W.H. Mathews

William Hood (later changed to W.H.), followed his older brother Arthur’s choice of service branches, the Navy. He went to West Point, Mississippi for testing just before his nineteenth birthday. He was soon called to be inducted into the Navy. First he traveled by train to New Orleans, Louisiana where he had more test given and on February 2, 1938 began his military training. The railroad was the most economical form of travel so W.H. boarded a train for Norfolk, Virginia to the Naval Training Station where he was sworn into the U.S. Navy. It was hard to join the military at that time due to the fact that a person had to be in perfect health, not even allowed to have a filling in a tooth.

Upon graduation in June 1938, he was assigned to the USS Gridley (DD380), which was a destroyer that his brother Arthur was serving aboard. The Gridley had just completed it’s post commissioning shakedown cruise in the Caribbean, and would immediately depart Boston for the Panama Canal and San Diego. As with most young sailors their first time at sea, W.H. was terribly sea sick from Norfolk to Panama and spent a good deal of time on deck with his head stuck threw the line guides on the ship. During the passage a man was swept overboard during a storm and Arthur was sure he had lost his little brother, but it turned out to be a civilian who was hitching a ride to the canal. On his first liberty, which was in Panama, Arthur showed him a "good time", being the world traveler he was. His ship went on several "Good Will Tours". Some places they went were Cuba, Port of Prince, Haiti, Cuba, Venezuela and to cities in the U.S. like Wilmington, North Carolina, where they went down a river so narrow the tree branches touched the sides of the ship.

Arthur was known throughout his career as "Ace", so it was natural for his little brother to pick up the moniker "Duce". So they were known as Ace and Duce by their shipmates.

In April 1940 the Gridley steamed to Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, as flagship of Division 11.

Gridley, cleared Pearl harbor 28 November 1941 as part of the antisubmarine screen for famed carrier Enterprise, flagship of Admiral "Bull" Halsey, and after a stop at Wake Island to off load aircraft, reversed course for Pearl. The TF was approaching Pearl on the morning of 7 December when the astounding message heralding the beginning of the war was received: "air raid on Pearl Harbor, this is no drill." Gridley entered the harbor the next day to help protect against renewed attack.

Early on in the war, in January 1942, the Gridley was involved in an accident at sea with the USS Fanning (DD-385) which badly damaged both ships. The accident turned out to be good fortune for it enabled the ship to receive radar long before other ships of it’s class.  (Note: Destroyers USS Gridley and USS Fanning were damaged in collision 150 miles northwest of American Samoa as TF 8 proceeded toward the Marshalls and Gilberts, on 22 Jan 1942.)

While engaged in a night attack off of the Marshall and Gilbert Islands, the USS Gridley was rammed forward of the number One gun turret by another ship, in a blinding rainstorm. The USS Gridley put into Pago Pago for emergency repairs and trolled back to Pearl Harbor, unescorted, at 5 knots, where it was fitted with radar at Pearl Harbor when the bow was replaced making it one of the first ships to posses this valuable tool.

An aside to this story, as told by W.H., is "after we ran together and had to pull into Pango Pango, American Samoa, harbor and wait a week before the repair people came in from Pearl Harbor to shore up the front end of the ship before they could go to Pearl Harbor for repairs. During daylight we could have liberty on the beach but you had to be on the ship by sunset. There was a community coed bath on the beach where the natives would go to bathe. The natives worshipped the sun and therefore anything that occurred after the sun went down was O.K.. Five of us sailors decided that they were going to get with their girl friends when the sun went down. We were taking them presents of cigarettes, gum and candy (which where packed in tin cans). The ship had guards stations front and stem with machineguns. The rear guard was a friend who had the 8pm to 4am shift. Therefore the plan was to be back aboard ship before he got off watch at 4am. We jumped ship, which at the time was about a mile from shore, with our clothes packed with the tins and started swimming to shore. About halfway to the beach we gave out and rested on a big buoy. Some of the others went on to shore but I remained on the buoy. The tide shifted the buoy and it was no longer in line with the ship-shore. As the ambient light increased I realized that my time was running out and I had to get back to the ship. I stripped and piled my clothes on the buoy and swam back to the ship. The others had returned earlier and had told the relief (the 4am shift had been relieved and another man was on duty) that I was yet to return, so I had no trouble getting back aboard ship. The next morning I got a sampan sailor (native), to go and recover my clothes from the buoy for a couple of tins of cigarettes to keep anyone from finding out that we had slipped over board that night."

The Gridley spent the next 5 months was occupied escorting transports and repair ships to and from Pearl and south pacific ports. Only 5 June 1942 she arrived at Kodiak, Alaska, with the cruiser Nashville. Here they patrolled the Japanese-held islands of Kiska and Attu, and bombarded Kiska 7 August 1942.

While at a beach party football game in xxx, Alaska, the ships crew got an emergency recall to steam and to link up with the Saratoga for the battle of Midway. W.H. broke his foot in the football game, and had to be strapped to his bunk for the all ahead full sprint in choppy, North Pacific seas. He rode out the battle of Midway in his bunk.

Buses and trucks went to bring us back to the ships so that we could get underway. Just prior to the word coming, we were playing football and I was running with the ball when a sailor tackled me. My right foot got broke on the instep, with my toes touching my heel. When we got to the ship there was a huge cargo net on the dock with bodies piled on it. I thought that the ships had been attached while we were away and that they were dead. Dead yes, but only dead drunk, that is how they were brought onto the ship from the party. The watch crew, which were sober, got the ship underway and we headed toward Midway. The seas were extremely rough with 20 foot waves and we were running wide open to get to the battle. We caught the tail end of the battle. One of our post battle duties was to shoot torpedoes into the damaged USS Yorktown to finish sinking her. We could always be sure we sunk at least one ship in the Battle of Midway, The Yorktown. I spent the battle in my bunk with a broken foot."

Escort duty took the Gridley to the Fiji’s, New Hebrides and Solomon islands.

Food For Guadalcanal

"We would load our fantail down with food and make a run off of Guadalcanal and drop the food into the water and wash it ashore with our wave on the second run. Little did I know I was helping my brother Guy at the time, for he was a Marine on that island."

In July 1943 the Gridley took part in the rescue of the crew from the cruiser USS Helena in Parasco Bay.

"The USS Helena was sunk near an island. A lot of the crew had swam to shore (est at around 200) in Parasco Bay. Captain called the crew to the fantail and ask for volunteers for a suicide mission to rescue the stranded crew of the USS Helena for a Japanese held island. If you were not to volunteer, you were to step forward. Nobody stepped forward so I didn't either, therefore I volunteered. Two "4 stackers" and two new destroyers, the USS Gridley and the USS McCall, headed out that night Plans were to get into the harbor by 4am and out before sun up, approx an hour and a half. Remember this was a Japanese held island. The 4 stackers were slower and had a shallower draft than we did so they went to the beach. The survivors of the USS Helena came out of the jungle and started climbing aboard the ships, which increased the ships weight and pushed the hulls into the muddy bottom of the harbor/beach. One of the 4 stackers got stuck in the mud and it took the two extra destroyers to pull it free from the beach. This ate up our time and we were at least 30 minutes over our preplanned departure time. The lookout in the guard destroyer, the USS McCall stationed at the mouth of the harbor, saw enemy ships on the horizon. We departed the harbor in convoy running wide open but had to allow for the slower 4 stackers with the USS Helena survivors on them. Radar picked up enemy aircraft coming from the island. We requested fighters from Guadalcanal to intercept the Zeros, we could here what was happening because the skipper had the command radio being piped over the loud speaker. The Zeros overtook the convoy and commenced to bomb it, then we heard "P-38's were in sight" and knew we were to be saved. If it hadn't been for the P-38's we would have never made it. Due to our maneuvering not a single bomb dropped by the Japanese hit a ship.

The Gridley escorted landing craft from Guadalcanal for the Tambatuni, New Georgia campaign, and bombarded shore installations near the invasion beach in July 1943. In conjunction with six other destroyers the Gridley destroyed Japanese landing barges in Vella Gulf in August 1943 and screened the Saratoga during air operations in the Solomon Islands.

After returning stateside to attend boiler school in Philadelphia, W.H. was assigned to a newly commissioned fuel tanker, the USS Elk (IX115) in San Pedro, California. In Jan 1944 the Elk sailed for Kwajalein Island and supported ships in the Marshalls and Marianas operations in the Majuro, Kwajalein, Eniwetok triangle. September 1944 found the Elk at Tarawa and October in Ulithi with the 3^rd and 5^th Fleets. In April 1945 she arrived at Okinawa to fuel the destroyers of the radar picket line.

While at Kwajalein, staging for the invasion of Okanawa, a two-man Japanese sub entered the harbor. In the "target rich" harbor of ship’s of the line and cargo ships, the sub picked the oil tanker moored beside the Elk as its target, blowing the tanker into a giant fireball.

Ace was on the USS Knapp at this time and it was anchored in the same harbor as the Elk. Ace borrowed the captains launch and came over to the Elk where W.H. produced a case of beer and they sat on the bow of the Elk and talked (see photo). The Knapp was called to general quarters and Ace had to jump onto the launch and hurry back to the Knapp as it was getting underway.

The Japanese would float in the harbors under wooden crates or other refuse and climb up the anchor chain and slit the throat of the deck watch. The watch got in the habit of shooting anything that floated by the ship.

In July W.H. returned stateside and received his "Ruptured Duck" (discharge) in September 1945 by the Navy.

For continued history of W.H. Mathews in USAF click on seal.

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