One of the Finest . . .: World War Ii Service and U.S. Navy Career Of

By Robert D. Samsot

This book features Robert D. Samsots World War II memoir and diary; his pre-war and post-war career in naval intelligence in New Orleans, where he investigated security risks, sabotage, espionage, and counter-subversion; and additional information about his background and professional life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Apr 5, 2017
• ISBN: 9781543412642

Robert D. Samsot

During World War II, Robert D. Samsot served as U.S. Naval Liaison to the Fifth Fighter Command of the U.S. Air Force in New Guinea and the Philippines. He briefed the Commanding General and Staff on all amphibious operations where fighter planes of the Command provided cover and where naval forces were involved; plotted the dawn and dusk positions of naval convoys and movements of task forces to keep them from being hit by friendly fire; and kept commanding officers advised of intelligence data from naval and Fighter Command sources. As U.S. forces moved westward through the Pacific, he participated in operations over a wide area, from Nadzab, New Guinea to Aitape, Humboldt Bay, Tanahmerah Bay, Wakde Island, Noemfoor Island, Owi Island, and finally Leyte, Mindoro and Fort Stotsenburg in the Philippine Islands.

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One of the Finest …

World War II Service and U.S. Navy Career of

Robert D. Samsot

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Copyright © 2017 by Kathleen Samsot Hawk.

Library of Congress Control Number:   2017904987

ISBN:      Hardcover      978-1-5434-1266-6

      Softcover      978-1-5434-1265-9

      eBook         978-1-5434-1264-2

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

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Rev. date: 04/05/2017

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CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

WORLD WAR II MEMOIR AND DIARY

EXCERPTS FROM RDS WARTIME LETTERS

EDUCATION, WARTIME SERVICE

RECORD AND POST-WAR CAREER

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INTRODUCTION

Kathleen Samsot Hawk

A friend who served with my father in the U.S. Navy during World War II remembered him as a fine man, highly intelligent, kind, considerate, and intensely loyal to his friends. Robert D. Samsot was also intensely loyal to the United States of America and to the U.S. Navy. He considered it a privilege and not just an obligation to serve his country, on active duty with the Navy during World War II, and then afterward as a civilian Naval Intelligence specialist.

He had long dreamed of being in the Navy. As a teenager, he had won an appointment to the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis. But he was unprepared for the rigors of his mathematics classes, an essential for an aspiring officer, and he washed out after just a year.

It was an enormous disappointment – but he dutifully returned to New Orleans, attended Loyola University, received a law degree, and worked for a law firm and then a maritime insurance agency. But the law never won his heart, and in early 1940, before the United States entered World War II, he returned to the Navy as a Lieutenant in the Naval Reserve and was assigned to intelligence duties in the Eighth Naval District of New Orleans. He was ordered to active duty in November 1940 and served until 1945, stateside at first and then in the Pacific theater between 1943 and 1945, in Australia, New Guinea and the Philippines. Leaving the Navy in 1946, after the war was over, he worked briefly again in marine insurance. He then returned to the Navy and spent the next 20 years in the Eighth Naval District in New Orleans, as chief Intelligence specialist and senior civilian advisor to the District Intelligence Officer.

After he died in 1981, I found a trove of his papers – his wartime diary, a chronology of his service that he prepared after the war, a few of his wartime letters to my mother (very few; I suspect most were lost or destroyed after the war), his civil service file, and other records, letters and pictures. I’ve compiled this book to keep the information in those files from being lost or scattered, and to honor the memory of this dedicated and loyal man who served his country when he was most needed.

Now, of course, I wish that I had asked more questions, gotten more insights into his thoughts and feelings about his wartime service. But when I was growing up, he never really talked about anything but the funny stories (more about those later). I can’t guarantee that my remembrances are accurate, or even that everything in my father’s reminiscences could be independently verified, but this was his war and these were his memories.

I did know, as a five-year-old at the war’s end, that he had returned home very thin (he had served as Naval liaison to the U.S. Air Force’s Fifth Fighter Command during the war, in a unit where the food was so poor that the mess chief was sent to the hospital for malnutrition). He would consume bowls and bowls of lettuce, fresh eggs by the dozen, and gallons of milk, to make up for all he had missed during the war. And ever after, he refused to have Spam in the house.

And I do remember a few of the funny stories he told. There was the time he and a couple of fellow servicemen flew into the wilds of New Guinea and encountered natives whose teeth were filed to points and stained purple from betel nut. These natives had seen few white people before; the men fingered the Navy men’s clothing and rubbed their skin to see if the color would change, and the women spied on them in the latrine to see if these strangers looked like their own men. The trip must have been a good deal more frightening at the time than in the retelling, since they didn’t know if the natives would be friendly or unfriendly and might even be cannibals, but in later years the visit made for a good story. And he would sometimes mention the Americans’ nickname for the topless native women: the milk factory.

Another time, a tin of maple syrup arrived as a gift to someone in his unit from friends in the United States. The men all wondered why it was sent, since they had no pancakes, but they carried it from camp to camp until a letter arrived asking how they had liked the Scotch. It was soon emptied.

Although he served in the Pacific as Naval Liaison to the Fifth Fighter Command of the U.S. Air Force, tasked with mapping ship positions so that they would not be accidentally hit by American planes (and did his job so well that no U.S. ships in his area of responsibility ever received friendly fire), he did occasionally have reason to visit U.S. Navy bases. The Navy apparently had much better food than the Air Force, and he used those occasions to stock up on scarce food items to bring back to his unit. This was always a cause for celebration. On one of those trips, he also managed to acquire a new pair of shoes for himself – such a rare achievement that it was celebrated in a cartoon in the base newspaper.

When my brother Robert was about a year old, in 1944, my mother sent photos of the two of us in which Rob had an abundant mass of curls. My father put the photo on his desk, and was aghast when another officer complimented him on his two beautiful daughters. My mother soon received a letter saying, Get that boy’s hair cut – and send me a new picture!

The men managed to laugh even when things were depressing, as evidenced by a parody poem that one of the unidentified men in my father’s unit wrote in the style of Edgar Allan Poe’s The Raven. I’m sorry there was no name on the faded copy of the poem in my father’s files, because I’d have liked to give credit to the man who managed to summarize the hardships in such a vivid and imaginative way. A-1 refers to the Navy Personnel Office, and A-2 to an Intelligence unit.

THE RAVIN’

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary

Over many a piece of poop and recco photos by the score,

While I studied miles of mapping, suddenly there came a tapping

As if someone gently rapping, tapping on the A-2 door.

‘Tis some visitor entreating entrance to the A-2 door.

This there is and nothing more.

Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December

And each separate A-2 member sat like ghosts around the floor,

While a military mortal stepped within the A-2 portal,

Leaned against a painted picture hanging near the A-2 door,

Leaned against old dour Macarthur hanging near the A-2 door,

This there was and nothing more.

Smoldering fires were fanned to burning, fanned to flame with constant yearning,

Tell me now, A-1 I asked, for it was he within the door,

"When will be that wondrous day when I shall up and sail away

And leave this terrifying place where souls are stifling by the score,

Leave this putrifying place and know the things I knew before?"

Quoth the A-1, Nevermore.

Tell me, A-1, I repeated, undiscouraged, undefeated,

"When shall I re-see the sights that I have seen before,

Friendly scenes and friendly places? Kindly friends and kindly places,

When shall I re-see my family standing in the old home door,

Greeting me with smiles of welcome, standing in the old home door?"

Quoth the A-1, Nevermore.

"A-1, you have heard our curses of the V.A.D.’s and nurses,

Of the brown skinned native maids with naked breasts that brush the floor,

When am I again returning to the one for whom I’m yearning,

To my most beloved one, the only one that I adore,

To the hair, the hazel eyes, the luscious lips that I adore?"

Quoth the A-1, Nevermore.

Beast said I "or bird or devil. Tell me A-1, on the level,

Tell me now or I shall loathe you. I refuse to stand much more,

Caterpillar rash and bunion, beastly bully beef and onions,

Jungle juice and acetone that rots you to the very core.

When shall I see food again, at least a liquor store?"

Quoth the A-1, Nevermore.

Beast, cried I and shrieked in terror, "surely you must be in error,

Mosquitoes, ants and beri beri, crocodiles and dysentery,

Heat and sweat and mud and snakes and and flies upon a tropic shore,

Surely one can’t stand forever rain and rats and spiders by the score,

Send me to my home forever, send me to my native shore."

Quoth the A-I,