I visited Gold Beach near the commune of Arromanches in Normandy on a chilly spring morning. The beach was deserted and serene in its stone silence. A brisk breeze kept all except the bravest of seagulls away. The sun, the wisps of clouds, and the shadowy remnants of an artificial harbor demanded reflection. Beyond the stalwart concrete caissons lie the bones of a group of sixty ships known as the Derelict Convoy who acted as the breakwaters that made the Normandy landings possible. Without the fearless devotion of their skeleton merchant crews, the landings would have failed.
Turning around, I crouched low on the sand and looked to the bluffs overhead, thinking of all those who lost their lives on the same beach almost seven decades prior. I imagined for many a young man this same gentle beach was their last sight: grains of sand in front, blue sky above, and churning seas behind – all colored by adrenaline static as fear spiked their guts. And many of them died, an estimated 1,100, on this beach in a single day. Local legend claims faint red leeches into the channel, markedly visible after a storm. I climbed aboard a Land Rover and toured the broken and twisted remnants of the concrete emplacements tasked with sentinel duty over the seaside. They stood perched on their cliffs as gaping sockets naked to the elements. Later that same day, I walked among a field of white grave makers and was lost among the names of so many taken too soon. I was moved by the silence of the place and of the sea. It was harrowing.
Across the ocean, at the tip of Manhattan Island, rests a cenotaph and sculpture in memory of the sailors and mariners who perished in the Atlantic during the Second World War. It is the East Coast Memorial. Unlike the Normandy American Cemetery, the solemnity of the memorial seemed lost on those around me. Summer was coming, and vendors were out with hot dogs and frozen treats. Everyone was rushing to queue up for the ferry to take them to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. Purists among us may call for hushed silence upon seeing such a memorial. However, the ultimate sacrifice of the few was so that we may live and go about our concerns without fear. And there, the names of the dead persist in direct view, in the background, stalwart and barely reflected upon by those who pass by.
President Kennedy debuted the memorial eighteen years after the close of the Second World War. The pylons of the memorial, acting as a cenotaph, are comprised of several slabs flanking two sides of a black eagle. The eagle is poised for flight above a wave and grasps a wreath of olive branches. Names and ranks of the dead are carved deep into the stone in orderly rows. Absent from the memorial are the names of the many merchant seamen who perished in the wartime Atlantic. As almost an afterthought, a tablet, placed on the eagle’s pedestal is engraved with the following:
1941 * * * * 1945
ADDITION TO THE 4,597 AMERICAN SERVICEMEN HONORED HERE / WHO LOST THEIR LIVES IN HER SERVICE AND / WHO SLEEP IN THE AMERICAN COASTAL WATERS OF THE ATLANTIC OCEAN / THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA / HONORS THE 6,185 SEAMEN OF THE UNITED STATES MERCHANT MARINE / AND THE 529 SEAMEN OF THE UNITED STATES ARMY TRANSPORT SERVICE / WHO LOST THEIR LIVES DURING WORLD WAR II
A stone’s throw from the imposing and sterile war monument, another, more visceral and emotional monument faces the City. It honors the Merchant Mariner. The president of AFL-CIO, Joseph Lane Kirkland – himself a Kings Pointer – conceived of an idea to commission a monument that would pay homage to the generations of Merchant Mariners who were pressed into the service of the nation. He gained the support of a fellow classmate, then superintendent of the Merchant Marine Academy, Rear Admiral Thomas A. King. He had a similar idea and wished to create a national monument. Combined, their ideas coalesced and became the national American Merchant Mariners’ Memorial. After holding a nation-wide competition, a maquette submitted by Marisol moved the jury. Instead of creating a work in an impersonal, heroic Greco Deco style, she chose a personal, almost accusatory rendition of four merchant seamen alone on a floundering lifeboat.
Unlike somber pride represented by the East Coast Memorial, this work evokes the terror and gnawing helplessness felt by many of those who were torpedoed, abandoned ship, and whose fate was left to the capricious sea. Twice a day the body of one of the figures is swallowed by the harbor and is frozen in desperation, just beyond the grasp of his struggling comrade; one shouts out to the viewer, calling for an act of compassion to deliver his shipmates from a certain death; while another is on his knees, impassive and staring toward those who abandoned him. Kirkland spoke at the monument’s installation in 1991, saying it is: “a fitting remembrance dedicated to those merchant seamen who gave their lives in defense of the love of democracy that Americans share with the citizens of other free nations around the world.”
It is the most visceral of statues I have ever encountered and is all the more powerful since it was based on the plight of the survivors of the SS Muskogee. Standard practice among U-Boat crews was to wait for identifying debris from their victims or query any survivors after a torpedoing to mark their score in their reports; in this case, the commander of the U-Boat who sank SS Muskogee took a series of snapshots for propaganda purposes of the ship and the remanants of her crew. The snapshots surfaced decades after the war and reached the eyes of the son of one of those who was aboard the ship; in them he saw the last image of his father alive. He later tracked down the commander to learn the story of his father’s death; afterward, he distributed the image, hoping to identify the others on the life raft in an effort to provide closure for their families. The image made it into the hands of Marisol at the time of the competition for the design of American Merchant Mariners’ Memorial; she never rendered a sculpture like it prior or since.
Naval warfare in the Atlantic and Mediterranean theatres of war, as cruel as it was, was still prosecuted by professionals and governed by tradition. As heartless as the abandonment of the survivors of the SS Muskogee may seem, the German commander told the son that he did come alongside and gave the survivors water, rations, and smokes – a final act of gentlemanly courtesy to tide them over until their rescue. He further explained he was unable to take survivors since his already cramped boat had no room. In the Pacific, survivors often met capture, torture, or death by machine-gun, as the record shows.
Captain Arthur R. Moore writes in the opening of his exhaustive study of American ship losses, A Careless Word – a Needless Sinking, he could not describe the emotions of the survivors who sat in lifeboats watching potential rescue ships pass them by in plain sight. Marisol did this flawlessly. For those merchant seamen who returned, young in years but made old through the horrors of war, Vice Admiral Emery Scott Land addressed them on Maritime Day, May 23, 1945:
“Very few people in this country realize the hardships men of the Maritime Service have withstood so far in this war. Many of you have been torpedoed and been thrown into the water of the North Atlantic, in the middle of the winter. Many have seen their shipmates killed by explosions, collisions at sea, taken prisoners by submarine and in many instances have seen practically entire convoys wiped out by enemy action. Some of you have probably been afloat on a life-raft in the tropics and practically burned to a crisp and almost passed out because of thirst. Some of you have been aboard ships which cracked and fell apart, and most of you know how it feels to return from Europe via the North Atlantic in the winter, with only ballast in the lower holds. For my money the men of the Maritime Service deserve a lot more credit for the job they have done, than the credit they have received.”
Official reports state war conditions resulted in the loss of 1,586 United States-flag merchant ships and marine casualties during the Second World War. Postwar researchers tabulate the number as 1,768. Nevertheless, U.S. Maritime Commission estimates cover the period spanning from the sinking of the SS City of Rayville after striking a mine on November 8, 1940, to May 8, 1945 – V-E Day. The bulk of the tonnage was accounted for by 570 ships lost from direct war causes; a balance of 984 was lost in marine casualties resulting from convoy operations, reduced aids to navigation, and blackouts; other losses include 32 U. S. flag vessels that were not sunk in combat, but scuttled by their own crews to form the artificial harbors for the Allied invasion of Normandy.
The destruction of ships by the enemy resulted in a heavy loss of life. “Merchant Marine Casualty List No. 30,” from October 1945 – and the last of the Second World War – brought the United States Merchant Marine casualties reported to next of kin during the period from September 27, 1941, to June 30, 1945, to a total of 6,059 individuals, which breaks down as follows: Dead 4,830; missing, 794; prisoners of war, 435.
American merchant seamen, although they did not share the uniforms of military combatants, were killed, imprisoned, and imperiled just the same. The War Manpower Commission steadfastly maintained the Federal mandate that the U.S. Merchant Marine functioned “as an auxiliary to the armed forces and [bore] the heavy responsibility for deploying troops […], for moving supplies […], for bringing American troops home and for providing the food and machinery required in the rehabilitation of Europe.” The Roosevelt administration understood the militarized nature of the work American merchant seamen did, and as recognition of being erstwhile agents of the Federal government, the War Shipping Administration provided them with small tokens of appreciation throughout the final years of the Second World War in the form of ribbons and medals. The final thank you was a Victory Medal. After the Merchant Marine’s institution of a pyramid of honor by the War Shipping Administration, this medal was the bookend to wartime awards.
To this day, the last surviving Merchant Marine veterans are fighting for recognition from Congress for their sacrifices and to be placed on a similar footing with others who fought and sacrificed their lives for the greater good. As they slowly die of old age, the American merchant seaman’s role continues unrewarded and mostly unrecognized. Despite government praise at the time of the war, the unspoken compact between the Federal government and all those who volunteered at the government’s behest were abandoned. Unlike their uniformed peers, who were granted education benefits, medical treatment, and low-interest loans, irrespective of whether they faced the enemy or not, merchant seamen who survived the war received nothing except for a mealy-mouthed citation and few bits of colored cloth. These tokens did not provide them with a living, only a hollow thanks. The greatest award was intangible – they survived.
Special thanks are owed to Dr. Joshua Smith of the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy at Kings Point and Interim Director of the American Merchant Marine Museum. He opened the Museum’s collections to me and there I discovered Marisol’s maquette which in turn formed the genesis of this post.
The Normandy photos are from a trip to France I went on with my family. One evening my Grandfather Willard told me he had a Z-Card. This post is for him.
References
Division of Public Relations, U.S. Maritime Commission. “Derelict Convoy.” Victory Fleet, Vol III no. 17 Oct 23, 1944, pp 1-
Division of Public Relations, U.S. Maritime Commission. “Gallant Ghosts.” Victory Fleet, Vol III no. 19 Nov 6, 1944, pp 1-3
Roosevelt, Franklin. “Christmas Greeting.” The Master, Mate, and Pilot, Vol. 8, No. 1 Jan 1945.
The Master, Mate, and Pilot, Vol. 8, no. 7 July 1945, p 9.
“Merchant Marine Casualty List No. 30.” The Master, Mate, and Pilot, Vol. 8, no. 10, Oct 1945, p. 8.
Moore, Arthur R. A Careless Word – a Needless Sinking: A History of the Staggering Losses Suffered by the U.S. Merchant Marine, both in Ships and Personnel, during World War II. American Merchant Marine Museum, U.S. Merchant Marine Academy, Kings Point, NY, 1998.
