US Military in WW2: The Submarines (eBook)

Rendezvous by Submarine, USS Seawolf - Submarine Raider of the Pacific and Sink ‘Em All,

Various Artists (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2018
The P-47 Press (Verlag)
9780359059218 (ISBN)

Infos

US Military in WW2: The Submarines presents three classic first-hand accounts of life aboard a US Navy submarine during World War 2. 
Rendezvous by Submarine - The Story of Charles Parsons and the Guerrilla-Soldiers in the Philippines by Travis Ingham tells how American-led guerrilla forces in the Philippines paved the way for US forces to re-take the Japanese held islands.
U.S.S. Seawolf: Submarine Raider of the Pacific by Gerold Frank is the first-hand account of the legendary U.S. Navy submarine Seawolf a.k.a. the Wolf which patrolled the Pacific during World War 2 and had over a dozen confirmed enemy sinkings. 
Sink 'Em All by Charles A. Lockwood is the absorbing and exhaustive account of every major US submarine's role in the war.
*Each work Includes detailed footnotes.
*Original photographs from World War 2.

Textauszug

I am not a colorful figure and I wish to be kept out of the story of the guerrilla movement as much as possible. Whatever success I may have had in accomplishing my mission has been due entirely to the fact that my knowledge of the language and the people has made it possible for me to “blend in” with the country and so pass unnoticed by the enemy.

To understand the background of the guerrilla movement in the Philippine Islands—its growth from a mere idea at the time of Corregidor’s fall to a trained army of jungle fighters, perfectly coordinated with American forces at invasion time—it is necessary to understand the background of the men who have been responsible for this movement.

It is impossible to have a free movement without freemen. Love of freedom is the major link between the lawyers, doctors, tradesmen, farmers, and unsurrendered soldiers who became the personnel and backbone of this movement in the Islands.

But love of freedom alone is not enough.

To be successful a free movement must be encouraged by outside sources. It must be supplied with arms and ammunition. It must be synchronized by a communications system. It must be directed and disciplined by capable and trusted leaders. It must operate according to a plan.

Among free movements in history the story of the guerrillas of the Philippines is unique. In no other similar movement have all these functions been assumed and discharged, with success, by a single man.

A man who first brought out definite proof to General MacArthur that a free movement was not only possible but underway in the Islands; who formed an Army-Navy team to supply this movement with the necessary equipment and ship it by submarine. A man who went into the Islands himself, time and again, under the most hazardous of circumstances to set up proper leadership, assure the safe delivery of arms, ammunition, and medicines, establish coast-watcher and radio stations, and evacuate valuable American and Allied personnel from the clutches of the Japanese. A man who withal worked in such modesty and secrecy that only once—when the Japanese announced with cries of “Banzai!” that he was dead and buried—did his name make the papers, but who is still carrying on in the hills and jungles, behind the dwindling lines of the Japs.

Parsons, known to the Army and Navy as ‘Chick’ of the Spy Squadron, Spyron.

It’s a long jump from Shelbyville, Tennessee, where Charles Parsons was born in 1902, to the Philippine Islands and a major role in a global war. Americans make those jumps, however, because they are . . . Americans. Chick’s two uncles on his mother’s side had gone out to the Philippines to seek their fortunes and their letters fired the boy’s youthful imagination, appealed to his love of adventure. In the Chattanooga schools he took courses in stenography and shorthand and acquired a working knowledge of Spanish. After a year or two of practice as a court stenographer Chick made his way to the West Coast via side door Pullman, signed on a freighter as a member of the crew, and presently found himself alone, broke and nineteen years old—on the beach at Manila.

He stayed there only long enough to get his bearings. His knowledge of stenography plus Spanish enabled him to qualify for the job of secretary to Leonard Wood, then head of the Wood-Forbes Investigating Committee. For the next three years, Chick accompanied Wood on his yacht, the Apo, to all parts of the Islands. He got to know the terrain, meet the people, learn the language and the customs.

He began to blend in with the country.

A postgraduate course in commerce at the University of the Philippines, plus an ever-growing fluency in the local idiom, enabled Chick to land his next job, with the Philippine Telephone and Telegraph Company. In 1927 he had a chance to go to Zamboanga in Mindanao with the Meyer Muzzall Company, financed and operated by then Mayor Rolph of San Francisco, later governor of the state of California. The business of this company was the exporting of logs and lumber to the United States. As a buyer Chick traveled up and down the coast of Mindanao, second largest island in the group, until he knew it like a book; he hadn’t the slightest idea this knowledge would many times save his life in years shortly to come.

Chick Parsons’ approach to the Philippines was unlike that of the usual young American adventurer. From the first he had no desire simply to spend a few lucrative years in the Islands and return home to spend the money. This was home and, to emphasize the fact beyond further possibility of doubt, while he was in Zamboanga Chick married Katraushka Jurika, daughter of a naturalized Czechoslovakian, Stephen Jurika, and Blanche Walker, of Oxnard, California.

Katsy—it is pronounced “Cotsy”—was only fifteen. Chick about thirty. That never has made any difference.

“There I was in my pigtails and bloomers,” Katsy explained, “and here came Chick with his big grin, and that was all there was to it.”

Stephen Jurika had come to the Islands as a soldier in 1898. He had married there, and all of his children including Tommy—now a major and Chick’s right-hand man in Spyron—were born in the Philippines. In marrying into this family, Chick married into the country and placed the final stamp on his blending-in process. He loved and understood the people—a sentiment which was mutually reciprocated. He spoke their language, figuratively and literally. He was completely and irrevocably identified with the Islands.

Moving on up into Manila, Katsy busied herself with family matters which presently involved three small male editions of their father, who meanwhile began a manager association with a string of businesses with which, if they exist, he is still connected.

Two young Americans had organized the North American Trading and Importing Company for the salvaging of alcohol from a hitherto waste product of sugar refining—molasses. This appeared to Chick to have possibilities and he became manager of this young industry, and also of the La Insula Cigar and Cigarette Factory, one of the largest tobacco interests in the Islands and owned by Spanish royalty. Presently he added the managership of the Luzon Stevedoring Company to his list and with it the operation of a fleet of tugboats, a series of chrome and manganese mines, and other activities with which this company was involved.

The last-named company and job are responsible for the title Chick likes best—that of boss stevedore. He also claims to be the only polo-playing stevedore in the world and with the Elizalde brothers founded the Los Tamaros Club in Manila to assure proper high-goal competition.

For a boy brought up in landlocked Tennessee, the sea has always been amazingly familiar to Chick Parsons. In 1929 he joined the Naval Reserve of the Islands and as a lieutenant, junior grade, took active duty with the fleet whenever possible.

By the fall of 1941 the Parsons fortunes had prospered to the point where Chick thought he might retire and devote his declining years—from the age of thirty-nine on—to polo, Katsy, young Michael, Peter, and Patrick Parsons, and the good life. Fate and a couple of Jap flattops had other plans in store for him, however.

Manila is a full day ahead of Pearl Harbor. On the night of December 8, Chick was awakened by a brother reserve officer, informed that the entire personnel and equipment of the Luzon Stevedoring Company had been taken into the United States Navy, was brought before Admiral Hart and sworn into active duty as a lieutenant, senior grade.

Davao, chief city of Mindanao, had been bombed by the Japanese. War had come to the Islands.

This, briefly, was Chick’s schooling for destiny. What of the men he was soon to lead, direct, and supply—the guerrillas?

During the months that Bataan was being besieged, the southern and central islands of the Philippines were relatively free from enemy interest or effort. During this period USAFFE (United States Armed Forces in the Far East)* was increasing its manpower by recruiting as many eligible Filipinos as possible from the areas near which the various divisions under General William Fletcher Sharp, commander of Mindanao and the Visayas, were stationed.

*The United States Armed Forces in the Far East was based in Manila, with MacArthur in command. Brigadier General Richard K. Sutherland was Chief of Staff and Deputy Chief of Staff was Lieutenant Colonel Richard J. Marshall. 

THESE MEN WERE ALL volunteers, ranging in age from seventeen to twenty-four, able-bodied, eager. They were brought into the service, armed, and trained to the fullest extent possible in a limited time. For, while it was quite apparent to the commanders in the south and central islands that Bataan and Corregidor could not hold out indefinitely, nevertheless a fight to the finish, and beyond, was anticipated.

Plans had been made to continue a guerrilla type of warfare should the enemy forces landing in these areas prove too strong to be met in open battle. Caches of food, ammunition, and other materiel were placed in the mountains and General Sharp intended to utilize to the highest extent the natural ability of the Filipino soldier for guerrilla-style warfare.

When General Wainwright surrendered Corregidor on May 7 he was forced to order all USAFFE forces in the central and southern islands to yield to the enemy....

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 3.9.2018
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Biografien / Erfahrungsberichte
• Themenwelt: Sachbuch/Ratgeber ► Geschichte / Politik ► Allgemeines / Lexika
• ISBN-13: 9780359059218 / 9780359059218