Doc ~ A Tribute To My Father

They called him “Doc.”  As a Pharmacist Mate 3, my father was the highest ranking medical officer on his ship ~ an LST (Tank Landing Ship) used during WWII.

Dad graduated from pharmacy college at the University of Minnesota in June, 1941. Pearl Harbor was attacked six months later. My father knew he didn’t want to be drafted into the Army, so he enlisted in the Navy in June, 1942. He was twenty-four years old.

Dad did not go through traditional “boot camp” but was sent, instead, for medical training at the Great Lakes Naval Hospital, north of Chicago. His first assignment was the Brooklyn Naval Hospital and my mother joined him there.

My father was transferred to Geneva, New York, where I was born in May. In June, 1943, Dad was sent to Maryland for amphibious training and my mother and I went to live with Dad’s family in St. Paul.

Dad was assigned to LST 492. It would be his home for the next two years. The ship was commissioned on December 8, 1943 and immediately sailed to England, to prepare for the first wave on Omaha Beach, June 6, 1944. 

The following is from an article written by David Chrisinger, published in the New York Times Magazine, June 5, 2019:

“Most of the men in the first wave never stood a chance. In the predawn darkness of June 6, 1944, thousands of American soldiers crawled down swaying cargo nets and thudded into steel landing craft bound for the Normandy coast.”

My father’s ship was one of those landing crafts. When they reach Normandy, the doors to the LST swung open. Tanks, and soldiers rolled into the ocean. As a medical officer, my father stay on the ship with the other sailors, waiting to treat wounded American soldiers and German prisoners of war.

“Allied troops kept landing, wave after wave, and by midday they had crossed the 300 yards of sandy killing ground, scaled the bluffs and overpowered the German defenses. By the end of the day, the beaches had been secured and the heaviest fighting had moved at least a mile inland.

In the biggest and most complicated amphibious operation in military history, it wasn’t bombs, artillery or tanks that overwhelmed the Germans; it was men — many of them boys, really — slogging up the beaches and crawling over the corpses of their friends that won the Allies a toehold at the western edge of Europe.” ~ David Chrisinger

This week  I came across a letter, written by Lt. Commander, Ralph Newman, commander of the LST 492, to my mother on July 4, 1944:

“Dear Mrs. Jones, I would like to take this opportunity to write a few words about your husband, Robert. We point with some pride to the record of the good old 492. No one has so much as broken a little finger. And no one has more friends than Bob. The “doc” has the respect of his officers and shipmates, alike.’

From Normandy, the LST 492 traveled to North Africa, Italy and Sicily, with German POW’s still onboard. On August 15, 1944, the ship was part of the second D-Day invasion, Operation Dragoon, an assault against German forces in Southern France that eventually led to the liberation of Paris.

After leaving the  south of  France in September, 1944, the LST 492 was assigned to the Pacific fleet and traveled to Hawaii, Guam, the Philippines and the Wake Islands. The ship was based in Okinawa. Japan, as bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

When asked about his feelings about the atom bomb, my father wrote, “I felt relieved that the war was going to be terminated and I could return to my family and my normal lifestyle. I was happy only for myself. I had no feelings for the eventual consequences of it. I suppose that was selfish. Now I don’t believe it was justified.”

After the war, my father returned to Minnesota and his family. He seldom spoke of his time in the Navy. He went to work at Swanson Drug in St. Paul, where he worked as a pharmacist for almost forty-five years. 

My father has always been a kind-hearted, quiet man. I can’t imagine how difficult war must have been for him. But he was also a man who always did what he was called upon to do. Later, reflecting back on his time in the Navy, my father commented that  he felt that WWII was necessary to defeat Hitler. But overall, he was opposed to all wars. He believed they were  “senseless.”

Every year, on Memorial Day, my father took his trumpet out of its case, stood outside in the dark, and played Taps. I know he was thinking of his days on the LST 492,  as those sweet sounds floated through the air for all the neighbors to hear.