The Sailor's Homer: The Life and Times of Richard McKenna, Author of The Sand Pebbles

By Dennis L Noble

There are virtually no biographies of naval enlisted personnel, making Dennis L. Noble’s book wholly unique. Richard McKenna was an enlisted sailor for twenty-two years, from the late 1930s to the end of the Korean War. Like most of his shipmates, he was one of many “faceless” enlisted sailors. McKenna, who eventually became a writer, did not hide the fact that, like the proverbial sailor, he enjoyed going ashore to such colorful-sounding establishments in China as “Nagasaki Joe’s.” Nor did he hide his interest in Japanese and Chinese women. While all of this would seem to indicate McKenna had become the stereotypical enlisted sailor, he did not fit neatly into this niche. Two important qualities made McKenna stand out among the many enlisted sailors. The first was his indomitable will, his desire to rise up against seemingly great odds and continue onward even when events seemed to conspire against him. The average person might have given up and moved on without trying to overcome the many adversities placed in their path. The second distinguishing quality was his desire to be educated and to write. McKenna set out to record his experiences in a novel. His love of machinery, his acceptance by the sailors he served with, his experiences ashore with crews at their normal haunts, his interest in other cultures, and his natural intelligence all influenced his writing. For the first time readers could understand the typical life of a sailor. His book, The Sand Pebbles, became a classic in naval literature and a major motion picture starring Steve McQueen in 1966. While McKenna focused largely on the enlisted force, his work applies to anyone in the military, especially those in the sea services. The Sailor’s Homer, in addition to giving context to McKenna’s writings, includes his short story “Hour of Panic,” which is difficult to find in its entirety. This biography offers more than just a frame for McKenna’s work. It provides a fuller perspective on the life of all enlisted sailors of his era, showcasing the oft-forgotten good alongside the bad. Cdr. Thomas Cutler, USN (Ret.), author of A Sailor's History of the U.S. Navy, best sums up Richard McKenna’s life and work: they are “a virtual training ground for those who must encounter other cultures in their travels and a study in human character with a particular relevance to those who wear uniforms.”"

• Language: English
• Publisher: Naval Institute Press
• Release date: Nov 15, 2015
• ISBN: 9781612518961

Book preview

Titles in the Series

With Commodore Perry to Japan: The Journal of William Speiden Jr., 1852–1855

Whips to Walls: Naval Discipline from Flogging to Progressive-Era Reform at Portsmouth Prison

Crisis in the Mediterranean: Naval Competition and Great Power Politics, 1904–1914

Home Squadron: The U.S. Navy on the North Atlantic Station

New Perspectives on Maritime History and Nautical Archaeology

James C. Bradford and Gene A. Smith, editors

Rivers, seas, oceans, and lakes have provided food and transportation for man since the beginning of time. As avenues of communication they link the peoples of the world, continuing to the present to transport more commodities and trade goods than all other methods of conveyance combined. The New Perspectives on Maritime History and Nautical Archaeology series is devoted to exploring the significance of the earth’s waterways while providing lively and important books that cover the spectrum of maritime history and nautical archaeology broadly defined. The series includes works that focus on the role of canals, rivers, lakes, and oceans in history; on the economic, military, and political use of those waters; on the exploration of waters and their secrets by seafarers, archaeologists, oceanographers, and other scientists; and on the people, communities, and industries that support maritime endeavors. Limited by neither geography nor time, volumes in the series contribute to the overall understanding of maritime history and can be read with profit by both general readers and specialists alike.

This book has been brought to publication with the generous assistance of Marguerite and Gerry Lenfest.

Naval Institute Press

291 Wood Road

Annapolis, MD 21402

© 2015 by Dennis L. Noble

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

ISBN: 978-1-61251-896-1 (eBook)

Print editions meet the requirements of ANSI/NISO z39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper).

232221201918171615987654321

First printing

Gilgamesh, in Fossil Relief, reprinted with permission from Brian Turner, Here, Bullet (Farmington: Alice James Books, 2005), 53.

Hour of Panic story © SEPS licensed by Curtis Licensing Indianapolis, IN.

All rights reserved.

For José Madarieta—this book could not have been written without his knowledge and assistance.

And

Dr. Vincent Patton III, EdD, MCPOCG, U.S. Coast Guard (Ret.), who has given me help, encouragement, and friendship over the years.

History is a cloudy mirror made of dirt

and bone and ruin. And love? Loss?

These are questions we must answer

by war and famine and pestilence, and again

by touch and kiss, because each age must learn

This is the path of the sun’s journey by night.

BRIAN TURNER, Gilgamesh, in Fossil Relief, in Here, Bullet

CONTENTS

Preface

Acknowledgments

1.The Desert

2.First Assignments

3.USS Gold Star

4.Asian Liberties and Stories

5.USS Tulsa and USS Asheville

6.USS Edsall and USS Luzon

7.USS Mount Vernon

8.Swallowing the Anchor

9.A New Life

Epilogue

Appendix: Hour of Panic, a Short Story by Richard McKenna

Notes

Selected Bibliography

Index

PREFACE

In 1962 a first-time author burst upon the literary scene. Richard McKenna’s novel The Sand Pebbles took place in a U.S. Navy gunboat operating on China’s mighty Yangtze River during the turmoil of the 1920s. The novel resonated so well with the reading public that in 1964 it was made into a movie. McKenna’s novel is arguably not only the best fictional account of the upheaval taking place in China but also one of the best depictions of enlisted life on the old China Station. McKenna brought unusual qualifications to his writing: he served as a career enlisted man in the Navy for twenty-two years, ten of which were in Asia, including serving in a Yangtze River gunboat. Upon retirement, McKenna earned a degree at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and then turned to writing, using some of his life experiences in his fiction. Even at a cursory glance, the life of Richard McKenna was as interesting as his novel.

My interest in McKenna began early in the 1970s while I browsed the shelves of a public library. It took only a few minutes of perusing The Sand Pebbles for me to decide to read the 597-page volume. At that time I had served seventeen years in the enlisted force of the U.S. Coast Guard and recognized that McKenna not only knew about enlisted naval service but also seemed to have captured the lives of sailors serving in an unusual ship and location in China. Like most people in the United States, I knew little about the U.S. military in China before World War II. Curious, I searched for nonfiction books on the subject and turned up only two volumes: Kemp Tolley’s classic Yangtze Patrol: The U.S. Navy in China (1971) and Charles G. Finney’s The Old China Hands (1961), which examined Finney’s time with the U.S. Army’s 15th Infantry at Tientsin (Tianjin), China, in the 1920s. The search did yield a few articles published in the U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings, but there appeared almost nothing readily available in English.

The U.S. military in China and the paucity of material on this subject continued to pique my interest to such an extent that shortly after my retirement from the U.S. Coast Guard, I decided to return to university. My goal was to earn a PhD in history and write my dissertation on the U.S. military in China from 1901 to 1937. I chose this period to show the military’s actions between World Wars I and II and the armed forces’ views of China and the Chinese at a time when various political forces were attempting to remake the country. These actions and the military’s take on China and the Chinese at the time are part and parcel of McKenna’s The Sand Pebbles. When I finished my dissertation, I had a great appreciation for McKenna’s novel and wanted to know more about the author, who had otherwise been reduced to just a few bibliographical lines on the book’s jacket.

Like his novel, Richard McKenna had fired my curiosity, and I decided to write a biography of the man. I chose to tell his life’s story mainly because little is known about the enlisted forces of the U.S. military. So little is known because enlisted men and women—especially those serving before World War II—rarely wrote diaries or left collections of correspondence. Years after he had retired from the Navy, Richard McKenna wrote that his shipmates in his first ship, Gold Star (AK 12), seldom wrote or received letters. McKenna, with his long service in a still little-known region of the world and his obvious writing ability, seemed the perfect subject to help illuminate the world of enlisted people in the Navy.

The second reason for my interest in McKenna was personal: McKenna’s life in many ways paralleled my life. McKenna had retired from the enlisted force of a naval service, as had I. He had attended university using the World War II GI Bill; I used the Vietnam War GI Bill to attend Purdue University. He had decided near the end of his service years to become a writer of fiction, whereas near the end of my active duty, I began work in nonfiction. Lastly, McKenna had won first place in an annual writing contest in Proceedings; I placed in Honorable Mention.

With the goal of researching the life of a career enlisted sailor to shed more light on the enlisted personnel of the naval forces, I began looking for material on the author of The Sand Pebbles. I quickly came up against the classic obstacle responsible for the blanks in military history regarding enlisted personnel: McKenna seemed not to have left any papers. I examined the archival collections at the Naval Historical Center, now known as the Naval History and Heritage Command (NHHC), and found nothing that could be considered a major primary source—diaries, manuscript collections, and letters—and support a biography. At the start of my research, my progress came to a halt. I decided the biography could not be accomplished, so I moved on to other projects in maritime history. Nevertheless, when I visited Washington, D.C., in pursuit of other subjects, I continued to check the collections of the NHHC for material on McKenna, to no avail. Finally, after a detailed literature search, I found a handful of secondary material on the Navy in China and McKenna, including Professor Robert Shenk’s introduction to the 1984 reprint of The Sand Pebbles in the Naval Institute Press’ Classics of Naval Literature series and a few books that had gathered McKenna’s speeches and short stories. These few sources allowed me enough information to write a short article on McKenna that was published in the U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings in 2002. Thinking this would be my last effort in telling McKenna’s story, I then returned to researching and writing about maritime history, but I continued to check the NHHC’s holdings during my many research trips to Washington, D.C.

Shortly after my article was published, I received an e-mail from a Mountain Home, Idaho, librarian, asking if she could reprint the article; she wanted to show the residents of Mountain Home something about a local author. I directed her to the editor of Proceedings, who gave her permission to use the article and also sent her copies of the Naval Institute’s 1984 edition of The Sand Pebbles. I returned to other projects. It wasn’t long after this, however, that I received a letter from José Madarieta, an English teacher at the Richard McKenna Charter High School in Mountain Home. José told me he had established a museum and collection dedicated to Richard McKenna in the school’s library, and he invited me to visit. The invitation came just as I was finishing a project that had taken me to Ketchum, Idaho. The route home from Ketchum took me near Mountain Home, and I agreed to stop at the school.

During my visit to the Richard McKenna Charter High School, I learned how Madarieta had come to establish the museum and collection. He had been instrumental in having the charter high school named after Richard McKenna, and in the process of naming the school, he had made contact with the sister of McKenna’s deceased widow. The sister told José she had boxes of material concerning McKenna stored in a shed behind her home in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Madarieta received a grant to travel to North Carolina to examine the boxes, and he returned with two hundred pounds of papers. Not only did José undertake the difficult task of organizing the collection; he also conducted interviews with the people who had known McKenna during his childhood and adolescence in Mountain Home and sought out any possible source dealing with Richard McKenna.

The collection as organized by José contains material on McKenna’s high school years, drafts and copies of typed speeches, articles and typed drafts of The Sand Pebbles, and a novel in progress at the time of his death. In the correspondence section, there are letters written to McKenna after the success of The Sand Pebbles from his classmates at Mountain Home and one teacher he respected at the College of Idaho, along with Richard’s responses to many of these letters. With two exceptions, the largest part of the correspondence section contains letters McKenna received from former shipmates and readers after the publication of his novel. Many of these correspondents were Navy people and shipmates, but others are businessmen, missionaries, and the sons and daughters of missionaries and businessmen who all had had experience in China. McKenna responded to many of these letters and in some cases had extended discussions about China. The two exceptions, as may be expected, are letters to and from McKenna’s agent, Rogers Terrill, and the editor of The Sand Pebbles, Marion S. Wyeth Jr., at Harper & Row. In short, when I surveyed the McKenna Collection at the Richard McKenna Charter High School, I knew I had seen the largest collection of primary material on Richard McKenna in the United States. It was enough material to begin work on the biography I had always wanted to write.

With the Richard McKenna Collection in hand, I next tried to obtain another vital collection: McKenna’s Navy service record. Federal privacy laws forbid those other than immediate family members from viewing a service record for at least seventy-five years after the service member’s death. With all of McKenna’s immediate family deceased, I contacted my U.S. representative, Derek Kilmer (D-Washington), in an attempt to obtain the record. Thanks to work undertaken by Nicholas Jay Carr, a member of the congressman’s staff, and Congressman Kilmer’s letter on my behalf, I received a full copy of McKenna’s service record. The service record, like the McKenna Collection, was pivotal in writing this biography.

Robert A. Caro, author of a magnificent multivolume work on President Lyndon B. Johnson, has spoken of the value of place in a person’s life. James L. Haley, author of Wolf: The Lives of Jack London (2010), writes of the importance of "research around [Haley’s emphasis] the subject. I followed this excellent advice in observing Richard McKenna’s life. For example, McKenna spent at least seventeen years at sea, and for him, ships were home (place); therefore, an overview of the ships he served in and their importance in his life are essential in his biography. McKenna’s service in China is also important; thus, I have provided an overview of the China Station to satisfy Haley’s research around" requirement. I also discuss the turmoil in China during McKenna’s tour of duty in the Middle Kingdom, especially when he served in a river gunboat in the late 1930s and just before 7 December 1941. At this time several wars were ongoing in China: the civil war between Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist Party and Mao Tse-tung’s Communist Party and the Sino-Japanese War between both Chinese parties and the Japanese. The Sino-Japanese War began in 1937 and morphed into World War II, but the Chinese in fact seemed to spend more time fighting each other. An overview of these conflicts occurring around McKenna is important here.

In the years before, during, and after McKenna’s time in the Middle Kingdom, Mandarin Chinese names were romanized under a system known as Wade-Giles. Since the advent of Mao Tse-tung’s government, the system of Pinyin has been in use in the People’s Republic of China. I use the Wade-Giles system because it was used during McKenna’s time. To prevent confusion, I have placed the Pinyin spelling in parentheses when a term is first used in the narrative: for instance, Tientsin (Tianjin), Peking (Beijing), and Mao Tse-tung (Mao Zedong).

Also, the Navy’s system of abbreviations for ranks has changed throughout the years. For example, in 1933 the abbreviation listed in the USS Gold Star logbook for lieutenant commander was Lieut. Comdr., but by the 1950s the USS Van Valkenburgh logbook used the abbreviation CDR for commander. A chief petty officer in the machinist’s mate rating was abbreviated as CMM in 1940, but by 1950 it was MMC. To avoid confusion, I have used the contemporary standard for all officer ranks and enlisted ratings.

Finally, I have used the twenty-four-hour system for recording times: 2:00 a.m. is 0200 and 2:00 p.m. is 1400. This system was used during McKenna’s time in the military and is still in use in the modern-day military.

If this biography of Richard McKenna helps keep his name alive in the annals of naval history and sheds light on the little-known enlisted sailors of his era as they were, then the book will have served its purpose.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This book could not have been written without the significant assistance of the individuals listed in no particular order in this paragraph. I would like to thank James and Louise Crain, who gave the McKenna papers to the Richard McKenna Charter High School, in Mountain Home, Idaho, to preserve the story and memory of Richard McKenna, and José Madarieta, of the Richard McKenna Charter High School, who established the Richard McKenna Collection. Mark Mollan, Navy/Maritime Reference, Archives I, Textual Services Branch, went above and beyond the call of duty to cheerfully track down information on McKenna. His attitude makes digging in the National Archives a pleasure. Candace Clifford, Alexandria, Virginia, spent much time in the holdings of the National Archives digitizing records for writing this book, not only producing outstanding images but also making sure they were properly cited; she always alerted me to extra material and contacted me if she had any questions. U.S. representative Derek Kilmer (D-Washington) and staff member Nicholas Jay Carr paved the way for me to obtain McKenna’s personnel record. Dr. Niels J. Zussblatt, management analyst, National Personnel Records Center, National Archives and Records Administration, St. Louis, Missouri, personally photocopied Richard McKenna’s service record.

At Mountain Home Principal Larry Slade and the teachers, staff, and students of the Richard McKenna Charter High School made my research enjoyable. I would especially like to thank James Alexander; John Hiler, Mountain Home historian; Mir Seyedbagheri, Elmore County extension agent; and Louise House, library director.

I would also like to thank Paul A. Cogan, Archives II, Reference Section, National Archives and Records Administration.

At the U.S. Coast Guard, in no particular order, I would like to thank Capt. Michael F. White; Capt. John Koster; Cdr. Thomas Griffitts; Michiko Iwata; Capt. Casey J. White; CMC Michael Ellis; MCPOCG Michael Leavitt and YNCM Bobbie Sisto of MCPOCG Leavitt’s office; CMC Jason Vanderhaden; Dr. Robert Browning; Dr. William Thiesen; and MCPOCG Vincent Patton III, USCG (Ret.).

At the U.S. Navy, in no particular order, I would like to thank James Allen Knechtmann, senior reference librarian; Nellie S. Moffitt of the Navy General Library Program; Stephanie Pezzella; Lt. Callie Ferrari, USN; Lt. Cdr. Heidi Lenzini, USN; and Michael G. Rhode.

Loren Alice Noble read drafts of the manuscript, accompanied me on research trips to Mountain Home, and had to listen to my continual stories of McKenna. Dr. Thomas McCurdy and Gregg Shield offered outstanding suggestions that greatly improved the work.

Tracy Ellen Smith produced the great map for this book.

Others who helped include Bill Wells, Truman Strobridge, Karen S. Kilgore, and Wendy Oak, interlibrary loan librarians at the North Olympic Library System, Port Angeles, Washington. Gary and Jan Holmquist of Port Angeles introduced me to David Tamaki, who helped with translation of Japanese material. Yoichi Hiokata of Peninsula College also provided me with excellent translations of Japanese material. I would like to thank the John McCulloch Tuesday Lunch Group at Port Angeles, Washington—John McCulloch, Dr. Thomas McCurdy, Carl Gay, Jim McEntire, and Ray Gruver—for putting up with sea stories and tales of McKenna.

Series editor Gene Allen Smith first recognized the importance of this biography, as did his coeditor James C. Bradford. At the Naval Institute Press, acquisitions editor Adam Nettina went above and beyond the call of duty to help me. Others at the press contributed to the publication of this book, including Rick Russell, Susan Corrado, Nick Lyle, Claire Noble, and Judy Heise. Also, copy editor Julie Kimmel did outstanding work.

All of these people—and those not listed, who I hope will forgive me for my oversight—made this biography a pleasure to write. Any omissions or factual errors are mine.

CHAPTER 1

THE DESERT

In 1966 a Hollywood epic captivated moviegoers across the United States. Directed by Robert Wise and starring Steve McQueen and Candice Bergen, The Sand Pebbles ran a long 182 minutes. The production introduced many Americans to the little-known China Station of the 1920s by focusing on an enlisted sailor serving in a U.S. Navy river gunboat on the Yangtze River. The novel of the same name, written by Richard McKenna, is arguably the best fictional work about U.S. sailors serving in the Middle Kingdom. Historian George V. Traylor notes that McKenna’s book, although not a work of history, is an excellent source for those who rarely read history to understand the 1920s in China and life as an enlisted sailor during those years. Richard McKenna’s life was as interesting as his novel, which allowed a glimpse at a career enlisted sailor’s service in an era that ended at the outbreak of World War II. McKenna, however, served from the 1930s until his retirement in 1953 and then began a new career as a novelist, drawing inspiration from his experiences during his many years in the Navy.¹

Richard Milton McKenna was born on 9 May 1913 in the small southwestern Idaho community of Mountain Home in Elmore County. The county is bounded by two waterways—the Snake River in the south and the Boise River in the north—and encompasses more than three thousand square miles, more than twice the area of Rhode Island. Sixty percent of the land is mountainous, with altitudes ranging from twenty-five hundred feet to more than ninety-seven hundred feet, more than two thousand feet higher than any mountain in the East Coast’s Appalachian Mountains. The northern portion of the county is in the high country but slopes in a southerly direction to flatter land where cattle ranching, sheep herding, and other small agriculture predominate. Mountain Home falls into the climatic classification of semiarid.

In the early years of Elmore County, the aptly named Rattlesnake Junction, nestled in a mountainous area some seven miles northeast of the current Mountain Home, boasted a post office. People living in the settlement not too surprisingly changed the name of their town to Mountain Home, hoping to encourage more people into the area. When the Oregon Short Line Railroad entered the flatter desert area of the region in 1883, the post office moved to a more accessible location and thus began the present Mountain Home.

Mrs. Minnie Howard came to Mountain Home on 10 August 1890. Forty-nine years later, she recalled the village . . . was a very desolate place, no trees or lawns and very little vegetation. According to early residents, the town seemed to live up to the western frontier type featured in early dime novels or something the prolific western novelist Zane Grey might use as a model for one of his stories. Take, for example, F. W. Boyd, who journeyed westward from Ohio to California and eventually arrived in Mountain Home on 24 September 1893. Settling into his new home, Boyd attended a dance held in a bar and dance hall. He noticed a posted sign demanding cowboys leave their guns at the bar while dancing. During the evening there were 45 [pistols] behind the bar at one time.²

John Hiler, local historian of Mountain Home, points out that the town grew slowly, with the surrounding countryside made for horse and sheep country. Furthermore, the town sat at the crossroads for the mines of the region. Between 1911 and 1912 the population rose to twenty-two hundred. Mountain Home during this period could claim six churches, one school, four physicians, three dentists, eleven lawyers, and two newspapers. Located over a water table at a depth of twelve feet, Mountain Home used numerous windmills to pump its water and earned the sobriquet the town of windmills.³

Beginning in the 1890s sheep and wool became one of the major industries of Elmore County. This and the railroad assured Mountain Home of some importance. In the early twentieth century, wool had three major shipping points within the United States: Boston, Mountain Home, and Utah. Buyers from Boston undertook the long journey to Mountain Home to purchase wool. The raising of sheep required someone willing to spend long periods with the animals as they wandered through the sagebrush, foothills, mountains, and forests of Elmore County. Furthermore, the work involved periods of unemployment between when the lambs were shipped to market and when the ewes gave birth to a new crop of sheep. Although sheep herding paid relatively well, few cared to endure the loneliness involved and the periods of unemployment. Into this niche in Elmore County, and most of the western United States, came the Basques, an early sea people from Europe.

The first Basques in the area were bachelors who saved their money and returned to Europe. The bachelors stayed in hotels, establishments built for sheepherders, where they could feel at home among others speaking their native language. When Basque women came to the area, it was usually as domestic help in the hotels. Some Basque men managed to earn enough to own herds and married the daughters of the hotel owners or the women working in the hotels. Thus the Basques worked themselves into the fabric of Elmore County and Mountain Home.⁴

Mountain Home’s importance rose during the Spanish-American War of 1898 and World War I. The area helped supply the Army with horses and wool for uniforms, and warehouses for storing wool lined the railroad tracks in Mountain Home. Even after the end of the Great War, the town continued to ship its horses and sheep.⁵

Richard McKenna was born at his home at 204 East Fourth Street, Mountain Home. His maternal grandfather, Joseph Ertz, had left Germany to avoid the army and settled in Tennessee. Facing further conscription at the outset of the U.S. Civil War, he walked all the way to Chicago to avoid serving in the Confederate Army. Joseph married Mary Burkhard while living in Chicago but then moved to the Nebraska sand-hill country near Ogallala to avoid the Union Army. Anna Lucy Ertz, Richard’s mother, grew up in this rugged area when it was still pretty wild Indian and cowboy country.⁶

Richard’s paternal grandfather took land in the John Day Valley in eastern Oregon. The settlers were still fighting Indians around there when Richard’s father, Milton, was young. McKenna recalled his father ran away from home when he was eleven and grew up in cow camps in Eastern Oregon.⁷

Milton Lewis McKenna married Anna Lucy Ertz on 18 June 1912 at Mountain Home. Anna, who later in life began using her middle name more frequently, was a devoted Christian Scientist for most of her life, and this was the only religious instruction Richard received while living in Mountain Home. Richard was the eldest of four boys; Archie, the second son; Donald, the third son; and Roderick, the youngest, made up the rest of the McKenna family. The McKennas lived in Mountain Home but eventually moved to a five-acre farm in Canyon Creek, just outside town. Five acres in the high desert is not a great deal of land in the Mountain Home region, where the controlling factors are water and soil. The soils were calcareous, that is, overloaded with calcium, and crops on the McKenna holdings required about 22 inches of water. To put these statistics in perspective and understand the problems Richard’s father faced as a small farmer near Mountain Home, the