-assembled for display in Washington DC. What the exhibitors actually undertook to portray around this aircraft artifact was the act of an aggressive nation, the United States, against a beaten enemy, the Japanese. Indignant U.S. veteran's groups and others learned from news media of the plans and the Smithsonian then made some modifications to its version of "history". About this same time, some other elements of society obtained publicity for their view that the Holocaust, memorialized in another museum display in Washington DC, did not really occur at all. I wanted to believe that the silent majority, at least those in a free press country such as the US, would be more active in countering such attempts to re-write history. The public's tepid reaction to these news stories surprised and saddened me.

One vigorous defender of historical fact during the active reporting period (centered on 1995) of these aberrations in historical recall was the Wall Street Journal. By 1997, however, readers of the Journal began to take note of articles by a staff reporter named Thomas E. Ricks who also carried a byline in the Atlantic Monthly. Mr. Ricks has written frequently about matters that affect the US military and has been particularly applauded for articles on military personnel. On May 30, 1997 under the headline, "Latest Battle for the Military Is How Best to Deal with Consensual Sex", Mr. Ricks included the following paragraph in an otherwise excellent article on this complex subject:

"A key fact about today's U.S. military is that military experts generally agree it's the world's best, arguably for the first time in history. So today's generals aren't just being politically correct when they express support for the gender-integrated military. They also would rather command a force of competent volunteers of both sexes than the main alternative-a force of less-trained and sometimes surly male draftees."

That last sentence, particularly the phrase "sometimes surly draftees", reveals Mr. Ricks and the Journal involved in a bit of history re-writing of their own. Only the Wall Street Journal knows how the paragraph ever got by its editors into a Journal feature article. The phrase had no relation to Mr. Ricks' central points. Neither the Journal nor Mr. Ricks responded to a letter I wrote to the Journal about it. It is not objectionable to find "today's generals" proud of their forces. Ricks does not identify any sources in the group, "they also would". The reader is left to guess why the last sentence ever goes beyond "a force of competent volunteers of both sexes" to disparage "sometimes surly male draftees". Men are taking hits these days. Denigrating three generations of draftees in WW II, Korea, and Vietnam, by suggesting that they could "sometimes" be surly might have come from some of today's generals, or from one of today's generals, or from one of today's Journal writers, or from some of today's Journal editors. It's a bum rap. The ambiguities that the Journal permitted to stand in that sentence may have been intentional.

I have never met a surly draftee. In 1968, two wars after the one providing the backdrop for this story, one of my sons "volunteered" for duty in the Vietnam conflict as he was about to be drafted. The line can be very faint between draftee and volunteer. It certainly disappears in the body bag. I have met many young men, spanning three generations, caught in the same circumstance as my son. The soldiers, sailors and airmen of the Korean and the Vietnam conflicts, on the eve of their being called to duty for their country, were no different than the young men "sweating" duty in WW II. When I think of the sacrifices these men have made, and the conditions under which they fought, it occurs to me that most of today's generals, writers and editors are not likely to have had contact with those draftees except by reading about them. So, generals, writers and editors, currently active in your professions, read what I have to relate.

Nothing of such global significance as the Holocaust or the Atomic Bomb will be covered here. This story will portray a ship's company of yesterday's regulars, reservists, and draftees in a different light. These men fought the USS Edison from 1941-1945 and they fought her well. The story will be told in a series of episodes. Some are about triumph in the heat of battle. Some are about mistakes that are made when millions of men and women are taken from peaceful lives and thrown together in battle action preceded by a modicum of often just as dangerous training for that action. These folks were in "for the duration."

A Ship Revisited

The actions described in this story center on the USS Edison, DD 439, a destroyer commissioned early in 1941 and decommissioned in 1946 after the end of WW II. The photo below shows the ship in her first "war paint". Later photos will reveal important armament changes. Although the ship's standard enlisted complement was just over 200 men, in the short span of her service, 940 served aboard her.

Credit OUR NAVY PHOTO

"...going to War?"

A granddaughter interviewed me in 1997 for her high school history term paper. "How did you end up going to War?", was her first question. I must say that the War came to me, rather than my going to War. A 1935 western New York State high school graduate with two years of college credits toward a Chemical Engineering degree ran out of money, went to work, but still wanted to get a college degree. A political Uncle knew the Honorable CarolineO'Day, Congresswoman-At-Large from New York, and he prevailed on her to offer me a Principal Appointment to the U.S. Naval Academy. With no entrance exam required because of the satisfactory college grades, the only remaining obstacle was a physical exam. That was taken June 5-7, 1939 at the U.S. Naval Academy (USNA) at Annapolis, Maryland. An eye condition called farsightedness caused a one day delay but I was sworn in with the Class of 1943, USNA, on June 7, 1939. I was 18. My appointment as Midshipman U.S. Navy was signed by Charles Edison, Acting Secretary of the Navy. Just three years later, I was ordered to report to the USS Edison, a destroyer named after Charles Edison's father, inventor Thomas Alva Edison. For those interested in more on coincidence, the Edison was DD439. Those numbers were the last three numbers on the Social Security card issued so I could accept employment at Eastman Kodak in Rochester, NY in 1936. It took a very supportive, fact-aware wife, to point these coincidences out to me.

In my early teens, I had been an avid reader of current events but I still thought of my goal as getting an education. The going-to-war sequence did not figure prominently in my thoughts. The new Midshipman uniforms hid a landlubber who could not tell a Chief Petty Officer from a Commissioned Officer. (The appointment available from Congresswoman O'Day was for the Naval Academy. I'm sure that if her available appointment had been to West Point, I would have gone there.) The choices faced later by others, to enlist or be drafted, to get into graduate school or work in a war plant, or to apply for status as a Conscientious Objector, were never before me. I was already there. Patriotism was important to me from early childhood but it was not a factor in how I joined the war at sea.

Hitler's invasion of Poland in 1939, followed by the invasion of Norway, the overrunning of Holland, Belgium, Luxembourg and the defeat of France in 1940 forced a speedup in the USNA schedule. The Class of 1943 was set to be graduated one year early, in June of 1942. The attack by Japan at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 put all midshipmen on armed watches. A classmate used his .45 to commit suicide while on one of those watches.

When I reported aboard Edison as the "junior" Ensign in July 1942, the ship already had acquired some War History and one star on her service ribbon. I would be aboard while she earned five more stars on that ribbon for close fire support for amphibious landings at Casablanca, Sicily, Salerno, Anzio and Southern France. A number of other episodes will also be recounted, some tragic, some zany, and some touching. There were no dull days on the Edison. Order Book

Frank Dailey Jr. July 27, 1997

Several hundred readers have responded with e-mails and letters. These responses have provided the author expanded insights. The nephew of one of those Red Cross nurses plucked from an open lifeboat in the North Atlantic in July of 1941 by the USS Charles F. Hughes has provided a followup on her story. A 460-page paperback incorporating some of those insights is now available in a 2nd Edition dated June 1999. The book can be ordered by clicking here. ( 2006: The Third Edition, with new covers, has an enlarged format, 6x9, so contains just 413 pages. Nothing has been left out though some introductory material in the 2nd Edition is now in an Appendix.)
The 2nd Edition went through six printings. 1400 were sold. Here is the "short list" of WWII ships/units that have been heard from via E-mail: minesweeper USS Pioneer; U.S. destroyers Buck, Benson, Edison, Gleaves, Lansdale, Ludlow, Mayo, Plunkett, Wilkes and Woolsey and from a later destroyer generation, USS Dyess; U.S.cruisers Augusta, Philadelphia, Savannah ,and British cruiser HMS Spartan; troop transports HMTS Rohna, SS Awatea, SS Mallory, SS Santa Elena, SS Santa Margarita, SS Vigrid, U.S. Army Transport Dorchester and USS West Point; supply ship USS Electra; amphibious ship USS Doyen (PA-1); Darby's Rangers. An officer on the staff of Admiral Richmond Kelly Turner commented favorably.
One reader, Mark Henshaw, was so impressed with the book that he developed an Index of the 300 ships that appear in the book. This 8-page index is available free by writing Dailey International Publishers, 500 Laurel Oaks Lane, Alpharetta, GA 30004-4508 or e-mailing, franklyn21@daileyint.com
For quick reference to the Henshaw index, go to index.htm
Frank Dailey Jr. 10 March, 2008