Talley: patriotic to the core

THE DAILY NEWS

SUN n In 1943 enlisting in the military was considered a patriotic duty, and it was one that 17-year-old Vernon Talley of Sun had no desire to shirk. Still, as a minor, he needed his parents' signature to enlist.

"My pleading and persuading prevailed," Talley said. "I told them that if they would sign, I could get into the branch of service I wanted and be trained in the field I picked. If I waited until I was 18 and was drafted those choices would be taken from me."

Having won his parent's support, Talley told his high school sweetheart, Doris Pierce, of his plans. The two had been dating for two years and expected to spend their lives together.

"She was proud of me," Talley stated. "She wrote me the whole time I was in the Navy."

He tried using code to let her know where he was, but he was never subtle enough. The military censor always caught his references and blotted them out so that she got letters with black marker masking the clues.

"Some of the islands had names similar to senior's at home, like Solomon, and I tried making references to them, but the censors marked it out," Talley admitted with a smile. "It didn't work for me."

Naval initiation

Talley joined the regular Navy on Sept. 27, 1943, just 18 days after his seventeenth birthday. He went to San Diego for basic training and then on to landing craft school for the amphibious force. After training he went to a receiving station to await transport to the mid-Pacific via merchant ship.

By March of 1944, Talley arrived at a Pacific receiving station in Noumea, New Caledonia near Australia but he did not board his vessel there. Instead, he was eventually taken to Hawaii where he boarded the USS Alhena AKA-9 in April 1944. At would point he would remain on the ship in the Pacific for 25 months before being granted leave. While he did have the occasional few hours of shore leave, even then he was on alert because he remained in the war zone.

After boarding the Alhena, Talley had the dubious honor of being initiated as a Shellback, the designation given a naval recruit who crossed the equator in the Pacific Ocean. Before his initiation he was known as a lowly Polly Wog. On the first crossing, the uninitiated are subjected to a day of hazing. Those who cross the landmark in the Atlantic become Bluenoses, a concession to the colder waters of the ocean.

Talley said the Captain turns the operation over to the experienced crew when the ship crosses the equator and turns a blind eye to any antics. Officers and enlisted men alike are subject to the initiation.

Talley remembers having to bow to and kiss the feet of the biggest, blackest sailor on board, who was chosen King for the day. Initiates were run through a belt line. Some were strapped to boards and sailors pretended to behead them with a pirate's sword.

An unlucky few were chosen to walk the plank. They were blindfolded and taken to the plank. Unbeknownst to them, the plank that had previously disappeared over the side of the ship now ended over a canvass vat filled with seawater. When the scared crewman walked off the end of the plank, he believed he was dropping into the ocean. Talley indicated that he was glad he was not chosen to walk the plank.

"They could hear the ocean hitting the sides of the ship," Talley said. "They had no way to know they were not falling into the ocean. They were terrified."

This tomfoolery helped to ease the tension of being in war torn waters where possible attacks from submarines or bombers were a daily reality.

Alhena faces danger

The Alhena was newly repaired when Talley joined the crew, having suffered a direct torpedo hit at Gaudalcanal which blew a hole bigger than a normal outboard motorboat in the side. He hoped that the ship had sustained enough damage to spare it further harm, but that was not to prove the case.

The crew practiced maneuvers until June 1944, when they participated in the Invasion of Saipan as part of task force 58. For seven days they participated in troop and supply landings, during the heated battle where George Bush Sr. flew a plane that was shot down.

Although the Alhena was not badly damaged during the successful invasion, afterwards in July the ship returned to the United States to be refitted. During their three months in port, the T- shaped deck structures were replaced by sturdier tripod-shaped ones.

The ship finally was ready and on Oct. 13, which had the misfortune of being a Friday, they sailed to Manus Island to take on supplies and prepare to join in the invasion of Okinawa.

"Leaving on Friday 13 proved to be bad luck," Talley concluded. "On Nov. 10 [1944], while we were in the harbor at Manus Island, the USS Mt. Hood [an ammunition ship in the harbor] exploded. We were very near them n too near."

As a quartermaster, Talley had taken his turn on bridge watch and was relieved from his post at 8 a.m. He was in his living quarters when he heard a loud noise and the ship listed to one side. As he jumped up, the battle stations alarm went off. His battle station was on the bridge where he was supposed to take the wheel.

As he came through the hatch onto the main deck, cases of 50-caliber ammunition blown from the nearby Mt. Hood landed on the deck. The concussion of landing caused the ammo to begin to fire. Talley ran through the carnage to the bridge. He found sailors bleeding and many down.

When the air cleared and he looked toward the Mt. Hood, there was nothing there. The ship had simply disappeared. Three men on the Alhena died as a result of the explosion; one was Talley's replacement who had relieved him 55 minutes before the explosion.

"I guess there's somebody looking over me," he said humbly.

Besides the three killed, 70 were wounded, 25 seriously. One of the wounded was the ship doctor, who sustained a broken leg when a piece of the Mt. Hood boiler was blown through three bulkheads ending up in the doctor's stateroom and breaking his leg. He refused treatment for his own wound until he had dealt with the other casualties.

Talley later read an eyewitness account of the event. The man saw a Japanese Zero flying so low that he could see the pilot. It flew aft of the Alhena fantail, making a direct hit on the nearby Mt. Hood.

The newly refitted Alhena sustained major above-deck damage. Because of the havoc to the vessel, they were unable to participate in the invasion of Okinawa as planned. They were told to begin to prepare for an invasion of Japan.

Aborted invasion of Japan

While awaiting the proposed the invasion of Japan, they shuttled supplies and troops to various locales in the Pacific. They also participated in the occupation of Iwo Jima, for which the ship received its fifth battle star. They transported the third marine division to Iwo Jima in Feb. 1945. Talley was on board when the ship received its fourth and fifth battle stars for the invasions and occupations of Saipan and Iwo Jima.

By August 26, 1945, the Alhena was in Subic Bay, Philippines, taking on troops for the invasion of Japan. Somewhere en route to Japan between Aug. 26 and Sept. 2, a notice was posted on the ship bulletin board telling the sailors that "hostilities had ceased." In this way with no fanfare, they learned that ‘the big bomb' had made the invasion of Japan unnecessary.

The Alhena arrived in Tokyo Bay on Sept. 13, 1945, 11 days after the Instrument of Surrender was signed aboard the Missouri in the very Bay where they anchored. While in Tokyo Bay, the sailors were given four-hour, day liberty in the city. The government was still uncertain of the strength of the Japanese underground and did not want American troops in the city after dark.

The Japanese that Talley encountered, though, were respectful, showing no belligerence to the American captors.

"The old, old senior people revered the U.S. service men," Talley explained. "They would get out into the street while you passed and bow until you passed by. I guess they had gotten a taste of what being whipped and beat meant, from the bomb explosion. They had respect for their conquerors."

Talley returned to the U.S. with his ship by Nov. 30.

Leave denied

"We all thought we were going to get leave. I hadn't had leave since Aug. 1944. But we went to Washington for repairs and then to San Francisco. We were given shore liberty but no leave."

In January 1946, the Alhena was dispatched to China with a load of beer and whiskey for the occupation force of China.

"The occupying force was Marines and I guess the US government wanted them to have a good time," Talley conjectured. "We weren't too thrilled to be back at sea with no leave, so we thought, ‘I'll show you since you sent us back out to sea.' We got into the hold and confiscated enough liquid cargo to last us for the whole trip back to the states."

When the Alhena returned to the US in March 1945, the ship was routed to Bayonne, New Jersey, where it was decommissioned on May 22.

Shortly thereafter, Talley got his long-awaited leave. While at home in Sun, he married Doris, his wife for the next 51 years until her death in 1997. When his leave was up, he once again left his sweetheart to report to Boston.

He was assigned to the NOA DD-841. The ship was sent on a goodwill tour of the Mediterranean and the Atlantic. While on the tour, the ship evacuated the Albanian ambassador.

When they pulled into the harbor to pick him up, they found Albania gun ships with guns aimed at the NOA. The Albanians brought the ambassador and his entourage via boat to the destroyer, keeping the ship in its gun sights the whole time.

Another tense moment occurred when the ship was in a harbor in northern Italy. Some of them took liberty in a town that was part Italian and part Yugoslavian. The country border ran through the town. They were warned not to cross into the Yugoslavian part of the town, as the Yugoslavians were unfriendly.

"Some sailors sipped some strong tea while we were on shore," Talley admitted. "We made friends with some Army men stationed there. We asked them for a ride back to the ship on their tank. That tank went through the middle of town and out onto the pier with sailors hanging all over it. The officer on deck was scared since there had been warnings about hostile Yugoslavians and he didn't know what was going on, but we were just having a little fun."

The goodwill tour ended by June 1947 and Talley was briefly assigned to another ship while awaiting discharge. On July 8, he was allowed to return home and use up his 60 days of accumulated leave, ending his stint in the Navy when his discharge papers dated 9/10/1946 arrived via mail in Sun.

Home to stay

Talley still lives in Sun just down the road from where Doris was raised and only a few miles from his old home place. He and Doris raised three children, Sandra Conors of Bogalusa, Donna Adams of Rio, and Grant Talley of Rio. He has five grandchildren, Jodi Byrd, Kelly Talley, Garrett Talley, Jennifer Davis, and Jeff Purvis. He has two great-grandchildren Seth and Macy Purvis.

After Doris' death, Talley eventually remarried.

"I married a wonderful lady, Wanzie Jenkins, who is my current wife," he said.

Talley has never regretted giving four years of his life to defend his country. He is a proud veteran who is a strong supporter of troops today who are doing their patriotic duty in Iraq. Every year, he attends the annual reunion of the Alhena crew. The numbers are dwindling as his brothers-in-arms die.

"You form a special bond with them," Talley said. "It's hard to explain to those who have never experienced war."