USS LST Ship Memorial - Interview with WWII Veteran James Edwards-

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	A Special Interview with James Edwards The first portion of this interview was recorded by Wilson Earl Kelley, Jr., SF1/c who is now deceased. James finished it, as he served on LST 28. The photos were furnished by James.
"These are my recollections, along with notes of my experiences during WWII.When I volunteered, repeat volunteered, I wasn't drafted… it was September 29, 1942. I was working at the Naval Shipyard at the time and it took a little bit of doing to get into the service. They didn't want qualified employees leaving the shipyard, as that was important too. You had to have draft status and so if you were working in the shipyard - or any essential industry - they automatically put you in a status 2-B and they wouldn't touch you. The draft that is. So what I did when I got my notice in the summer of '42, you were supposed to carry it to the yard and turn it into your supervisor and they would take care of things and you were automatically 2-B. Everyone at that time was supposed to. I didn't carry that over. I don't know. Patriotism. I really didn't feel that it was that. I just felt that I should be in the service so this is what I did. I didn't turn in my notice and soon I was in 1-A which was draft classification. If I waited around just a month or two I would have surely been drafted. Well this is what I had planned and I had contacted Chris Bentz who was the Navy Recruiter and he promised me a 3/c Ship fitter’s rating in the Navy. And so that is exactly what I did. I went over to the Post Office where the recruiting service was and signed up on September the 29th. Martha went with me; I said good-bye to her there.
The next night I was home, in uniform. It seems that they were in such dire need of welders and ship fitters that they didn't even bother to send me to boot camp. They sent me to the receiving station in Norfolk. Gave me my uniform that day and the following day I was to be transferred. I didn't know where but I knew I was going directly into service and not into any training unit. Well, it turned out I didn't go far, I went to Little Creek. This new amphibious base… it was just being started and it was a quagmire. Quonset huts, well they weren't really Quonset huts… they were more tarpaper shacks. frames with tarpaper tacked on them. And stoves… two in each barracks. These barracks were approximately 100 feet long, about 20 feet wide. They would have four of them arranged and in between the four would be a washroom and head and what have you. A laundry room and all. The only heat was in these cast iron stoves. They had to be fed wood, coal, whatever we had.
This required a watch all night; I forget what they call them. It was really a security watch, but the security watch consisted of feeding the fire. The big problem was they were starting this amphibious force and this was all a brand new baby too. Had these landing craft that they were putting out; training people on beaching. LCVP's were 36 foot on up to LCMs, which were 50 foot. And LST's, 300 foot. LCPI's were 30 foot - they were wood - the others were all steel. And they were tying these things up right and left, naturally. All of these rookies could hardly get them into the dock; they were banging them up, punching holes in them right and left. They were sorely in need of repairs and so that's where I went and put right to work there. It was right up my alley because I had been doing all of this in the shipyard. I could weld and brine and patch these plates. the holes in the plates. They didn't require anything neat, just slap a plate and weld around it so they could punch a hole in it again. All in all it wasn't bad duty. Most of the help that we had there at Little Creek at this time was coming from the Navy School. They were turning ship fitters out a little too rapidly and they weren't too swift. You asked for a vertical bead and you were asking for the moon. But we got along. There were a couple of fellows there who had a little experience as well as myself. I remember one was from Texas; he had worked in the oil fields. He was a Carpenters Mate named Snead. He knew his business but he came from the Newport News Shipyard. In later years he had a son that had an outstanding professional football career - Norman Snead. I stayed there at Little Creek doing this and got Martha to move to Ocean view and whenever I wasn't on duty, well, I would ease on down there. All this came to an end on March 26, 1943 when my temporary ship's duty expired. I was in the draft, which was a term used for shipping out. So it was very inopportune, no notice, or anything. Just all of a sudden your name was called out and you were told to pack your sea bag and go. I left my car and all of that.. I had to make a hurried phone call to Bradford to get them to pick the car up. I told them I didn't know where I was going and I didn't. It turned out I went to the Solomons, MD which was an organizing base for crews for LSTs. They would band all of these various people together and then more or less introduce themselves and go through some training. This was the only time I was in service that I got any marching at all. They must have thought I really had two left legs because with no book training at all they sent me over to march with a crew. There wasn't anybody there that was expert anyway, so I stumbled through. It didn't last long anyway. Just about a month later we were shipped by a bus to Washington and put on a troop train for Panama City, FL. We knew where we were going. So this was to put us on a ship for training purposes. So on May 10, 1943 we arrived at Panama City after two days and a very dirty, crawly troop train. It was a train that had outdated and been brought back in service and we were crawly and filthy. It took 2 days to get there. Well, this was a new part of the Country for me... Florida! It was May and beautiful. They put us on LST 202 for training purposes. This lasted just the trip back up to Norfolk. June 10, 1943 we arrived at Coraopolis, PA and went aboard LST 28 which was to be my home. It was built by Dravo Corporation at Neville Island, just right outside of Pittsburgh. We took this brand new ship and they had some ... a special skeleton crew along with us that knew the river because we had to go down the Ohio River to the Mississippi and then all the way down the Mississippi. As well as picking up pilots on the way down. A beautiful trip. I really enjoyed that. Our Country. We went on down to New Orleans to a base called Algiers. While you were at this Amphibious base, you could tell where you were going. They had a painters there. Half the ships were painted a camouflage green - a light and dark green. And other ships were painted a blue with a lighter blue the darker blue on top of the lighter blue… kind of a drab blue. The blue ones were going to Europe. The green ones were going to the South Pacific. The patterns that were on the 29, a good friend of mine in the Navy and who… we were together at Solomons, MD and the ship was painted green. He was going to the Pacific. Ours was painted blue. Pointed East to Europe. We took the ship from New Orleans and brought her up to Norfolk. It wasn’t a very large crew at that time, there wasn’t too many guns on it. There was a 5.38 at the stern and I think there was four 40mm’s. I believe that there weren’t 40mm on it at first… they were 20 mm’s anti aircraft guns on it. Nevertheless, when we got to Norfolk, I came down sick with enteritis. They had to carry me off the ship to a Naval Hospital. I spent about a week at the hospital. But I volunteered to go back to the ship… the same ship. I could have stayed in there and there’s no tell to where I would have gone. I felt my obligation was to those fellows. So I did just that and I was back on the ship in November. We had to go over to Europe. I’m looking at this Diary I kept when I was overseas. Various names. There was an Albert White on LST 75, Ray K. Thompson on the 77, Jay Severnak (SPELLING) on the Yorktown, John Molassa (SPELLING) on the 4, Walter Collins on the Oiltown. That was later on - he was transferred on to there. Some of these people didn’t make it.
Well, after my hospital tour, I got back in time. Before we went overseas, we had to go up north. This was in November. We went up to Quonset Point, Rhode Island. Providence. Right near Providence to pick up some Quonset huts to bring down to Norfolk. It was pretty uneventful except for it was colder there than Norfolk. We were back at Norfolk on December 1^st. We’d seen a little in the bay. Then we left Norfolk around March the 1^st for Europe. In Convoy. It was a six night Convoy – it took us about 30 days to get over to Africa. The first landing was at Bizerte, Tunisia. On April the 1^st we got our first taste of action. Quite a big air raid from the German planes from Laissez. I will have to be perfectly truthful, my knees got shaky. Along about four o’clock in the morning General Quarters sounded. I jumped out of my sack and put my clothes on and went to my General Quarters station which was up forward at the bow of the ship. I was in charge of the repair gang there. The Commissioned Officer had the other repair gang, what they called damage control party. I had the other half as the leading Petty Officer forward. They got up on deck and the guns were firing – ours hadn’t started to fire yet but they were letting loose with all of these ships.
The bombs – you couldn’t see them drop, you couldn’t even see the planes, but you could see the explosions. They had already hit a tanker and there was a fire. My knees did get wobbly. I have to admit it, but the average person raises up right then. For just an instant he’s queasy, but then he’ll do what he’s trained to do. And that’s exactly what I did and that’s what most everyone did. Now, we did have one fellow that .. we were carrying an LCT on the deck of the LST. He was supposed to be manning a gun and he didn’t. He dove for cover under the gun. This was an isolated instance. It was just one man in the whole crew. We didn’t get hit except by some shells by some other ships and a couple of guys got spent shell fragments in them, but no one was hurt bad. A couple of days later when we arrived at Bizerte… we were right off Algiers by the way when this attack occurred… a couple of days later when we got into Bizerte, there was one of the ships putting a swastika up on their Conn as if they had shot one of their planes down. What really happened was the plane hit their mast and crashed right off of the ship. The plane got too low and crashed himself. You couldn’t see anything. They had searchlights from this British cruiser that was escorting us, but they never picked anything up. I never saw the first plane yet in that raid. All I saw was the results. Bizerte was quite a sight to behold. This was a town that had changed hands about four times in the war and every time it was blasted by the other side. I don’t believe there was a roof left on a building in the city. Wherever I went it had been a beautiful city at one time. It’s just about 20 miles from Tunis. While we were there I did take this Tunisville trolley train they had from Bizerte over to Tunis to see the big city. We really wasn’t there very long. We unloaded ammunition. We had loaded the whole tank deck up with ammunition packaged up in cartons. All kinds. We figured if we ever took a shot there wouldn’t be anything left. And there wouldn’t.. we would have gone up rocket. We unloaded that at Bizerte. Took a load of tanks aboard and went over into Italy to the Anzio Beachhead. When we hit the beach and unloaded at Nettuno, went back to Oran, towing a disabled LCT. The LCT rammed a couple of holes in our stern in the rough weather which I had to fix later on. The date was April 15^thand we were off to England – Merry Old England! We arrived May the 3^rd at Swansea, Wales and on the 4^th we went on up to Cardiff. We carried a load of French Provincial Sailors. They joined with a Tank Corps there and were going up with French forces in England to man tanks. They were Sailors off of one of the French ships. Quite a few of them were natives. Between Oran and Wales it could get kinda rough, especially after you get to the Straits of Gibraltar. And they were a mess… seasick… laying out on the deck.. throwing up… laying there like they were dead. I never learned to take the sea too well either. I got seasick when it got bad. This diesel fuel that we used for the ship, it put out a stench that was quite sickening. Some got sick, but never deadly like those fellows. I looked for them to roll on overboard, but they never did. This was all in preparation for the big day – the invasion of France. We traveled around southern England – Swansea to Cardiff, Milford Haven on the way to over to Falmouth, Southampton and Plymouth. These ports in southern England, we hit them all at one time or another in the next month. Here, I’ll go back to my notes. On Thursday, April the 20^th we left Oran. We were supposed to meet a convoy at noon. Good weather, nice and calm. We had one liberty in Oran. A big place, but dirty. They were rather filthy cities. I bought a bracelet for 145 francs, a little aluminum thing that had been handmade. I learned a little French from these Frenchmen we were taking on board. On the 21^st we set into Milford Haven. On the 24^th we arrived at Falmouth from Milford Haven and on the 26^th. They had an air raid while we were there, at 4 o’clock in the morning. And so the day arrived… June 5^th. That was the day everyone had waited We had loaded 500 soldiers aboard that little LST. Nobody ate good. Nobody. Nothing hot. There was a mountain of corned beef hash cans on the deck and you could have all you wanted of that, but believe me, corned beef hash after a while gets a little old. You just got tired of it. But I want to remind you.. a cookie who was supposed to feed about 40 – with 500 soldiers aboard – there was just no hope. We had K Rations, C Rations; mostly K Rations – the C Rations had to be heated up and there was no way to do that. Our Skipper – a fellow by the name of Findley from Baltimore, he said we would eat the same thing the soldiers ate. I suppose that was fair enough. As soon as we could unload them, we’d get back to hot chow. Their prospects of hot meals were pretty remote. We left the harbor at Weymouth on June the 5^th early in the morning. Probably about two… because it was still dark. We sailed around inside the harbor for a little while and first thing you knew we were going back in. It was stormy – it was really rough. The sailors were really having a tough time and we weren’t having it too easy. We heard through the grapevine that the whole thing had been pushed back for 24 hours. That made one more day of living in this __ pile. Everyone crawling all over each other… but somehow, we all survived. Poker games and crap games sprung up all over the ship. All over. Everybody had to wait for a day or two. The next morning we went over and it was on this time. We got in line with a Flotilla and the sun didn’t come up – it was cloudy – but it got lighter. It was the most awesome sight that I have ever seen. I was up on the Conn doing a little work. The water was so choppy that one of the gaskets that I had made – it was a weather vane on an oak door frame that was coming loose. I had to secure it down again. I got a pretty good view of the armada of ships. It was something – as far as the eye could see were ships. I’m sure that if you put them end to end you could have walked to France that day.
	We had a Doctor aboard. I hadn’t mentioned this, but we were designated to be a medical ship. Our duty was to take casualties off the beach and back to England. In addition to our regular crew, we had four Doctors and about sixteen medics - Army medics and Navy hospital Corpsmen stationed with us for this trip for the initial invasion. One of the Doctors had a camera exactly like mine and he was taking pictures continuously of this whole proceeding. I would have loved to have had mine, but at this time we weren’t permitted. About the best I could do was to confiscate
a notice that they had issued to all of the ships that were in the landings from Admiral Cook. It said that they were to be destroyed that morning. I was the one to destroy it and I didn’t. I had it in my possession – an unnoticed affect – we were landing and it was just a pep talk more or less. It really didn’t give any secrets. It was probably really rare… We were detailed to go to a beach called Dog Red on the Omaha beachhead. The beachhead was divided up into general areas Utah, Omaha, Juno, and Gold. [Ed. Note: also Sword] Americans landed at Utah and Omaha and the British and Canadians at the others. At the initial landing, Omaha turned out to be the toughest but we didn’t know it. And that’s where we went – Omaha. It didn’t really make it quite so tough for us because we never did run in. We got off the beach and stood by, and they were having so much trouble on the beach that we couldn’t even land. We couldn’t beach the ship. Things were all bottled up. The soldiers weren’t advancing inland for one reason or another. I think they ran into a German Panzer Division that just happened to be in that Sector. They weren’t getting anywhere. It just took time to flag that particular area and everything was piling up on the beach. We were standing about three-quarters of a mile offshore and being shelled, but not by heavy stuff. It was 88’s I believe – a world famous German gun they used for most anything. They would drop one now and then. They did hit an LCI that was closer in than we were. I think we must have been at the outer edge of their range. Everything was at a standstill. We stood by there for hours. I’m not exactly sure what time it was during the day that they unloaded us onto what they called Rhino Ferry. They were just a series of tanks that floated, squares of tanks powered by a great huge outboard motor. We unloaded these one at a time – the tanks, right there at sea. Now our small boats did go in and we lost one of them – it hit a mine and we never heard who survived or who lived. It was highly unlikely that any of them lived. The only ones that we knew were the Bowhook and the Coxswain of the boat who were from our crew. A fellow named Box was the Coxswain and the name of the Bowhook escapes me. The rest were soldiers. I’m sure that they probably suffered almost 100% casualties. The whole area was heavily mined. That was the extent of our casualties this first day, this D-Day. Once we unloaded we took off single file, just as soon as we could, and high tailed it back to England, back to Southampton. Once there, we loaded up again just as fast as we could and went back across the channel in convoy. Now we went in convoy but we came back single file. I never knew why but this is how we did it there for a while. This route that we took was about seventy-five miles I suppose across and the zig-zagging and all, it took about 12 hours to make the trip. The second trip was back to Omaha, which had settled down some, this was D +1, and we did hit the beach and unloaded and got off real fast. No sweat. But then comes a pretty hairy tale. On June the 9^th we arrived back at Portland after our second trip. We had some contact with some E boats, no trouble with them, but they were out there and they did hit a couple of ships. Our biggest trouble was we almost rammed another LST - the 331. It was at night, about nine, and a pretty big air attack was taking place. I guess it’s the biggest one since we were over there. We brought back 24 wounded but all of them seemed to be alive this time. They operated on one of them – he had caught a mine - I think they called them a Leapin’ Lena– a mine that jumps out of the ground and explodes. It caught him at the waist and he must have had a thousand pieces of shrapnel in him. They said he would live. I think they said all 24 would live; one was a German POW. We went back to Portland and Weymouth – they were pretty close together. . On June the 14^th we returned to the same beachhead at Omaha. We came over with four LSTs because we missed the big convoy. We were stuck on the beachhead, what they called the hard – a concrete job that they had formed well. We would nose in to the dock and they would load us, back everything in. Of course they have pretty strong tides over there. We went back over to the same beach though, and had air attacks, single planes were nothing, not exciting – we were stuck on the beach - right on the beachhead. The next day I got a pretty good look and there were wrecked LCTs and LCIs. I didn’t see any LSTs yet, at least not in that area. An LST did hit a mine right off the English coast. The mine hit toward the aft end of the ship and they suffered something like sixty casualties. There were sixty killed. There were more casualties than that a lot of wounded. It must have been a floating mine. They kept after those mines. Minesweepers were working continually. They couldn’t get them all. A lot of these planes we were seeing, the German planes, were dropping these mines I think. Things went on like this until June 24^th. We had made four trips. This time we went to Chattyville. This was on the British beachhead. This was on the 24^th – 18 days after D-Day and they hadn’t got in more than six miles from the beach. We were being shelled the whole time when we were on the beach. There were two LST's sunk there – the 499 and the 133. I think they tried to salvage one of them – they were working on it. They were in bad shape there. We were under shellfire. We had this barrage balloon. I think they were lining up the distance for the guns with it. They couldn’t miss. It was pretty obvious they had the range right on us. The Skipper let that jewel go. It was causing more trouble than it was worth. We weren’t getting that much strafing. That’s what the variety of balloons were for, to prevent low level strafing. They would do most of the damage from the shelling. We took a half a day off and would work a day at Cherbourg. We couldn’t weld because of the magnetic mines. One trip we had so many Germans they covered the whole tank deck.

Continued by James Edwards, Electrician's Mate LST 28 continued it's service in the coming months with many supply runs to the Normandy beaches, taking wounded back to England. The demands of war in the Pacific had taken a toll on American ships and soon LST 28 received orders to return to New York for retrofitting. Upon arrival in New York, the ship was drydocked. All Officers and crew were given leave and replaced with a new crew complement. The new crew were preparing themselves and LST 28 for the invasion of Japan. The 3" stern gun was removed and replaced with dual 40mm guns which had a 'new' electric control. The bow gun was replaced during this time and all equipment was refurbished and conditioned. The ship was moved to New Jersey where an LCT was loaded on the main deck. The Pacific theatre paint camoflauge was applied to the hull. After approximately three months of work, LCT 28 began taking on stores, supplies, cargo and munitions (they removed an arsenal from the East Coast) bound for the West Coast of the United States. During this time, the atomic bombs were dropped at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The war ended. James Edwards, Electrician's Mate said "the entire world went wild - on board ship, the air was filled with the sound of horns and bells" from their ship and others in the vicinity. The ship later returned to the shipyard in New York. It was re-painted ship blue, covering the Pacific camoflague that had recently been applied. After a short period of inactivity, the ship was decommissioned and struck from the Naval register on 29 October 1946. The U. S. LST 28 was sold to George H. Nutman, Brooklyn, N. Y. for scrap.
	James said " I had a problem after the war ended.. the new Skipper said I had to have a replacement electrician's mate before I could go home. Since I was the last electrician on board at that point, every day I would ask every man coming aboard "Do you know anything about electricity or batteries?" It seemed a long time waiting. One day a young boy came on board and to my surprise he said "I worked in a filling station and know a little about batteries - how to charge them." I grabbed him and dragged him into the Skipper's office and asked "When can I go home?" It wasn't long after that when I was sent to Oklahoma and discharged.
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