We were in a 36-foot LCVP, Landing Craft Vehicle Personnel, about a mile from a beautiful island, Okinawa, in the dark blue water of the Pacific Ocean. The LCVP was tied up to the side of an APA, a 492-foot Auxiliary Personnel Attack ship. An APA can transport 1500 troops and all of their military devices necessary to invade an island. There were three other APAs that day taking part in the invasion. Four APAs and 6000 troops.
It was peace time, but we had an island to invade. That is what we did in peace time to keep us busy and to keep us out of trouble, invade a beautiful island. Of course, there were no real amphibious invasions going on in 1954, but this invasion was enough to keep us busy and out of trouble.
We, the three-man crew of the LCVP, had already been in our boat in the water for about four hours making five round trips to the island. We were pretty grungy. We had nothing to eat except C-rations warmed on the exhaust manifold of the boat’s engine. We were tired and wanted the war to be over.
Tied up to the side of the ship once again, we were waiting for the guys who were going to take the beach away from the enemy. They had to climb down a cargo net, get in the boat and we would be on our way. To our surprise, we did not see any troops climbing down. What we did see coming over the side of the ship was a Jeep, dangling above, daring us to get it safely into our boat.
The battle on shore progressed while the water offshore became very rough. Troops climbing down a cargo net getting into a landing craft in calm water was one thing. But a Jeep to be loaded into our boat, in rough water, was really something else. All we had to do, bouncing around in the rough water like a thrill ride in a theme park, was safely guide this dangling Jeep into our boat that was barely large enough to accommodate it.
All I could think was – my mother’s favorite son was going to be sent back home in a box after having been battered around by a 2000-pound Jeep in a bouncing boat. I was a 19-year-old kid, and it was sort of fun to be out there playing a war game just like it was fun back home playing cowboys and Indians. Of course, the Indians did not batter us around like the 2000-pound Jeep in a bouncing boat might do.
With our boat bouncing around in the water like a beach ball in a swimming pool, it took several attempts to get the Jeep on board without the wheels of the Jeep hanging over the gunnels of the boat.
Yeah, I did not know what gunnels were either. Gunnels. In days of old, the uppermost outboard edge of the ship was an ideal place to mount a gun. So, they did, and the outboard edge of the ship was called a gun wall, which evolved into gunnel. And, now youknow, just in case someone asks what gunnels are.
With the water angrily rising and falling, the boat suddenly dropped and then rose back up directly under the dangling Jeep. And, to our surprise, with a little bounce, the Jeep was on deck in the middle of our boat with no help from us. The man above on the ship, who was in charge of the loading process, was watching and signaled to the man controlling the crane to release the tension on the loading cable. He did immediately and there was the Jeep onboard, waiting patiently to get on with the invasion. No kidding, things like that really happen. In fact, I had a friend who lost a couple of fingers in a similar situation that did not go as smoothly as ours did.
Anyway, I was not going back home in a box after all.
While the deck hand and I were congratulating each other for getting the Jeep into the boat and waiting for troops to climb down, we looked up and saw a trailer now coming over the side of the ship.
At least, the trailer was smaller than the Jeep and more easily handled, allowing us to get it into the boat behind the Jeep with minimal difficulty.
Then the troops came, two of them. A young man, with new shiny gold lieutenant’s bars on each of his shoulders and a corporal who probably had more time in service than all of us put together.
After the lieutenant made sure the trailer was hooked to the Jeep to his satisfaction, he climbed into the driver’s seat. The corporal, who should have been the driver, was directed to the passenger’s seat. The new lieutenant with his shiny gold bars and his Jeep was ready to capture the island all on his own. In a real war, he would not be wearing shiny gold bars. They make great targets.
We had not even pulled away from the side of the ship when the lieutenant started the engine of the Jeep with a roar.
When invading a beach, it takes a while to get all of the landing craft organized. The way it is managed, when the landing craft are loaded and ready to go, they form a circle about 50 yards away from each of the mother ships. There can be as many as 50 boats or more involved in an invasion like this.
The fortification of the beach usually determines how many attack waves there will be and how many boats are in each wave. After being in a circle near the mother ship, the boats are gathered and formed into several separate attack waves. They line up with one wave behind another in an attack formation and head for the beach about a mile away.
It would take the LCVPs about 10 minutes to get to the beach. That can be a very long time when you have an excitable young lieutenant sitting in the Jeep, unnecessarily revving the engine as if it was the beginning of a drag race. The salty marine corporal in the passenger’s seat looked like he would rather be any place other than where he was.
LCVPs are designed to prevent the passenger’s heads from getting blown off. To protect them, the passengers are, or should be, below the level of the gunnels. Our two passengers, sitting in the Jeep, below the gunnels, could not see the beach, still about 100 yards away. The deck hand and I were preparing to hit the beach, when we hit a sand bar and came to an abrupt stop.
After almost smashing his face into the steering wheel of the Jeep, the lieutenant, thinking we had hit the beach, turned to me and shouted, “Drop the ramp!”
As the boat engineer, it was my responsibility to drop the ramp. I knew we weren’t on the beach, so I didn’t bother to drop it. The lieutenant shouted at me, again, much louder, as if I had not heard him before, “Drop the ramp!”
I looked at the cox’n. He just shrugged and said, “Drop the ramp.” I did and the lieutenant jammed the gas pedal of the Jeep to the floorboard, the Jeep roared out of the boat, down the ramp, over the sand bar and into about six feet of water.
As the cox’n was backing the boat off of the sand bar, the lieutenant popped up to the surface of the water, sputtering and saying a few things about us not knowing how to drive a boat around a sand bar.”
The cox’n saluted the lieutenant and yelled over the noise of the battle on the beach, “Sir, there will be a repair boat here any minute now. They will be happy to help you get your jeep and your trailer out of the water and up onto the beach.”
The cox’n backed the boat off the sand bar, turned the boat around and took us back to our ship to get another load of young men going off to fight another practice invasion.
When the invasion was all over, I am very happy to say that Okinawa was still beautiful. It did not look anything like it did when the young men were fighting for their lives in 1945.
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- A Summer Day, In 1954, Invading Okinawa - November 30, 2024
