My family has a Facebook page for the family of Reed and Marjorie Bills, my paternal grandparents. Sometimes people share stories of my grandparents or of their own childhoods on this page. My uncle shared this story a couple of days ago.
One of the experiences I had on my recent cruise reminded me of a story Dad told about his voyage to Brisbane AU in WW2.
The type of ship that his unit was transported on was called a "Victory" ship. Many of the men , including Dad were concerned that they were not sailing in a convoy with other ships, they were sailing all alone.
The captain announced that the Victory ship was one of the fastest cargo ships used by the Navy and no Japanese submarines could catch them.
Dad's concern was that a submarine may not catch them but if spotted by a sub, it could radio another sub to intercept them with direction heading and speed information.
One day he was assigned as Officer of the Day and was on duty on the bridge for 24 hours. The thing that impressed him the most was looking in every direction and not seeing land or any other ships. He felt very vulnerable because if they were sunk by a sub there was absolutely no chance of rescue.
After his 24 hours on the bridge, he went below desks to sleep in his assigned bunk. A little while after he dozed off to get some much needed sleep, he was startled awake by a thundering explosion that shook the ship. He feared that worst case scenario had happened, and they were hit by a torpedo. He rushed to get dressed and grab a life preserver and sprinted up the stairs to the deck. just before he got to the door to the deck there was a 2nd loud explosion. Dad thought they had been hit by another torpedo.
As he rushed out on deck, he was extremely startled that no one else on deck was wearing a life vest and were just routinely going about their business. Then he remembered that the defensive artillery gunners team were scheduled to do drills and target practice that day.
He sheepishly went back down below deck and got back in his bunk. He said that the intense adrenaline rush kept him from going back to sleep for quite a while.
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