https://pge.post-gazette.com/.fullpdfs/2021/01/20210110.pdf Page 9 wrote:
Former merchant mariners saluted for WWII convoys
By Torsten Ove
Pittsbugh Post-Gazette
Winston Churchill described it
as the “worst journey in the
world,” and two local Merchant
Marine veterans in their 90s are
among the last left in the U.S. to
have endured it.
These were the World War II
Arctic convoys to the Russian
ports of Murmansk and Archangel
to supply the USSR with materials
to carry on its fight for survival
against Nazi Germany.
From 1941 to 1945, Merchant
Marine convoys battled submarine
and air attacks while braving icy
seas and vicious storms.
The overloaded Liberty ships
hauled everything from boots to
tanks and locomotives. Some 800
ships made the Murmansk run in
41 convoys. More than 100 sank
from German attacks, mines,
storms and accidents.
But enough material got
through for the Soviets eventually
to turn the tide.
Now Russia is saying thank you
to the remaining veterans — 17 at
last count — by presenting them
with the Medal of Ushakov. The
decoration is named for Adm. Fyodor Ushakov, the patron saint of
the Russian Navy famous for never
losing a battle.
Two of those recipients —
Howard Pfeifer, 97, and Mike
Kemple, 93 — are members of the
Three Rivers Chapter of the
American Merchant Marine
Veterans.
The plan had been to pay tribute to them with an in-person presentation last month. COVID-19
scuttled the idea, so the Russian
Embassy mailed the medals instead. Capt. Scott Nowak, treasurer of the local chapter, delivered them.
Even without a ceremony, it was
a high honor for the aging mariners.
“I’m proud of it,” said Mr.
Kemple, of Elizabeth, who shipped
off for Murmansk in 1944 as a 17-
year-old. “I understand that there
are only 17 of us left.”
‘What’s the
Merchant Marine?’
Mr. Pfeifer, of Franklin Park,
made three runs to Russia and two
others to Iran and Omaha Beach.
“I was really pleased,” he said. “I
am very grateful that they recognized our efforts and I was proud to
serve my country.”
Mariners have long felt neglected in the annals of World War
II in comparison with the Navy,
Army and Marines. The Allies
could not have won without the
cargo ships delivering war supplies to far-flung ports. Yet many
Americans don’t know what the
Merchant Marine is.
As a young man growing up on
Pittsburgh’s South Side, Mr. Pfeifer didn’t either.
When the war came, he was
working at U.S. Steel in Homestead
and wanted to do his part. A cousin
in the Navy suggested he join the
Merchant Marine because it would
allow him to choose his fate rather
than be drafted and sent wherever
the Army or Navy needed him.
“Being from Pittsburgh, I said,
‘What the hell is the Merchant
Marine?’ ” he said. “I would never
have known what the Merchant
Marine was if it wasn’t for my
cousin.”
He joined in 1943 at age 19 and
trained at Sheepshead Bay, N.Y.,
where he saw oceangoing ships for
the first time. “It was absolutely
new and interesting,” he said.
The Liberty ships carried a crew
of mariners and Navy Armed
Guard personnel to man the guns
for self-defense. Mr. Pfeifer steered
the ship, despite having little training. His first trip was to Iran in July
1943, transporting Studebaker
trucks and other supplies for the
Russians.
“My main memory of that
voyage was that when we were underway, entering the port, our ship
ran aground to the point that we
were seriously listing, because we
were going in as the tide was coming out,” Mr. Pfeifer said in an
email. “It took several days for the
ship to right itself, using the help of
several tugs.”
Grateful Russians
He next journeyed to Murmansk
in February 1944, leaving from
New York as part of a 45-ship convoy. Army soldiers guarded the
load. “The cargo was crated, so I’m
not sure what it all was,” he said.
On the second day out, German
U-boats attacked.
“The ship ahead of us [a tanker]
blew up,” Mr. Pfeifer said. “I was at
the wheel. I was scared, hoping we
wouldn’t get hit.”
Mr. Pfeifer realized then the
high stakes of the war and what
could happen.
After stopping in England, the
convoy steamed past Norway and
into the Barents Sea. The crew wore
sheepskin coats and hats to protect
against the Arctic cold. At desolate
Murmansk, the Russians mandated
that the Americans visit only certain places, but they were genial.
“The Russians came on board
and gave us rubles to spend,” he
said. “They said, ‘We want you to
know that this is a gift from Stalin.’
The Russians were friendly. They
were grateful for what we were
bringing them.”
In May 1944 Mr. Pfeifer shipped
out again, this time to England on a
rust bucket built in 1914 hauling 1-
ton bombs. “Howard,” a crewmate,
said to Mr. Pfeifer, “I don’t think
this old tub will make it out of the
harbor.” The engines did break
down, requiring repairs at sea. In
addition, the bombs began shifting
around because of poor loading.
The captain asked for volunteers to
secure the load. It was dangerous
because of the risk of getting
crushed between the bombs, but
Mr. Pfeifer and his friend volunteered.
“My friend said, ‘Why are
we doing this, Howard?’”
Mr. Pfeifer wrote in a journal of his exploits, “to which
I answered, ‘I know what we
can do, but I don’t know
what someone else may do.”
They went below and secured the bombs by placing
two-by-fours between them.
The ship continued to England, where the bombs were
offloaded. Workers then filled
the ship with dirt, and it
headed out again, scraping
the bottom of the harbor.
“They never told us
where we were going,” Mr.
Pfeifer recalled. “I was in my
bunk when I heard lots of
noise. There was tremendous firing like you can’t
imagine.”
Omaha Beach
It was the invasion of Normandy.
The ship lay at anchor until the Allies secured the
landing area at Omaha
Beach. The bombing and
shooting left the deck covered with shrapnel each
morning. When the beach
was secured, the crew drove
the ship in to shore, where it
and others were scuttled to
provide an artificial dock for
unloading supplies. Mr. Pfeifer and the crew remained
on Omaha Beach for a time,
witnessing the invasion operations. From there, they
sailed to England, took a
train to Scotland and then
boarded a renovated cruise
ship carrying wounded men
back to Boston.
Mr. Pfeifer next shipped
off to Archangel in September 1944 through stormy
seas. He remembers standing watch in the crow’s nest
and watching German
planes sweep in. A reconnaissance plane always
came in first to scope out potential targets.
“One plane came close. I
could see the pilot’s head,”
he said. “We were attacked a
number of times.”
Bombs devastated several
ships. The Naval Armed
Guard fired back with machine guns.
“I was concerned in general” rather than truly
afraid, Mr. Pfeifer said, but
he focused on his job. “I
thought the best thing was to
just do what you have to do.”
Danger from the Germans
and the elements was constant, but long periods of
boredom marked much of
convoy duty. And there were
light moments, too.
On his last voyage to Russia, this time to the port of
Ekonomiya in February
1945, Mr. Pfeifer found himself in trouble with the law.
The crew could go ashore
with Russian rubles and
visit a hotel restaurant and a
dance hall. Local kids
wanted cigarettes and other
items from the Americans.
“The kids would try to
buy stuff off us,” Mr. Pfeifer
said. “They would say, ‘cigarettes, soap, comrade.’ ”
On his last night of liberty, he went ashore to get
souvenirs for himself and a
friend. He sold cigarettes to
some kids in a back alley. A
Russian police officer immediately accosted him and
marched him to the police
station.
He grabbed one officer,
shoved him into another and
ran, shouting, “I’m getting
the hell out of here.”
“They chased me yelling,
‘Halt, comrade.’ I turned
around and saw that the one
officer had a gun pointed at
me, and I was praying that
he was a bad shot.”
He ran back to the area
where sailors were allowed
and switched coats and hats
with someone to disguise
himself. He then walked back
to his ship. As he slipped
through the turnstiles, he
spotted the two Russian police officers searching for
him. One stood at the turnstile to his left and one at the
turnstile to the right. So Mr.
Pfeifer walked through the
middle turnstile.
Back on board ship, his
friend saw him emptyhanded and asked, “Didn’t
you get anything?”
“ ‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘I got arrested.’ ”
After the war, Mr. Pfeifer
had an opportunity to ship
out again. He declined. His
sailing days were done, and
he got on with his life like millions of other veterans, entering a career in construction
and raising a family.
One and done
Unlike Mr. Pfeifer, Mr.
Kemple made only one run
as a mariner. Growing up in
Elizabeth, he enlisted in the
Merchant Marine in 1944. He
was only 17.
“I felt proud of my country and I wanted to do something,” he said.
After training at
Sheepshead Bay, he boarded
a ship in New York.
“I got seasick in New York
Harbor,” he laughed. “I was
sick for five days.”
A cook told him to eat
crackers. He started to feel
better and never got seasick
again.
He shipped off for Murmansk in November 1944,
first stopping in England.
“It took 17 days to get to
England,” he said. “The captain was drunk most of the
way over.”
The captain was replaced
in England, and the ship
joined a convoy bound for
Murmansk.
“I was a messman,” he
said. “I peeled potatoes for 68
guys.”
Mr. Kemple also helped
bake pies and cakes. The
crew members could have
anything they wanted —
eggs for breakfast, steaks for
dinner cooked directly on
the burners.
“We had real good food on
that ship,” he said. “Boy, you
could get fat with the food
they had.”
He’d never been to sea, and
coming from Pittsburgh, it
was a new experience.
“All you see is water,” he
said.
Off Norway, the convoy
ran into a storm.
“Waves came over the
side of the ship,” Mr. Kemple
recalled. “The men panicked
and ran into each other.”
The convoy approached
Murmansk, and “that’s
where the submarines got
us,” he said. “Ships were torpedoed right close to us. We
were lucky to survive.”
Was he scared?
“You bet,” he said. “We
didn’t know what to do.”
The convoy needed icebreakers to get into port. Mr.
Kemple remembers throwing hard candy to Russian
children standing out on the
ice. The crew could go
ashore, but the Russians
were not allowed to talk to the
Americans, Mr. Kemple said.
On the way home, the
ship’s steering broke down,
and the vessel had to move
into an area protected by
anti-submarine nets.
“Another ship hit us in
the dark,” Mr. Kemple said.
A Navy escort guided his
ship back to England. Mr.
Kemple came home to the
U.S. after that and decided
he was done with sailing.
“I’d had enough of it,” he
said.
He joined the Army,
trained in New York and
ended up in Italy. But the
war was winding down, and
he never saw combat. He
came home again and, like
everyone else, went to work.
He took various jobs in Pittsburgh, California, Ohio and
finally back home again
while raising a family.
‘Bravest souls afloat’
Mr. Pfeifer and Mr.
Kemple have been recognized before with various
decorations for their service.
They are among a vanishing
breed.
Tens of thousands of mariners made the Arctic runs,
and 829 died, along with 1,944
Navy personnel. The Royal
Navy also lost 18 warships
and the Soviets another 30
merchant ships.
President Franklin D.
Roosevelt, himself a man of
the sea as former assistant
secretary of the Navy, understood the dangers better
than most.
“The men of our Merchant Marine have pushed
through despite the perils of
the submarine, the dive
bomber and the surface
raider,” he said in 1943.
“They have returned voluntarily to their jobs at sea
again and again, because
they realized that the lifelines to our battlefronts
would be broken if they did
not carry out their vital part
in this global war. ... In their
hands, our vital supply lines
are expanding. Their skill
and determination will keep
open the highway to victory
and unconditional surrender.”
The following year he
made this prediction: “As
time goes on, there will be
greater public understanding of our merchant fleet’s
record during this war.”
He was right on both
counts. In recent years, the
Merchant Marine has
gained greater recognition,
especially for its World War
II service.
But the men who remember the Murmansk run are
fast dwindling; several are
in hospice care.
Soon no one will be left
among the men Winston
Churchill called the “bravest souls afloat.”
I've seen programmes about the Merchant Marine and they had a hard time of it. My dad was in the RN but he took his hat off to how the Merchentmen managed during the war.
