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Gary Drake |
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Did you enlist or were you drafted?
I enlisted in the Navy is 1954. I am still considered a Korean War veteran although I was never on the continent of Korea; we operated in the waters off Korea. Most of my tour of duty consisted of operating down in the South China Sea. At that particular time the Chinese were involved in trying to get back the island of Taiwan, formerly known as the island of Formosa. We would go down there and operate with the 7th Fleet just to keep the Chinese away from Chang Kai Chek, who was at that time the leader of Taiwan. So as far as having any actual combat duty on the Korean peninsula, I did not. The Korean War was never, has never been over, per say. In fact, the military personnel that are stationed in Korea now are eligible to be in the Veterans of Foreign War organization. There was an armistice; it is still an active type of war, just never gone, its been forgotten.
Did you go through any type of training?
Oh yes. When I enlisted in the navy I went to Great Lakes Naval Training Center in Great Lakes, Illinois, and spent ten weeks in boot camp learning all about navy life. I went to a class “A” school, also the Great Lakes, Illinois, and it was a machinist’s mate school. I worked in the engine room aboard ship. I spent fourteen weeks learning all about marine propulsion engines. After that, I was sent to Manila Bay in the Philippine Islands, where I caught my ship, a fleet oilier. The designation was AO105, the USS Mispillion. Navy oilers are named after rivers that are named for famous Indian chiefs. I spent thirty-eight months aboard this fleet oilier. We would replenish ships at sea. We would pull into a port and take on black oil, aviation gasoline, and jet fuel. Then we’d go out to sea and operate with either a task force or a task group. A task group is smaller than a task force. As the ships were running low on fuel, we would pull alongside and refuel them, Normally, we would take a carrier or a cruiser on our port side, that is the left side. On the starboard side, which is the right side, we would fuel destroyers, or as they are known in the navy, “tin cans,” because they are so flimsy. They ran picket around the carrier and the cruiser and they usually did anti-submarine searches. At that particular time, the cold war was really going string between Russia, China, and the United States, so we were constantly looking for submarines. Both the United States and Russia opened submarines to gather information. We refueled a task force that included everything: three oilers beside the one I was on, ammunition ships, cargo ships, and goods. We were called the service squadron; our designation was COMSERVPAC, which operated in the western Pacific. My homeport was first in southern Japan and the second was on the island of Kyshu, which is in the North.
What was the weather like?
Well, when we operated in the South China Sea and around the island of Guam the weather was hot. I never got to cross the Equator, but came within ten or fifteen degrees. The weather in that particular area, around Formosa, was hot, humid, and wet. When we operated up and around Japan, we were usually there from April till September and the weather was quite like Wisconsin, but maybe a little more rain because of the monsoon season came at that particular time. We also had typhoons to worry about. The time I spent aboard ship we had three typhoons and I went through some pretty big storms. We were looking at thirty to forty foot waves and most of the time our main desk was awash with water. One night at about nine o’clock we got a man overboard call. Everybody had to go to their duty station and that meant putting a boat over the side to look for whoever was overboard. As it turned out, a sailor was going up on watch and when he went out the hatch, the ship rolled and the hatch came loose and caught his leg. He screamed and we assumed he had fallen over; but they found him with his leg pinched in the hatch.
Did you ever get on land in Korea?
Not in Korea, but we operated off its coast a few times. We had submarine alerts.
What was the hardest part of your tour?
The hardest part was being away from home. It was always a year or two between leaves. Other than that it was the heat. I worked the after pump room, right below the boiler room so the temperature was usually around 140 degrees. I lost about thirty pounds. I lost three men to the heat; one had a rash so bad he couldn’t wear a uniform, and the others just passed out. Other than that I can’t remember any other hardships.
Were you on occupation duty?
Not in Korea, I was part of the occupation of Japan. At that time we were still considered occupation troops in Japan.
How much cargo would your
ship carry?
Ours was all liquid. It seems to me that we carried 45,000 barrels of black oil and I don’t know how much aviation gasoline and jet fuel. Of course we would carry fresh water and we pumped it to the other ships. The smaller ships, like the destroyers, would take so much fresh water to run their boilers. They have what are called evaporators. They pump in seawater, boil it and take the fresh water as it is evaporated off. Then it’s pumped in as fresh water and the salt water was pumped over the side. But their evaporators were so small that is was all they could do to keep fresh water for the boilers in destroyers. They took saltwater showers. While at sea, destroyers came alongside and put water hoses across and pumped fresh water. We had two large tanks, one in the bow and on in the stern, that were full of fresh water. The oilier I was on could make eighteen knots, which was flank speed, but we usually refueled at fifteen knots, a high speed. Carriers and cruisers could make thirty or forty knots, so we were pretty slow. It was quite a sight to see, especially early in the morning, when we did the refueling of a task group. You would get up and the sun would come up and all you could see was ships from horizon to horizon. One time off Formosa we were refueling and they ran in a straight line and whatever got in the way just got in the way. There were fishing boats that got angled up and I am sure it cost the United States government quite a bit of money for fishing nets. We couldn’t vary our course with three ships abreast. It took about four hours to refuel, and hour per destroyer. By that time we would be dry and turn around and go back to port, fill up and come out again. The task force remained out. When we were in Taiwan we pulled into a port there and the destroyers would come in and pull up alongside us. Once a week we would go out and refuel the carrier. The oilier I was on was 550 feet long and 125 feet wide compared to older carriers which were 800-850 feet long. Now the carriers are around 1000-1200 feet long. It is hard to imagine.
What time did you get up every morning?
Reveille on board ship was at six A.M. but we stood watches around the clock. We had four, four-hour watches: 12 to 4, 4 to 8, 8 to 12, and 12 to 4. We had enough men on board that when you stood the 12 to 4 watch in the afternoon then you could “dog the watch” with somebody to rotate your shift. Otherwise we didn’t have enough men. If you were put on mid-watch when you left port in the United States you stayed on mid-watch until you got to Japan. It was only four hours but it’s four hours of sleep you don’t get- plus you’d have and eight-hour work detail. The 4 to 8 watch in the afternoon was after your workday, so you put in 12 hours. You were pretty busy all the time.
Did you make friends with a lot of people?
Oh sure, there are two in the area. One lived here and enlisted just before I did, and the other was from South Dakota. When we were discharged he came home and stayed with us.
Have you attended any
reunions?
I haven’t been to any. There was one about four or five years ago in Long Beach, California. I had a good friend that lived in California but he’s passed away and I have another in South Dakota. I haven’t had any communication with him lately.
How often did you get shore
leave?
On the oilier it wasn’t too bad. We would go out and refuel and then go back into port. Then we would have liberty. It consisted of what we called “two section” liberty. There is a port section and a starboard section cause there always had to be somebody on ship to stand watches, even in port. We stood watched because our machinery wasn’t shut down. We got off at four o’clock in the afternoon and we had o be back by six in the morning and once a year we could take thirty days leave. You could take it anywhere, but I usually took it when I got back to the United States.
What was your opinion of the
outcome of the Korean War?
Not very good, it was never settled and it still isn’t. It is still there, you have North Korea and South Korea. I don’t know, I think if the Chinese had stayed out of the conflict it would have been resolved into one Korea. It was political, and the politicians decided they didn’t want to irritate China. So it sits undecided. North Korea is making overtures now, but I don’t know. They have let some South Korean families visit. There are families on both sides, brothers and sisters separated by the border. War isn’t cracked up to what it’s supposed to be. I can remember, I was in high school and casualties came home from the war with lots and lots of cases of frostbite. The temperature gets way down below the 38th parallel, so the temperature is hot in the summer and cold in the winter.
What was your opinion of the
time you spent in the military?
For the most part, I don’t now if I enjoyed it. I must have, because I did enlist, I wasn’t drafted. I’m not sure if I would want to do it again, but I’m sure glad that I did. That particular time when I was growing up was during WWII and the propaganda about joining the military carrier right through to Korea. I graduated from Everest ’54 and I think there were 46 of us in the graduating class and out of that I think 12 or so went into the military.
So it was still the thing to do. It was not the thing to do to go to college. I didn’t go.
