Bargain Basement War Heroes: What Did You Do in Wwii, Grandpa?

By Bernard F. Flynn

A World War II Merchant Marine combat veteran does more than just rock the boat with this book. This grandpa opens up a can of worms that should cause some squirming in high places, past, present, or future.

1. Kennedys assassination, Oswald, the State Department, Congress, and big name personalities are all featured and highlighted in Grandpas story within.

2. Accusations of a criminal law that was enacted by the wartime Congress, which removed every government benefit that the early volunteers for the Merchant Marine had and reclassified them as migrant workers.

3. Why was there acceptance of the never-ending scapegoating of these brave heroes, which was nothing but pure, self-serving lies and distortions by the press, broadcast media, politicians, and higher-ups in the military?

4. Read the absolute truth about the Merchant Marine that is related in this book. You can make up your own mind about the wartime Merchant Marine. Their wartime contribution to winning that war is incontrovertible. Why was the report to President Truman at the end of the war kept a war secret and not made available until 2009, sixty-five years later?

5. Read the authors take on the wartime start-up of his alma mater, the United States Merchant Marine Academy at Kings Point, New York, which is now considered the hidden treasure of our federal academies.

6. It is doubtful if any of our seamen, especially our African American volunteers, understood what really happened in the wartime Congress. Those thousands of widows and children who lost all benefits should force a federal disclosure of the facts, and the hope of this book is to put them all on full alert. The disclaimer and speculation is clearly indicated in the early part of this book. Read President Obamas response.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: May 11, 2015
• ISBN: 9781496948625

Bernard F. Flynn

In 1940, Bernard F. Flynn graduated from Boston English High School, the oldest public high school in the United States. In early 1942, he was accepted as an officer candidate in the newly established Merchant Marine Academy at Kings Point, New York. He sailed in deadly waters as a cadet trainee all of 1943 and graduated as a licensed officer in 1944. These ships supplied the war under combat conditions. He went active duty afloat on a US Navy cruiser in 1945 and left the navy in 1947. He got married in 1947 and raised eight children, but his youngest died at eight years old from a fall. He was employed as a sales rep in 1947 and became the president of a rope, cordage, and twine firm that he started and ran until 1993. In 1990, his wife of forty-three years died of ALS. In 1993, he remarried. His second wife of fifteen years died from a massive heart attack in 2008. He presently lives alone in a ten-room house, keeping the home fires burning. Publishing Credits The author has no other book efforts. However, he has numerous feature articles published after an interview, mostly in the Gannet News chain, local Westchester, New York, journal news. Most of these articles are included in his book, which details his seagoing tales. He created a twenty-page booklet “Of and about the Class of 1944” which was distributed in 2004 to surviving grads at a homecoming and in fundraising mailings. First it was1500 copies, then another 1000 to the 1945 class. Several of his articles were featured in Memorial Day special editions and senior citizens’ newsletters.

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© 2014, 2015 Bernard F. Flynn. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 05/11/2015

ISBN: 978-1-4969-4861-8 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4969-4863-2 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4969-4862-5 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2014920034

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To DOLLY

Whose friendship and encouraging words were just what was needed for me to write this book!

Contents

Introduction

Preface

Chapter 1     Documents, Certificates, Licenses, Etc.

Chapter 2     President Obama’s Response

Chapter 3     More about Everything

Chapter 4     Merchant Marine at War

Chapter 5     Normandy and the European Invasion Fleets

Chapter 6     The Murmansk Run

Chapter 7     The Pacific and Beyond!

Chapter 8     Battle of the Atlantic

Chapter 9     To my extended family, one and all

Chapter 10   Kings Point Wartime Class of 1944

Chapter 11   An Overview of Kings Point

Chapter 12   Author’s Prerogative—Love and Romance

Chapter 13   2010 Kings Point Graduation

Chapter 14   Veterans Administration Correspondence Regarding Combat Record

Chapter 15   Second Pearl Harbor

Chapter 16   What Is the Merchant Marine?

Chapter 17   Nine Points of Contention

Chapter 18   Bargain Basement War Heroes

Chapter 19   My Seagoing Stories

Chapter 20   The Abba Schwartz Story, Part 1

Chapter 21   The Abba Schwartz Story, Part 2

Chapter 22   House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) Internal Security

Chapter 23   The Kennedy Assassination

Chapter 24   In That Era

Chapter 25   Miscellaneous Reference Articles:

Chapter 26   Illegal Shipment of Uranium and Alexander Pregel

Chapter 27   The Mariel Boat Lift from Cuba

Chapter 28   Abba Schwartz’s Book Open Society

Chapter 29   Venona, Book about Communist Spies

Chapter 30   The Otepka Firing

Chapter 31   Otepka and the State Department

Chapter 32   Kennedy’s Detail, Book

Chapter 33   George Soros’s Open Society and Open Borders

Chapter 34   Kennedy’s Assassination

Chapter 35   Immigration

Introduction

Why, now, this book? That is a valid question, and this eighty-eight-year-old grandpa will do his best to answer it. It is directly related to the fact that I am now a widowed World War II veteran, and all my children have left the nest. Any inhibitions that I might have had concerning these topics have dissipated. However, the subject matter presented in these pages is so controversial and the content so explosive that I never could risk the notoriety prior to this. So in this twilight of my life, I want to put my story on the record for whatever value it has in that era’s history.

Anyone who lived through those cataclysmic events will realize that I am just one more voice crying in the wilderness and nothing more. Generations of serious, well-meaning, innocent, but very obviously gullible Americans should read my take on those past events, which are still resonating throughout our current history. The facts that I present here are either unknown or hidden, even to this day. Again—why?

Early in the book, I show how the American Merchant Marine participated in every invasion, and the pictures prove it. We were trained on weapons, we served aboard naval auxiliaries, we were subject to military control and discipline, and we were treated as prisoners of war by the enemy. We suffered the highest death rate of all the services and lost more oceangoing ships to enemy action than the US Navy. These were not like PT boats commanded by Jack Kennedy, but ships of 9000 tons. We were recruited and enlisted just months after the war started, and we were on deck and in the engine rooms, fully operational from the git go long before the military had even caught their breath after Pearl Harbor. Without us, the US would have lost that war!

For these achievements, many of our US government rights and benefits were taken away from us, and we were designated as migrant workers by the wartime congress with absolutely no benefits, not even for the wives and children of our American seamen who are resting on the bottom of every ocean of the world. This and more is covered in this book. There is even a possible racial discrimination angle, also covered. Read it and weep. Could this be the real reason for all this Mariner hatred? All this is covered and exposed within this book. Read it!

We were made veterans in 1988. But the questions about benefits are still being argued in the halls of Congress in this, the 111th session of Congress. What a colossal miscarriage of justice, because we are now mostly dead or dying of old age! Charges of draft dodging and worse for our 240,000 wartime Mariners are stilled being spewed after sixty-five years. This is all covered in this book. How this could happen to patriotic Americans who volunteered to die for their country and did to a greater percentage than any of our military? Oh, by the way, I went navy as an officer on a cruiser after VE Day. Read about it within these pages.

My book also covers an unknown aspect of the Kennedy assassination. Make sure you get to it in the latter part of my book. I expect that story will make me no friends in and from high places. But don’t cry for me, Argentina. I am eighty-eight, and hope this story will point fingers in the right direction. But I doubt I’ll ever see that day.

As Always, Smooth sailing

Bernie Flynn

Preface

My second wife, Doris, died of a massive heart attack on July 10, 2008. After a tenuous, lonely existence, 2009 was generally a lousy year for me with many, many concerns. Okay, call them by their right name: worries. You probably remember 2009? Don’t you? Well, like a lot of other people, I was faced with a one-man show for money woes. My second wife and I generally shared assets that fueled our extravagant trips and to fund our joint account. When my wife died, said joint account evaporated at the same time my stock market holdings dived off the stern of a sinking ship. This was all of a sudden very serious, and I did not want to sell my house. At this time, in my eighty-seventh year, I decided that my seven married children and twenty-one adult grandchildren didn’t need my annual monetary Christmas gifts because I needed it more.

That fact of life rattled around my empty head until that proverbial light bulb lit up and its radiant glow caused me to exclaim: I know what! I’ll write my World War II stories with a title like ‘What Did You Do in World War II, Grandpa?’ Those pesky grade school teachers were always giving them assignments that involved picking Grandpa’s brain about anything and everything, especially the War and the Depression and so forth. A very old sample of one of these assignments is included here. Please note the sentence Little did we know that World War II was just around the corner. I always cooperated. A lot of that material and stuff was sent to me after my parents died, along with my old foot locker with a Liberty ship stenciled on the lid, my name in block letters. A gold mine of documents that I immediately recognized as being great fillers for pages in my newly decided Christmas presents to them.

Write I did! Just in time at that. After I bought all that ink and stuff, like guru help, I think I should have given them money after all because Staples awarded me a prize for being a best customer. That tells you something.

There is more—much more. In fact, even I was surprised to realize how much I was involved in; I could still quote all this seaman’s tales chapter and verse but didn’t. The subject matter was more than controversial, so I could never allow myself to subject my family to possible notoriety. Therefore, I sat on it all these years. But now I’m going beyond my original rendition, which was strictly family-oriented, and have committed myself to mount the soapbox. Will anyone salute it when I will run it up the flagpole? I wonder?

That limited booklet is no more and now is a vehicle for all my ruminations. However, it is still this grandpa’s story.

You can call it whatever you want, including a kook’s conspiracy theory, rabble rousing, or ranting and raving. There are many featured players: Jack Kennedy, Mr. and Mrs. Roosevelt, Justice Frankfurter, and the whole State Department, and especially the Bureau of Security and Consular Affairs.

This book has many topics and covers several subjects. The first section, which is more than half the book, covers war, ships, romance, Congress then and now, and general maritime-related subjects, an exposé of many things that occurred during the War, all described as part one. These events are absolute fact, having been experienced by me. That part and introduces a Kings Point section mate of mine named Abba Schwartz who eventually became Jack Kennedy’s assistant secretary of state.

My involvement in part two is admittedly speculation backed up by many years of watching Abba’s career and is supported by copies of various printed newspaper articles that could be interpreted as facts. Tying these facts together is the substance of part two.

As an eighty-eight year old World War II veteran of the Merchant Marine and US Navy, I no longer am worried about notoriety, so hang onto your hats—steady as she goes, rough water ahead! Don’t worry, there is much more that has just as much impact. This is about a bill that is still in Congress—very controversial. It was and still is about a criminal act by the Congress of World War II.

The overall title of this book still stands as Grandpa’s story. However, that title is a mild version of what is really discussed within these pages. The original presentation was family-oriented and didn’t cover the rest of the story as now revealed and made public, so to speak. That content is covered numerically below.

1. A look back at the Kennedy assassination from somebody like me, who could have been a witness in the McCarthy hearings had they known I existed. Read my story and ponder. Even at this late date I’m still pondering. Read on and connect your own dots.

2. Marvel at the disgusting and totally untrue disinformation about the World War II Merchant Marine that was promulgated by the usual suspects named within. Why?

3. Criminal laws passed by the wartime congress against the American Merchant Marine. This took place sixteen months after the war started.

4. These same Merchant Marine veterans of World War II are still being dissed by the current Congress based on the same old lies that can be disproved by reading Admiral Land’s final report to President Truman at the close of the war in 1946. This report documents the American Merchant Marine’s unbelievable achievements, an essential factor in winning that war. It never ceases to amaze me that it took sixty-five years to release this report. Why? This grandpa’s story chronicles some of these facts.

5. Finally, an upbeat, refreshing, and pleasant change of pace that recounts the inevitable establishing of a Merchant Marine Academy by the federal government during the war to provide officers for the massive number of ships they were building. This academy was modeled along the same lines as other federal academies such as Annapolis, West Point, and at that time, the Coast Guard Academy. The birth of this academy was not without its headaches, false starts, and a vocal and dedicated enemy’s list. Sixty-six years later it is an upstanding, successful undertaking that should make all Americans proud. The United States Merchant Marine academy at Kings Point, New York, has been described as the unknown treasure of federal academies. I am proud to say that I was joined at the hip to the start of this academy in 1942. And I paid my dues as a graduate officer on merchant ships throughout the war, and to complete the picture, as an active duty communications officer on a flagship cruiser in the US Navy. Kings Point’s story is reflected in these pages.

6. To validate these recollections of mine and to enhance my grandpa’s story, I have included many of my seafaring stories that were never previously disclosed. My wartime at sea brought me to many places I never dreamed about just a few short years before. I sailed as a cadet midshipman or licensed officer from 1942 to 1945, during the height of the war. We carried supplies to England, France, Sicily, Italy, and North Africa. Our ships were enemy targets. Some of my stories are personal but interesting, so I have included them for posterity. There will never be enough time or paper to record everything. Fiddler’s Green is my next port of call.

Casualties

The United States Merchant Marine provided the greatest sealift in history, between the production army at home and the fighting forces scattered around the globe in World War II. The prewar total of 55,000 experienced Mariners was increased to over 215,000 through US Maritime Service training programs.

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SS Byron D. Benson, torpedoed on April 4, 1942, off North Carolina.

Ten members of the crew of thirty-seven lost their lives.

Merchant ships faced danger from submarines, mines, armed raiders and destroyers, aircraft, kamikazes, and the elements. About 8,300 Mariners were killed at sea; 12,000 wounded, of whom at least 1,100 died from their wounds; and 663 men and women were taken prisoner. (The estimated total of those killed is 9,300.) Some were blown to death, some incinerated, some drowned, some froze, and some starved. Among them, Sixty-Six died in prison camps or aboard Japanese ships while being transported to other camps, and Thirty-One ships vanished without a trace to a watery grave.

One in twenty-six Mariners serving aboard merchant ships in World War II died in the line of duty. The Merchant Marine suffered a greater percentage of war-related deaths than all other US services. Casualties were kept secret during the war to keep information about their success from the enemy and to attract and keep mariners at sea.

Newspapers carried essentially the same story each week: Two medium-sized Allied ships sunk in the Atlantic. In reality, the average for 1942 was thirty-three Allied ships sunk each week.¹

Chapter 1

Documents, Certificates, Licenses, Etc.

This section may look like an ego trip for me, but that is far from the facts of my enlistment in the Merchant Marine in 1942. The reason that I am including all this stuff is to expose the absolute calumny that was aimed at the Merchant Marine. We were recruited very early in the War. Everything we were trained for was orchestrated by the US government and was military in nature.

Does anything in these papers suggest or exhibit anything but war participation and military orientation? When I and others like me went in, not only we were there first, we also were held over long after the war was over, and we were still having our ships blown up by mines. How did all that war material and manpower get there or return? We did more than our share in winning that war!

So the wartime Congress of the United States took all of the limited benefits we had and effectively changed our status to migrant workers, with no benefits. This happened sixteen months after the war started, not only for us, but also for the widows and families of seamen lying dead on ocean bottoms throughout the world. This was done with no notification, as required by law, and didn’t come to light until after the war! Read what follows to get my take on what I think actually happened.

What I am about to propose is a conclusion I reached only after we elected a black president. I had previously written a long, tortuous essay entitled Nine Points of Contention, subtitled with the sentence Clarification and rebuttal of ‘negatives’ attributed to World War II Merchant Marine as justification for denial of benefits. This article is included in the pages that follow, in chapter 17.

I’m also jumping the gun by putting this material up front. So please bear with me; it dawned on me only after Obama was elected president. At that time, point number 8 suddenly lit that proverbial light bulb in my head. So I followed the request for a letter acknowledging a show of support for the H.R. 23 (112th): Belated Thank You to the Merchant Mariners of World War II Act of 2011 Bill then and still in Congress by the Just Compensation Committee.

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Chapter 2

President Obama’s Response

MY LETTER TO PRESIDENT OBAMA

JUST COMPENSATION BILL IN CONGRESS FOR

US MERCHANT MARINE VETERANS FROM WORLD WAR II

First of all, I do not expect anyone to read the enclosed booklet except for a quick reference. I acknowledge it to be pretty wordy and scary stuff. However, President Obama, who has a congressional record of supporting the previously rejected bills, should be apprised of this paragraph in my booklet based on his young age alone. When this stuff was written, it never emphasized point 8, item F in my booklet entitled Nine Points of Contention (enclosed).

F––I hate to enlighten all you good people, but there was one more culprit that resided in Congress, and that was Jim Crow. He was part and parcel of a culture of segregation, to coin a phrase. When the war started, Jim Crow was alive and well in all the military services. However, not the Merchant Marine. I sailed on merchant ships for the whole war, and we always had seamen of color. They were as good as and sometimes better than any of us white folks. History will attest that the mere fact they were in the Merchant Marine raised the hackles of an elite body of senators and congress people that wanted to return those people to their migrant worker status; so they did. God help us all!

I now believe that this paragraph is the key to everything that happened during the war, especially in Congress, which, as history will show, was dominated by the Southern bloc, a fact that is critical to this contention of mine. The Axis submarines just about won this war, sinking over 500 ships within sight of the East Coast, all the way from New Orleans to Halifax. After Pearl Harbor, Churchill and Roosevelt dictated an emergency buildup of ships and needed to recruit a massive number of people to man them. I was one of the suckers that enlisted. The South, which was totally segregated and very violent in some cases (such as the KKK) started to see many black men joining the Merchant Marine to escape the deplorable life in the South. This was duplicated in the North, where most blacks who came from the South were now living in the slums of New York City, Boston, Chicago, and other big cities. The South, which had inherited this segregated culture lock, stock, and barrel, were totally against giving these runaway blacks anything like veterans benefits. So all seamen lost everything under this figurative whip when they decided to make us migrant workers with no benefits.

N.B. I went on active duty in US Navy after VE day. Therefore, I don’t benefit if the bill does pass.

THE WHITE HOUSE

WASHINGTON

October 6, 2009

Dear Friend:

Thank you for writing regarding the United States Merchant Marine. I appreciate hearing from you.

Members of the United States Merchant Marine have always bolstered our Nation’s security and our economy. During America’s earliest days, these patriots took up arms alongside the Continental Navy to help win the Revolutionary War. Since that historic victory, they have served bravely as the United States has faced threats ranging from war to piracy. Merchant Mariners have also made significant contributions to humanitarian efforts and our leadership in the global economy. In times of crisis and calm, our Nation continues to rely on their unique capabilities.

My Administration is working to support Merchant Mariners. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funds $1.5 billion in grants to strengthen links between maritime and surface operations. My 2010 Budget expands funding for the United States Merchant Marine Academy by $12 million. And in honor of those who helped keep our Nation secure in World War II, the Department of Veterans Affairs provides benefits to certain Merchant Mariners whose ocean-going service was designated active duty.

To learn more about benefits provided to Merchant Mariners, you may call the Department of Veterans Affairs at 1-800-827-1000. I also invite you to read my proclamation of National Maritime Day, which can be found at: www.WhiteHouse.gov.

Again, thank you for writing.

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PRESIDENT OBAMA’S LETTER

I quote from our chairman Ian Allision’s letter to all members:

Earlier this year (2009) I asked all 11,000 members on our mailing list to write a letter to President Obama to help get our bill s663 released from the Senate Committee on Veterans Affairs for a full floor vote to override Senator Akaka’s stranglehold on our bill.

I took the bait and wrote a drastic letter to President Obama in which I quoted my point 8 about Jim Crow and outlining my contention as to why Congress did this to 240,000 of their fellow countrymen. The letter is included for your perusal. I also received a letter from President Obama in return, which is also included here.

This is a continuation of Ian Allison’s letter to we eighty-year-old-plus World War II Merchant Marine veterans. I quote:

I am sure many thousands of our Merchant Marine Combat veterans answered the call and wrote President Obama. We saw only two or three replies from the president’s office until recently, when literally thousands of you are receiving letters from President Obama about the help he is giving to all of our veterans. It proves that he thought enough of the Merchant Marine veterans to keep us posted. Did my letter predate the above letters? My letter was dated D Day (June) 2009. Does the four-and-a-half-month time lag for his answer to me suggest complete