Dad - your ship -
the mighty
USS WILHOITE-DE397
Destroyer Escort/Sub Killer
Shiver Me Timbers!
(And Navy/Sailing/Marine Vocabulary
Practice For Me)
Note: If you would like to hear the Navy fight song Anchors Aweigh
and to watch a stirring slide show of the mighty
USS Wilhoite-DE397
(destroyer escort/subkiller that Dad was on during Dubya Dubya Too,
The Big One), go - but not now - to the USS Wilhoite
Home Port (link at the bottom of this page) (Graphics-intensive
page, though, so allow about as much time as it would take ya to fire
off a Hedgehog projectile or a nine-gun salvo . . .)
Ahoy, Dad!
Under the Uniform Code of Military Justice (http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/ucmj.htm),
I should probably be sent straight to the Brigantine
for not belaying my constant stream of transmissions to you (I am sadly
losing the battle of the bilge). I have obviously gone off the deep
end and simply cannot slow down my radio traffic since I lost my sea
anchor several weeks ago.
Anyway, I got a coupl'a questions for ya 'cause I'm swabbing the USS
Wilhoite-DE397 Home Port on my website, (use link at the bottom of this
page but not now, for God sake, or you'll wind
up in such an endless circular maelstrom of a loop in your Internet
browser that I doubt I'll be able to tow you out of 'er, even with me
twin Evinrude inboard-outboard 120 horse engines a'full-a'throttle.
Plus I know you've got an old diesel-powered computer and a slow Internet
connection, so wait on the USS Wilhoite Home Port link until after you
have read this thing - this here below).
Anyway, regarding my swabbing action, I'm really torn and conflicted:
should I deploy my new battery-operated Swiffer, my Holystone or my
chipping hammer? Whaddayathink?
All of the above to the contrary, here are the questions I need your
answers to regarding your WWII Navy service aboard the Wilhoite, and
I need these answers pronto and double-time - and overtime, if necessary
(at your regular rate of Jolly,
Jolly Six Pence per day, of course) - so I can scrape the
barnacles off me bottom and shine 'er up like a penny soaked in sea
water and baking soda. So, Anchors Aweigh, Dad, and better put on your
life vest 'cause there are definitely some rough waters ahead:
1. During your WWII service aboard USS Wilhoite-DE397, were you
a member of the Black Gang or were you a Deck Ape?
2. When the USS Wilhoite-DE397 was busy
torpedoing fish with her five-inch-thirty-eights (Dad, this
documented war story is the ONE and ONLY fish story that you never shared
with us kids and which I discovered just on happenstance. You can steam
away, Dad, but ya can't hide, not with my quick fingers in the Google
search bar!), anyway, during this Naval action were you wearing a pea
coat and bell-bottomed trousers (or dungarees), or a greatcoat, skivvies
and chest waders? More importantly, which of these outfits would make
a person look slimmer?
3. How long did it take you to study and thoroughly learn your Bowditch?
4. Regarding all my recent transmissions to you, do you think I
have a problem with drift factor? Do you think I might be just a tad
off course (if you get my drift)? Or alternatively, do I seem like someone
with a great deal of dead reckoning? Someone as solid as the Rock of
Gibraltar? Should we submit this question to the anchor pool? (I pray
to God I've still got a few stanchion supporters out there.)
5. Did the USS Wilhoite-DE397 and her sister destroyer escorts look
like a bunch of little dinghies as they circled protectively around
the giant tincans, especially Old
Mamie?
6. During your Navy travels, did you ever have the honor of meeting
Mark Twain? If the answer is "aye, aye," I trust you remembered
to get his autograph? Can I have it?
7. How do you pronounce the word "fathometer" - is the
emphasis on the first and third syllables as in fath-o-meter
or on the second syllable as in fa-THAH-meter?
(I bet the Limeys use the second pronunciation. Why is it that their
accents always make them sound a bit light on the lines, if you get
my drift? After all, they played a little part in the war and they're
known to be pretty fair sailors.) Please tell me this word is not pronounced
monosyllabically as in FA-THO-ME-TER. That is SO NOT FUN.
8. How are you doing on fathoming the depth of this email so far?
9. Were you ever knighted into the Royal Order of Shellbacks or
did you remain a pollywog (and thus pogy bait)?
10. Do you know how to get various tars out of a wool rug (the kind
tracked in by a roly-poly little four-legged bosun's
mate (who shall remain nameless in the interest of privacy because
Buddy, my little black cocker spaniel, is terribly embarrassed about
how FAT he's getting!)?
[Click on me bosun's
mate.]
11. Did you ever foul your anchor lines - or anything else, for
that matter?
12. Related question: Were you ever guilty of waving an Irish Pennant?
13. By the end of the war, had you finally figured out the problems
resulting from pissing to windward?
14. Did you ever get laid-up on the quarterdeck? Perhaps while deploying
your Holystone? Do you recall exactly how many times? Do you consider
this information to be "For Eyes" and all that term implies?
15. What did you and your shipmates do to pass the time when the
USS Wilhoite-DE397 inevitably wandered into that sailor's hell known
as the Doldrums? Or is that information also "For Eyes"?
16. While in the Doldrums, did you happen to see a white whale named
Herman but who asked to be called Ishmael? (And who in their right mind
wouldn't?)
17. How come whenever some smartypants tells me to be somewhere
and uses the military time format, I have to set up numerous Excel spreadsheets
and deploy function programming to figure out how not to be late YET
AGAIN and I still can't, not even with the tool at http://www.easysurf.cc/cmtime.htm?
And I get reel sad and wish I had gotten a reel degree instead of my
dumb journalism BS? (Note, this time format business is the primary
reason that I myself never joined the military. This is to the United
States Navy's great loss, as you can undoubtedly tell from my command
of Navy terminology.)
18. Do you consider my questions to be just so much flotsam and
jetsam? Do you feel like launching a depth charge (or 13 - the Navy's
standard pattern) and lobbing it/them/whatever my way? Do you think
you have the range and firepower to knock out my communications center?
Go ahead and try, see if I care. You can't stop me because you are thoroughly
outgunned in this one!
19. Did this Navy standard practice of always dropping 13 depth
charges at a time while trying to kill an enemy submarine (or a school
of fish!) ever worry you? Wasn't the Navy at all superstitious?
20. During the USS Wilhoite's 29-day chase of that German U-boat
(the longest sub hunt of the war), did that submarine ever about-face
and act offensively, or was she just running away defensively the whole
time? (Note: I also know a lot of football terminology. My brother-in-law
is teaching me but he is very modest and doesn't want to take any credit
whatsoever for what I now know about the wonderful sport of football.)
21. Now that the war is over, would you recommend 46°15'
N, 21°15' W (also see: http://www.maptools.com/products/LatLonRulers.html)
as a nice vacation spot? Or does it kind of lack in thrill if you aren't
thrashing around in a hastily built, ammunition-loaded ship while dodging
torpedos from enemy aircraft above and hostile U-boats and submarines
below, and generally wondering if you will see tomorrow, let alone 46°15'
N, 21°15' W, ever again?
22. When the USS Wilhoite-DE397 towed the disabled USS Barr (http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USN/ships/APD/APD-39_Barr.html)
to Casablanca,
did you happen to wade to shore for a couple of quick cold ones at Rick
Blaine's Cafe Americain? If so, did you run into Humphrey Bogart and
Ingrid Bergman? Most importantly, did you get their autographs? Can
I have them?
23. During the above-described Naval action involving the USS Barr,
was the USS Wilhoite-DE397 flying wing-on-wing or was she chasing a
following sea? Who was driving? Or was she on autopilot?
24. When a veteran Mom or Dad "cuts the cheese," is the
correct terminology "Apparent Wind"?
25. Regarding the above question, why does it always happen that
their poor kid ends up downwind of this deployment? Is it because the
parents always have the poor kid within close reach? Possibly for the
kid's daily beating into the wind (sometimes involving blistering and
the kid keeling over and even becoming delaminated)? And the poor kid
doesn't even know what he's done to ketch such hell aft?
26. Is the above what they mean by the term "lowering the boom"?
27. Regarding high winds and your heroic actions aboard the mighty
USS Wilhoite-DE397, did you ever "fall off" "head down"?
If so, did you hit a "plank" (if you get my "drift")?
And if so, is the result of this Naval strategy the origination of the
term "knots"?
28. What did you do with your parrot after the war was over? Did
you both wear eyepatches? If so, were they just to make you both look
as buff as Errol
Flynn - or Charles
Laughton - OR JOHNNY
DEPP (yeah)!!! - or did you really need them? And if you
really needed them, can I blame you personally for the fact that people
call me "Four
Eyes"?
29. During your world travels that the Navy promised - and delivered!
- to you, did you ever run into Howard Hughes? Was he all spruced up?
Was he wearing an albatross around his neck? Did you remember to get
his autograph (the albatross's, that is)? Or was that poor bird just
too darned ancient to even pluck one of his own quills and use it as
a pen? And too exhausted to come up with a good Rime?
30. During the course of the war, did your battle group ever happen
to wander on down to Tahiti, maybe for a little Rum and Coca Cola (in
between battles, of course)? Were the Andrews Sisters playing?
31. Did you happen to sail by (or over) Marlon
Brando? Did he look well or more like something of a floater?
If all was well with him, did you remember to get his autograph? If
so, is the paper still soaking wet (as a piece of paper from a captain's
log should be, after all)?
32. Was it you who absent-mindedly left his cheese
sandwich by the radar tracking device and came back to find it blackened
beyond recognition, all the while little realizing that you could have
become filthy rich and even owned your very own destroyer escort if
you'd just thought about this prototype of the modern day microwave
oven?
33. Related question: Remember how you spilled that chemical on
your pants - after the war when you were with Mead Paper - and later
on, while you were ironing those pants (before you married Mom and got
her to iron them for ya) - the crease would not come out, and how it
never occurred to you how inadvertently close you had come to discovering
the modern day wonder of "permanently pressed fabrics"?
34. Related question: How are you coming along with that industrial
revolutionizing idea of yours to speed up the de-feathering of chickens
by dipping them in melted wax? Would your process work on a gooseneck?
Well, I hear someone jibe-ho'ing me from the afterberth so I better
scuttle me butt on to me other chores.
But trim your canvas and sail close to the wind 'cause I'm sure
to tack on back with more questions.
Your ever so nautical daughter,
Me
P.S. I copied me siblings - the ones you spawned after the war when
you had sailed into your final home port - on the below previously sent
email. However, I realized I had used some advanced technical Naval
jargon that these poor innocent lubbers definitely will not understand.
Thus, below is that same email repeated with a little glossary at the
end for the "abecedarians" (if you get my drift; and also
note that I use that term in a completely loving and caring way - as
Dame Edna would say).
Email previously sent: Date: Sun, 30 Jan 2005 12:30:46 -0800 (PST)
JUST YAW-ING FOR BOGEYS ON ME SUNDAY AFTERNOON CARQUALS
Dear Dad:
I was just relaxing today (it's Sunday), just sort of yaw-ing around
on the Internet and running carquals for bogeys on my website WHEN I
HAPPENED UPON THE BELOW REPORT regarding a WWII (the Big One) Naval
action involving your ship, the USS Wilhoite-DE397. Here's what I read
on the above-mentioned World War II Naval history site (http://www.hazegray.org/danfs/escorts/de397.htm):
At 0630 on 3 August [in the year
of our Lord 1944-my notation for reference added], however, a message
arrived that abruptly cut short the training. TG [Task Group] 22.3 was
to proceed to the vicinity of 46°15' N, 21°15' W for offensive
operations against a westbound enemy submarine. At 1646 on the next
day, Wilhoite picked up a sound
contact and attacked at 1702; listeners picked up seven detonations
but could ascertain no positive results. At 1405 on the 7th,
the destroyer escort laid two "hedgehog"
projectile patterns and one standard depth charge pattern on a target
later evaluated as a school of fish. (Back
To Where You Were Busy Torpedoing Fish Before You Sailed Here)
Oh well, Dad, don't worry. You guys may have lost that one depth
charge but you sure as shootin' won the war!
By the way, given that the USS Wilhoite-DE397 during the above Naval
action was part of the hunter-killer task group headed by the USS
Bogue, did it ever worry you how similar that ship's name
was to the word "bogey"?
Love,
Your most nautical daughter
Glossary for me lubbing siblings:
Yaw:
1. Nautical. To swerve off course momentarily or temporarily: The ship
yawed as the heavy wave struck abeam.
2. To turn about the vertical axis. Used of an aircraft, spacecraft,
or projectile.
3. To move unsteadily; weave.
Bogey:
1. an evil spirit [syn: bogy, bogie]
2. (golf) a score of one stroke over par on a hole
3. an unidentified (and possibly enemy) aircraft [syn: bogy, bogie]
4. Humphrey Bogart (portraying Rick Blaine) in Casablanca
Bogart:
1. Something you better not do to that joint, my friend (Dad, I have
absolutely no idea what this expression means).
Carqual:
1. Naval: something somebody "carries out" in regard to something
else (entirely too technical to explain in the time and space allotted
here)
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