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"DEDICATED TO OUR SHIPMATES WHO SACRIFICED THEIRLIVES IN THE U.S. SUBMARINES DURING WORLD WAR 11"

"CHARTERED BY THE U.S. CONGRESS - NOV 1981"

SUBMARINE VETERANS OF WWII

SWAMP FOX JOURNAL

LEWIS ALLISON. STATE CDR. (843) 832-8787

STACY POWER PRESIDENT (843) 556-6369

MIGUEL EMERSON TREASRER (843) 553-4109

ABLE JENKINS VICE PRES. (843) 553-8837

ROGER GIBSON, BASE SECRETARY & NEWSLETTER EDITOR (843) 875-4933

Our next meeting will be at Ryan's Family Steak House 1314 North Main Street in Summerville, SC onThursday, April 15th, at 1200 Summerville. We look forward to seeing everyone at the meeting!

Invocation: Roger Gibson; Lunch

Meeting Called to order: Stacy PowerPledge of Allegiance: William JonesPurpose of the Organization: Stacy/Lee

Tolling of Lost boats:Stacy Power: Lee Allison & Mike Emerson.

Introduction of GuestsPresident: Stacy

Howdy Shipmates,According to Webster, to reminisce is to recallthe past. Reminiscing, to recollect and tell of thepast experiences or events. So here goes a littlereminiscing with you Brothers of the Dolphinand invited guest.It was early June 1958, as we secured fromspecial sea detail just passing through Papa

Hotel Buoys at Pearl Harbor, the Captain sentword for me to come to his state room, LCDRBill Masek was the CO of the USS Sabalo(SS302). He was a soft spoken, look you rightin the eye type of guy, no nonsense person. Iwas shivering like a dog crapping peach seedswhen I knocked on his cabin bulkhead. “ChiefPower here Captain”, “Come in Power, have aseat on that trash can”. Yes Sir Captain.

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You know we are heading to the Island of Maui,Chief! Yes Sir, Captain. We are going to havesome rescue drills with the ASR Greenletstarting tomorrow. Yes Sir, the Greenlet is goingto drop the rescue Bell down on us at 200ft. YesSir, is that all Captain? No, that’s not all we aregoing to send one man up from the forwardtorpedo room escape trunk. “Great”, I asked,who do you want to send, Captain? “You ofcourse, your the Chief of the Boat. Yes sircaptain. We’ll start tomorrow after breakfast isover be ready at 0830, that’s all chief; yes sircaptain.I went across the passage way to the Goat lockerand sat down on my bunk. Damn, I said tomyself. That’s twice as deep as the lower dooron the training tank. About that time the old manstruck his head in the curtain at the goat lockerdoor. Chief Power there is just one more thing.Yes Sir? We’ll come up to Sixty feet so you canmake that Blow and go ascent to the surface.Yes Sir, I said, as I looked him in the eye.He walked away smiling. The next morning Iwas ready to go. The torpedo men in the forwardtorpedo room were as excited as I was. The chieftorpedo man went over the routine with me untilI convinced him that I knew it well enough to goby myself.As I glided upward with my pneumatic lifejacket on, my right hand held straight above myhead expelling air from my lungs all the way up,something bumped me on the shoulder. It scaredme. I thought it was the rescue launch that wasout there to pick me up. It wasn’t though. It wasthe periscope going by me with the captain onthe scope. You guessed it, he was eyeballing me;eye to eye.Stacy

Lee Allison “Swamp Fox”

I hope that everyone has known and experiencedall the wonderful things that have happenedlately.First on December 7, 2009 we dedicated theLost Boats Amberjack Monument at the ColdWar Memorial at Patriots Point. There was agreat crowd of guests and the Charleston BaseUSSVI. We only had ten (10) WWII Veterans atthe service. It was a great time.On 20, March 2010, we had our AmberjackMemorial at the Cold War Memorial. Presentwere 40, plus VI Sub vets who put on theservice, and I can tell you, they did a super job,complete with the roster of our lost AmberjackCrew on Eternal Patrol. We only had 4 WWIIMembers present, due to illness of 8 regulars.THANK YOU CHARLESTON BASE, you nowhave the watch. Lee

Lee’s first sub

Base Secretary: Roger

This old secretary is starting to get tired andlooking for a replacement so if there are anytakers? As a secretary I had two years with theUSSVI and seven with the World War TwoSwamp fox Chapter, but from what I see in thefuture our WWII Sub Vets are/is winding down,the organization is low on funds and looks likethe last Hurrah will be in Cincinnati Ohio for theWWII Sub Vets, their convention will becombined with the USSVI convention in August2010, details will follow, keep your dial set to…Our last meeting the treasurer and secretary werepresent and we had a Quorum, Stacy was at afuneral and Lee was on mother in law duty,bless his soul “Ha” now just think what I justsaid, Lee is 83 and has a mother in Law….

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Well anyway we had a guest speaker John Hill aWWII sub vet his story will be in the minutes.Some other notes, Abe had back surgery and isstill recovering, keep him and his wife in yourprayers. We had our Amberjack memorial at theCold War memorial, we had five WWIIVeterans attending along with 30 or so USSVICharleston base members. For all those whohelped our thanks from Mike who tolled the bellto our Chaplin John, the Cob Rick and Paulagain our thanks. I have some pictures, but forthose who have computers go on line and checkout our web site <ussvicb.org> and see the slideshow, our web master nick is great.Some other news we had an oyster roast at thebarn and had a good turn out and good time hadby all, we even had a special country band fromNashville and some first class singers but therewas one individual with a tall hat that sang a fewsongs but wouldn’t give me his autograph“couldn’t spell his name” I think his name was“Giddy up”Marshall wasn’t at the oyster roast lee has toldme he is undergoing chemo therapy so keeppappy in your prayers. Pappy and John hillserved on the S38 together and operated out ofAustralia, Ray Murphy also was in the S boatshe is now in Oregon with his daughter she is adoctor and keeps a good eye on him. Oh I forgotwe have two new associates joined the WWIISub vets Roger Rader and George Schard

Minutes of the February meetingMeeting called to order by Roger, Stacy and Leenot present! The pledge of allegiance was leadby Willie Jones and bell tolling for the lost boatsMike and Roger. The order of business waschanged due to the absence of the president andState commander, no official business wasconducted with exception of the approval of theminutes from the last meeting I Februarymotion was made and passed “Law” MikeEmerson gave the treasurers report, monies werediscussed. Further discussions were to remind allhands about the Amberjack memorial at the coldwar museum at patriots point in Mt Pleasant,march 20th on the Saturday at 1100 hours, theCob Rick wise and the USSVI base commanderhave taken over these responsibilities “FromRoger, thank you” Old business and newbusiness none was covered, for the good of theorder

Rick wise USSVI Cob informed all attendingthat we have an oyster roast on the last Saturdayat the end of February all invited.And now from John Hill (doc) Pharmacist’smate or now known as Hospital corpsman willgive us a taste of what it was like at the start ofWWII….JohnHow did I get into the submarine service that’s astory in it self, I was stationed at campPendleton marine Corps base in a medicalcompany I had just made second class whichmeant we had all the privileges of the marinesergeants, which meant you eat late sleep lateand all that crap.. This one Friday morning theChief calls all the second class into his room andasks the five that were there, I need sixvolunteers for submarines and all second class,well after some discussion and arm twistingamong the second class one would say I’ll go ifyou go well we got five names, and me thinking“sub school in New London I’ll have a ball,having relations in New York and New Jerseythen the sixth second class showed up “Gilmore”the chief asked if he would like a transfer but asit turned out that Gilmore and myself wereassigned that Friday morning to set up a campfor snipers and scouts no sooner did we get thisdone up comes the driver that took us there saidpack up put your gear in the truck you are goingto submarine duty, we thought he was pullingour let and told him to get lost, about a half hourlater he gets one of the squadron doctors andconfirmed that they in deed were gettingtransferred, they took us to our barracks to pickup our gear but all we had was Marine issueuniforms and one set of blues, so we left whatwas there and hopped the truck and thought“Transportation to New London” here we comean away drove us down to San Diego base,drives through this gate to a old building, lookslike a good wind would blow it over the driversaid go in there, that’s submarine headquarters,well we checked in since it was Saturdaymorning they gave us liberty cards and said seeyou Monday, oh by the way see that section overthere that’s where you can sleep.. Mondaymorning we line up in a row and this officerfrom the squadron office comes over and saysyou, you and you pack your gear your flying toAlaska. What happened to our submarine duty?Oh don’t worry you don’t need it there threeboats waiting for you, so the next three “I wasone of the three” follow me, we went straight toa dry dock and 6 S- boats were in there being

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overhauled, the officer said see those, I said yespick one…. After getting to know the crews inthe barracks the crew of the s 38 asked me if Iwould like to come aboard so I accepted, thisalso was Pappy’s “Marshall” boat these werethe boats that escaped from Manila got toAustralia then back to the states to getoverhauled. New London liberties forget it,New York liberty forget it we stayed in SanDiego and I tell you what that was a wonderfulgroup. We had a gunners mate called meat head,he was going to take me down to the boat andteach me to stand topside watch and I said tohim, I’m only suppose to carry a 45 forprotection he said don’t worry about that youdon’t need it any more so he was showing methe boats in dry dock showed me the S-38 saidwe can’t go down on the boat they haveeverything stripped out and there is no place towalk, then I asked him, oh by the way what areall those round circles on the hull? Oh that; theywere using the air gun chipping the hull and theywent through don’t worry about that they fixedit, so that was my introduction to submarineservice.

When they made the test dive in San Diegoharbor I was in my bunk “I was only 19 then”green as all hell but I fell asleep when I woke Iasked” when are we going to make our test dive?Oh doc we have already done that, we are tiedup to the pier what are you doing aboard?Pappy Marshall another S-38 boat sailor “MotorMack” John you didn’t tell it all, still in SanDiego “an other story” every morning like clockwork this captain walked his hound dog atquarter to eight his main goal in life was to makelife miserable for the submarine sailors if youhad a dirty uniform he would write you up andmade sure you changed into a clean one, my selfI still had my marine uniforms and as I walkedby him I would salute and say good morningcaptain and he would return his salute and saygood morning son and the poor sailor behind mewould get wrote up he hated submarine sailors,ask Pappy about the incident with the hound dogthat a story in its self. When the S-38 reachedHawaii there was the mystery of alcoholdisappearing from sealed containers, you need toget with Pappy and John and have them tell youhow this miracle happened I tell you this was aone boat crew to me it was the best crew Iserved with., John HillEnd of the minutes, no new or old businessmeeting adjurned

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