| Summary: | (6:35) Mr. Shockley tells about his experiences in the Coast Guard after leaving the Merchant Marines during World War II.Florence-Lauderdale Public Library Digital Archive
Interview with Paul W. Shockley
January 27, 2010
Florence, Alabama
Conducted by Clint Alley and Rhonda Haygood
Clip 2
Clint Alley: Where did you go to join the Coast Guard?
Paul Shockley: In Birmingham.
CA: Went to Birmingham.
PS: Yeah.
CA: Okay.
PS: I hitchhiked from the country over here this side of Huntsville and mostly walked most of the way.
CA: So, you were eager to get back out to sea then weren’t you?
PS: Yeah, yeah. I was eager to get back.
CA: Did you have to go through any additional Coast Guard training or—?
PS: Oh, I didn’t tell them I’d been in the service before.
CA: Oh, did you not?
PS: No, no. Well, they’d a knew I was underage and I couldn’t have got in.
CA: Oh, okay. Yeah.
PS: So, no, I was brand new. I went through training in the, in the Coast Guard, five weeks training, went aboard a brand new ship, Army FS-282, and the captain commissioned the ship and we sailed out three days later and went through the Panama Canal and went to California and from California we went to Pearl Harbor and Hawaii and then on to the South Pacific where the fighting was going on and went to a resupply fuel depot, Fuji-Fuji, and fueled up and then from there we went into all the different islands. We had the reputation of never going in the same island twice, because we drawed such a small amount of water that we could go in with supplies on a small cargo ship. It was only 172 feet long and 30 feet wide and we could take supplies in and bring the wounded or the dead out for burial or take them out to the hospital ship where the larger ships couldn’t get in as close as we could. And taking supplies around to the small islands was basically what we did. And we was on so many islands I can’t, I can’t name them all. And that certificate there is where we crossed the equator after Iwo Jima and was taking the dead to a Frenchaven for burial and from there we went to Australia for rest and recuperation and then back to the different islands. And an interesting thing happened, we stopped at Hollandia, New Guinea and I got the mail in at that time and I got a letter from my mother and she said that my cousin who had, got drafted in the Navy was stationed at Hollandia, New Guinea at a Navy supply depot. And I asked the captain, could I go up on the side of the hill where they were all camped out, a thousand of them, you know, and all the warehouses with re-supply stuff, supplying all of our ships and islands and all that we‘d taken and, ah, he said, “Sure. Go ahead.” And I caught a ride with somebody in a jeep and went up and found his address and found the tent that he was living in and he’d gone to chow, supper, and I went in and sat down on his bunk and waiting on him. And he come in and walked in and got almost to his bunk and he looked over there and said, “Paul, is that you?” I said, “Yeah, I come to get you to take you home.” He said, “Am I seeing things?” He’d been over there a couple of years. He said, “I can’t believe this.” He said, “What are you doing over here?” He knew how old I was, you know. I was just fifteen at this time. And he says, “I can’t believe this.” And I said, “Yeah, it’s true.” I said, “Our ship’s tied up down at the dock, down at the foot of the hill.” And he was really glad to see me. And we had occasions to come into Hollandia three times while he was there and he’d always come down and, and eat with me onboard ship for just a change, you know. Of course, our food was all the same, you know, you either eat goat or, or sea rations and most all food was dehydrated so we just put, had all the different vegetables and stuff and you just put water with it and then it blowed it up and then you eat it so it all tasted the same. But it was a little different him coming down and eating onboard our ship, you know.
CA: Um-hm.
PS: And it, it was a real friendly little ship. There wasn’t but twenty-seven onboard the ship I was on and, ah, we had a compass was all the navigating equipment that we had and the captain had what they call a sextant, that’s a navigating instrument that at dawn in the morning and at dusk at night he’d go out on deck and take a reading of the stars and all and go back and calculate on it, to see if he was on the right course. And now you got every kind of instrument you can think of for navigation, you know. But, ah, we went all over the world from New York, through the Panama Canal to the South Pacific and with a compass, so he was a pretty good captain. We thought he was an old man; he was twenty-six. Yeah, we thought he was an old man.
CA: What was his name?
PS: Edwin G. Sturgis.
CA: Edwin G. Sturgis.
PS: Lieutenant. He converted back to a chief petty officer and, and stayed in the Navy thirty years and retired. I mean, not in the Navy, in the Coast Guard. And I met a captain that was inspecting the, the Coast Guard station that was over in Sheffield years ago when I had the Holiday Inn. And I asked him to look him up for me and he did and then when he come back he told me all about him and all, you know.
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