Honor for the forgotten service
by B.D. Hammer, NY Daily News, Dec. 12, 1997Larry Lawrence's body was removed from Arlington National Cemetery yesterday because his claim to have served in the Merchant Marine during World War II has been labeled a lie.
Embarrassing as this episode has been, however, it has served one good purpose: spotlighting the nation's continuing failure to fully recognize the service, valor and sacrifice of merchant mariners in WWII.
President Franklin Roosevelt once said: "The Merchant Marine delivered the sinews of war from the Arsenal of Democracy to where and when they were needed."
FDR was right, of course. Merchant mariners crossed the U-boat-infested oceans of the world, often without escort. Their casualties were the highest per capita of any service group. Yet they faced not only the fury of the enemy but the neglect of their government, which provided no postwar benefits for them under the G. I. Bill. Equally cruel, they faced the unjustified bigotry of many of their fellow Americans.
This was in part due to an enemy misinformation campaign of lies and calumnies a campaign that was never refuted by our government and that persists in popular mythology to this day.
How ironic, since the only German surface warship sunk by U.S. forces during WWII was sunk by a merchant mariner. On Sept. 27, 1942, the German auxiliary cruiser Stier intercepted the Liberty ship Stephen Hopkins steaming in the south Atlantic without escort. The 5.9-inch guns of the Stier left the Hopkins ablaze and sinking, with many of its crew dead or wounded.
Then, from the carnage of the engine room emerged a wounded 18-year-old cadet-midshipman, Edwin O'Hara. He cleared the dead from the Hopkins' 4-inch deck gun and fired into the Stier until the ammunition was gone. The raider caught fire, exploded and sank. In the exchange, O'Hara was killed.
Remembering WWII valor of the Merchant Marine
Yet despite a memo from Roosevelt to the Navy and war secretaries directing that merchant mariners should be decorated on the same basis as other servicemen, O'Hara was never considered for the Medal of Honor. He was "only" a merchant mariner.
Such heroism and discrimination would be repeated many times: 142 cadet-midshipmen from the United States Merchant Marine Academy were killed in action during WWII. Kings Point is the only service academy to send its undergraduates into battle.
In the half century since WWII ended, there have been some half steps toward fairness. In l988, the Secretary of the Air Force, who administers the G.I. Bill Improvement Act, ruled that merchant mariners who could document 180 days of service between Pearl Harbor and V-J Day would be deemed veterans.
That's an improvement, but it still leaves out thousands or merchant mariners. By way of contrast, members of other services with 30 days of duty between Sept. 3, 1939, and Dec. 31, 1946, are considered veterans and are eligible for such vital benefits as free admission to a veterans hospital.
During the celebrations marking the 50th anniversary of the end of WWII there was no mention of the slaughter of merchant mariners off the Eastern seaboard, the destruction of Convoy PQ-17 to north Russia on July 4, 1942, the Hopkins fight or any other example of merchant mariners' heroic service.
The American Battle Monuments Commission the agency with the duty to memorialize all of America's war dead, refuses to place the names of some 9,000 merchant mariners killed or missing in action on any of its monuments.
Time passes, bureaucracy obfuscates, damn few care. Isn't it time to bring justice to some of America's forgotten heroes before they are all gone?
B.D. Hammer, who lives in Brooklyn, is executive director of the Battle of the Atlantic Historical Society.