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Interviewed by: Carl Hollingsworth |
My name is Hal Pottle and
I joined the Navy in 1940. I was in Bowdon College in Maine and graduated in 1941. I
got my diploma in the mail and never did get to attend my own graduation ceremony. I
was teaching school, and the Navy sent me to Boston. I told them that I'd handled
powerboats all my life and that I was qualified to be a skipper.  The Navy had an opportunity to take over some fishing boats, which they did by removing the masts and adding a diesel engine and guns. Conditions were cramped, the mess (eating area) was small and there was only one bathroom. At that time the Navy would even take private yachts and put guns on them.
We were told to go from Boston to Puerto Rico. We went around
Cape Hatteras, I heard about Pearl Harbor just after I had gotten out of school and was stationed in Norfolk, Virginia. At this time, even though I was trained in sea duty, they put me in Naval Intelligence. I was 22 years old and they put me in civilian clothes and gave me a gun. Boy, I thought I was Dick Tracy — real hot stuff. We rounded up Japanese civilians in the Norfolk area. We also did investigations on suspected Nazi or Communist sympathizers after receiving reports from concerned citizens. You asked me what my biggest fear was. Because my boat (the YP-443) was so slow and small, the Germans would use them for target practice. That, and the weather was horrible. Did my parents approve of my participation in the war? It was a different world back then. If you didn’t go there was something wrong with you, and even if you tried to avoid it then you’d be drafted. Everybody who went did so because they wanted to, but you really didn’t get a choice. I didn’t feel very good about leaving my wife and baby behind for four years while I was in the Navy. My wife and I stayed in communication through letters, but it wasn’t easy. When I’d come home, I resented those who didn’t have to go. I got behind five years and lost the advancement I would have gotten in working. It seemed very unfair at the time, but now it doesn’t.
We had a one-year anniversary with a turkey feast on our LST. One of my good friends was a tennis pro who set up a tennis court on the back end of his ship so that he could practice. He’d challenge the local champ at each port-of-call. My ship crossed the Atlantic Ocean and we were off Gibraltar, the entrance to the Mediterranean when my ship was attacked from the air. The kids on board had never fired the guns, had no target practice or anything. Nothing is worse than a night air attack; it's spooky because you can’t see. There were bullets skipping all around. You asked me if I shot down any planes? Well, I don’t know because it was dark. During this time my ship went from Bizerte in Africa to Sicily. We participated in the Anzio landings and in the invasion of Southern France. My ship transported German prisoners of war from Africa to Marseilles. We unloaded under the fire of huge German guns in an Italian harbor, but thank God for good things, we never got hit. One interesting story of the way that discipline works in the Navy is the story of a older man, a chief (senior enlisted man) who was a bosun in charge of deck duties on my LST. Someone came to me and said, "Captain, the chief’s stabbed somebody!" He was in the kitchen with a bloody knife. I took a chance that he would do what I told him to do and got my courage up and said, "Chief, give me the knife," and he handed it to me. I took him to the brig (which was really no more than a storage area above decks) and chucked him in there. He ran at the mesh door and had a rocket in his hands. The chief was yelling that he was going to blow the ship up. You know what I did? I ran off that thing so fast — thinking that this was not the time to be a hero! Discipline is so constant in the armed forces that you tend to react without thinking. Nothing much would have happened if he’d fired the small rocket, but I didn’t know that!
What would I change about my war experience? Well, it didn’t make any difference as long as you survived. Permission granted for use by Hal Pottle © 2001
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Ernest Harold "Hal" Pottle, 84, of Overland Park, Kansas passed away on July 1, 2003. We are thankful that we got to meet Hal and hear his stories. |
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Copyright © 2001 Nieman Enhanced Learning Center
Hal Pottle
Because they were fishing boats, they never
could get the smell of fish or the many cockroaches out of them. I was made the
skipper of one of these boats, the YP-443, and was the only officer on board with
six enlisted men under my command. One man had to start the engine with air
compressed by turning a large wheel in an area too small to stand. The engine would
glow red-hot when it got going. Fortunately, if anything went wrong with the boat we
had a radio with which we could call for help. The boat only went 9 ½ knots and was
made of wood, so we had a hard time getting away from the explosions of the depth charges
that we dropped. How we won the war is something of a mystery — I guess we just
had more of everything than the enemy did. 
famous for its dangerous currents and the fact that many ships have been wrecked
there. We actually made it to Puerto Rico, which shows that you can do
anything! I was skipper of this ship for a year. I was the only officer on
board, and only an officer is fit to take command. However, one time I got so tired that I
had to go to bed and put one of the enlisted men in charge. While I was in bed, one
of my guys put the ship up on a reef for me. CRRRRAAASH! I got it off
— got it back to base. The Navy gave me a reprimand for putting it on the
coral, and a commendation for getting it off without sinking it! That’s how
things work in the Navy.
How
did the war affect my life afterwards? Well, my wife says I left a boy and came back
a man. When I was in charge of an LST (a big ship, with 150 men that carried
tanks or supplies) you could drop the anchor and open big doors in the front and land
right on the beach. Then you would use the anchor to pull you back out to sea. The
scariest thing was that these ships were flat-bottomed and couldn’t steer or hold
into the wind — and they were built for just one trip! They just smacked them
together. They were built in Pittsburgh and moved down to New Orleans, and before I
was given the command of one I shuttled others down to the ocean. On one these
voyages the engineer and I were the only ones who had been to sea. 
You asked me what I thought of the bombing of Hiroshima. I had mixed
feelings. You see, it saved a lot of American lives, but it killed a lot of
Japanese. But I don’t believe in killing. What most impressed me about
those times was the willingness of the civilian population, as well as the soldiers and
sailors, to stand for rationing and discipline. I was very proud as far as
that goes. But I wouldn’t want to go through it again. I had a good time
in the war, I was young, but if you asked the man who is twenty leagues under the sea how
he liked the war, he’d say it wasn’t much fun.