Published Jan. 3, 2005
Hendersonville Times-News

http://www.blueridgenow.com/article/20050103/EXTRAS02/501030315/0/search

By Jonathan Rich
Mills River resident John Nelson does not show his age when discussing his naval adventures during World War II.
When recounting those experiences in person and in a book he wrote, the 85-year-old makes his escapades seem like they happened just yesterday.
“In my book, what I wrote down are my remembrances,” he said, his eyes sparkling. “Some of it is unbelievable, but none of it is made up. It’s all for real.”
In 2000, Madison County-based Alexander Books printed 1,000 copies of Nelson’s 112-page memoir, “Gob’s View of World War II; Adventures of a Sailor Both Before and in The War of the Century.”
Gob refers to a sailor of non-commissioned rank. The book is Nelson’s attempt to, as he puts it, “dwell on the lighter side of the war, as not all of our time was spent fightin’ and dying.”
That’s not to say the book or his time in the service lack excitement.
With chapters titled “I Date a German Spy” and “Headhunters of New Guinea,” the Henderson County native brings a personal perspective to his globe-trotting adventures.
“It was more or less needling by some of my relatives and co-workers over the years that lead me to do it,” he explained while sitting in the den of his mobile home and leafing through a copy of the paperback.

In the Navy

Nelson enlisted in the Navy at an Asheville recruiting station in early 1938 because of the $21 per month paycheck it promised.
“Back then they had an old saying, “The Army does the work, the Marines get the credit but the Navy gets the money for it,” he said. “That sounded good to me. It was peacetime and there were no jobs. This way, I knew I’d have a salary.”
After going through training at the U.S. Naval Station at Hampton Roads, Va., the country boy found himself onboard the USS Arkansas for his first trip to New York City, then later transferred to the USS Wichita for training exercises through the Caribbean Islands.
In the summer of 1940, seaman Nelson was a pointer assigned to position a six-inch gun that fired a 105-pound projectile at enemy targets from the USS Omaha.
It was on board the Omaha in November 1941, when the Navy came across a ship claiming to be headed to New Orleans.
“That ship was actually coming from Japan to Germany with contraband and was only disguised as an American ship,” he said.
When that vessel was about to be boarded by the Navy, Nelson says he saw the crew lower the U.S. flags and raise one with a Nazi swastika on it. The Germans then began lowering lifeboats into the water as explosions inside the ship began to sink it.
“We rescued the German crew, but left their lifeboats in the water,” Nelson writes in the book. “Our captain ordered the boats sunk for target practice.”
Later during a search in the Caribbean Sea for the German battleship Scharnhorst, he got a more sobering brush with the realities of war.
When the Sharnhorst was spotted, the German boat had more firepower and launched on Nelson and his fellow crew members.
“The shells sounded like a freight train going by as they were whizzing past us,” he said. “Our guns could not reach her, so we turned tail and ran. They didn’t chase us because they were out for a merchant ship.”

Spreading the word of Peal Harbor

It was during Nelson’s service in the communications department of the Omaha that he found himself spreading the word of one of the war’s darkest moments.
“Although I had been in radio for almost a year, I couldn’t copy Morse code much faster than 30 words a minute,” he said. “A report was coming in at about 38 words a minute, so I was not getting all of it. But, it was saying that the Arizona has been sunk at Pearl Harbor. My supervisor saw what I was copying and sent for the executive officer. Next thing I knew they were standing behind me. I’d miss a few words, but got about 90 percent of what was coming in. We found out about Pearl Harbor as it was happening and, while it was a tragedy, that day my work was exciting.”

Life back on dry land

After Nelson left the Navy in October 1945, he spent a few years working for a business printing company near Washington before he took a job with Eastern Airlines closer to home in Greenville, S.C.
For the next 17 years, he held a variety of jobs for the airline, including being a ramp agent prepping planes for takeoff and taking passengers’ tickets.
He followed that job with work as a groundskeeper with the Forest Service working near the University of North Carolina at Asheville.
While at all those jobs, he would occasionally tell his co-workers stories from his time at sea and, at their insistence, began to seriously consider writing the tales down.
Nelson started taking notes about his experiences, then read the notes into a tape recorder. After verifying certain facts at the Henderson County Public Library, he had someone type up a manuscript and went about getting it all published after three years of work on the project.
Copies of the book are available at library branches in Buncombe, Henderson and Transylvania counties. The author hopes people who read the book will find it both entertaining and informative.
“I hope it gives them an insight into what happened,” he said. “It’s a case of real history.”
Looking back on his time at sea, Nelson says the Navy literally expanded his horizons.
“It gave me a fair chance to see the world and some of the most beautiful places in it,” he said remembering shore leave in Rio De Janeiro and Hawaii. “I had a good time. Even when I was being fired at, at least it was exciting.”