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EDITOR’S NOTE: The following narrative comes from the World War II memoirs of David J. Bechtold of Johnstown, Pa., who passed the story along to us for our interest. It relates largely to the activities of the Philadelphia District’s seagoing hopper dredge William L. Marshall in 1944 and 1945, when Bechtold (an Army warrant officer with a bachelor’s in electrical engineering) served aboard the vessel.
It seems the Corps of Engineers was in need of officers to fill out the crew complement of some vessels that were short of qualified personnel. Dredges, they said.
At that time, I thought of a dredge as a scow with a steam shovel on the bow. But off we went, this time to Fort DuPont, Del., where we were made officers (Warrant Officer Junior Grade in my case) and introduced to dredges.
Not so bad after all—these were substantial and complex vessels, around 300 feet long, 3,000-ton displacement, and a crew complement of 60-plus men. They were seagoing diesel-electric hydraulic dredging vessels, normally functioning under Corps of Engineers control, maintaining and improving the coastal and harbor channels around the U.S. coasts.
Four of them—the Marshall, Rossell, Harding and Hoffman—had just come out of the shipyard where they were "militarized" by adding a couple of 3-inch gun turrets, fore and aft, and two 20-millimeter machine gun turrets midships, along with crew quarters for a complement of about 12 Navy personnel who were to man the armament.
Our ultimate destination was the European Theater of Operations.
The four dredges were based at Fort Mifflin, in south Philly right at the junction of the Schuylkill and Delaware rivers, across from the Philadelphia Navy Yard. We commuted back and forth between DuPont and Mifflin for a time, but then went aboard the Marshall for full time operation and training as the crewmen we were replacing had left.
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The "grand plan" through the prewar years was to man military facilities with civilians and, in the event of war, simply swear them in as soldiers and carry on. That worked okay for part of the crew but some of them opted to get out, and apparently they did.
That’s where we came in. In our case, we found that the departees had taken along all their tools, so the quickest fix for that was to buy our own, which I did, at Sears’ big store out in northeast Philly on Roosevelt Boulevard. I still have the toolbox and tools at home here, along with some test gadgetry of my own, like my old Triplett volt-ohm meter.
Aboard the vessel in that period, we had been refurbishing all the electrical equipment and making a few break-in runs. For a couple of months prior to our arrival on the scene these ships had been in a shipyard, being militarized—that is, having the armament installed, portholes armored, life rafts emplaced, etc. All the engines were supposedly overhauled and put in top shape, too.
However, it appears that in the turmoil and turnover of part of the crew debarking, the "store" was unwatched and much of the work just didn’t get done properly.
So, it fell to us mechanical and electrical people to do much more than had been expected. The Marshall was already 20 years old at that time so there was a lot to do; but being a new experience, we all dug in and got things in as good shape as possible.
The Marshall was 268 feet long with a 46-foot beam, and displaced 3,012 long tons light and 4,750 long tons loaded. Topside, there was a forward pilothouse and deck crew quarters, with the forward engine room below. Midships was the hopper space, port and starboard, and in a central well, the dredge pipe, drag, and hoist equipment. Aft was the rest of the crew quarters, the officers’ mess, crew mess, galley, Navy armed guard quarters on top deck. Below was the after engine room.
She was all steel construction except for the upper top decks, which were canvas-covered wood construction. Normal personnel were 11 officers and 33 crewmen, but with the added Navy armed guard cadre of one ensign and his seamen, we totaled 64 men. In normal operation around the clock, we stood the two standard marine watches of 4 hours each 24 hours (8 to 12, 12 to 4, and 4 to 8).
For convenience in port, we carried on board a Dodge Power Wagon, and a 20-foot launch that could be swung off as needed.
The machinery, except for the diesel engines, was all electric. The forward engine room contained two 1,600-horsepower, 150-r.p.m., six-22-by-32-inch-cylinder air injection diesel engines (big—about 12 feet high and 20 feet long) direct-connected to 600-volt D.C. generators, and the dredge pump and pump drive motor.
The aft engine room housed another identical 1,600-horsepower engine, direct-coupled to a 600-volt generator, and two electric propulsion motors direct-coupled to shafts to the twin screws; also two smaller 250-horsepower, 6-cylinder diesels powering 240-volt D.C. auxiliary generators.
Her maximum speed was 13 miles per hour light, 10.5 loaded. The engines were all Macintosh and Seymour, made in Auburn, N.Y. (which became Alco many years later). The ship was constructed in 1924 by Sun Shipyards in Chester, Pa., just a mile or so south of Fort Mifflin, at a cost of $1,184,000.
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The dredge pipe had a 26-inch inner diameter. She could work in depths from 22 to 50 feet like a huge hydraulic vacuum cleaner, with the lowered drag moving along the work area bottom, sucking everything in its path up through the big pipe and pump, from sloppy mud to sizeable boulders.
The detritus sluiced into the hoppers, where it settled out while excess water scuppered over the side. Hopper capacity was 1,447 cubic yards, loadable in ten minutes to a half hour depending on bottom material.
Unloading was by traveling to an approved deeper waste area, opening the hopper doors in the bottom allowing the "mud" to simply slide out, usually taking just a moment without even slowing down before heading back to the work area. Port and starboard hoppers were opened together to maintain vessel trim. Occasionally a hopper load on one side would bang up, making for a little excitement with the resultant sudden list. Water jets were available for flushing to clear any jam.
The output of all these diesel electric generators was fed to a large switchboard on our switchboard flat, which extended across the forward end of the after engine room. From there, it was controlled as needed and sent throughout the ship to power lights, heat, power for motors on all the auxiliary pumps, winches, and other gear.
Everything was operated electrically. The switchboard was quite sophisticated for its time, and a wide variety of hookups between the three identical diesel generators and the identical motors on the two screws and the dredge pump was possible in any combination. The normal getup was for the two forward engines to power the prop motors and the aft big engine to power the dredge pump motor. The flexibility proved convenient, if not life saving, more than once.
A well setup machine shop flat was at the aft end of the after engine room. The noise environment below from the diesels was extremely loud. We didn’t realize it at the time, but our hearing was badly damaged thereby, deafening us in the higher frequencies of the sound spectrum.
Each shift was manned by a deck officer topsides in the pilot house, a mechanical engineering officer below, and an electrical engineering officer on the switchboard flat (my normal shift station), plus extra manpower on deck, engine rooms, galley, quartermaster department, as appropriate.
Other than observing and routine rounds, we had little to do under way. The ship had a regular rotary engine room telegraph to the switchboard flat to pass pilot instructions down below, but the normal setup was with a pilothouse control console that enabled the pilot to directly control the ship’s operation, screw speed and direction. Their easily variable twin-screw control gave the pilot great flexibility to steer and control speed, important when working, often in fairly close quarters near docks and other shipping.
The three groups of officers had similar quarters. We electrical engineers were quartered in a suite consisting of a cabin for the chief electrician and a cabin with three bunks, desk, settee, chair, and lockers, with a shared head and shower facility between the cabins. Location was along the after starboard walkway. The mechanical engineers quarters were similar on the port side.
The, deck officers were likewise quartered forward, topside, convenient to the pilothouse above them. We "dined" in an officers’ mess, complete with waiter service. Our cabins were kept tidied by a steward. All in all, it wasn’t a rough way to go to war!
Which we did on March 2, 1944. At that time, German subs were sinking two or three ships a day off the Jersey coast, so we proceeded down the Delaware Bay, around Cape May, and up the Jersey Coast under cover of darkness, as close as possible to shore, into New York Bay, through the East River, eastward in Long Island Sound, to the Cape Cod Canal, and up into Boston Harbor. Next leg was on up the coast to Halifax (Nova Scotia) Harbor.
Through all this, we were accompanied by our sister ship Rossell, the larger newer Harding, and the smaller new Hoffman.
We had some excitement off the Jersey coast, courtesy of our Navy armed guard, which had its first chance to test out our weaponry. The 20-millimeter machine guns were great. Then came the first test of the aft 3-inch gun.
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Although mounted in a steel turret, it was located just above the wood and canvas roof structure of the aft quarters. The muzzle blast so violently bounced this light decking that it smashed down ceiling light fixtures in the mess halls underneath, and made the roof somewhat leaky for the rest of the war. The 3-inch guns were never fired again. Yes, a snafu—of sorts...
Halifax was the biggest assembly point for convoys to England and huge numbers of vessels departed daily in large convoys, in company of a couple of destroyers or destroyer escort vessels for protection.
Word was passed that we were scheduled to take off soon in a 10-knot convoy, and we moved to a fueling dock to top our tanks for the long crossing. But next day, we didn’t go—we went instead into drydock. Nothing was said officially, but word got passed that (1) we weren’t fast enough to keep our position in a 14-knot convoy and (2) we didn’t have sufficient fuel tank capacity to get us across the Atlantic.
(These dredges were all designed for coastal operation or in coastal ports. The Marshall had once been out to Bermuda and back but that was the farthest ever from resupply).
This was a big-time snafu—or was it?
The next day I overheard two of the drydock workers comment on "how clever these Yanks were, making themselves into an oil tanker..." Sure enough, we welded shut and sealed the midship hopper doors, made covers for the hoppers, and installed interior piping from them to our regular fuel tankage.
Done in a week or so, we loaded our hoppers with some 275,000 gallons of extra fuel oil. Then we waited until an 8-knot convoy was assembled, and finally, on Wednesday, March 29, 1944, off we went in the company of hundreds of other ships, scattered in a wide pattern as far as the eye could see. About half of them were new landing ship tanks (LSTs).
Eight knots crossing the Atlantic is deadly slow, but loaded as we now were with full hoppers of fuel oil, we would indeed have been pressed to go much faster. The first week at sea was very boring, cold, foggy, glassy calm seas with numerous growlers (chunks of floating ice) scattered about.
We were blacked out of both lights and radio. Communication seemed to be only by blinker lights and I, being fluent in the Morse code, enjoyed trying to read the lights. It turned out to be a different mental process reading the blinking light compared to listening to the usual sounds of code, but I got onto it pretty well in a short time. Of course, we didn’t discuss what we were reading.
On April 5, we had a bit of trouble when the #2 main engine (starboard side, forward engine room) developed low injection air pressure. Each engine had a 3-stage compressor to provide fuel-injection air at about 3,000 pounds per square inch. The third, or highest pressure stage on these engines needed more than usual attention to keep in good order, and had supposedly been fully overhauled at the militarization time while in the shipyard.
This was apparently a part of the work that didn’t get done. Anyway, no big deal, the problem was solved by piping the 41 engine injection air so it was paralleled with the weak #2 engine supply, and we continued on our way.
Early the next morning, at 1:30 a.m., we had our first general alarm. Sub attack! Wide awake and with life jacket on, we hit the deck and battle stations. Our two destroyer escorts were always on the alert for the "wolf packs" of Nazi subs and we had apparently come onto one.
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Fortunately, the action appeared to be all a couple of miles away in the after port side of the convoy. (We were in the starboard aft area). We could see one ship burning brightly, but no action, and after a bit, our alarm was cancelled. We never officially heard any details, but supposedly, one ship had been torpedoed and sunk and the DE’s had sunk one submarine. The rest of the convoy, as per the rules, just plodded on.
This made us even more conscious of our strong resemblance to the Nazi subs’ favorite targets—oil tankers.
Then at 2:30 p.m. the next day, Friday, April 7, things suddenly broke loose again. The general alarm sounded, and simultaneously we were rocked by two quick strong explosions close alongside. I came on deck just in time to see one of the DE’s speeding away astern. Their sonar had detected a possible sub right in our convoy lane and had passed on our starboard side and let go two depth charges.
Nothing else happened. The alarm was cancelled. Again, no official word, but rumor was that it must have been a false alarm, perhaps a whale. Anyway, the concussion was so severe that we had to check everything for damage. Luckily, nothing serious, although a lot of scale was knocked loose in the propulsion motor cooling air ducts, causing spasmodic commutator arcing for a while.
About that time, our calm seas disappeared as a strong spring Atlantic northwester blew in, and seas built up to humongous proportions, estimated at 40 feet. Low in the water as we were with our load of oil, we had solid green water washing across the midship deck area.
All hatches were checked and dogged. From up on "monkey island" (the open deck on top of the pilot house) our ship looked like a rowboat in those huge rollers, and when we were in the hollow of those rollers, the rest of the convoy was hidden by the high waves. Seasickness affected almost everyone to varying extents, but we managed and it was an exciting time.
Suddenly, at 2 p.m. on Saturday, April 8, another general alarm! This time it was trouble aboard, fire in the forward engine room, centered around and in the oily bilge under the #1 engine generator. An escape hatch above the generator had been flipped open by a passing big wave and salt water had poured in onto the generator.
The generator was under full load and its open, close-spaced 600 volt terminal board on top shorted out in the salt water dousing, starting the riser cable insulation burning and dropping into the bilge and burning there. The diesel, under the control of its governor, was wide open, maintaining the arcing and fire.
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First thing was to get that shut down and get the #3 alternate big diesel generator in the aft engine room started and switched in to replace the stricken # 1 machine, which would enable the vessel to maintain normal way and its position in the convoy. The #3 engine had been kept "at the ready" for several days, because of the weakness of the injection air on #2 engine.
Too ready, it seems. As the #3 engine started, it "ran away," seriously overspeeding before it exhausted the puddled fuel that had accumulated in the overprimed cylinders. Fortunately, nothing shook loose that- could easily have punctured the hull and sunk us. The overspeed was so severe that it was deemed necessary to carefully inspect the engine before trying another start.
So, using that elaborate switching system, we seriesed the two propulsion motors on the one remaining #2 main diesel generator. This of course reduced our speed by almost half and we couldn’t hold our position in the convoy, which forged on ahead per the rules, and eventually out of sight.
Later we heard from others who’d seen this from neighboring vessels that we were a sad sight, smoking badly from the fire and falling away from the convoy.
While the runaway engine start was in progress, others were trying to get at the fire up forward—difficult because the only access was by open steel grating walkways and ladders above the fire area. But fortunately, they were successful. Inspection of the shorted generator showed severe damage to the connecting cables and it was probably damaged internally, so it was out of consideration for restart.
The engineers went at the inspection of the #3 engine, which took all that night. By early morning light, we looked pretty lonesome plodding along at half speed, not another ship in sight. The rumors started flying that nobody on deck knew how to use a sextant, so we were in a mess.
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But by mid-morning, things began to turn around when the engine was declared apparently sound for a restart. With some apprehension, the restart was made, first making sure the cylinders were purged of excess oil this time. All went well—we did the switching to get back to full propulsion power and we went up to flank speed, hopefully in the direction of our convoy over the horizon somewhere ahead.
Late that Easter Sunday afternoon, we spotted first one ship and then more of our convoy up ahead. Sometime that night, we sneaked into our place in the convoy again. The seas were calming down and things were definitely looking better.
Investigation of what caused the fire pointed to one of our oilers who was alone in the forward engine room, felt apprehensive, and decided to undog the deck hatch at the top of the chain escape ladder "just in case," so he could exit quickly if needed. The green water smashing over the hatch in that low midsection of deck simply flipped the hatch open and poured in.
We electrical engineers opened the damaged generator for inspection. It was soaked with salt water, so we washed it down thoroughly with hot fresh water, rigged a canvas tarp over it and applied heat to begin drying.
The machine meggered dead grounded windings. The bottom field coil that had had the worst of it was removed and replaced with a spare. My personal old Triplett VOM that I’d brought with me had a very good low-ohm range in it and I checked the windings with it and was able to detect that, although grounded, the winding was not quite solid ground, so there was some hope.
We continued to take readings while the heating and drying went on and were rewarded by seeing the ground resistance beginning to build up. So we continued the drying process as we sailed on.
Wednesday, April 12, we sighted our first land as we rounded Northern Ireland and headed south into the Irish Sea. On the 14th, we entered Milford Haven, anchored, and were FWE (Finished With Engines) at 1:37 that afternoon. We’d made it! The motor launch was put over and the skipper went ashore to contact customs, etc., and get further orders.
Next day we upped anchor and sailed into the Bristol Channel, entered Port Talbot, about midway in on the north shore, and tied up to the dock. We had been 20-plus days at sea in the crossing, with some rough moments, but—We Made It!
Port Talbot became our headquarters. We entered a waiting phase, as the huge buildup toward a future D-Day went on. After a couple weeks of further drying, the insulation of the damaged #1 Generator had slowly kept improving, until we could declare it ready for an operating test. It worked fine, so we were sound again and capable of working normally:
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There was still one problem. We couldn’t work until we had offloaded the large amount of fuel oil left aboard in our hopper space. Word somehow got out that our hopper covers had leaked somewhat in those heavy Atlantic crossing seas, and our oil was contaminated with slugs of salt water. Nobody would accept it.
So, we undertook to use it up ourselves. We underwent several weeks of random stalling of our engines, blacking out the ship, etc., when a slug of water got in the fuel system and it was a real mess. But eventually it was gone, and the hoppers were unsealed and readied for normal use.
Our skipper wasn’t one to enjoy laying about, and he actively sought interim work for the boat. The British Admiralty obliged and we moved to Liverpool where we did some needed dredging in the Mersey River at the entrance to the Lever Brothers dock there.
Tides all over western Europe run up to 20 feet and most docking areas are made behind locks to maintain an even water level. The strong tidal currents in the unlocked waters create a lot of silting and require this periodic dredging.
Lever Brothers dock was the receiving point for ships loaded with palm nuts or palm oil from the tropics, which was converted to margarine in an adjacent modern plant. The company was very paternalistic and provided a very pleasant company town for their workers.
We officers from the ship were given membership in their clubs and they showed us great hospitality. We got in some sightseeing around Liverpool—including a lot of bombed-out wasteland in the central city, which seemed to have happened back in ‘40-’41 when the Nazis did so much bombing in the Battle of Britain. We later found that almost every town of any size had suffered major destruction in their central areas from the Nazi bombing raids.
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We returned to Port Talbot for a bit and then were asked to do a job at Dundee way up on the northeast coast of Scotland, on the Firth of Tay. Away we went again, around Lands End and the southern English coast, through the English Channel, in and out of the Thames Estuary, and on up into the North Sea and Dundee.
Our job here was to remove a shoal that had built up at the entrance to the Firth of Tay and was interfering with the use of a sub and carrier base there.
We took care of that project in good time, although we did have some excitement, too. A storm blew up on the North Sea and the big swells began to bounce our bottom on the shoal we were removing, so we had to lay off for a couple of days in the calm inner waters of the Firth. It was mid-afternoon and we lay quietly swinging at anchor in the strong incoming tidal current, when we were startled by the general alarm going off.
Rushing on deck, we were greeted with the sight of numbers of round spiked objects (mines?) floating by on the tide. It appeared that they were explosive mines that had been in place somewhere, had broken their anchor chains in the storm waves, and were floating free on the tide.
Our Navy armed guard sprang into action with our 20-millimeter guns, trying to sink any that threatened to bump into our hull and blow us out of the water. They sank several, none of them hit us or were exploded by the bullets. We could see the bullets ricocheting off the water and directly over into town.
Later we heard that one mine had exploded when trapped and bumping around under a dock and that another one supposedly blew up from rolling around in the waves on a beach. We never heard any word concerning the stray bullets that went into the town area.
We were back in our Port Talbot base only a short time when D-Day was upon us. We had been ordered to Southampton, from whence, the day after D-Day, we departed and stood off Utah Beach.
It turned out there was nothing we were needed for, and we returned to Southampton and Port Talbot.
Within a short time our forces had secured the Contentin Peninsula and the port of Cherbourg (D+20). We were dispatched there for possible work, but none was needed , so we just rode at anchor (dragging anchor often on the hard bottom) for about a week. We had one chance to get ashore for sightseeing and saw the famous hedgerows and plenty of signs of recent active fighting in the area.
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As we departed again for Port Talbot, we were witness to an unfortunate collision between two navy cutters.
There are long stone jetties that protect the rather wide-open Cherbourg harbor from the sea. At low tide, the jetties stand well above the water and vessels close to them cannot see over them.
From our distance we could see one vessel moving on our side toward the exit opening, and also the upper rigging of another vessel on the other side of the jetty moving parallel also toward the exit opening. They could not see each other but we could see them both, and more and more it became evident they would reach the end of the jetty at the opening at the same moment...
Sure enough, they did, coming together with a big crunch. Neither sank that we saw, but they sure did a lot of damage to each other. There was plenty of other help on hand, so we held our course and sailed on.
After another standby layover at Port Talbot, we were ordered to Antwerp, Belgium, which had just been liberated. Antwerp, is situated well inland on the Westerschelde Estuary. It is a major seaport, and somehow had been seized intact from the Nazis. Obviously they intended to return.
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When we arrived and locked into the inner harbor and proceeded a couple of miles to our berth—between solid rows of cargo vessels on both sides of us, being unloaded by intact operational dock cranes—I got the great feeling that at last, in the Fall of ‘44, we were winning this war.
Our assignment here was to clear and widen the Schelde channel, which, little used for several years, had silted badly in the tidal currents. It was a big job and we were at it for a number of weeks. We had a routine of working out on the job around the clock six days, and going into Antwerp port for one day to refuel and resupply.
Much of our work was right at the bend of the Schelde, north of Antwerp, and only about 10 miles south of Dutch territory still occupied by the Nazis and from which they were actively launching VVs (buzz bombs) and V2s (rockets) at the London area and into Antwerp. London got most of the publicity about them, but after the war, studies showed that more were launched into Antwerp than into London.
Our work area was just west of and about halfway along the buzz bomb path from launch to Antwerp. Night after night we were fascinated to stand on our deck and watch these flame-tailed demons come whipping south at about a thousand foot elevation and 400 miles per hour, and the huge play of antiaircraft fire that met them as soon as they crossed the combat line.
When we first arrived, they were sent one at a time and the ack-ack regularly blew up their thousand-pound load of TNT in a big ball of fire. Then, they changed tactics, and sent them over periodically in salvos. This diluted the ack-ack and for a short time many got through. Fog or low clouds were extra bad, disabling the antiaircraft guns completely.
Fortunately, proximity-fused antiaircraft shells became available about that time and that again reversed the tide and most were blown up. Quite a few were just damaged and went awry in various ways. Many veered off course and threatened us. We had several dive and explode within a hundred yards of us, but except for some wooden screen doors on the tap decks, the steel hull protected us against damage.
The V2 rockets were something else. We could see them going upward right after launch leaving a bright contrail. If the trail bent to the west as they rose, that was for London. If the trail appeared straight, that was for Antwerp and us.
We quickly learned that one boom and flap of the blackout curtains was a V 1 explosion. A double boom-boom and two flaps of the curtains was a V2. The V2s came down supersonically, so the fast boom and flap was its shock wave, and the second boom was the explosion.
Both VI and V2 carried half-ton warheads and left craters typically 10 feet deep and 40 feet in diameter in open ground. Hitting in a built up area usually demolished a whole block of buildings. There was not a whole pane of window glass left in Antwerp, and the port area was dotted with explosion craters.
The famed Battle of the Bulge occurred while we were there. It was a last gasp offensive by the Nazis, and their objective was to retake Antwerp. It was touch and go for a bit and we had to hunker in to avoid possible difficulties with our own sentries and troops, who were very edgy in that December, 1944 battle. We even had a couple of air raids, each time with a renegade single Nazi fighter plane buzzing and machine gunning the lines of ships in the dock.
The battle eventually turned in our favor and the end of the war was obviously nearing. We finished in the Schelde and undertook a small job on a side ship canal winch extended about 10 miles south to Ghent, Belgium. We were at Ghent when V-E Day came and we could relax somewhat.
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The war in Europe being ended, we got orders to proceed to Bremerhaven, Germany and took off directly from Ghent.
Arriving in Bremerhaven, rumor had it that the Navy port command was upset with us. Reputedly we were the first Allied vessel to enter Bremerhaven by sea, and the Navy hadn’t finished sweeping for mines to open the port to traffic and we shouldn’t have been there yet.
As an Army unit we were an anachronism—out of place. We moved from port to port and ports were under Navy commands. The Army sometimes didn’t seem to know we were around and the Navy didn’t know we were around either. As a result we occasionally missed out on orders, advisories, mail, etc.
But, we made it, and immediately started working in the North German Lloyd docks area. We desilted the inlet to the locks of their dock area so the intact Europa could be towed out and refitted as a troop ship, eventually to be given to France and renamed the Liberte and serve again in the transatlantic passenger liner fleet for a number of years.
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A skeleton German crew had stayed aboard the Europa, keeping her in the best possible shape, and they gave us a much-appreciated tour of the vessel before she departed. Their loyalty and affection for the ship was evident. Europa’s sister ship, the Bremen, was in the same dock area but had been hit with a bomb and destroyed so only a hulk of wreckage remained.
Finished with the Europa release job, we went to work in the main Weser River channel. Shortly, the atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and Japan surrendered, eliminating the probability of our being redeployed to the Pacific.
Demobilization began and increased rapidly, based on a point system. We all had plenty of "points" to go home and be released, but we kept on dredging the Weser. To compound our impatience, we could see idle German dredges, complete with crews aboard, which had always done the Weser work we were doing, moored at docks along the shore.
We kept out of it, but 40 or so of the crew signed a gripe letter and sent it in to the Stars and Stripes, the official Army daily newspaper, which had a column where they published such gripe letters. To everyone’s surprise and embarrassment, they published the letter one day, right on the front page, under the headline, Dredging is Drudgery." Major Miller was naturally a bit upset, but it worked.
In just a short time, on November 5, 1945, we were heading south through the English Channel again and across the Atlantic via the Azores for refueling, Bermuda, Cape Henlopen and "home" up the Delaware at Fort Mifflin on November 27, 1945. The voyage this time went smoothly, with nice weather and no problems aboard.
We immediately took off on leave. I retrieved my ‘41 Chevy from where it had been stored since 1942. I drove back to Fort Mifflin, collected my duffle and tools and went on to the Pentagon and Fort Belvoir where I was officially "separated" in just a couple of days and back home to Towanda, Pa., for good. My terminal leave lasted until March 30, 1946, after which I was officially "out" and the war was over for me, after 3 years and 7 months of service.
I understand the Marshall was scrapped in 1947. No question, we pretty much wore her out. Thanks to skipper Bill Miller’s zeal for work, we really accomplished a lot with the old Marshall, enough to make us proud that we could keep her patched up and functional and get her safely back to Philly.
We had been close to disaster several times, like after the forward engine room fire, for 24 hours we were clown to depending on just one engine, the weak #2, and if it had quit, we’d have been uncontrollable in those high seas, and would no doubt have broached and swamped.
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And we were a sitting duck if a sub spotted us out there alone. If any of the heavy parts of the runaway #3 engine had broken and penetrated the hull, we’d have sunk. A number of buzz bombs came very close, and several times we dredged up live ammunition through the pump without exploding, which would have burst the pump and flooded the forward engine room, sinking us.
Those mines on the tide in the Firth of Tay, and the unswept mines going into Bremerhaven—any of these could have, but luckily did not, do us in.
The few snafus I mentioned are not really faulting anybody. They were and are a part of all military things and happened universally in WW2 on both sides.
All that counts is that our side won!
Prior to the Marshall’s service in World War II—in fact, more than a year before Pearl Harbor—the widening war in Europe highlighted the need for a deeper channel to serve the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard. As a result, between Dec. 16, 1940 and Feb. 28, 1942, she was one of 13 Corps dredges engaged in creating what is now the 40-foot Delaware River, Philadelphia to Sea federal navigation channel.