What is a Veteran?
 

WWII Stories: ''I wasn’t going to let those little devils bury me''

Hugh Merritt paid to have a monument erected at Little Creek Naval Amphibious Base in memory of those who served on Bataan and Corregidor in the Philippine Islands.
BILL TIERNAN / THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT


By ED MILLER, The Virginian-Pilot
© May 26, 2004

VIRGINIA BEACH — The white Mercedes pulled off the road and under an oak tree. Hugh Merritt, 85, popped the trunk, pulled out a plastic shopping bag and walked across a clearing toward a granite monument, 3½ feet high.   He set the bag on the grass and took out several miniature American flags, wrapped in brown paper. Then he removed seven full-sized flags and a blue garrison cap with a pin near its crown that read “Ex-POW.”

  Traffic rolled by on Nider Boulevard on the Little Creek Naval Amphibious Base.

The azaleas behind the monument were in full bloom. It was a Thursday morning, May 6 – 62 years, to the day, that the island of Corregidor fell to the Japanese. “They took the American flag down,” Merritt recalled. “They lined us all up and sent word down to get rid of guns, destroy ’em.”

They were a ragged bunch. They had been living on half-rations for months, first on Bataan and then during the 28-day siege of Corregidor .

The Japanese stripped them to their skivvies. American officers told anyone with Japanese money to get rid of it; the Japanese would know it had come from their soldiers.   Some men tried to hide the money in their shoes.   “The Japs would find it, and shoot them right there. You’d hear a shot, down the line a ways, and you’d know there was another guy gone.”

The men were loaded on barges and taken to Bilibid Prison in Manila. >From there, they were jammed into boxcars for the ride to Cabanatuan No.1, a POW camp.

“I don’t know how many guys died. You really didn’t know they were dead, because they couldn’t fall. When they couldn’t get out the door, you knew the ones left behind were dead.”

On the third day three officers escaped. They were quickly captured, made to dig their own graves, and shot.

Prisoners were placed in squads of 10. If one escaped, the Japanese killed the other nine.

“If you heard shots, you knew they had shot them. If you didn’t hear shots, you knew they had beheaded them.”

In April of 1944, about 350 prisoners were loaded in the hold of a cargo ship headed to Japan. There was no room to sit, and no water. A five-gallon can served as the bathroom.

“At night time, for those that died during the day, they’d throw ropes down and you’d tie them on it, and they’d haul them up and throw them over the side.

“Then after a while, you could sit down.”

They were taken to a copper mine near Hitachi, where they worked 2,500 feet down, 12 hours a day, seven days a week.

Many men simply gave up.

“They said, 'Uncle Sam’s not coming to get us. They just forgot us.’ We knew there was no one coming.


“When your buddy died, you stripped him. You took his clothes, because that was the only way you had any clothes. There was never a man that I knew, when I was on death detail, who was buried with his clothes on.

“I was determined. I wasn’t going to let those little devils bury me over there.”

The Japanese gave the men two cigarettes a day. Merritt traded them for rice. Dying men often craved a last smoke.

One day they came out of the mine and found no shift waiting to relieve them.

“They told us, 'No more work. No more work. The U.S. and Japan have signed a peace treaty.’ ”

After a few days, fighter planes appeared in the distance. They swooped in low, then turned around and left.

“Three or four hours later, they came back. They had these sea bags full of candy, cigarettes and girly magazines. They dropped them daggone things down. Some of them went right through the barracks. Man, I’ll tell you, we had a ball.”

Eventually they boarded a train to Yokohama, where hospital ships awaited.

Merritt limped up the ramp to the ship using a rifle as a cane. He had taken the rifle from a Japanese guard, and wrapped it in a blanket.

He weighed 86 pounds. At the start of the war, he had weighed 150.

“This corpsman said to me, 'What have you got there?’

“I said, 'None of your damn business.’ “He said: 'You’ve got to tell me what you’ve got.’

“ 'A rifle.’ “ 'You can’t take a rifle on board.’

“I looked at him and I said, 'Are you going to take this rifle away from me?’

“He said: 'No, I don’t think I’m going to.’ “

The rifle leans in a corner of the guest room in Merritt’s Virginia Beach home, along with other mementos of a 30-year Navy career.

Merritt enlisted in 1935, a month after his 17th birthday. He pedaled his bike from his home in Lambert’s Point to the recruiting station in downtown Norfolk.

He became a torpedoman’s mate second class. It was only by a series of coincidences and bad timing that he wound up shouldering a rifle in the Philippine jungle, wearing Navy whites dyed yellow with coffee grounds.

Early in 1942, pinned down on Bataan, outnumbered and with little modern weaponry, they waited for the help they’d been promised. It never came.

Merritt was awarded a Purple Heart in 1950 and the Bronze Star in 1992.

He reached into his own pocket to create the monument at Little Creek.

It is dedicated to the “Battling Bastards” of Bataan/Corregidor, Philippine Islands, and was dedicated on April 10, 2000.

Merritt dug the post holes for the six flag poles that encircle the monument, and planted the grass that surrounds it. He keeps the grounds tidy, spraying weeds, trimming trees.

Each May 6, he visits, carrying his flags.

Merritt placed a miniature flag in the stones at the base of each flag pole. Then he carefully unfolded each of seven different flags.

He raised the American flag first, directly in front of the monument. Then, working clockwise around the monument, he raised a Navy flag, an Army and an Army Air Corps flag together, a USS Bataan flag, a POW-MIA flag, and a Marine Corps flag.

Merritt then put the garrison cap on his head and placed a single flag at the foot of the monument.

Merritt is not sure who will maintain the monument when he’s gone.

While he’s still here, his mission is clear.

“I want people to remember,” he said.

Reach Ed Miller at 446-2372 or ed.miller@pilotonline.com
 

Coffee, in its many forms, has been a mainstay of the Navy through the years.

       Grande, skinny, light foam,latte, cappuccino, frappaccino, mocha. These are names of beverages that have crept into the English language recently as various coffee-based drinks have brought a high degree of choice to consumers in all walks of life. As these choices have expanded, Navy officers and enlisted personnel have become more sophisticated in their beverage choices. This still-growing range of coffee choices in the U.S. Navy has evolved slowly over more than two centuries, as commercial coffee makers and purveyors developed imaginative techniques that today whet the thirst of men and women throughout the world.

       When men first went to sea thousands of years ago, their solid food and beverage needs were major concerns. In earliest recorded time, ships rarely sailed beyond sight of land, where they could easily put in to shore to obtain food and water.

       Later, as ships became larger and voyages longer and more hazardous, crews were sustained with substantial stores of food containers and jugs of water, requiring development of procedures for stowing, issuing and consuming them. Sanitary conditions at sea affected liquids and other foods aboard ship, leading to boiling water or adding alcohol to make it palatable. Before coffee came into use, water was supplemented by mead, a drink of fermented honey and water, flavored with fruit or spices. The meager rations were carefully doled out during each voyage.

       Inevitable onboard shortages on long cruises frequently became major issues among the crews, leading to occasional refusals to participate in manning their stations and even mutinies. Exhausted supplies of liquids far at sea could be replenished solely by capturing rainwater in sails, buckets or whatever else was at hand.

       The Old Testament indicates that wine was a popular beverage in biblical times. Archaeologists have uncovered ancient hieroglyphics describing how to brew beer and have located jugs that were used for containing beer more than 5,000 years ago. Although there is strong evidence that a strong alcoholic beverage was originally distilled from sugarcane in ancient Asia, it was not until the 15th century that Europeans learned to convert sugarcane readily into a thick, sweet liquor that became known as rum.

       Rum was quickly adopted by Great Britain's Royal Navy. The fledgling American Continental Navy was modeled along the lines of the RN and, early in 1794, the Continental Congress enacted into law that a daily ration for American sailors would be "one half pint of distilled spirits," or in lieu thereof, "one quart of beer."

       Royal Navy officials soon noticed that allowing enlisted ratings to drink straight rum hampered their performance at sea and endangered the safety of their ships. The Admiralty solved this problem by specifying that rum be diluted with water, creating a beverage called grog, which satisfied Sailors' need for a more thirst-quenching drink than water alone.

       Influenced by their English heritage, some American Sailors preferred drinking tea. Both coffee and tea could easily be brewed aboard ships. As a result of King George III's instituting a tax on tea and retaliation by colonists in the famous Boston Tea Party in 1773, the Continental Congress declared coffee the national drink of the colonies and aboard U.S. Navy ships. American Sailors promptly switched from tea to coffee.

       Preserving coffee beans proved to be a daunting task aboard Navy ships and in warehouses ashore. Wormholes in the beans roused considerable concern because of the unknown effect upon the final brewed product from the holes and the insects that caused them. Paymaster F.T. Arms addressed this concern in the Navy Cook Book, published in 1902, which he authored and distributed. Arms wrote, "The presence of wormholes in coffee should not occasion its rejection unless it is of inferior quality and strength, since they (the wormholes) generally indicate age, weigh nothing, and disappear when the coffee is ground."

       Coffee was served primarily for its satisfying taste and warming characteristics, but necessity sometimes fostered other innovative uses. In the spring of 1914, the Navy flotilla of destroyers was sen to Tampico on the Caribbean coast of Mexico where Marines were landed to secure release of arrested American seaman. The skipper of one destroyer, realizing that some of his Sailors, who would accompany the Marines, had only blues and whites in their sea bags to wear ashore in the semitropical climate, turned to his officers for suggestions.

       One unknown destroyer paymaster resolved the problem of providing more comfortable tropical uniforms by dipping white uniforms into pots of coffee, which effectively transformed them into khakis. A future flag officer and chief of Supply Corps, then a yeoman, third class (later VADM), Charles W. Fox, reported that there was "absolutely no comfort in wearing a uniform soaked from having been dipped in a pot of coffee dregs."

       Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels, scandalized by reports of drunkenness aboard ship, issued an order 1919 banned the serving of wine in the wardroom and any consumption of alcoholic aboardship. Daniels, a teetotaler, decreed that only coffee or tea should be served. This was not a popular order and Sailors promptly dubbed a cup of coffee as a "cup of joe."

       Popularity of coffee continued to increase during the period between two world wars as supply officers strove to assure that coffee of suitable quality was available in sufficient quantity to sate the thirst of officers and Sailors afloat and ashore.

       The importance of coffee to officers and Sailors was driven home on 7 December 1941, when supply officers of undamaged or lightly damaged combatant ships following the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor prepared to board supplies for immediate deployment no later than early the next morning. CAPT (later RADM) John J. Gaffney, senior Supply Corps officer assigned to the Navy Yard Pearl Harbor, issued a series of emergency orders to his staff. Among officers he dispatched into action was LTJG J. B. Andrade, SC, USNR, one of five Naval Reservists already serving on two weeks active duty in CAPT Gaffney's Supply Department. He instructed Andrade to drive into Honolulu to make emergency purchase of five tons of the popular Kona coffee for issue to fleet units preparing to put to sea.

       The young officer was unable to obtain the entire five tons as hastily opened wholesale firms turned over their entire Kona coffee inventory to him. Anticipating that it might not be possible for LTJG Andrade to purchase the full five tons, Gaffney had authorized substitution of commercial brands. Andrade purchased and delivered five tons of Kona and other acceptable coffee by late evening that day.

       As America went on a full wartime footing, soldiers were issued instant coffee in their ration kits. Back at home, shortages of coffee eventually led to rationing.

       One frequent World War II saying boasted that Navy ships operated on fuel oil and their crews operated on coffee. Many Sailors were convinced that U.S. Navy combatant ships in World War II had more unofficial "coffee messes" (or coffee pots) in place than crewmen aboard - about 2,000 in battleships. Most of these unauthorized "messes" consisted of a single electric coffeemaker plugged into the nearest electrical outlet in crew quarters, offices, workshops and sometimes even at battle stations. The number of individual messes and the frequent need to substitute lesser-known brands of coffee were among several factors that raised questions about the quality of Navy coffee, particularly in the fleet.

       U.S. Navy officials, motivated by the belief that coffee is as important to personnel in the fleet as ammunition is to its weapons systems, were concerned early during wartime expansion in 1942 over the widely varying quality of the roasted coffee being supplied to ships and shore stations. The solution was to open Navy fresh coffee roasting plants on both the East and West coasts and later in Hawaii.



       The coffee roasting plant at the Naval Supply Corps Depot Oakland, capable of roasting 13 million pounds an hour, went on line on Oct. 27, 1942. The plant annually produced 13.5 million pounds of freshly ground coffee from approximately 16 million pounds of green coffee beans obtained from Central and South America, usually from Brazil and Colombia.

       During the period from opening in October 1942 to June 1948, the Oakland Coffee Roasting Plant blended, roasted and ground 115,830,896 pounds of green coffee into a total of 98,456,264 pounds of freshly ground and roasted coffee and packed them in 50-pound sacks of high-quality freshly roasted coffee for the Pacific Fleet. Coffee was also shipped to other Navy, Marine Corps and Army units throughout the Pacific, including bases in Western states.

       A second coffee roasting plant, located at the Naval Clothing Depot at Brooklyn, N.Y., provided a similar service to the Atlantic Fleet and to other American military services in the North African and European theaters of operations. Both plants were operated until disestablished in 1956. An older Navy coffee roasting plant at Mare Island Shipyard in California was dismantled, shipped to Pearl Harbor, and began operation in July 1943 to meet expanding coffee needs of growing and rapidly advancing forces in the Central Pacific.

       Anecdotes about coffee in the Navy abound. Attorney Harris Meyer, son of the late CAPT Sam Meyer, USNR, shares one story that his father-in-law, Bernie Eisenbach, told fondly with pride. Eisenbach, a trained and experienced tool and die maker, enlisted in the Navy in 1942 and was designated a torpedoman, second class. He was ordered to the destroyer escort, USS Richard W. Suesens (DE 342), deployed to the South Pacific that already had a full complement of torpedomen. Eisenbach could type, so he was assigned as assistant to the ship's cook.

       The cook promptly gave Eisenbach the task of assuring that there was ample coffee for all watches. Bernie soon noticed that large quantities of coffee were left in the 20-quart containers in which it was brewed. The crewman who had this task before him, simply filled large pots with water, threw in large cheesecloth wrapped bags of coffee, turned on the heat and left them to boil. Sailors strongly criticized the bitter taste and drank little of it.

       Not being a coffee drinker, Eisenbach wrote to his father, a professional baker, and asked for the exact formula and procedure for brewing great coffee, which he subsequently received. His father stressed how much coffee he should put in for each gallon of water, exactly how long to brew the coffee and he emphasized that when the coffee was brewed, the grounds should be removed immediately.

       When the crew tasted the strong, well-brewed and improved coffee, prepared according to instructions of Bernie's father, they enjoyed the change. Thereafter, coffee usually disappeared by the middle of the watch, requiring Bernie to prepare additional quantities. Bernie's successful improvement in coffee definitely raised crew morale, but it had an unintended side effect that doubled his workload. The seemingly miraculous improvement in the ship's coffee formula soon spread throughout the squadron.

       CAPT Len Sapera, SC, USN (Ret.), recalls a shipboard coffee incident that had a less pleasant outcome. As a lieutenant, junior grade, in 1962, he was assigned as food services officer in USS Cavalier (APA 37) and caught a seaman apprentice one day making the morning coffee for the mess decks, using dirty dishwater. "I nailed him and took him to captain's mast where the CO busted him down to seaman recruit and processed him out of the Navy. That was the first time I put someone on report and nailed him at mast."

       At special times, military families traditionally have taken their holiday meals at base dining halls and dining facilities. CDR (later CAPT) Thomas J. Ingram, SC, USN, believed that the food service staff should be rewarded with a big holiday turnout, so he took his family to Thanksgiving dinner at the Cheatham Annex, Va., General Mess in the late 1960s. As a teenager, Alison Ingram (later CDR, CEC, USN, Ret.) accompanied her family for a special turkey dinner. When a mess attendant took her dessert order, she asked for pumpkin pie, but was served coffee, a beverage she never consumed. As the attendant stood by to determine her satisfaction, Alison reluctantly drank the coffee and found that it was delicious. CDR Ingram now says that she has been drinking coffee ever since.

       In 1974, as the U.S. Navy's communications station in Asmara, Ethiopia, was closing, a warehouse filled with remaining excess stores, was opened to the Ethiopian public for one visit per person to take whatever could be carried. Although beer was the popular choice, many 20-pound square cans of roasted and ground coffee departed on tops of heads or under arms. These square 20-lb. cans are still used today, primarily aboard American submarines, and DLA sold $556,000 worth in fiscal year 2003.

       Coffee has always been employed as a medium of exchange for enterprising Navy Supply Corps officers afloat. Two former chiefs of Supply Corps recall just how valuable coffee is around the world.

       RADM Jim Miller, 37th Chief, reports, "When I was a young junior supply officer, skippers of my ships would always warn me to have 5-pound tins of coffee aboard when we visited Hong Kong. There, a sampan captained by 'Mary Sue' with a crew of young girls, would pull alongside arriving U.S. Navy ships and offer to paint our hulls in return for tins of coffee. We'd supply the paint and rollers and the women would use them to paint our ships." RADM Ted Walker, 35th Chief, adds, "A 5?pound tin of coffee would get almost anything done at a Navy shipyard."

       Worldwide consumption of coffee expanded throughout the 20th century and continues into the 21st century. One reporter's article, published in a Chicago suburban newspaper in 2002, provided his perspective on coffee in American society. Jake Herrle wrote:

       "It (coffee) jump starts our mornings and fortifies us for winter's freeze. It can summon the courage to face a particularly dreadful day at the office.

       "Coffee is a warm and inviting friend that greets us again after dinner to smooth over a rough day or to help digest an ample meal. The day's last cup of joe signals the mind to shift gears into the inky night and begin to slow down.

       "Not to slight our furry four-legged friends, but coffee is a constant and reliable companion to most of our lives."

       Much has been written in the popular press about the phenomenon of coffee shops as popular gathering places for refreshment, fellowship and conversation in other parts of the world. Coffee shops are becoming equally popular as social institutions in the United States. Serving a wide variety of coffee, tea and chocolate beverages, these occasions have tempted Americans from middle school students to retirees, including the American military personnel. As reporter Herrle put it, "Ever stopped in the floral shop of a strange town to get the scoop on the local gossip?"

       Historically, individual military services were responsible for procuring, storing and distributing all commodities, including food. Beginning in October 1961 with formation of the Defense Supply Agency, now the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA), within the Defense Department, methods of supplying subsistence items changed drastically. The mission of the Defense Supply Center Philadelphia (DSCP) includes providing subsistence for United States military personnel worldwide.

       CAPT Jeffrey Bradley, SC, USN, Director of Subsistence, DSCP, reports that from World War II until the early 1990s, roast and ground coffee was centrally purchased under a military specification, placed in military depots and issued. In 1993, the Department of Defense replaced the military depot system for garrison feeding with the Subsistence Prime Vendor Program, utilizing commercial distributors.

       "Today's warfighters don't select coffee with the same regularity as their predecessors and tend to choose sports drinks, sodas or other popular fountain lines. The familiar coffee urn in the dining halls that are full 24 hours a day, have in many instances, been replaced by fountain dispensers using reconstituted liquid coffee at a cost of $800,000 a year," Bradley explains.

       Despite the changing trends in beverage consumption by members of U.S. military services, use of roasted and ground coffee is still substantial with reported purchases of approximately $3 million a year. Bradley reports, "Initiatives are underway by DLA Defense Supply Center Philadelphia, in cooperation with the National Institute for the Severely Handicapped, the government of Puerto Rico and the State of Hawaii to develop a domestic source of roast and ground coffee that could be made available to the U.S. military."

       Navy Exchange Service Command operated direct-run retail fast-food outlets on Navy facilities in the early 1970s, but sales were lackluster. Recognizing the success of name-brand fast-food stores near Navy installations, NEXCOM executed a local contract that Burger King won through competitive bidding and, in 1974, was awarded the right to operate at four Navy waterfront sites - Norfolk, Pearl Harbor, Long Beach and New London - where Sailors could purchase coffee. NEXCOM Commander RADM William Maguire, SC, USN, explains, "Revenues were terrific and so we decided at the term of the existing contract, we would resolicit."

       In 1984, McDonald's Corporation was awarded a contract to operate at multiple sites, now totaling 52 systemwide. Under separate contracts, Wendy's operates a store in Iceland and Burger King operates two in Europe. These contract locations do a lively business in coffee sales. Eurest, operating as 5 Star Cafe, was awarded a contract in 2002 to provide food service at The Pentagon, including brewing and selling Starbuck's coffee under license.

       Even with constantly changing public tastes, coffee remains one of the most popular beverages sold and consumed in the United States, trailing only soft drinks, milk and bottled water in annual volume of consumption. Suppliers can be anticipated to continue their quest for innovative new techniques for packaging and presenting coffee worldwide to the public, including military personnel.

       Much has been written in the past about the alleged negative effect that caffeine in coffee causes to individual health, but reports of recent studies have resulted in a reassessment of the health effects of coffee drinking. A recent article in the Wall Street Journal reported that "Researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health have found that men who drink four to five cups of coffee a day cut their risk of developing Parkinson's disease nearly in half." The Journal article further reported that "German researchers have also identified a compound in coffee that may offer protection against colon cancer."

       Obviously, additional research will continue as the pros and cons of drinking coffee remain under constant scrutiny by health authorities and the providers of coffee products, as well as consumers. In the meantime, it is safe to conclude that coffee will continue to be a significant part of Navy life aboard ship and ashore and that consumers will welcome the newer choices as they come on the market.


RADM Frank Allston had 34 years of active and Reserve duty when he retired in 1985. He was commissioned an ensign in the Naval Reserve Supply Corps in 1952 and served on active duty during the Korean War. He was presented the Department of the Navy Distinguished Public Service Award in 1998 for his 10-year effort in researching and writing Ready for Sea, an extensive history of the first 200 years of the U.S. Navy Supply Corps. RADM Allston has been selected as the 2004 Navy Supply Corps School Distinguished Alumnus. He now serves on the Newsletter Editorial Board.

CAPT Kathleen Jensen is currently Project Manager/Virtual SYSCOM Support at Naval Supply Systems Command Headquarters. Her recent Reserve assignments include Commanding Officer, AIRPAC Supply 0189 and Executive Officer, NR Defense Distribution Center Detachment B120.
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Contributed,
YNCS Don Harribine, USN(Ret)