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In the book “At War, At Home: World War II,” The World-Herald takes a special look back at the Nebraskans and Iowans who helped the nation win a war.
The 350-page book, filled with gripping stories and compelling photographs from 70 years of coverage, recounts the sacrifice and commitment of a remarkable generation of Americans. The book, which costs $29.95, can be ordered online here.
Lyle Strom trudged down an Omaha street in 1942.
His head drooped. His shoulders slumped. He kicked at imaginary pebbles on the pavement.
Strom, then 18, had just failed an eye test that would have entered him into the U.S. Navy. It was the middle of World War II, and he didn't know if he could even fight in the war. Even if they did let him join, he didn't know where he'd go, what he'd do.
Just then, one of Strom's teachers at Omaha's Tech High walked past him. What's wrong, Lyle?
Lyle told him.
"Well, why don't you join the Merchant Marine?" the teacher asked.
"The what?" Strom said.
Seven decades later, Lyle Strom — that's the Honorable Lyle Strom, federal District Court judge, to you — and 10 other Merchant Marine veterans met for a reunion lunch in La Vista.
They swapped old stories. Stories about circling the globe and seeing Italy, China, the world. Stories about dodging the dreaded German U-boats and living to tell it.
Stories about how, 70 years later, when they say they were in the Merchant Marine, people say, "The what?"
"They don't know anything about us," says LeRoy Dittmar, a Merchant Marine vet from Seward. "It's like we didn't exist. But we did. We do."
In fact, the Merchant Marine played a large, if largely unknown, role in World War II.
Nearly a quarter-million mariners — they are mariners, not Marines — manned the thousands of ships that transported troops, tanks and bombs to the war.
C.M. "Beech" Dale of Lincoln served on a troop transport that carted soldiers to Omaha Beach on D-Day.
Wally Ursdevenicz of La Vista served as a radio operator on a cargo ship that docked during the infamous Battle of Anzio in 1944.
At war's end, Burt Young of Lincoln served on a ship that brought American troops home to ticker-tape parades — and also carried German Jews who survived the Holocaust to their new home in the United States.
"We know we made a great contribution to the war effort," Dale says.
Contrary to popular belief at the time, the Merchant Marine was no wartime holiday.
Exactly the opposite, in fact. Lightly protected American cargo and transport ships were fair game and often easy prey for Japanese fighter planes and German U-boats.
One of every 25 members of the Merchant Marine was killed in action during the war, according to military estimates. That's a higher casualty rate than either the Army, where roughly one in 48 was killed, or even the Marines, with one in 34 killed.
Many of the mariners who attended the reunion remember the dread they felt the night before setting course for Europe or the Pacific Theater.
They worried about the oceans themselves, with their unpredictable storms and 40-foot waves. Mostly, they feared German U-boats, which routinely crept up to the Merchant Marine convoys, fired torpedoes and sank a ship or two — often killing hundreds in the process — before disappearing into the Atlantic.
On May 29, 1943, Jim Greer of Bennington was serving as an engineer on the MV Florida, which had just delivered high-test airplane gasoline — a highly flammable fuel — to American bombers refueling in Brazil.
Just 50 miles from the coast, a torpedo slammed into the MV Florida, knocking out the lights and releasing the stench of ammonia into the air. The back end of the ship cracked and began to sink. Greer sprinted to his assigned life boat — but it was already swamped.
He sprinted up the catwalk to the only other lifeboat he could find. It was full of mariners, in the water, and already pulling away.
Finally he saw an empty raft, dove into the ocean and pulled himself to safety.
"Who knows what would have happened," Greer said, if the Florida had still had the fuel onboard.
That ever-present danger is one of the reasons many mariners at the reunion remain angry about their postwar treatment.
The U.S. government dawdled for more than four decades until formally declaring these men veterans of World War II.
The slight meant that Strom had to pay his way through college and law school since he wasn't eligible for the GI Bill.
It meant that Jack Wolff of Omaha had to fight in the Korean War, too — his three years of service in the Merchant Marine didn't protect him from the draft.
"I had no idea that I wasn't in the service" during World War II, Dittmar says. "No one ever told us. It's just ridiculous to think about."
At Tuesday's reunion, the mariners focused on fonder memories, too. They remembered docking in China, Calcutta, Australia after the war ended. Two of the mariners actually made around-the-world voyages.
"I'd never seen anything bigger than the Blue River!" Dittmar says.
"When I saw the Atlantic Ocean for the first time, and you couldn't see across ... " says Ed Craig.
"I went 28 days without seeing land once!" Dittmar responds. "Can you imagine that now?"
The group holds these reunions one Tuesday a month. They used to get 50 men at meetings. Now they get a dozen, at best. That decline mirrors the national drop: Only 9,000 of the roughly 250,000 World War II-era mariners are still living.
The Omaha-area mariners agree: It would be nice if more people didn't stare blankly at the mention of the Merchant Marine.
But life is short, they think. They might as well enjoy it themselves.
"We were a bastard outfit," Dale says, and laughs. But because of that outsider status, he says, "We feel really good about what we did. We feel good about each other."
Contact the writer:
402-444-1064, matthew.hansen@owh.com
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