Celebration of Life: WWII part two: Joseph N. Ermer

Before setting off to the South Pacific. Joseph "Joe' N. Ermer got his orders to report to the Receiving Station in Philadelphia. Joe Ermer was given final leave to wrap up his affairs in Washington D.C. and take his new wife back home to Brooklyn. Click here for audio version.

"When I got to Philadelphia, I found that I was part of the nucleus of the crew. The Gunnery Officer was in charge as we were building up the crew as they reported in," Joe Ermer wrote. "When the crew was assembled, we took off for Baltimore where they were finishing converting a brand new maritime C-3 into an attack transport. They were finishing up installing all the guns, etc. I got to talk to one of the electrical foreman. It turned out that he was Mr. Augusten's (Ruth's father) nephew, Arne Ludvigsen. He invited Ruth and me to stay with them as long as I was in Baltimore. Real nice people.

After that was over, we shipped out to Norfolk to have our degaussing installed; that protects the ship from magnetic mines. From Norfolk we headed for the Panama Canal. I was assigned to the First Lieutenant. On a Navy Ship, he is something like the First Mate except he is only involved in the Ship not the personnel. That is the Exec's job. I really got along with the First Lieutenant; he was a Merchant Marine Reserve Officer - a lean, dark Irishman from Boston, Joseph J. Flaherty.

We got caught in the tail end of a hurricane near Puerto Rico; it did a bit of topside damage and gave us a chance to get our sea-legs. We went through the Canal at night. No lights. I was on anchor detail. A small boat was coming towards us to pick up a line to take it to the little locomotive. We were going too fast and couldn't see how close we were to the locks. Suddenly, the old man yells for us to drop the anchor. Down goes the anchor, almost into the small boat; but it did bring us up short before we put the Panal Canal out of action.

From Panama we went to San Pedro where we got our Pacific paint job; a uniform dull blue. Atlantic camouflage was a dazzle black and gray. We wound up in San Diego for a couple of months. They

were assembling an invasion fleet and we practiced landings on San Clemente Island. The surf was usually quite heavy and we wrecked some landing craft, which had to be replaced.

Our first enemy action was at Kwajalien; we were about three miles off the beach at the island with an airfield. It was manned by Japanese Royal Marines, most of whom were actually Koreans and they were much bigger than Japanese.

One of the big problems were the covered drainage ditches. Our troops would secure an area but would find they had overrun some of the Japanese hiding in the ditches. They would pop up, kill as many as they could before being killed themselves.

We lost our first crewman, Mc Hugh, a married man in his late 30s, with children. He had been drafted from a small town in West Virginia. We also lost a young crewman. He was walking along the deck, stepped over a winch cable, which flew up and caught him between the legs. He fell through an open hatch and landed on the concrete lowest hull deck.

Soon, invasions and all that came with war became a regular part of life for Joe Ermer and his crew mates.  Stay tuned for more on the life of a true friend, mentor, artist and role model: Joseph "Joe" N. Ermer.

Joseph "Joe" N. Ermer Memoirs (click links below to view/hear):
Celebration of Life: Joseph N. Ermer
Celebration of life: early childhood: Joseph N. Ermer
Celebration of Life: sports in the early years: Joseph N. Ermer
Celebration of Life: early years: Boy Scouts: Joseph N. Ermer
Celebration of Life: WWII part one: Joseph N. Ermer
Celebration of Life: WWII part two: Joseph N. Ermer
Celebration of Life: WWII part three: Joseph N. Ermer
Celebration of Life: WWII part four: Joseph N. Ermer