I remember that several of the officers lived in a cabin on Brigham’s Cove while the ship was under construction. Our next door neighbor was a former mayor of Bath who had been impeached and removed from office. He was a good friend to us, however, and took us out in his power boat almost every afternoon to pull lobster pots in the cove. We had a steady diet of lobster and beer each night.
One weekend, the mayor loaned his catboat to Ed Breed, Jim Turner and me. Ed was the only one experienced in sailing small craft, so Jim and I were his crew. We had a bottle of booze with us and we made a day of it, sailing out into Casco Bay. On the return to Brigham’s Cove, Ed turned over the conn to Jim so Ed could stand up in the stern to relieve himself. At that moment, a strong gust of wind hit us broadside. Jim put a death grip on the tiller and the sail, and we capsized. By good fortune, an old fisherman was watching us from his home on the shore, and he jumped in his skiff and rowed out to us. I believe he saved our lives, because we weren’t exactly sober, and the water was really cold. We recovered the catboat and returned it to the mayor, but I’m afraid the people of Bath didn’t think much of naval officers’ seamanship.
Do you remember our return to the Brooklyn Navy Yard where we were all looking forward to liberty and the commodore ordered that we start scraping paint off the bulkheads in the living spaces? Many of the crew never got ashore. Of course, the reason for the order was valid—our ships were being lost from internal fires in the paintwork in battle, but we were all angry that it couldn’t be delayed for a few days. The skipper ordered that the first room to be scraped was the commodore’s, which made us feel somewhat better.
Do you remember the transit of the Panama Canal? A lot of us were on the fantail when we went through the locks. Since it was close to Christmas, the Assistant Gunnery Officer, Vernon Burnin’ Binion, led us in singing Christmas Carols, and the people on the locks joined in. I remember we also sang “It Was Sad When That Great Ship Went Down,” but we had no idea it would apply to the Chevalier some day.
I remember that all the more junior officers had to stand watch on Walt Hughes’ coding machine, which operated like a typewriter. Classified messages would come in by radio as a series of meaningless letters. We would then type the letters into the machine, which would print the message in plain English. Each message would begin and end with an unrelated padding of words to prevent the enemy from breaking the code. The padding was often of more interest than the message itself. One message I remember began with: ERROL FLYNN’S LATEST PICTURE/ MESSAGE/ I’LL DO IT AGAIN WITH SHIRLEY TEMPLE.
We used to make up fake messages to pass the time and give them to other officers as a joke. We wrote one for the XO George Wilson: FROM ADM. HALSEY TO USS CHEVALIER X EXECUTIVE OFFICER LCDR GEORGE WILSON HEREWITH DETACHED PROCEED WITH STEWARD’S MATE HODGE TO TULAGI HARBOR X UPON ARRIVAL TAKE COMMAND OF CAPTURED JAPANESE TWO-MAN SUBMARINE X PROCEED UP SLOT X SEARCH FOR ENEMY AND DESTROY ENEMY ENCOUNTERED X KILL MORE JAPS XXX
Do you remember the bum boats that used to come to the ship when we were moored in Tulagi Harbor for refueling and replenishment? They sold everything from canes to cat’s eye jewelry. One enterprising gent had his daughter in the boat who stood up wearing nothing but a US Navy towel. We would bid for the towel using packs of cigarettes and packages of pipe tobacco. When the price was right, the old gentleman would whip the towel off his daughter, toss it to the highest bidder, and whip another towel around her so quickly none of us got to see a thing.
I remember George Wilson wanted us all to pool our money after the war to buy a liberty ship. He wanted to fill it with beads, trinkets (and Navy towels) and sail to the Solomon Islands with Gold Star mothers who wanted to see where their boys had fought. He figured we could sell all that junk back to the natives and get all our money back that we had given to the bum boats.
Do you remember that we had to order water hours because the hot tropical waters were so full of various sea salts our evaporators were encrusted with them and could not produce enough fresh water? Then we found a solution in Espiritu Santo when we went alongside the destroyer tender. I had enough alcohol on board to test boiler water for a hundred years, so I slipped some to our chiefs who then invited some chiefs from the tender to our chief’s quarters to have a drink or two. This resulted in our receiving special treatment from the tender. One special job was the installation of a large GI can piped into the evaporator so that we could mix up a solution of cornstarch and boiler compound and feed it into the evaporator with the sea water. The new solution prevented the sea salts from sticking to the evaporator tubes, which stayed clean from then on. No more water hours and plenty of water for showers! We sure had every ship guessing why we ordered so much cornstarch when we took on supplied.
I remember the night we were sunk that after I made an inspection of the engineering spaces, I went to the bridge to report to the captain. He was lying on his back just coming to after being knocked out from the explosion. He finally recovered enough to hear my report, and he looked up with half a smile and said, “Damn it, Gowen, if you had been making the right speed the torpedo would have hit the engine room!”
When we finally abandoned ship, I went over the port side aft and swam to a life raft I had cut loose earlier. Other crew members were already aboard, and they began shouting to me as I approached. “Put it out,” they hollered. Finally, I understood. I had gone into the water with my 4-cell flashlight in my hip pocket. The water shorted it out and it was shining back up into the sky. I emptied the batteries into the sea and my shipmates finally let me aboard. The history of the battle states that there was a flare from a Japanese plane that had been dropped in the water. I still think it was my flashlight.
I remember that we used to trade movies with other ships in the task group. USS O’Bannon’s engineer had asked me to trade a Veronica Lake movie to him, but we hadn’t gotten around to it before the battle. When we finally were picked up by the O’Bannon, I climbed the Jacob’s ladder covered with oil and soaked to the skin, glad to be still alive, and the engineer came running up to me and asked, “Did you bring the Veronica Lake movie?”
I’m sure that you will all agree that our service in Chevalier affected our whole lives. Those who came through looked deep into their own hears and souls and characters and they have marched forward through all their trials and tests with pride and confidence.
My thanks to all who helped make Chevalier a memorable ship, and who helped me have a wonderful career in the Navy.
