thedrifter
02-10-08, 09:46 AM
Posted on Sun, Feb. 10, 2008
Radioman directed airstrikes in Marianas during World War II
By PAULETTE PERHACH
Fred Grider was happy when he walked onto the USS Nashville, switching boats in the Pacific after an operation on Leyte. For one thing, it was his 21st birthday.
"I was laughing and cutting up. I was happy to get off that island and off those smaller ships, because, the bigger the ship you were on the safer it was, I thought," he said.
The next morning, a beautiful day, the captain came on the PA system and briefed the crew on their mission. Then music played.
Grider and his buddy Harry had just been relieved, and were stepping down the ladder when they heard the explosion. They looked out the hatch to see blooms of fire. Blasts rocked the ship. A chief petty officer closed the hatch and kept them in until it was safe to go out. A Kamikaze had struck. Among those killed by the suicide attack were the two men who relieved Grider and his buddy.
"Two boys, the two that relieved us about an hour before, they had gone to elementary and high school together. These two kids, we were all just kids, were from Cleveland. One just got married. His baby, a little girl, was born about two months before. He'd never seen the child," recalled Grider.
Grider had been in the Navy since 1943, when the draft scraped the bottom of the barrel and scooped out most of the boys entering the senior class in Tullahoma, Tenn.
"We were all 17, 18 years old," said Grider, now 84. "They drafted all the draft-aged kids I knew."
He was sent to San Diego for boot camp, after which he tested into radio school. There he studied how to read maps, identify aircraft from a radar blip and speak the lingo of the pilots to whom he'd be feeding target coordinates.
He had no idea where he was going when he left the U.S. on the USS Cambria, a converted pleasure ship.
After a briefing at Pearl Harbor, they left on May 30, 1944, for the Mariana Islands invasion, serving as flagship of an attack group.
Working from the ship, Grider communicated with pilots as a voice for the Marines on land, telling them where to strike.
Even from hundreds of yards offshore, Grider learned to stomach the aftermath of war.
"The ground and the sky turned yellow or dark green and it was an awful stench, when the wind was blowing the right direction, you could hardly stand the stench of corpses, I guess."
Kamikazes began to prey on ships anchored in the harbor.
"We had one Kamikaze attack, they came down this row going to an island about a mile or two from Saipan," said Grider. "We were in close with a unit or two of Marines who repelled the attack."
When he was on land, he spent most of his time on Mount Tagpochau.
"The only battle I was close to was the night they tried to take the dock at Saipan going over to Tinian," he said. "They just went for the gauntlet. Marines were set up on both sides of the road, and it had a big culvert on either side. They all came from one direction as a suicide attack. Dead soldiers were piled up the next morning three or four deep along that road."
From there he was pulled out of his unit and sent to New Guinea. He ended up in Hollandia and then in Leyte Gulf in the Philippines.
Their objective there was to capture three or four small islands prior to the invasion of Leyte Gulf.
The troops were doing pretty well, but they got stopped at a river, the Ormoc, said Grider. He was part of a mission that went up the river from the other direction and landed some troops from the back side.
"The troops went in and hit the Japanese from the rear and opened up the front so that our soldiers could cross the river," he said. "From then on it was fairly smooth sailing."
After that he was transferred to the USS Nashville, where he would barely avoid that Kamikaze that killed everyone topside, 133 people.
Grider left the Navy as a Radioman Second Class and began a career in education. He moved to his home on Comares Avenue in 1966. His career included teaching, coaching and, for a time, as principal of St. Augustine High School.
Ellie
Radioman directed airstrikes in Marianas during World War II
By PAULETTE PERHACH
Fred Grider was happy when he walked onto the USS Nashville, switching boats in the Pacific after an operation on Leyte. For one thing, it was his 21st birthday.
"I was laughing and cutting up. I was happy to get off that island and off those smaller ships, because, the bigger the ship you were on the safer it was, I thought," he said.
The next morning, a beautiful day, the captain came on the PA system and briefed the crew on their mission. Then music played.
Grider and his buddy Harry had just been relieved, and were stepping down the ladder when they heard the explosion. They looked out the hatch to see blooms of fire. Blasts rocked the ship. A chief petty officer closed the hatch and kept them in until it was safe to go out. A Kamikaze had struck. Among those killed by the suicide attack were the two men who relieved Grider and his buddy.
"Two boys, the two that relieved us about an hour before, they had gone to elementary and high school together. These two kids, we were all just kids, were from Cleveland. One just got married. His baby, a little girl, was born about two months before. He'd never seen the child," recalled Grider.
Grider had been in the Navy since 1943, when the draft scraped the bottom of the barrel and scooped out most of the boys entering the senior class in Tullahoma, Tenn.
"We were all 17, 18 years old," said Grider, now 84. "They drafted all the draft-aged kids I knew."
He was sent to San Diego for boot camp, after which he tested into radio school. There he studied how to read maps, identify aircraft from a radar blip and speak the lingo of the pilots to whom he'd be feeding target coordinates.
He had no idea where he was going when he left the U.S. on the USS Cambria, a converted pleasure ship.
After a briefing at Pearl Harbor, they left on May 30, 1944, for the Mariana Islands invasion, serving as flagship of an attack group.
Working from the ship, Grider communicated with pilots as a voice for the Marines on land, telling them where to strike.
Even from hundreds of yards offshore, Grider learned to stomach the aftermath of war.
"The ground and the sky turned yellow or dark green and it was an awful stench, when the wind was blowing the right direction, you could hardly stand the stench of corpses, I guess."
Kamikazes began to prey on ships anchored in the harbor.
"We had one Kamikaze attack, they came down this row going to an island about a mile or two from Saipan," said Grider. "We were in close with a unit or two of Marines who repelled the attack."
When he was on land, he spent most of his time on Mount Tagpochau.
"The only battle I was close to was the night they tried to take the dock at Saipan going over to Tinian," he said. "They just went for the gauntlet. Marines were set up on both sides of the road, and it had a big culvert on either side. They all came from one direction as a suicide attack. Dead soldiers were piled up the next morning three or four deep along that road."
From there he was pulled out of his unit and sent to New Guinea. He ended up in Hollandia and then in Leyte Gulf in the Philippines.
Their objective there was to capture three or four small islands prior to the invasion of Leyte Gulf.
The troops were doing pretty well, but they got stopped at a river, the Ormoc, said Grider. He was part of a mission that went up the river from the other direction and landed some troops from the back side.
"The troops went in and hit the Japanese from the rear and opened up the front so that our soldiers could cross the river," he said. "From then on it was fairly smooth sailing."
After that he was transferred to the USS Nashville, where he would barely avoid that Kamikaze that killed everyone topside, 133 people.
Grider left the Navy as a Radioman Second Class and began a career in education. He moved to his home on Comares Avenue in 1966. His career included teaching, coaching and, for a time, as principal of St. Augustine High School.
Ellie