HOMER
LEE ELLIOTT
by
Norval P. Caples
The new destroyer-minelayer, U.S.S. Henry A. Wiley
(D.M.29) with mostly an untried crew aboard, was being readied for assaulting
the enemy. It was getting toward autumn 1944 and we'd been training ashore for
several months getting prepared. Now we were headed out into the Atlantic on a
shakedown cruise. Various civilian technicians representing the Bethlehem Steel
shipbuilding facility in Brooklyn, NY, were aboard with clipboards to assess how
the new ship's equipment and armaments functioned under the pounding of heavy
seas and simulated battle conditions.
It took some imagination, but not much, to realize
what was really going on. We were taking this shiny new baby out on the road to
see what she'd do and our spirits ran high.
It was a time for testing the crew as well as the
ship. Many of us had never been to sea before, and several shipmates became
seasick-some to the point of not being able to function and having to be treated
by the ship's doctor for their condition, and a special group of hammocks were
set aside for their use.
The executive officer had prepared us for this
possibility by doing a shrewd thing. He announced at ship's assembly that he too
became seasick--once to the point of being unable to perform his duties or even
eat anything except dry crusts of bread for several days. This announcement
seemed to make us all determined not to become seasick if we could help it-more
to go one-up on this hard driving officer than anything else.
It was a straight up climb on a 14 foot steel ladder
to the bridge where a 24-hour lookout was maintained. The lookout duty was
rotated every half hour, and one day when the sea was particularly rough, I felt
fear while hanging onto the steel rungs for dear life, frozen there, as the ship
rolled outward, putting me, or so it appeared, perilously close to the roaring
sea below. Once safely down, I joined my watch group standing huddled and
miserable while being pelted by stinging droplets of flying salt spray, hoping
my trembling would go away. It didn't. It was seasickness, and I continued to
feel weak and queasy. Well, I wasn't nauseous yet, and the worst of the lousy
feeling seemed to come and go. Maybe I'd get better. I did, but in an unexpected
way that couldn't have been foreseen. Something other than stinging drops of sea
water was hitting my face, neck and shoulders -- soft, gooey, white stringy
particles. Looking upward-straight up-I saw the lookout at the station I'd just
vacated, leaning over the bridge railing, unable to control his vomiting. In
abject misery, he slowly shook his head from side to side, signaling his
embarrassment as our eyes met.
His name was Homer Lee Elliott and the seasick episode
began a friendship that has lasted from then on.
I'd made other friends from Georgia and had read Gone
With the Wind, but Homer was the first to explain to me that real life in
north Georgia was just not as described in the book and probably never had been.
Not that living in Georgia during the early 1940s wasn't exciting enough. Homer
told me about the job he had at the time he entered the Navy. He drove a truck
loaded with live broiler chickens (between 2 and 3 pounds) to markets in
Jacksonville, FL, Savannah, GA, Columbia, SC, and Mobile, AL, distances of up to
400 miles each way from the poultry capital city, Gainesville, Georgia. It was a
responsible job which required youth and stamina, but he liked it. The job paid
well and his employer always sent a relief driver along to help with the
considerable job of feeding and watering the chickens at truck stops along their
route and to help with the driving. However, his real goal was to buy a 2-ton
fiat bed truck much like the one he'd been driving and go into business for
himself as a hauling contractor, carrying lumber from small sawmill operations
to nearby lumber yards and planing mills. Only a couple of years older than
myself, Homer was married and the father of two children. In addition, he was
familiar with the ways of the world while it gradually began to sink in that I
was as green as grass.
Homer had, at 22, developed a sure-fire formula for
getting along with all manner of folk up
and down the social scale, and he displayed a surprising amount of
sophistication that I marveled at but couldn't point my finger to just what the
gift was, and I still can't. Most of us sought out friends much like ourselves
if we could which was often a hard and lonely go. Not so for Homer--Yankees,
Southerners, sailors with unpronounceable last names who spoke two languages
fluently -- they were all the same to him and he mixed easily.
Homer's bunk and locker were within the enclosed
passageway that ran fore and aft on the port (left) side of the main deck. How
Homer and the dozen others who bunked there ever endured it I don't know. It was
like Grand Central Station with traffic scurrying up and down day and night,
carelessly splashing the sleeping sailors with sea water from their soaked
clothing and yelling loudly at one another all the while. During the day, the
passageway hammocks would all be folded away against the bulkhead (wall) --
providing room for 2-way traffic but denying any resting or goofing off space to
those who "lived" there.
All living quarters had their disadvantages. There was
at least one, maybe two, living compartment two decks down and forward where the
ship's violent pitching was felt the most, and the tedious trail to above deck
action involved squeezing through small round openings that had to be closed and
locked down by the last man out.
My own living compartment was directly below the
number 3, twin 5-inch gun turret, and when those guns were fired, our whole area
would vibrate viciously, dislodging the fireproof material covering steam pipes
overhead. We'd return to find our bunks covered with pieces of insulation and
the area would be hazy, as though in a dense fog, from the particles of asbestos
and spun glass insulation material suspended and dancing in the air we breathed.
Several months had now passed and most of us had
crammed more fear, excitement, and adventure into our lives than we'd
experienced all put together until then. Homer and I hadn't seen much of each
other for months now, virtually non-stop at "General Quarters" and
really into the thick of things--Homer on Calfee's 4-barrelled 40 millimeter
anti-aircraft guns and me forward in a smaller 20 mm gun crew. One day in June,
1945, Homer beckoned me to come look at a picture he'd received from home. He
showed me a small snapshot of a very pretty girl who just a few weeks before had
graduated from high school. She was his wife's sister and was already attending
business college to further her education still more. Then he added, "Why
don't you write to this girl? I'll write ahead about yon and then she won't be
hearing from a total stranger." I agreed, probably impressed most of all,
right then, by his singling me out to write to his wife's sister. (I didn't know
it then, but I had competition from right there on the Wiley. Homer had gotten
another buddy of his to write to her, too.)
I was a high school dropout myself and wondered if I'd
have that many shared interests with this poised and pretty young girl who had
the ambition to continue her education even beyond the high school diploma that
had eluded me.
A half-century has passed and I have often thought
about Homer Lee over the years and frequently miss his companionship. My wife,
that pretty young girl, and I may just travel to his home and visit again this
afternoon.
N.P.C.'95