Published Aug. 21, 2000
Hendersonville Times-News

http://www.blueridgenow.com/article/20000821/EXTRAS02/8210315/0/search

Local veteran recalls his submarine duty during World War II

By Ken Worthen
“Life aboard a World War II submarine could best be described as long periods of boredom interrupted by brief periods of stark terror.” – Norman Guice
Norman Guice didn’t start his Navy career as a “submariner.” In fact, when he enlisted in 1938 he never even gave submarines a thought.
“I began my service in August of 1938, spending the 12 long, hot weeks of boot camp in Norfolk, Va. From there I went to Hospital Corpsman School at the Portsmouth Naval Hospital,” says Guice.
After boot camp, most military personnel want to get as far away as possible from that part of the military. Guice went about eight miles.
Upon completion of his medical education he was assigned to the Naval hospital in Chelsea, Mass., where he spent 2 1/2 years. Among his many duties there he helped with the Red Cross.
“This was one of the more enjoyable duties,” he says, “because I got to run the movie projector. I saw a lot of movies.”
In October 1941, Guice was transferred to the Joseph T. Dickman, a troop transport ship. That November, the Dickman was sent, along with five other transports, to Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, where they picked up about 20,000 British troops and transported them to Bombay, India, by way of Cape Town, South Africa.
“It was on my 21st birthday, Dec. 7, 1941, that the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. We were one day out of Cape Town. The British soldiers kind of liked that, but I didn’t think it was so hot.
“I think,” he says, “most of those soldiers saw service over in North Africa fighting Rommel.
“On our way back to the States, we were fired upon by a German submarine somewhere down in the Caribbean. If it hadn’t been for some quick action by the guys in the wheelhouse, we would have been hit. The torpedo missed our ship by about six feet.”
When the Joseph T. Dickman docked in New York, it was sent to the Bethlehem Steel yard to be refitted for use as a Navy ship.
While in New York, the bureau of personnel came out and asked if any pharmacist mates would volunteer for submarine duty.
“I thought that’d be pretty nice, so I volunteered, and exactly one week later I was on my way to New London, Conn.”
Guice was sent to submarine school in New London in 1942. Sub school involved a lot of training, because while on duty aboard a submarine each man must be able to go into any compartment on that boat and do any job in that compartment, even firing the torpedoes.
“You could always tell a submariner by his smell. Seems like no matter how many times we washed our clothes and took a shower we just couldn’t get the smell of diesel fuel to go away. The shower stalls onboard the boats were about the size of a small telephone booth and if we had just left port they were even smaller because they were usually packed with sacks of potatoes. In the R-13 World War I submarine we used as a trainer, about the only places I could stand up straight, being 6 feet tall, were the areas under the hatches. The submarines we have today are like hotels compared to what we had back then. Why I heard they even have Coke machines on today’s subs.”
After submarine school. Guice was assigned duty aboard the USS Cero.
“I became a åplank owner’ on the Cero when she was launched April 4, 1943. She wasn’t commissioned until July 4 that same year under Commander D.C. White.”
People become plank owners when they ride the ship or boat down the “ways” and it touches water for the first time.
After some open water readiness tests, Cero sailed for Pearl Harbor.
“I don’t remember exactly what day it was when we arrived at Pearl, but I remember they had just gotten the USS Oklahoma in dry dock. I remember I sat on the dock over there and watched ’em load caskets aboard a merchant ship, called Honanda Knott, to be shipped back to the States for burial.”
Cero left Pearl on Sept. 16 for her first war patrol, which was conducted in the East China and Yellow seas, stopping off at Midway Island for supplies.
“I think it was the second night out of Midway when we hit this small Japanese convoy, I think there were three merchant ships escorted by two destroyers. We tracked ’em most of the night until just before daylight when we got into position, dove and fired, sinking one of the merchantmen. We were having a lot of trouble with the torpedoes; I think they were duds or the firing pins jammed or something. The other merchant ships got away, taking one of the destroyers with them, leaving the other destroyer to hunt for us, dropping depth charges to try to sink us.”
A depth charge is a weapon designed with the specific purpose of destroying submarines. The ones used during World War II were made of a light metal case filled with TNT or other explosives. Ships laid a series of these charges in a pattern by rolling them off the deck while firing others to the side. Depth charges explode under water, creating shock waves that cause submarines to collapse.
“We had to dive deep to avoid the depth charges. That’s when the reality of war came home to me. It suddenly dawned on me that they were actually trying to kill me. I could die right here, I told myself, but I didn’t, and we got away.”
About 3 p.m. the men onboard the Cero heard this crazy noise.
“It sounded like a tightly wound spring being released, then an explosion. The åol’ man’ brought the boat up to take a look around and said they were firing their deck guns into the water at us. I think what they were doing was trying to keep us around until some help came or something, ’cause they had used up all their depth charges.”
All the while the enemy destroyer was firing at the Cero it was trying to pick up any survivors from the sunken merchant ship.
“It occurred to me after things cooled down a bit,” Guice says solemnly, “that we not only sank a ship, we had also killed a bunch of people, and I guess they felt justified in trying to kill us in retaliation.
“We surfaced after dark – a considerable distance away. I don’t know whether or not they picked up any survivors. I presume they did.”
During that same patrol, the Cero damaged two other freighters and a small patrol boat, which she engaged on the surface.
“During that same patrol we received a coded message from Pearl, saying there were two Jap cruisers headed into our patrol area. We started running on the surface to intercept. I was on periscope watch because even though we were on the surface the periscope gets up much higher than the topside lookouts. I spotted two aircraft and yelled out, åAircraft!’ That’s all it took. When the crew hears the word åaircraft’ they point the sub for the bottom. Because of that delay we missed the cruisers. I remember seeing a faint outline of land on the horizon, which, after I got back down in the conning tower and checked the charts, I realized the land I saw was Iwo Jima. Of course, that was about two years before the big invasion.”
The Cero returned to Midway on Nov. 16, 1943.
After that run, Guice was transferred to the sub tender USS Bushnell and was sent to Majuro Atoll in the Marshall Islands to help set up a submarine rest camp.
“After each run, the submarine crews got to take a week of vacation, if you could call it that. There wasn’t much there, coconut palms and sand. There was a small village on the island, but it was restricted. About 4 p.m. – if we were lucky – we got two beers. If we were unlucky,” he says with a chuckle, “we only got one.”
From Majuro Atoll, Guice was sent back to Pearl Harbor and worked at a sub base dispensary for about two months.
Early in 1945 he was assigned duty on the USS Pilotfish and, on May 21, departed for the North Pacific for patrols.
“Part of our duty during this patrol was to pick up any downed fliers in the area, since they were bombing Japan at the time. Incidentally, while we were out on this particular patrol one of our boats picked up a young flier named George Bush. Of course, at that time he was just another pilot.”
The Pilotfish did some lifeguard duty off Marcus Island, then made her way to Tanapag Harbor, Saipan. On June 20, she left for the second half of her lifeguard patrol in the vicinity of the Japanese home islands. She arrived in Apra Harbor, Guam, on July 14.
“We went to a little rest camp in Tanafunda Bay, I think it was called. There were still Japs up in the hills and we weren’t allowed out of the Quonset huts at night unless we carried a flashlight because the Japs were coming down to scrounge for food and stuff.”
On Aug. 6, 1945, an American B-29 bomber, the Enola Gay, dropped the first atomic bomb used in warfare on the Japanese city of Hiroshima.
Around this same time the Pilotfish left Guam for another patrol. This time its station was in an area just southeast of Japan.
“The morning we left Guam there were four Marine Corps tanks heading up the beach. As we pulled out of the harbor we could hear them firing at the Japs up in the hills.
“We patrolled the area just south of Nagasaki for only a few days when we were ordered to change stations. I’ll always believe the reason we had to move is because the United States was going to bomb Nagasaki and wanted us out of the way.”
On Aug. 9, 1945, the United States dropped a second atomic bomb, this time on the Japanese city of Nagasaki.
“We heard the Japanese emperor’s speech on the radio when he said they had to åthink the unthinkable’ and that they’d have to surrender.”
The cease-fire order arrived Aug. 15 as the Pilotfish continued lifeguard and neutrality patrol off Kii Suido, Japan.
“We patrolled the harbor there to make sure nothing went in or out.”
Toward the end of the month the Pilotfish rendezvoused with other ships and proceeded to Tokyo to participate in the initial occupation of Japan and the formal surrender ceremonies.
“I believe the actual surrender was to have taken place on the 30th of August, but it actually took place on Sept. 2, 1945. It was postponed because of a typhoon. We rode out the typhoon for four days – four very rough days. We had sandwiches and coffee the whole time ’cause the cooks couldn’t fix anything else. We were so elated about the war being over we really didn’t care.
“After the signing, we came back to Pearl Harbor, where I worked at a sub base dispensary. My last tour of duty was on Midway, for about five months.
“Midway had a little radio station; it may have been 25 watts or so. The day I left to come home they played a song and dedicated it to me. It was Sentimental Journey,” he says, smiling. “I’ll never forget that.”
Guice was discharged in November 1947 and was recalled by the Navy in October 1950 for the Korean War. He spent 18 months at Green Cove Springs, Fla., and was discharged a second time in January 1952.
During the Korean War, Guice was given a Navy commendation for saving the life of an injured pilot. The pilot desperately needed plasma before medical personnel could get him to a hospital. Guice was the attending hospital corpsman, which is what the pharmacist mate was called during the Korean War, and with quick thinking administered a transfusion.
“It wasn’t until later that I found out the man I had helped was from East Flat Rock.”
Norman Guice married his childhood sweetheart, Edna M. Ray, in 1946. They have four children, Julie Thompson, Peggy Bloom, Mary Rouse and Michael Guice. They also have four grandchildren. The couple has lived in Henderson County all their lives.
After his first discharge, between 1947 and 1950, Guice worked as a traveling salesman. When he came home from his second war, he worked at several jobs, including as a bank teller and theater manager, before retiring from DuPont in 1991 after 11 years of employment, which, incidentally, is about the same time he spent in the Navy.