Found some cool post cards

Thought this was pretty cool.  I have no idea where this came from, or how I wound up with it. Regardless I'm glad it didn't get lost during the renovation and all our moves, as I remember seeing these cards many years ago. They were put in a safe place, safe enough not to remember where they were put.

Anyway these depict an artists rendering of what Stone Mountain was to look like. In real life you will see that it was scaled down drastically.  I think today (in current times) it's safe to say that this would not even exist.

Grampa certainly got around. I'm assuming this trip south was by train.

Back of card

Artist Rendering

Quite a plan!

Todays reality.

It's been a long time ...

I realized it has been quite awhile since I last posted anything here. Since Carolyn's passing there was some soul searching as to what is in store for the future.  To be in such a large house by myself didn't make sense, however, after all the planning being done, I decided that the renovation would continue and very shortly after Carolyn's service it was started. The final product we hope will be a place for all to come visit, enjoy the lake, the house, and to have fun in!!!
The destruction process was quick and very extensive. I have been living out of three rooms that haven't been touched. The small bathroom has been multitasking to the extreme. I have mastered washing the dishes, and laundry while taking a shower at the same time ...    just kidding, but close!
Currently the house is still trashed but starting to be put back together. The exterior has been painted new colors and looks great. The interior has been painted but a lot remains to be done. Trim work, cabinets, island, bath, beams, new floors, garage door, front door, and cleaning, cleaning, did I mention cleaning!  I have sheet rock dust everywhere, I mean everywhere, after the sanders did their part, thinking it was done, I come home to see the painters.... sanding! nothing was covered or taped/plastic over, what a mess! the cleaning process starts this morning and who knows when its over. All in all the end is in sight and we're still ahead of schedule and so far under budget. I'm sure Carolyn would give a thumbs up seeing her vision coming together, Ashley and Becca have helped in the details selecting the colors, fixtures, etc.
I have no doubt that Carolyn is happy seeing that Ellen is now in my life, we are very happy together and plan to one day make this a permanent life together. We both realize that this has been fast and some would think maybe too fast. It's hard to explain but both of us have the same feeling that this is okay and right for us.  There are no schedules or time frame set, and when we think the time is right we'll move on to the next step.  As we begin our new adventures together and start visiting everyone you will get to see why we're together.
Some pictures!

2 new kayaks

hull panels to be epoxied together

Stern transom stitched together

Wood Duck 12, taking shape

The beginning

Rear deck and new windows

Garage, new door and 1 foot longer

The beam from hell :)

Beam gone!!

     

Before

The kitchen!

   

After

New front door, needs finishing and install :)

Tinsley, Ashley, Ellen on top of Stone Mountain

Bedroom paint

       

Ellen, Rebecca, at top of Amicalola Falls

Fireplace on deck

 

Canoeing on Lake Arrowhead.

That's it for now! next post will have the final reveal of the renovation. !!

End of Summer, into Fall and some more family history. Get a drink, relax, this is a long one :)

September has become an annual Florida vacation trip with Ashley, Josh and the kids.  This summer seemed to be threatened by a tropical storm which turned and went up the east coast of Florida. The condo, a couple floors down from Marcia and Don had a renovation and updating just completed. The finished product turned out very nice.

Sept. 2015

Post card picture, this is tough to get used to.

Donna, where's Kevin ?

Good food, cold beer, dancing to the Beatles! Yes, they really were there.

Sunset 2015 Ft. Myers Beach

 Walks on the beach, swimming in the gulf and in the pool, night time mini golf, feeding the birds, sand castles, Brooks BBQ, cold drinks, good food and lazy days on the beach. A fun vacation!

Marcia and I took a day to travel up to see Uncle Art and Aunt Millie, what an inspiration they both are, I can only hope that if I get to their age I'm as "with it" as they are. Why in the hell I can never remember to take a picture when the phone/camera is in my pocket I'll never know.  Anyway, Barb and John were there it was great talking with everyone and the afternoon passed way too fast.

As promised a couple posts ago when I looked into Dad's travels and experiences in WWII, I decided to expand this endeavor to look at the family history and their military service. So, continuing on with Uncle Art.
Personal note: I feel strongly that it's important to hear, know, and try to imagine the experiences of our family who served in WWII, and other times of war, conflict, revolution or what have you, who came home and resumed a "normal" life.

So here goes, ... (a caveat first, hopefully this is accurate and I'll rely on Uncle Art to correct me if I've gotten something wrong.

Arthur T. Freer Jr.

On December 7th 1941, The United States was attacked by Japanese forces at Pearl Harbor, then the Territory of Hawaii. Uncle Art was 18 years old and a Senior in Gilbertsville Central High School. Eight months later he would find himself on a Train to Albany, NY, where, after a physical, quite possibly to determine his ability to endure his next meal, "white hotdogs and white peas" while on the next train to Chicago for Naval Basic Training at Great Lakes Naval Station. About a month later Uncle Art would find himself at the University of Wisconsin where he would remain for the next 4 months receiving training as a Radioman and assigned to Naval Amphibious Force.

Assigned to LST 480;
What's an LST?  easy answer, a big ship that carries troops, vehicles, ammunition, fuel and anything else troops in combat could possibly need or want.  It's a floating football field! over 100 yards long and 50 feet wide.  What's LST stand for?  Landing Ship Tank, they carried tanks, trucks and other tracked / armored vehicles to carry invasion forces to the battle. These ships had a unique design that was developed from a request by Winston Churchill after the evacuation of British forces from Dunkirk, Churchill called for a ship which could carry troops and supplies into shallow waters.
Because an LST is so large and heavy their speed was slow. Many sailors who served aboard an LST affectionately referred to the LST as a Large Slow moving Target.

North! To Alaska!
Operation Cottage, Kiska Island, Alaska
August 15, 1943, Uncle Art and 34,426 of his closest friends comprised the invasion force of American and Canadian forces. LST 480 had a crew assigned of 55 personnel a normal crew was 115,
"The invaders landed to find the island (Kiska) abandoned. Army Air Force chose to bomb abandoned positions for almost three weeks. The day before the withdrawal, the U.S. Navy fought an inconclusive and possibly meaningless Battle of the Pips 80 mi (70 nmi; 130 km) to the west.

In fact the Japanese forces had left two weeks earlier. Under the cover of fog, the Japanese had successfully removed their troops on 28 July. Yet strangely, despite US military command having access to Japanese ciphers and having decoded all the Japanese naval messages; the
The Japanese may have been gone, but Allied casualties on Kiska nevertheless numbered 313. All were the result of friendly fire, booby traps, disease, or frostbite. As with Attu, Kiska offered an extremely hostile environment."  Wikipedia.

Kiska Is. Invasion fleet at Harbor,  Adak, AK 

First ship to the right with bow doors open is LST 480, unloading troops and supplies on Kiska Is.

LST 480,  an LCT  and another LST, Kiska Is. The below picture gives you an idea of size comparison.

LCT unloading tanks, to give you an idea, comparison to LST's size.

Don't know the location of this, but it's representative of the crowded conditions of logistics while preparing for an invasion. Soldiers, Sailors, Marines, guns, ammunition, fuel, what could possibly go wrong?

Back to the mainland;
LST 480 is towing an LCT back to Seattle through a storm and high seas which causes them to be separated from the convoy. Adding to that, the high seas cause the LCT to swamp, the crew of 12 were evacuated to LST 480 and the LCT was subsequently sunk.  Both of these type ships have a flat bottom hull which is ideal for shallow and calm waters, open seas and rough waves frequently made for an interesting voyage especially when fully loaded with cargo and sometimes being top heavy. Uncle Art received a communication via the radio that contained the coordinates of the convoy so they could meet up. The "captain was not happy" I'm guessing this was because the coordinates were transmitted and the Japanese could easily be listening.
Once loaded with cargo LST 480 sails from Seattle to Pearl Harbor.
While at Pearl Harbor Uncle Art said "the brigs (jails) were emptied and prisoners were put on ships to complete the crews. "They were a tough group, earrings, long hair, tattoos, looking like pirates," He steered clear of these guys!
LST 480 then sails to Funafuti an Atoll in the Tuvalu Is. chain.

Tuvalu Is. Chain,  a long way from anywhere!

Funafuti Atoll.

Uncle Art received a radio message advising that Funafuti was under attack! He goes out on deck and sees one Japanese plane aiming for some of the larger ships. On to Tarawa...

November 20 through November 23, 1943.

The Battle of Tarawa, a battle in the Pacific Theater of World War II that was fought from November 20 to November 23, 1943. It took place at the Tarawa Atoll in the Gilbert Islands.^[2] Nearly 6,400 Japanese, Koreans, and Americans died in the fighting, mostly on and around the small island of Betio, in the extreme southwest of Tarawa Atoll.^[3]
The Battle of Tarawa was the first American offensive in the critical central Pacific region. It was also the first time in the war that the United States faced serious Japanese opposition to an amphibious landing.^[4] Previous landings met little or no initial resistance,^{[5][N 1]} but this time the 4,500 Japanese defenders were well-supplied and well-prepared, and they fought almost to the last man, exacting a heavy toll on the United States Marine Corps. The U.S. had suffered similar casualties in other campaigns, for example over the six months of the Guadalcanal Campaign, but in this case the losses were incurred within the space of 76 hours.  Wikipedia.

The American invasion force to the Gilberts was the largest yet assembled for a single operation in the Pacific, consisting of 17 aircraft carriers (6 CVs, 5 CVLs, and 6 CVEs), 12 battleships, 8 heavy cruisers, 4 light cruisers, 66 destroyers, and 36 transport ships. On board the transports was the 2nd Marine Division and a part of the Army's 27th Infantry Division, for a total of about 35,000 troops.

Sometime around November 25, 1943 Uncle Art and LST 480 arrive to resupply the invasion forces and was witness to the gruesome part of war seeing the bodies of Japanese soldiers.

Folks, I have to tell you as I write this and do some research it's kind of like following bread crumbs, as I find something interesting (I think anyway) I get pulled into another direction. In following Uncle Art's travels I find more on Dad's travels which lead me down another path of "interesting stuff", so, I'll be adding or editing some to the post of Dad's travels in the future.

Ok, Back to Pearl Harbor, LST 480, loaded once again with supplies and is off to Kwajalein Atoll, part of the Marshall Islands.  From the descriptions this place doesn't seem much bigger than LST 480.

Kwajalein Atoll

After a dropping off supplies here and at Makin Island, LST 480 returns to Pearl Harbor to prepare for the invasion of Saipan.  Preparations included practice landings on beaches near Hawaii and the loading of LSTs with supplies of ammunition, fuel, vehicles, and with soldiers and Marines. During the practice landings high winds, storms and heavy seas turned the practice landings into a disaster with ships being damaged and personnel being lost, killed or injured.

As if the previous months and travels through out the Pacific weren't exciting enough, there's more!

May 21, 1944, West Loch, Pearl Harbor, Territory of Hawaii.

Pearl Harbor, West Loch, Oahu Hawaii

Bear with me while I try to condense 269 pages into a few paragraphs.  :-)

The West Loch Disaster.  I had never heard of it! There's been books written, references made to it but few even know about it because... until 1965, this incident remained classified and the personnel there were ordered not "to talk about it to anyone"!

The Middle of May 1944 U.S. forces of the Army, Navy and Marines were successfully making hard fought progress against the Japanese. Gen. MacArthur and the Army were making their way north along the coast of New Guinea and Admiral Nimitz was preparing for the largest invasion to date since D-Day in Normandy. This would be the invasion of Saipan.  "In order to transport the Marine and Army invaders to the beaches of Saipan, the Navy had assembled a vast array of transports, including forty-nine landing ship, tanks (LSTs)"  The Second Pearl Harbor, The West Loch Disaster. Gene Salecher.

Vice Admiral Richmond Turner "wanted his men to be well trained for the up-coming invasion of the Mariana island of Saipan. Accordingly he scheduled five days of full-blown rehearsals to take place around Hawaii, (the biggest and longest held to date in the Pacific Camapigns."  The Second Pearl Harbor, The West Loch Disaster. Gene Salecher.

LST 480 and several other ships did not participate in these practice landings, some were under going engine or other mechanical repairs, others were being loaded with ammunition, supplies, fuel, vehicles, etc., while others such as LST 480 were being outfitted with large pontoons that were being attached to their sides.  The pontoons were essentially large metal boxes that during the invasion would be removed and positioned to act as docks and causeways to allow for transporting supplies to shore in the shallow coral reefs surrounding the islands.

Let me ask you to scroll up to the picture showing numerous LSTs docked together, notice the crowded conditions, the vehicles and supplies loaded on the decks of these ships. Below deck there's even more ammunition, vehicles and supplies!

“RM2/c Arthur T. Freer, added, “Or ammunition was loaded about four foot high on the tank deck and on top of that was DUKWs  (an amphibious vehicle). On topside was probably hundreds and hundreds of gasoline drums (55 gal. drums).”  The Second Pearl Harbor, The West Loch Disaster, May 21 1944.  Gene Eric Salecher, p.39.

The initial explosion on the bow of LST 353 had enough force to send debris and people flying, ships 500' away felt the concussion, windows in barracks over 1/2 mile away were shattered.

Well over a 1000' away LST 480 was undergoing preparations, Many of the crew were on liberty. Uncle Art was "playing checkers in the Radio Shack with a new recruit when the checkerboard and checkers jumped off the table". The official report on the cause of the explosion was blamed on a ammunition shell that was dropped during the loading process.  Since there were no surviving witnesses that account remains suspect to this day.  Many witnesses or survivors before the explosion blame the explosion on cigarette smoking in the vicinity of hundreds of barrels of high octane fuel. Many survivors described the almost overwhelming smell and odor from gasoline vapors.  It was common for Soldiers and Marines to "tap" a barrel of fuel to use the gasoline as a solvent while cleaning their weapons. After reading the accounts of activities while loading the ships I'm in the category of  a careless cigarette in proximity to gasoline vapors versus the chance of a dropped shell exploding.
Out on deck he sees burning debris, shrapnel, pieces of ship, vehicles, fuel drums, landing on the deck, which is loaded with 55gal. drums of aviation fuel.  While manning fire hoses to put the fires out and to keep the remaining fuel from exploding other ships are in the same predicament fuel, ammunition, vehicles all exploding flying through the air, landing on more ships and spreading the disaster.  The waters all around these ships are covered with fuel and oil which soon ignites and spreads to other ships. The waters are also filling with bodies, soldiers, sailors and marines who were either blown off the decks by the explosions or dove into the water to escape the flames and burning debris. Some LSTs either trying to get under way to escape the disaster or were torn from their moorings were now drifting with no control into the waterway.

Uncle Art, "we see LST 69 drifting towards them (burning and out of control) so we head to the back of the ship where we see shoes lined up on the fantail below, almost at attention."  There's two officers below who order abandon ship. Uncle Art, "the recruit can't swim so I give him my life jacket and we dive in". Once they reach shore the banks are wet and muddy from the people before them escaping the explosions. They make it to the top of the bank and are now in a freshly cut sugar cane field without shoes, burning vehicle parts and other debris are raining down around the personnel trying to escape, there are some who don't make it, being struck by debris.

"The cane had been cut at an angle and sharp, ...most of the men had taken off their shoes prior to jumping into the water. It cut our legs and our feet all to pieces, Going through the cane field without any shoes was tough on the feet concurred Radioman Freer."  The Second Pearl Harbor, The West Loch Disaster. Gene Salecher.

The West Loch Disaster.

LST burning, across the water way ... a huge ammunition storage facility.

Tracked amphibious vehicles foreground, burning LSTs in background.

LST 480 in background burning.

The smoldering remains of LST 480. Notice the pontoons attached to each side of the ship. After the explosions stopped and the fires were put out, LST 480 was pushed to the shore to beach it, keeping it from floating uncontrollably into the waterways.

" Half of the crew of Lieutenant Johnson's LST #480 were on liberty, and none of the Marine or Army passengers were on board when the gas drums on #353 blew up. Moored to the dolphin pilings at Tare #9, #480 had to wait for all of the outboard ships to move before she could move herself, and because she was downwind of the explosion, #480 was struck with a large amount of debris and shrapnel. Devoid of an LCT, but saddled with a pair of pontoons, her main deck was crowded with trucks, jeeps, and trailers, all covered with canvas tops. The first rain of debris set many of the tops on fire."  The Second Pearl Harbor, The West Loch Disaster. Gene Salecher.

"I don't think anybody jumped over from another ship onto ours," reported Radioman Freer. "all the time, as every explosion would go up ... all this stuff would drizzle down and have little fires, you know, so we just kinda sprayed them."  Machinists Mate Knebel, " The noise was so loud that it burst my eardrums." ..."It was our assignment to spray water on the 100 55gal. barrels of 100 octane aviation gasoline that was lashed to the main deck to keep them from exploding."  The Second Pearl Harbor, The West Loch Disaster. Gene Salecher.

LST 480 would receive three Battle Stars for combat operations in the Gilberts Islands, the Marshall Islands, and the Marianas Islands.  

LST 480 as she rests today.

West Loch Disaster Memorial

There are several official figures of casualties each that differ one another. 163 killed or missing and 396 injured.  However, the vast scope of this disaster, poor records, and a need to keep this disaster "quiet" during preparations for the impending invasion of Saipan has clouded the actual numbers. Many witnesses believe the numbers were much higher and possibly exceeding 2000. 


It ain't over til it's over;

The West Loch Disaster is over, recovery, cleanup and salvage operations begin and the war is not over!  Radioman Freer ships out from Pearl Harbor on USS Roy O. Hale (DE-336) a Destroyer class war ship.

Upon arrival at Guam, Uncle Art is transferred to a net tender in preparation of the invasion of Guam.
















On board LST #871;

A new ship! picked up in Jeffersonville, IN, sailed down the Mississippi river, in "Nawlins" uncle Art enjoyed liberty! New Orleans is a great place for liberty. Next up, through the Panama Canal to San Diego, Pearl Harbor, then Guam in the Marianas.

Operation Iceberg; April, 1, 1945. The invasion of Okinawa, the largest amphibious assault in the Pacific theater in WWII. 82 days of continuous combat. Three weeks after the invasion LST 871H arrives.  The H designation reveals LST 871 was converted to a Hospital ship in preparation of the high number of casualties expected in this operation and the up-coming invasion of Japan itself.
Uncle Art observed 100s of ships in the harbor with kamikaze planes trying to hit the larger ships.

Amphibious landings on Okinawa

LSTs off loading during Okinawa invasion.

Kamikaze plane.

Okinawa Invasion fleet.

Kamikaze hitting an aircraft carrier, Okinawa.

Sometime around August 6th, 1945, Radioman Freer received a message ...(Little Boy), the codename for the atomic bomb being dropped on Japan. (no-one believed him), Not hard to understand since the atomic bomb at that time was almost beyond comprehension.
It's over! getting home! personnel carrier with bunk beds stacked 18 high and arrives in San Francisco, After a leave at home, Uncle Art receives orders to Norfolk, VA, then to Long Island.
On December 18, 1945 Uncle Art receives just enough money to catch a train to Oneonta, NY and is honorably discharged from the U. S. Navy.  "Anchors aweigh..."   Glad and proud you made it Uncle Art!