The Seaweed

USS Champlin DD-601  

Spring 2002

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"So when you call me a Torpedoman,
I'm much more than that, you'll see;
Cause I'm back there with the charges,
Where a Depth Charge mate should be."

Now then, all ye doubters, who said that Torpedomen have no sense of the arts and the other finer things in life! Read on, there's more.

First Meeting with a Tin Can

Jack Brawdy, TM3c recalls his first meeting with a Tin Can: He writes, "In the month of December , 1942, I had been in the US Navy a total of five months. I have to say they were a hectic five months. War had been declared and this country was caught up in a war fever and fervor the likes of which our land had never seen. After the attack on Pearl Harbor December 7th and the Roosevelt declaration of war on Japan, thousands of young men were crowding the enlistment stations and signing up in the various branches of the military. I had chosen the Navy and had been rushed off to Newport, RI for eight weeks of Boot Camp and then sixteen more weeks of primary torpedo school. In between these two periods of time I was allowed to go home and show off my new uniform to Mom, Dad and all the family.

"I don't know how I ended up being a Torpedoman. Just before Pearl Harbor I had left boarding school, a seminary up in Canada after five years of intensive book work. Tools and my hands hardly ever came in close contact but the Navy said I had an aptitude for such work after seeing the results of those test we all had to take soon after joining the Navy. Anyway, I graduated from Torpedo School in Newport and armed with my little certificate I was sent to a place in New York City called Pier 92 (I think) for further assignment.

"After sixty years, I don't remember too much about Pier 92 except it was very large and there must have been hundreds of sailors there at the time waiting for new orders. There were old salts, new apprentice seamen almost all rates and class anxiously scanning the bulletin boards looking for their names every day. Life was fairly easy on the pier but boring with not too much to do. I watched the boards like everyone else and one day my name jumped out at me but it wasn't for further assignment, it was for mess duty the following day. I hit the sack that night resigned to my fate among the pots and pans but fate took a hand in my future when along about 3:00 a.m. that hand shook my shoulder and an authoritative voice told me to get up and pack my sea bag. Your outta here!!!

"The next thing I remember I was on the back of a pickup truck with another sailor (Ken Blatchford TM2c), dress blues and seabag's careening across New York City, heading for the Brooklyn Navy Yard. A pickup truck in the middle of December - absolutely ridiculous! You have to keep in mind that it was December and very cold and by the time we arrived we were so frozen we could hardly get out of the truck. We went aboard a long gray object tied to the pier. I had never seen a Navy ship before let alone being this close to one. I didn't know what it was until an officer with a side arm said to us, 'Welcome aboard gentlemen, this is the USS Champlin, DD-601. We will be getting underway later in the morning and you will be berthed at that time'. He put us in a small compartment right off the quarterdeck and told us to get some sleep. As I dozed off trying to get warm I remember the vibration or hum of the engines coming up through the deck.

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"In what seemed like only five minutes that vibration turned into a mighty roar and as I jumped up and looked out the hatch it was daylight and the pier area was moving right before my eyes! I couldn't understand it and as I watched I got sick to my stomach and just made it to the side before I up-chucked my last meal from Pier 92. I started to focus and realized the truth of the situation. The pier was not moving, I was, and the ship was, and the long gray thing from the night before was a destroyer and we were all headed for Casablanca, North Africa and whatever others ports and duties the future held for us. Four hours aboard, arriving in the middle of the night, and getting seasick, My first meeting with a Tin Can wasn't exactly memorable, but I'll never forget it."

Kappes Memories

As a lowly seaman fresh out of boots I was assigned to scullery duty. Normally that would have been a better job than mess cooking but it just happened that the automatic dishwasher was busted so every tray had to be scrubbed by hand. I really hated it when we had eggs for breakfast. But there's an old expression that goes "If you want to find the easiest way to do something just watch a lazy man do it". I soon got tired of scrubbing trays so I filled the deep sink in the scullery with boiling hot water, put on heavy rubber gloves, and added about two cups of sodium triphosphate (I understand that's the principal ingredient of Soilax!) and then just dipped as many trays as I could hold in two hands. After three or four vigorous dips they came out cleaner than if the machine had been in working order. In fact, after it was fixed I continued to wash them the same way because it was a lot faster. We ran into heavy weather during that time and being a very poor sailor, I neglected to tie down the trays at night so a lot of the cups and soup bowls got broken. Tempinski was a good boatswain's mate but looking back on it now I must have been a source of exasperation for him.

Simerly Recalls

This, from Arnold Simerly's hometown newspaper interview: "During the four long years that passed between the first American invasion of World War II at Safi, French Morocco, and the last battle Americans fought against the Japanese at Okinawa, Arnold Simerly probably wondered on more than one occasion if he would survive to see the end of the war. From the first battle to the last, Simerly and the men with whom he sailed were regularly under fire.

Simerly began the war as a sailor on a World War I era destroyer christened the Bernadou. During the invasion of Safi, the Bernadou led the attack, engaging in a hot firefight with German gunships that left her irreparably damaged.

"We had stripped the Bernadou down cut her stacks and mast so she looked like a submarine," Simerly says. "I guess that's what the Germans thought that she was one of theirs. I don't right there in the harbor if we hadn't laid her up on the beach."

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