ELWYN:  I entered the Coast Guard on October 21, 1941.  I was working at the naval ammunition depot in Portsmouth, Virginia.  I had been there for approximately seven months and Captain Woods, who was the commander of the ammunition depot, followed me up to his office and said, “Have a seat Harris.  I want to ask you some questions”.  He says, "What do you know about your draft board down there in Elizabeth City?"  I said, “Captain Woods, all I know about that board is Mr. C.J. Ballard is a clerk”. 

Well, he said, I want you to know, he says, I spent a lot of money and time training you here, you just got to the point that you have some value to us.  He said, I have written three personal letters to try to get you deferred because we need you.  He said, "We’ve got to get ammunition to fight this war.”  He ran back in and says, “Harris, I’m not going to tell you what to do, it’s none of my business, but I’m going to tell you what I’d do if I were in your shoes.”  He said that draft board would never get me.  He thought a minute, he said, “If you want the afternoon off, you have my blessings.”

 So, I did.  I went over to Norfolk, the recruiting station in Norfolk, Virginia, at the Coast Guard recruiting station.  Captain Midget was in charge of recruiting at that time.  I stated my case, told him my name and where I was from.  Well, he said we need a few men.  We’ve got an opening on the Speedwell and there were two or three others.  Well, I knew about the Speedwell because I had a relative that had served on that in prior years.  So, I took that and he gave me a rating of fireman, third class, $21 a month.  They put me aboard ship that same day.

 I went across from Portsmouth to Berkeley to get my uniforms and whatever that I needed and came back and they put me aboard ship.  I had to call my brother to come to Norfolk from Portsmouth and pick up my car.  It was out on the street.  Two days later, we went to Baltimore, Maryland, at the Coast Guard station there for a major overhaul on the Speedwell.  They stripped that thing down and mounted two .50 caliber machine guns on the stern of it and we were in there for four months.  We came out on February 1, 1942.  That was the day we left out of Portsmouth on our first patrol.  Our patrol was from Lewis, Delaware, to Charleston, South Carolina.  We were in torpedo junction.  That was really a hot spot for the submarines.

 The first day, well, we went at it the first of February.  Between Cape Henry and Hatteras, I counted 23 sunken ships.  They had rolled over and they looked like pyramids, just about.  Part of them was sticking up above water.  That was sort of a frightening sight for a little old country boy that had never been to sea.  But, it was interesting.  We did our patrol and our main effort and mission was age to navigation.  We had to mark all of those buoys, we had to sound them where they use the lead line to sound the position that it was laying on the ocean floor and was charted.  And, you could buy those charts and I feel sure that the Germans felt we were helping them rather then hindering them.

 But, we were in the middle of submarines for about three years and it was rough out there.  We did a lot of rescue of personnel and a lot of them were dead, aircraft and this kind of thing.  You see it’s a buoy tender, the Speedwell.  It’s a work ship that’s 172 feet long and I think our complement was 88 men.  And, I ran the hoist on it.  We had a 40-ton hoist on there for practically three years.  The buoys that we planted, they were called a 938 which means they were 9 feet in diameter and 38 feet long and they weighed 19 tons each.  The sinkers or the anchors that we used weighed 8,700 pounds.  They were half sphere steel or cast iron mooring. And if we were in rough water, especially around Hatteras, we had to put an extra 4,000 pounds of concrete.  But, they used three fathoms, more of the chain than the depths.  If you had 100 fathom of sea up there in the ocean you had to put 300 fathom of chain.

INTERVIEWER:  When you said you did rescue work, it was sailors in lifeboats no doubt?

CHESTER:  Right.  Well, we picked up an English lifeboat and the guys would latch their arms to the guns.  I picked up that thing up with the crane. And I think there were fourteen or eighteen, I forgot the exact number, but that was an awesome sight.  Only one guy was alive.  We kept the lifeboat aboard the Speedwell and the navy had a destroyer in the area and they came by and picked up the bodies and carried them into Norfolk.  We picked up plane crashes there in Chesapeake Bay; we picked up debris from that.  It was rescue as well as age and navigation.

INTERVIEWER:  How did they latch themselves, with guns?

CHESTER:  I guess they were so bad off that and the seas were so rough, that Atlantic Ocean was a rough place. 

2nd INTERVIEWER:  Were they merchant marine sailors?

CHESTER:  They were English merchant marines on that particular one.  But, there were many episodes out there that we assisted, then the rescue units we would go out in.  One night submarines got after a tug that was towing two barges with rebar on it, and they liked to got him, he chopped his hawser in two, we were moored right up there up at Nag’s Head.  He had his lights up there on us you know and said, "Man, you want us all to get sunk?"  But, we went out the next morning and righted the barges and got the line up and turned it back over to the tug and they went on their way.  But, there was always something to do.  We’d get a call at night that a buoy was out at a channel, I know Nag’s Head, in particular, we had to go out there several times.  The channel buoy would be out and you would go fix it.  Now, it’s like fixing a stop light at the crossing of the streets.  And, most times, when you had late night calls you only had half a crew, so it was pretty tough at times.  But, we did the job and it was great.

 He mentioned about the Bulge, when I say we, I mean the Coast Guard, put up a mine swept channel out of Cape Henry, it was 125 miles.  It was straight out from Cape Henry.  It was a mine swept channel where they had staged all of the ships.  There were over 500 ships in Hampton Roads, the Hampton Roads area.  I don’t know how long it took to put those things out there, but we had to patrol it just before the convoy started out.  As we were coming back in after the rounding the end buoy, the convoy was coming out.  There were five abreast, I believe four or five abreast ships.  And, that was a sight to behold.  Of course, the convoy is always the speed of the slowest ship.  It ran, I think, at about five of six knots.  The tankers had aircraft on them and it was just a sight.  It’s indescribable, really. 

An interesting thing happened after the convoy went out several months later.  We had to take up those buoys.  So, we were working the head and I think there was four other tenders that was working; Lotus, Speedwell, Casey, I believe.  We had one that one of the ships ran over and it sank.  Captain Digg said, "I believe I can find that thing."  So we took a grappling hook and it made a run and we snagged that thing and he got it.  And, when they brought it up, that thing was still flashing.  It was about eight inches to a foot long.  You know, marine life on it like you wouldn’t believe and the reason it was still flashing; those buoys were normally lighted with ________ gas, but this had batteries in it.  It didn’t hit the battery cage; it just punched a hole in the side and sunk it.  He got it up and we brought it in. But, it was an interesting mission.  I stayed on the Speedwell from October 1941 to July of 1945. 

In 1945, I was transferred to General Black, which was a troop transport.  Captain Diggs called me up in the office and said, Harris, “Do you want to get transferred”?  I said, No sir, I’m happy right here.  I said I can’t get any better place then this.  “Well”, he said, “They called for you about six times,” he said “I’ll keep you as my hoist man.”  He said, “That’s how I kept you. But,” he said. “You will go this time.”  I said. “Well, I appreciate all the efforts that you’ve done.”… And I did.  So, I went aboard with General Black and that’s when we really did the riding.  It was a troop transport and we could haul.  Well, we brought the 30th division back from France of 5,000 men.  But, our first mission, we went to Grabemhofchen (?), Germany and carried the crew to man the Europa, the navy crew, 650 men.  I believe, navy crew men.  We had a ragtag bunch.  We carried some Red Cross nurses to replace the ones in the LaHavre.  We went over to LaHavre, France from Grabemhofchen (?), there, we loaded the 30th division and came back to Boston, debarked there and left and went to Calcutta, India. 

We left, I forgot now the dates that we left, but we came into Calcutta.  I think it took us 54 days the roundtrip to Calcutta and back to New York.  We had a ragtag load that time.  We had the Red Cross nurses and different ones from different army units that were being discharged from the military in whatever mission they had.  But, that was an interesting trip.  We went down through the Mediterranean, the Suez Canal and into the Red Sea.  Now, the Red Sea was 96 degrees.  It was 135 degrees in the engine room where I was working.  I had on nothing but a pair of shoes and a pair of dungarees and water was running out of my shoes as if you had a garden hose running down my back.   That was a long, long trip.  We came back into New York and debarked the troops.  I forgot the street now.  But, I was discharged in November of 1945.  So, it was a little over four years and seven days. 

INTERVIEWER:  And, you went around the world, sort of speak?

CHESTER:  Almost, yeah.  The irony of it, I never got my medal so, I did get the Atlantic, you know down in the engine and the Pacific Ocean; good conduct medals, I never got that and I never got into any trouble. 

INTERVIEWER:  Did you have any depth charges on the Speedwell?

CHESTER:  Yeah, let me tell you about retro fitting us in the Coast Guard base in Maryland.  They retrofitted that thing with 250 caliber machine guns and they put ash cans on it, depth charges on the stern.  When we were out there in the middle of all these submarines, Captain Diggs said, I’m not going to roll one of those things off, and said I’m not going to blow myself out in the water.  You see, our maximum speed on the Speedwell was thirteen knots. It was slow.  But, I was telling him a while ago that we had an escort, a 333 or 383.  Anyway, they had been ahead of us and you know how an escort does, he’ll go ahead and he’s back.  He travels back and forth.  He’d gone up and come back and of course, we were ahead of him then.  On the way back, he opened up one of his radios, he did send a code, he said we’re being attacked and that submarine that surfaced did _____ and the guys that had taken _______ over the Speedwell the night before while we were at morning sea.  So, we were out there in the middle of it and we reported something, I mean two or three times which it didn’t happen. 

INTERVIEWER:  Did you pick up the crew of the escort?  What happened?

CHESTER:  Oh, there was a navy destroyer in the area.  I forgot, several of them got killed.

INTERVIEWER:  What kind of a ship was escorting the destroyer?

CHESTER:  The escort was one of these yachts that was turned in.  The Speedwell was eventually given to the Philippines.  I picked up the Raleigh paper one day and there was picture of it and the Speedwell was being given to the Philippines.  It was built in 1919.  It was an old steam ship.  I was on the throttle, I guess it was for about two years and I came up from the bottom to the throttle stand.  When I came out, I was a first class machines mate.  That was my rank.  They had my papers in for chief and tried to get me to stay.  I said, no, four years is long enough.  I’m ready to get out.  But for a man wants to make a career, the Coast Guard is a great place to be.  It’s a good place to be. 

INTERVIEWER:  How did they sink that escort? Gunfire?

CHESTER:  Gunfire.  Yeah, they surfaced and just used their gun and sunk it.  Yeah.  I had an interesting….. And I witnessed this in Morehead City, and Ray, I don’t know whether you remember the story of the German submarine commander that came back to Morehead City and visited with the navy destroyer that sunk him.  But, we were coming out of Morehead City and there was this destroyer and he was making a complete circle, rolling off his depth charges.  He sunk the submarine right there before we got into Morehead City.

INTERVIEWER:  Yeah, I’ve heard of that.

CHESTER:  Then they stopped and picked up the survivors.  They killed several of them, but the skipper and I don’t know how many others survived it.  But, mattresses came up, oil came up, but that was a sight to see.

INTERVIEWER:  And, you were there?

CHESTER:  Yeah, we were coming out of the harbor.  We were out there a lot of times to patrol and we would pull into Southport or Charleston, just to get a good night’s rest.  We even pulled in Georgetown when we got out of the submarine infestation so you wouldn’t be on the edge.  And you ran in blackout all the time at night.  You wouldn’t dare light a cigarette or flashlight or anything.  Total blackout. 

INTERVIEWER:  And you didn’t have that sophisticated, electronic equipment?

CHESTER:  We finally got some of our own that we could detect.  They were more help to us than ___ to navigation because we could find the ships that were sunk and chart them and plot them. It helped a lot.  But I didn’t finish the story about putting the armament on it, Ray.  We saw a ship turned over and we got an order from the district to fire on them and sink them.  Well, we had an old guy we called Guns, and he had polished those guns from day one for four months and they had I think 50 gallons of antifreeze.  It was World War I vintage, 50 calibers.  It had handlebars on it like a bicycle.  Captain Diggs said, all right Guns, pull your covers and fire.  (Laughter)  He’d pull the trigger and one would go wham, one shot.  And, we had I think three 12-gauge shotguns and a 45 revolver.  Now, we were prepared for war (laughter).

INTERVIEWER:  Oh my.

CHESTER:  But when we went back again, they put a 3 inch 50 on the bow and 20 millimeters; I think two or four 20 millimeters down on either side of the ship.  But there were some experiences out there.  It was rough ocean out there, especially this time of year, it’s smoothing out right now, but in the winter months it’s awfully rough.  Boy, Cape Hatteras has never seen such rough seas.  And fortunately, I never got seasick the first day.  We had one of those guys, his name was Ari.  He weighed about 150 pounds, a little towhead guy you know, and the minute Captain Diggs put that ship’s bow out towards Cape Henry, he got seasick.  I’ve seen him lying on the deck and water washing over him and he was wishing he could die.  Finally Captain Diggs said, “All right, you’re not putting on”.  He says “I’m going to take you over and give you shore duty.”  He said “you shouldn’t be punished like this”.  And he did, he put him ashore.  It was interesting. 

2nd INTERVIEWER:  Can we go back to that early day when you decided to enlist in the Coast Guard, you said you spoke with a recruiter?  What happened?  Take it step by step. 

CHESTER:  I told him who I was and wanted to see what they were taking in.  The Coast Guard was really desperate for men.  I thought surely they’d put me on patrol in the inland waterway because that was really a spot they were afraid of.  And, some did get in there.  But I told him why I was there.  If they’re going to draft me and if I’m going to go down, I’d rather go down and have it one time rather than drag me through a mud hole and eat on the ground.  I said I like to sit down at a table and eat.  And, that’s when he said I can give you a fireman’s rating, a third class fireman, and that’s why and how I got aboard the Speedwell. 

INTERVIEWER:  Well, do you know of anyone else that went in without any basic training?

CHESTER:  Yeah, Roland Marshall from Berkeley.  He went in the same day and he was a seaman on the deck.  We were out patrolling one day, we were about 250 miles at sea and nobody to this day ever knew what happened.  I was on the throttles and all at once, there was a violent slam, the skipper was turning the ship around.  I think he just took a side swell and a hatch door was open I think, because we were given an abandon ship.  And, man, everybody was scurrying around there and trying to get out of there.  The firemen ran out of the boiler room you know.  I looked at my gauges and I was losing steam so I ran them up and saw all the excitement.  I looked out, and they had tried to launch one of the cargo boats.  We had two big cargo boats that we’d take supplies out to the lighthouses; they had left the stern fully loose.  One guy, I won’t call him by name, had his gun strapped on him and this Roland Marshall was standing there on the step up to the captain’s quarters and he had a sheaf knife about like this and I had made up my mind, if he went berserk, I was going to clobber him.  I ran the steam up on that three times before they decided we’re not hit. 

We had the water tanks, the fresh water we carried was what we called the skin tanks and I think we carried about 55,000 gallons of water.  Now, if this thing is hit, I won’t be able to get caps back on it.  I had these little caps that I could measure the depths of the water in the tanks and I gingerly went into shaft and I took that one off and no water came in.  The engine room and the fire room were not hit and we weren’t, but the skipper logged it as a drill (laughter).

2nd INTERVIEWER:  But to this day you don’t know what that loud bang was?

CHESTER:  Nope.  We never did.

2nd INTERVIEWER:  Could it possibly have hit something?

CHESTER:  No, I don’t think it was because we were at such a rough sea.  Those doors, if they’re not hatched down, you know if you don’t hatch them down, they will slam.  But, it shook that ship whatever it was.  It was quite an experience there.

INTERVIEWER:  And this thing was cold-fired steam through?

CHESTER:  No, it was all fired and steam driven and it had two boilers.  I could go crank that thing up to this day if I could get a hold of it

INTERVIEWER:  Built in 1919?

CHESTER:  1919, Allis Chalmers compound engine, steam engines.  That means it was a high pressure and a low pressure.  And, of course, a big old condenser in there, once you use the steam, you went back across the coils and converted the steam back to water.  And we carried enough water that if we ran low. We could inject it into the boilers but it was steam driven and it was a great ship. 

INTERVIEWER:  What was it built for originally, do you know?

CHESTER:  It was a minelayer. 

INTERVIEWER:  It was a navy ship to begin with?

CHESTER:  Navy ship originally, yeah.  And you had to go in about every six months.  The navy has a way.  We were strictly under the navy in World War II.  Of course, I didn’t serve on any navy ships.  We used to take diving crews out that were navy diving crews.  And, those guys just tickled me; they’d be back in the mess hall eating, “How in the world do you guys eat so well?” “Well, you’re in the wrong outfit”.  I said, “You should have come in the Coast Guard.”  I said “we’ve got a good skipper.”  And we did.  He was a great man.  I admired him to no end and he was good to all of his men.  They’d say, “We don’t eat like that in the navy,” they’d say. “We have these old beans all of the time.”  I said, “Well, we get good food and plenty of it and that’s great.”

INTERVIEWER:  How many men did you say were on that thing? 

CHESTER:  88.Tthat was the crew.

INTERVIEWER:  How were your living accommodations, crowded?

CHESTER:  No, we had bunks, they were three high and most of them were comfortable.  Just regular old ship bunks and they had a rail about eight inches high with a mattress on it.  It was comfortable.  And, in the cold weather I didn’t have to worry about being cold in the engine room.  It was always hot down there.  

2nd INTERVIEWER:  Was it entirely a Coast Guard crew when you went to France to bring the troops back?

CHESTER:  Yes.  The Coast Guard manned a lot of ships in World War II and troop ships in particular.  I know the Leonard Wood and  ??, just to name a few.  The Coast Guard is very well trained in small craft.  They could take the landing boats and could carry troops in on those.  They had those little LCI, Landing Craft Institute or something like that.  They knew that they were good at handling small craft.  So, no we were strictly Coast Guard.  I believe that General Black, I’ve forgotten the compliment of that ship, it was 552 feet long.  I have a picture of it. 

INTERVIEWER:  I’d like to see that.

CHESTER:  Yeah, I’ll show that to you.  We didn’t run with an escort.  We were an eighteen-knot ship so we didn’t have an escort.  We ran on our own out in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, Ray….

INTERVIEWER:  Is this with the General Black?

CHESTER:  Yeah, and when the war ended, we were right in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, we were three days out.  Then, it was after that that we went to Calcutta.  We were just bringing things back, bringing people back then. 

2nd INTERVIEWER:  Did you go over to Calcutta empty? 

CHESTER:  No, we carried 600 Red Cross nurses to replace the ones that were there.  Incidentally, we carried, I believe I’ve forgotten the number but it was over 500 WACS when we brought back the 30th division.  They were replacements for the ones that had been on duty.  Of course, this is after the war.  But, they still had to clean up, mop up operations to do.  Yeah.

2nd INTERVIEWER:  And, you were in the engine room?

CHESTER:  Yeah, and the General Black in the Red Sea, that’s when I was telling you the temperature in that engine room was 135 degrees.

2nd INTERVIEWER:  How long could you stand that?

CHESTER:  Four hours.  You were down there four hours.  You didn’t have air conditioning then.  The General (William Murray) Black was unique.  It was built for  the ?? lines. When the war was over and they built them.  They thought that they could roam in the Pacific, but it was too hot.  It was an open fire room.  The boilers were after the engines.  They looked like tankers when you looked at them.  But, we could hold 5,000 troops.  And, you don’t sit down to eat when you have that many, you all stand up.  They piled the tables up on the ?? Inside, at arm level where you can just stand and eat.  They had rotated shifts. 

INTERVIEWER:  Did you get ashore in Calcutta any?

CHESTER:  I got ashore for four hours.  That was a strange place.  We went up to Hoogly River out in the Indian Ocean to get in there, and on the way up, I know there were at least six or maybe eight American industries on that Hoogly River with that American flag flying.  They seemed to be the most lonesome people.  When they’d see that ship with the American flag, they’d stand and wave from the time they could see you until you were out of sight.  It was interesting.  I had to take the bubonic plague shot and that’s the worst shot I’ve ever had.  It’s a skin shot.  My arm looked like Popeye’s arm.  That thing swelled up.  But, they had an outbreak of the bubonic plague two days before we went into Calcutta.   They warned us, be careful of the Gurkha troops.  The Gurkha troops, they wear that thing over their back, and if they ever draw the knife, they draw blood, even if it means pricking their own skin.   And Warren Steel, he was a buddy of mine, he was a first class chief’s mate, we were walking down the street and I stepped right in the middle of it.  They sleep anywhere.  And, of boy, I thought this is going to be trouble but he just rolled over and didn’t bother. 

But, it’s a unique place.  The Greater European Hotel there was the most modern and up-to-date place I have ever seen in my life.  And poverty plus, when we were going up, it wasn’t uncommon to see a dead Hindu coming floating out of the river.  Here come a dead hog or a dead Brahman cow.  Well, the Brahman cow is the sacred animal over there and I don’t know how much you want to put in this, but when the Brahman cow drops their droppings, the kids will run behind and catch the dung.  They take this dung and either lay it out and dry it and use it for fills.  They would take it in and coat their walls as a wall covering. 

The army guys, the guys with the jeeps saw us walking and said, you guys want a ride, and we said, yeah, we’re tired of walking.  He carried us around several places that we wouldn’t have gotten to see.  In the four hours, we saw a lot just by him being there and knowing how to get around.  But, you didn’t dare hit one of those.  If you ran into one of those Brahman cows and killed them it was your hide.  It was a sacred animal.  But, how they got rid of the dead, they made a big pile of wood and stacked it and put the Brahman up.  And, then they’ll reach in and soon enough an old bum bug come down and he reaches into a river and it was the same color as the Tar River, yellow.  Take that bucket of water and he’ll take a shower with it and they’ll take it and cook with it, wash with it and you know then why there’s so much sickness over there, dying young.  The shock I got; these Hindus will sit in a little cubicle, just big enough for him, maybe it’s four feet.  There was Pepsi Cola racked up behind him, I bet he had what would be the equivalent of maybe three or four cases of Pepsi Cola.

INTERVIEWER:  And, he was selling those?

CHESTER:  Yeah, he was selling Pepsi Cola.  These little old kids, they had these bamboo things.  They looked like clarinets and they could play them.  And, Pistol Packing Mama, they were playing Pistol Packing Mama just as pretty as you ever heard it.  And two or three boys bought them and they couldn’t get a note out of them.  Never did.  I never had time in any of these countries we went to and at Bhavnagar, I didn’t even get off ship because I had duty there.  But, there was nothing there.  That place, they blew it often, nothing was there but a concrete base.  In LeHavre, I was standing with pillboxes and the flamethrowers that burned those things down.  I did get a few souvenirs from LaHavre.  And I got a few in Calcutta, but very few. 

When we came back to the states, I believe we stayed on the New York side then we went across the river to Hoboken.  I was aboard that ship for two weeks and we were going back to Karachi.  You see, you got points and sea duty gave you a few extra points and of course, every day of my enlistment was sea duty.  I never got to do shore duty.  Captain Jacobs was the skipper of the General Blackwell.  There was only two.  Warren Steel and myself were the two first class mates.  He said, my compliment I will have three first class machine mates and he said, Harris, you can’t go.  I said, Captain Jacobs, I have been at sea for four years and I have got the most points and I did.  I had the most points of anybody on the Blackwell.  I said, "I do wish you could see fit to let me go."  And, they did.  They finally let me go.  I came down to Portsmouth; they mustered me out in Portsmouth. 

INTERVIEWER:  You never qualified on any weapons or anything?

CHESTER:  Yes, I did.  I almost forgot that.  One of the times while we were in for one of those six month overhauls checking out, they said everybody is going to get some weapons for training.  They carried me over to Damneck? Which is out on Virginia Beach and gave me a 30 alt 30 rifle? And, I believe it was 30 rounds of ammunition.  I fired the first five rounds and never hit the target.  The gun sergeant came over and said, hey sailor, what’s wrong with your gun.  I said, "You tell me, I’m not a gunnery man."  He fired and he missed it and said, well, no wonder, he said the sight’s off and I said well, that’s pretty good reason.  So then, he corrected the sight and I bulls eyed the five shots and then when he gave me rapid fire, my shoulder got in the way and he made me get in the sling.  Did you ever have to do that? 

INTERVIEWER:  Yeah, twisted around.

CHESTER:  Man, I had that thing and I was uncomfortable as you could be.  So, I lightened up and fired that thing the five rounds and the next day my shoulder looked like a prune.  It hammered me to the pieces.  But, that’s all the weapons firing that I did. 

INTERVIEWER:  Did you ever fire the 30’s, I mean the 50’s on the ship?

CHESTER:  We took them off and put the 20’s.  Now, we had a gunnery sergeant and he took care of that.  Old Guns we used to call him.  I can’t even think of his name but he really thought he had a jewel there and it wouldn’t fire. 

INTERVIEWER:  Did he ever find out what was wrong with the machine gun that you couldn’t fire?

CHESTER:  Yeah, they were World War I, vintage.  Yeah, they were World War I, fifty calibers.  And, you know, I still say I think we won the war in spite of them.  But, my hat’s off to any guy in the Coast Guard.  They worked them hard and they are hard working.  They are good people.   The crewman and the deckhand on the buoy tender, Ray, it’s worse than any hard farming you can do.  You have to serpentine that booring chain on the deck.  And, of course, it’s three times the depth of the water.  And, those little old chains, the lengths are about this long and about an inch in diameter.  They have, looked like tobacco cups, you know, like what we use for tobacco baskets.  That’s how they would play the chain up and down and then they would hang the anchor over the side.  They would tie it with about a four-inch hoist. 

When he got to the point where Captain Digger wanted to drop that buoy, they took an axe.  They chopped that line and threw it right there and dropped it.  You got everybody out of the way when that that chain went off because boy, you’re talking about that was a hazardous place to be. 

Even though in those three years I ran that hoist putting those buoys out, never had but one occasion that had scared me to death.  We had what you called the whip, which was a single cable and then you had your double that was for the main and the relief.  I had one of those 938’s.  We had just pulled it up and we were going to replace it.  About six of the deckhand were standing looking up at it, you know, deciding how they were going to chain it and get it back on deck.  That cable breaks.  They had just stepped back, not a one was hurt.  But it knocked a dent in that buoy pad.  The buoy pad was a solid piece of steel just about that square.  It had to be because of the weight and the force that hit it when you were at rough seas.  I guess the good Lord was just looking after everybody.  One of those things that happened and it was great that no one got hurt.

But funny things happened.  We had a call to go up to eastern shore.   The main ___ _____ had gone out and this guy Lawrence, he was exec at that time, that’s the one I was talking about before, the one that’s got the stores.  He took off and there was mine fields, laying all out there at Cape Henry.  Instead of going the normal route that was charted, he cut straight out to Cape Henry, I mean Cape Charles.  Boy, the army got on him, get the H out there, he said you’re going to get blown up.  He said, “Every light on the board is lit up.”  You see, when you went in and disturbed those mines, the board lit up, whichever mine that you were bopping or disturbing.  They had a net, Ray, across there at Hampton, Fort Wolf, stretched across and you couldn’t come in because it was to catch submarines, to keep submarines out.  We had spent a night out there.  We came in one afternoon about 5:30 or 6:00 and they said there’s a sub in your wake.  You are not going through that gate tonight.  So we had to sit out there where the sub was.  I guess he turned around and went out.

INTERVIEWER:  The sub went after you?

CHESTER:  No, no.  He wasn’t after us.  He would like to get in there at the naval base where he could do some damage, but none ever got in there.  You’ve heard this saying, you know, wouldn’t take a million dollars, wouldn’t give a dime for another tour.  I told my wife you know, I’d like to have about six more months aboard the ship.

INTERVIEWER:  You didn’t get into the reserve after you got out Elwyn? 

CHESTER:  I was in the reserve when I went in.

INTERVIEWER:  You joined the reserve.  Did you have active duty after you came out after your discharge? 

CHESTER:  Nope.  Came out and I never drew the 52/20.  I had a job waiting for me.  The guy wanted me to start the next day.  I said no.  I said, give me a couple of weeks.  I think I stayed out three weeks.  I was Assistant Manager for MG Marcy, a French company, and I was there for almost five years.  I moved to Chadburn in 1949, February the 1st and I’ve been here since.

INTERVIEWER:  As a reservist, you didn’t have to go to drills or anything?

CHESTER:  No, I never went to drills (laughter).

INTERVIEWER:  You ever hear of anybody else like you?  You said there was one other?

CHESTER:  Roland Marshall was one of the others.  Well, yeah, Charlie Hinton and who, let’s see.  There was another boy from down in the Weeksville area, but they all got odd jobs.  They got on these little boats and patrolled the inland waterways and the rivers.

INTERVIEWER:  So technically, you never qualified, you never even knew how to salute?

CHESTER:  Oh yeah, oh yes I did, you learn that quick.  I was coming out, had gone to my home in Elizabeth City, about an hour’s drive from Portsmouth and I had a place that I had rented in a garage to park the car.  This is after I finally got settled on the ship.  Maybe it was a year or so later and Captain Manyon was the skipper of the buoy yard, the Coast Guard base in Portsmouth.  I was cold and I had my hands in my pocket and kind of hooched over like that you know, and Captain Manyon there, and I went right on passed and he said, “Young man, do you not know how to salute your superiors?”  I said, “Yes sir”.  I gave him a salute and that was it.  But I never had any problems. 

INTERVIEWER:  Did you ever have any experience on the water before you went in the Coast Guard?

CHESTER:  I grew up there in Elizabeth City, just boating on the river there, never on any large ships.  It was quite a change of life for me, but I will say, I enjoyed it.  You knew you were there for the duration.  You might as well like it.  The ones that complained, I felt sorry for them because they were so miserable.  And that must be a hard way to live, hating what you were doing. 

Oh, I’ve got to tell you about the Butterworth brothers, Charles and George Butterworth.  They were brothers and they were from Connecticut.  No, Springfield, Massachusetts, I believe it was.  Anyway, Charlie was a gardener and everything had to be just right and George, he was one of the hell’s angels type.  He was a motorcycle guy and he was always raising cane.  You never saw them talking to each other except maybe once a month, a package would come, they’d divide it.  And, old George, he got transferred to another ship and he was going to do a 20 millimeter; take out the powder you know and have a souvenir and he exploded that thing and knocked his finger off.  And, old Charlie, I asked him one day, I said, do you ever hear from George?  No, he says, nobody knows, and we don’t have a whole lot in common.  But Charlie, we had an oil spill aboard deck where we had fueled one day and an old dude Austin says, get your hand full of that waste over there and a bucket full of soap and scrub off that oil.  And this guy Travis, he was chief boatsman mate and as good a seaman as you will ever find in your life.  He knew the sea, he knew the ships and he knew how to work men.  And, he just teased the men all the time.  He’d say, boys, you never had it so good in your life.  He said, you’re out here, you’ve got money, and you can’t spend it.  We didn’t even have a canteen or anything like that.  And they would go to cuss him and they would chip the paint and took their frustrations out.  He knew exactly what he was doing.  And old Butterworth, when he told him to clean up the oil, getting back to him, he said, “Butterworth” he says (he was quartered because he had to scrub that oil up), he says “There’s better days ahead”.  He said, “You never had it so good”.  He backed up as far as he could, he took the water waste and he threw it and it stuck to the bulkhead as if it were glue.  And he cussed a streak.  He would turn the sky blue.  I hate the Coast Guard; I hate every part of this ship.  I don’t know what ever happened to those guys.  You know, you often wonder because they were good shipmates and you’d like to know where they are and what they’re doing.  But I never see or hear from any of them (laughter).

INTERVIEWER:   You do go to reunions occasionally?

CHESTER:  I did go to one.  I went to one reunion in Portsmouth.

INTERVIEWER:  And that was with that ship only?

CHESTER:  Yeah, the Speedwell crew.  Captain Diggs was there and I’ve forgotten the rest of the crew.

INTERVIEWER:  You said that was in ’71 or ’72?

CHESTER:  Yeah, about ’72. 

INTERVIEWER:  And not all of them were there?

CHESTER:  No, no.  I guess maybe ten or twelve.  There were ones that had ever served on there.  Even back in the lighthouse days when it was the lighthouse service rather than the Coast Guard.

2nd INTERVIEWER:  I always ask the veterans a final question.  Well I make a statement and then a final question.  You’re never going to age one more day in your life as long as you’re on this videotape.

CHESTER:  That’s right.

2nd INTERVIEWER: So, people that are going to see this are going to be your grandchildren, or your children and your grandchildren, and your great grandchildren.

CHESTER:  I only have one.

2nd INTERVIEWER:  That’s all it takes.  I want you to look right into the camera and answer the following question.  What did you learn from being in the war that you would like your grandchildren to know?  What did it all mean? 

CHESTER:  It all means, and I have been a little disappointed.  I thought we were preserving the American way and we knew we had a reason to be there.  There was an enemy and there was a cause.  I did not hesitate to do my part.  To this day, I’m glad I did.  As I said, I made the best of it and I tried to be as good a citizen aboard that ship as I was on land and that is the secret of it.