No Ordinary Joes Read online

  ALSO BY LARRY COLTON

  Goat Brothers

  Counting Coup

  Copyright © 2010 by Larry Colton

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Crown Publishers, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

  www.crownpublishing.com

  Crown is a trademark and the Crown colophon is a registered trademark of Random House, Inc.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Colton, Larry.

  No ordinary Joes: the extraordinary true story of four submariners in war and love and life / Larry Colton.—1st ed.

  1. Grenadier (Submarine) 2. Submariners—United States—Biography. 3. World War, 1939–1945—Naval operations—Submarine. 4. World War, 1939–1945—Prisoners and prisons, Japanese. 5. Prisoners of war—United States—Biography. 6. Prisoners of war—Japan—Biography. 7. Palmer, Bob. 8. Cox, Gordy. 9. McCoy, Tim. 10. Vervalin, Chuck. I. Title.

  D783.5.G75C65 2010

  940.54′51092273—dc22 2010013572

  eISBN: 978-0-307-71724-5

  Insert Photo Credits—COURTESY TIM MCCOY: i1, i11, i19. COURTESY BARBARA PALMER: i2, i5, i15, i16. COURTESY THE FAMILY OF CHUCK VERVALIN: i3, i6, i9, i14, i17. COURTESY JANICE COX: i4, i5, i7, i12, i18. COURTESY BOB PALMER: i13. OFFICIAL PHOTOGRAPH U.S. NAVY: i8, i10.

  Map by Jeffrey L. Ward

  v3.1

  To Dick Solomon,

  friend and adviser

  To Lieutenant William J. Yetter, a dedicated parent

  and heroic World War II pilot

  To Gordy Cox,

  Tim McCoy,

  Bob Palmer,

  and Chuck Vervalin

  Any man who may be asked what he did to make his life worthwhile can respond with a good deal of pride and satisfaction: I served in the U.S. Navy.

  President John F. Kennedy

  I saw the submariners, the way they stood aloof and silent, watching their pigboat with loving eyes. They are alone in the Navy. I admired the PT boys. And I often wondered how the aviators had the courage to go out every day and I forgave their boasting. But the submariners! In the entire fleet they stand apart!

  James Michener, Tales of the South Pacific

  Contents

  Cover

  Other Books by This Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Map

  Prologue

  Part One: Surviving the Depression Chapter 1: Chuck Vervalin of Dundee, New York

  Chapter 2: Bob Palmer of Medford, Oregon

  Chapter 3: Tim McCoy of Dalhart, Texas

  Chapter 4: Gordy Cox of Yakima, Washington

  Part Two: Submariners Chapter 5: Chuck Vervalin: USS Gudgeon

  Chapter 6: Bob Palmer: USS Tuna

  Chapter 7: Tim “Skeeter” McCoy: USS Trout

  Chapter 8: Gordy Cox: USS Sculpin

  Part Three: Assignment Grenadier Chapter 9: Chuck Vervalin: USS Grenadier

  Chapter 10: Bob Palmer: USS Grenadier

  Chapter 11: Gordy Cox: USS Grenadier

  Chapter 12: Tim “Skeeter” McCoy: USS Grenadier

  Part Four: Captured Chapter 13: Chuck Vervalin: USS Grenadier

  Chapter 14: Bob Palmer: USS Grenadier

  Chapter 15: Tim “Skeeter” McCoy: USS Grenadier

  Chapter 16: Gordy Cox: USS Grenadier

  Part Five: The Convent on Light Street Chapter 17: Chuck Vervalin: POW

  Chapter 18: Bob Palmer: POW

  Chapter 19: Tim “Skeeter” McCoy: POW

  Chapter 20: Gordy Cox: POW

  Chapter 21: Chuck Vervalin: POW

  Chapter 22: Bob Palmer: POW

  Chapter 23: Tim “Skeeter” McCoy: POW

  Chapter 24: Gordy Cox: POW

  Part Six: From Bad to Worse Chapter 25: Chuck Vervalin: POW

  Chapter 26: Bob Palmer: POW

  Chapter 27: Tim “Skeeter” McCoy: POW

  Chapter 28: Gordy Cox: Fukuoka #3

  Chapter 29: Chuck Vervalin: Fukuoka #3

  Chapter 30: Bob Palmer: Ofuna

  Chapter 31: Tim “Skeeter” McCoy: Fukuoka #3

  Chapter 32: Bob Palmer: Ofuna

  Chapter 33: Tim “Skeeter” McCoy: Fukuoka #3

  Chapter 34: Gordy Cox: Fukuoka #3

  Chapter 35: Chuck Vervalin: Fukuoka #3

  Chapter 36: Bob Palmer: Ashio

  Photo Inserts

  Part Seven: Saved by the Bombs Chapter 37: Tim “Skeeter” McCoy: Fukuoka #3

  Chapter 38: Gordy Cox: Fukuoka #3

  Chapter 39: Bob Palmer: Ashio

  Chapter 40: Chuck Vervalin: Fukuoka #3

  Chapter 41: Bob Palmer: Ashio

  Part Eight: Going Home Chapter 42: Tim “Skeeter” McCoy: Texas

  Chapter 43: Gordy Cox: Yakima, Washington

  Chapter 44: Chuck Vervalin: Sodus, New York

  Chapter 45: Bob Palmer: Medford, Oregon

  Chapter 46: Tim “Skeeter” McCoy of Texas

  Part Nine: Sixty Years Later Chapter 47: Chuck Vervalin: Concord, California

  Chapter 48: Gordy Cox: Culver, Oregon

  Chapter 49: Tim “Skeeter” McCoy: Austin, Texas

  Chapter 50: Bob Palmer: Ocean Pines, Maryland

  Epilogue

  Author’s Notes

  Appendix 1

  Appendix 2

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  COMMANDER SUBMARINE FORCE

  UNITED STATES PACIFIC FLEET

  30 June 1944

  My Dear Mrs. Palmer:

  The Commander Submarine Force, Pacific Fleet, has the honor to award the Submarine Combat Insignia and to commend in absentia Robert Wiley Palmer, Yeoman first class, for service set forth in the following:

  CITATION

  The USS Grenadier on an offensive war patrol in restricted waters, heavily patrolled by the enemy, failed to return as scheduled. It is not known how many successful attacks the Grenadier made on this patrol; but, as she has had a splendid record since the early days of the war, it is believed that she was engaged in delivering the same relentless attacks against the enemy up until the time she was reported missing.

  As Yeoman first class of the USS Grenadier, Robert Wiley Palmer’s performance of duty materially contributed to the success of this vessel against the enemy. The Commander Submarine Force, Pacific Fleet, forwards this commendation in recognition of his splendid performance of duty, which was in keeping with the highest traditions of the Naval Service.

  Please accept my deepest sympathy in your great loss, which I assure you I also consider a great loss to the Naval Service.

  Most sincerely,

  C.A. Lockwood, Jr.

  Vice Admiral, U.S. Navy

  Prologue

  The waters felt unsafe to Bob Palmer. Too shallow. Too close to land. Too risky, given the ship’s unreliable torpedoes. But who was he, a twenty-one-year-old, to question the strategy of his submarine captain, a graduate of the Naval Academy and respected by every man on the ship? Palmer worked hard as the sub’s yeoman, but he was a high-school dropout, and he wasn’t privy to the radio messages the captain received.

  It was early evening, April 20, 1943, and the USS Grenadier was nearing the end of its sixth war patrol. Bob longed to get back to port in Fremantle, Australia; he was tired of the confinement, the foul smell of diesel fuel, and the constant stress of running deep in enemy waters. Back in Fremantle, there’d be large pints of Emu ale waiting in the bar at the Ocean Beach Hotel, as well as beautiful young Aussie women enamored of American sailors. Yes, he was recently married to his high-school sweetheart and loved her dearly. But this was war—a war on the other s
ide of the world, and every time he and his crewmates left port there was the real possibility they’d be blown to bits.

  As the Grenadier ran full speed on the surface through the Java Sea and the narrow Strait of Malacca between Malaysia and Sumatra, the lookout spotted two worthy targets—a pair of large Japanese freighters silhouetted on the horizon. The sea was calm, the sky bright from a full moon. Surprisingly, the vessels appeared to be unescorted, an opportunity almost too good to be true. The Japanese had recently taken Rangoon, and the Japanese ships plying the important supply route between Burma and Singapore were usually well guarded. But not these two.

  The Grenadier’s captain, Missouri-born James Fitzgerald, a ballsy former boxing champ at Annapolis, was eager to confront the enemy, and he had decided to ignore warnings that these waters were much too easily guarded by Japanese planes from nearby bases for his ship to be running on the surface. A month earlier, a sub had been sunk, taking sixty-five men down with it. But Fitzgerald wanted a kill before heading back to port. At this point in the war, with the Japanese racking up victory after victory in the Pacific, American naval forces were desperate for any small victory.

  Fitzgerald was one of a new breed of captain who had been hurried into battle; the top level of Navy leadership was now encouraging these newer graduates of the Naval Academy to “go in harm’s way” and take the war to the enemy. His approach was more aggressive than that of the older and more conservative sub commanders in charge at the start of the war who believed the purpose of submarines was to scout for the Navy’s surface fleet rather than to attack.

  From long range and on the surface, Fitzgerald considered firing torpedoes, but at this stage of the war, the available torpedoes were notoriously ineffective, either running too deep or failing to explode on contact. Instead he closed to 2,500 yards.

  The freighters discovered the ship’s presence, possibly by radar, and turned searchlights in its direction. Fitzgerald ordered the men manning the three-inch deck gun to commence firing. Immediately, the two freighters returned fire, neither side scoring a hit.* Knowing the Grenadier had been spotted, Fitzgerald quickly turned direction, electing to make a surface end-around, which would put the sub in front of the enemy, in position to submerge and attack. But while the Grenadier moved twice as fast on the surface than it did when submerged, it would take the Grenadier all night—twelve hours—to accomplish this maneuver. The crew—eight officers and sixty-eight enlisted men—stood down from their battle stations.

  Bob sat down at a table to write a letter to his wife, Barbara. He would post the letter as soon as the ship returned to Fremantle. Barbara was living in San Francisco, where they had gotten married a week after Pearl Harbor, six days before he’d shipped off to war. She’d gotten pregnant during those six days, but the excitement he’d felt when he’d gotten the news was soon offset by sadness when she lost the baby. He still had a year to go on his duty.

  Seated at the table with Palmer were three other men just as anxious to get back to port—Tim McCoy from Dallas, Texas; Chuck Vervalin from Dundee, New York; and Gordy Cox from Yakima, Washington. Tim and Chuck had met the women they thought were the loves of their young lives on their last leave in Fremantle, and both talked of marrying these young Aussies and taking them back to America after the war. Tim’s girl was the reigning Miss Perth. Gordy, the fourth man at the table, had also met a girl, but he was the shy type and wasn’t sure she liked him as much. Still, he hoped. He’d even written his mom about her. He’d never had a girlfriend growing up.

  As the Grenadier made its long circle, Tim and Gordy had time to talk. The two sailors, neither yet twenty-one, were total opposites. Tim was extroverted, cocky, and full of Texas bravado; Gordy was slightly built, quiet, and not confident in his ability to learn the complex set of submarine skills necessary to advance beyond his rank of seaman first class. Despite the close confines of the sub and their shared experience in battle—which included being scared shitless—they barely knew each other. Gordy’s initial impression was that Tim was a little too full of himself.

  Chuck got up from the table and walked to his bunk, where he pulled a picture of Gwen, his nineteen-year-old girlfriend, out from under his pillow. He’d met her strolling through an arcade in Perth a few months earlier. Two nights before the Grenadier had shipped out on this mission, Gwen had given him a Saint Christopher’s medal for good luck and protection. He promised he’d never take it off; she promised she’d wait for him. During their last night together, he confessed that he had an uneasy feeling about this patrol, much more than before the other four he’d been on. She asked why. “Because for the first time in my life I have somebody I really care about,” he answered.

  Throughout the night, the Grenadier sped along the ocean’s surface at its top speed, 18 knots. Just before daylight it neared its attack position. As it closed on its targets, Fitzgerald ordered it to submerge and for everyone to man their battle stations. But the freighters had unexpectedly changed direction, and Fitzgerald watched through his periscope as they zigzagged out of sight, leaving only smoke plumes visible on the horizon.

  More eager now than ever for a kill, Fitzgerald ordered the Grenadier back to the surface for a rapid pursuit, disregarding standard naval operating procedure, which advised subs to patrol on the surface only at night. The sun was now up, and so was a Japanese fighter plane sent to look for the Grenadier. For Bob Palmer, Gordy Cox, Tim McCoy, Chuck Vervalin, and the rest of the crew, the war was about to take a terrible turn.

  I first stumbled across this story when a cousin of Barbara Palmer’s gave me a twenty-page story Barbara’s husband Bob had written about his life. It was an earnest tale of war and survival, but that wasn’t the part that sucked me in: the passionate love story Bob had written (he was eighty years old) brought tears to my eyes. A month later I flew from Portland, Oregon, to the couple’s home on the Maryland shore. Their love was even more evident in person. As Bob was telling me about all Barbara did for him, unapologetic tears rolled down his cheeks and the lump in his throat was as big as a fist.

  For me, that was the beginning of a quest to meet the surviving members of the Grenadier’s crew. Bob, Gordy, Tim, and Chuck all had clear minds and acute recall of things that had happened sixty years earlier. More than that, they shared a kind of “ordinariness.” They were all enlisted men. They hadn’t been to prep schools or fancy academies. They had come of age, like others on their ship, during the great Depression, their childhoods hardscrabble and austere. Even before the crucible of war, these guys were tough-ass survivors.

  Following the war, they returned to an America far different from the one they’d left five years earlier, and were ill-equipped to deal with it. Over the next several decades, for the most part they went quietly about their business. But they all had troubles in their relationships with women and, later, with their sons. They all admitted to having drunk too much.

  And these ordinary men all had great—extraordinary—stories to tell.

  It wasn’t just their heroic endurance in terrible captivity that intrigued me. The more I got to know them, the more I realized that the qualities that enabled these four sailors to survive unimaginable cruelties in war were the same ones that got them into trouble later in life. That’s what made them so much more than abstract embodiments of the so-called Greatest Generation—and so real, men whose lives describe the lifetime burden of war.

  * Author’s note: In researching this event, I found numerous conflicting reports of exactly what happened regarding the firing of torpedoes. In the end, I relied on Captain Fitzgerald’s write-up.

  Part One

  SURVIVING THE DEPRESSION

  1

  Chuck Vervalin

  of Dundee, New York

  It had been a wet spring in the western foothills of the Catskill Mountains in 1928, and the rivers ran dangerously high. Arthur Vervalin told his wife not to let the kids anywhere near the water. People from those parts knew not to mess with the
rivers.

  Chuck, seven years old, heard his father’s warning, but when his thirteen-year-old sister, Beulah, set out for the swimming hole, he tagged along anyway. His concern was not the danger—only that they might get the belt when they got home.

  In Chuck’s eyes, Beulah could do no wrong. All the Vervalin girls were pretty, but she was the prettiest, with green eyes and chestnut brown hair that fell in ringlets to the middle of her back. She watched over him and took him into town to buy candy, never making him feel like a pest. He loved the way she sometimes carried him on her hip or let him lick the bowl when she made cookies. She also took him with her whenever she ventured down to the swimming hole at the Unidilla River. She was the best swimmer in the family.

  At the river, Beulah told Chuck and a couple of friends to wait on the bank while she tested the water. Her plan was to swim out to the sandbar in the middle where they usually sunned themselves, and if it was safe, she would come back and escort Chuck across. She’d done it dozens of times.

  Halfway across, she began to flounder, the current pulling her downstream, away from the sandbar and the bank. Flailing her arms, she yelled for help. A man standing nearby heard her scream and dove in after her. But the current was too strong, and he turned and struggled back to shore. Beulah disappeared under the water.

  Chuck was still standing on the bank an hour later when several men carried his sister’s body on a board across the field. He watched them load her into the back of a truck and disappear down the road. Three days later, he was sitting in a pew at the front of the Congressional Church, Beulah’s pansy-covered casket nearby. Next to him, his mother and sisters wept, and his father fixed his cold glare straight ahead.

  The Vervalins were a close family, all the kids helping with the chores, but there was also an abusive edge to family life, even before Beulah drowned, mainly because of Arthur. An imposing 300-pound Dutchman who liked to drink, he often took his belt to the kids, including the girls. Sometimes there seemed to be no reason for his outbursts. Chuck, the oldest son, caught the greatest share of his wrath.