Mike Salsbury/The Olympian
Larry LaFontaine shows mementos of his military service.

'We were in coffin corner'

Larry LaFontaine

On my 17th birthday, July 1, 1941, I took the test for the U.S. Navy and passed.

They told me the quota was full at that time and I would have to wait and they would call me in three to six months. On Dec. 16, 1941, I received a letter to report for induction.

I was given shots and told to go home for two weeks as they needed all the space at boot camp for all en-listees from out of state, as they were coming in so fast that they had no place to put them.

I lived a short distance from San Diego. On Jan. 7, 1942, I was finally ordered to San Diego. I was there three weeks and then sent to Balboa Park, which had several large buildings occupied by Marine recruits.

We stayed with them and trained for two weeks. Then several other men and I got the measles and were sent to the Navy hospital for four days.

In the meantime my company was transferred to ships in the fleet. After discharge from the hospital, I was sent to the destroyer base and assigned to the officers' mess galley. They put me in a little room with three to 50 pounds of fresh shrimp and told me to start peeling.

After three hours and about 10 pounds done, a first class petty officer came in and asked if I would like to go to the armed guard. I asked what it was, and he said something about sailing on merchant ships.

I said yes to get away from all the shrimp. He told me to pack my gear, and 12 of us were put on a train to San Francisco and Treasure Island.

This was in February 1942, and Treasure Island had a lot of empty buildings left over from the World's Fair. They quartered us in part of one building and they started a signal school at the other end. They put 25 of us in a class to be signalmen.

I could not send and receive the required 25 words per minute, so seven others and I were transferred to gunnery school, which is what we wanted in the first place. After three weeks of gunnery school, we went to Point Montera firing range. I got to shoot 50 rounds from a .30-caliber Browning machine gun and one magazine of 20mm at a sleeve towed by a plane.

They told me to lead the target, which I did and I shot the cable towing the target, so that ended our shoot-ing for the day.

That completed my gunnery training. The next evening about 8 p.m. they told us to pack our gear as we were leaving.

We were assigned to a rusty oil tanker called the S.S. R.J. Hanna. I was the gun pointer and later was gun pointer on all the ships I sailed on.

In 1943, I was assigned to the SS Fitz John Porter, which was a liberty ship. We left Cape Town, South Africa and sailed to Bahia, Brazil.

We left there and joined a 30-ship convoy. We were about 500 miles out when we were torpedoed. We were in coffin corner of the convoy and all other ships left. A Brazilian freighter picked us up the next day. We were taken to Recife, Brazil, put in jail for a day as we had no papers and they did not know what to do with us.

The next day, a naval officer and bus came and got us and took us to where the USS Milwaukee was tied up. We were taken aboard and issued some clothes, as all we were wearing was cutoff jeans and no shoes.

Later that day we were taken to the destroyer USS Kearney, DD 432, and were transported to the Charles-ton Navy Yard in South Carolina. We were then put on a train to Brooklyn Naval Yard in New York. I was given a choice to ship out of Brooklyn or pay my own way back to Treasure Island, which I did, $37.50 and three days on a train.

I was discharged Dec. 22, 1945, at Bremerton Navy Base. I went to California, got married and became a firefighter. After 28 years, I was disability retired in 1976 and moved back to my birthplace of Olympia.

The Olympian Copyright 2001

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