The Seaweed

USS Champlin DD-601  

Spring 2002

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Though the crew lost their ship, they completed the mission, giving safe passage to 200 Army Commandos, the first wave of the North African invasion. Simerly says he does not know what happened to those men afterward.

"That's just war," he says. "You see a lot of men come and go, and you don't ever know for sure what happens to them."

Simerly is now 80 years old and fighting a quiet battle against cancer. Diabetes has left him nearly sightless in one eye. Surprisingly, his frame does not seem weakened by his illnesses, though it's obvious his eyes give him trouble and his lungs are struggling.

"I get short of breath," he says as he shines a flashlight on the wall of an out of the way room, little more than a hallway at the back of the house, where a small felt lined case of medals hangs in an inconspicuous corner behind a lamp. There is still daylight in the room. The flashlight's bulb is a round reflection in the glass. The beam is a tiny ghost on the wall.

"They gave me a medal for good conduct, if you can believe that," he laughs. "I managed four years without getting sent to see the captain."

There is a ribbon for Safi, a presidential unit citation. There are two silver stars four bronze. On the opposite wall is a letter signed by Navy Secretary Frank Knox.

"That's my stuff," says Simerly, unimpressed with himself.

After Safi, Simerly and the crew of the ill fated Bernadou were transported back across the Atlantic to New York, where Simerly was assigned to a newly commissioned destroyer, the USS Champlin. For the next three years, Simerly would not often set foot on dry land.

"I've figured it up, he says. "More than 200,000 miles of water passed under our feet during the war. They let us ashore 52 or 54 days, no more. There were plenty of times I had to eat my dinner below deck with my legs and arms hugged around one of the ship's stanchion's. Sometimes we would go 48 to 72 hours on four hours' sleep. If you got six hours straight, you were a millionaire."

A few years ago, a friend sent Simerly a copy of the Champlin's log book. A list of her voyages spans 13 pages. Each line of minuscule type is single spaced and represents a battle or a passage from one incredible destination to the next.

"We went to so many places so fast. Toward the end of the war, I got a bundle of something like a 160 letters from my wife. She sent me a pair of swimming trunks, and it was nine months before I got those. The mail just couldn't keep up with us," he says.

"There are names of places I've been that I can't even pronounce."

One line of the log reads simply: Bombarded Okinawa.

We lost a lot of ships at Okinawa," he says matter of factly. "It was the end of the war, and those kamikaze planes were giving everybody hell. They had bombs strapped under them, and they would come at you out of the sun. It was you or them, and they weren't planning on going home."

After Okinawa and the war's end, Simerly was stationed in Charleston, S.C., and assigned the task of decommissioning ships. He had lived through six major battles and countless skirmishes, but the asbestos he stripped from the Champlin's hull would deal him his only wound, a spot on one lung that would not go away.

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Between Safi and Okinawa, the Champlin had taken part in the invasions of Italy and Southern France. She escorted innumerable ships safely across the North Atlantic. And she saw her own share of grief.

During a submarine hunt well off the coast of Casco Bay, Maine, April 7, 1944, the Champlin dropped depth charges on a German U boat. The submarine immediately surfaced, and the Champlin raked its decks with her guns, scoring a direct hit on the conning tower that started a furious fire.

Simerly's job was to keep fire in the Champlin's belly to keep the forward boilers steaming.

"I got my orders to open her up with all the steam we had going; we were going to ram that sub," he says. "I told my guys they'd better get down, and we all hung on for dear life." The Champlin succeeded in ramming and sinking the sub, U 856, but her own losses were heavy. The ship's captain, Commander John J. Shaffer, and 14 more of the Champlin's crew were killed during the battle.

Simerly's bad eyes grow distant. From his seat beside the Formica topped kitchen table in a small ranch style house in Elizabethton, he sees the cold Atlantic clearly.

"I don't know if you've ever seen anybody buried at sea," he says. "They put you in a canvas bag, and at the bottom of the bag they sew in a lead weight a little bigger than a brick. They put you on a slab under an American flag, and the chaplain says a few words, and they slide you out from under the flag into the deep ..."

His big hands tremble.

"They slip you into the sea ... and then they go on to the next one."

Remembering Nixon

Bill Gustin says, "Bob Nixon was a good friend of mine throughout my tour aboard the USS Champlin. Bob was a handsome young man with a boyish look about him - the kind of kid every Mom would like to call her own. And therein lies one of my favorite stories. On several occasions, I would accompany Nixon to visit the USO dances. 'Nix' would survey the crowd, looking for the best looking young lady who was accompanied by her mother. Once he had established his target, he would patiently wait for someone to dance with the young lady, leaving the chair beside the mother vacant. Nix would then go over and strike up a conversation with the mother. Remember, he was the kind of kid every mother would like to call her own. Before long, the Mom would invite him to sit down in the vacant chair ". . .until my daughter comes back". Then, like clockwork, the daughter would return, Nix would arise, and voila. . . Mom would introduce 'Nix' to her daughter, and off they would go for the rest of the evening. Smooth? I should say so. This country boy had never seen anything like it then, or since. And it worked every time."

Remembering Dee Gee

In an E-mail received some time ago, Thomas Di Giovanna, son of shipmate Thomas Joseph Di Giovanna S1c (RdM) informed me that his father's picture was in Thomas Brokaw's book "The Greatest Generation". Sure enough, on page 76, opposite the story of John

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