With war raging in both Europe and the South
Pacific in November 1944, Alvin “Jack” Dyer Sr.
wanted a piece of the action in the worst way.
“All the healthy men were gone to war, and it
seemed like the patriotic thing to do,” he
recalls now, at age 78, from his Gouldsboro
home.
At the time, Dyer was a high-school student in
Steuben. At age 17, he was too young for the
U.S. military and, at 5 feet 6 inches and 118
pounds, he was too small for the Merchant
Marine.
“The Merchant Marine said you were supposed to
weigh 125 pounds,” he said. “But they wanted
men, so they said I weighed 130 pounds.
“The Merchant Marine was the only thing left if
your hearing or your eyesight was not so good,”
Dyer said. “We weren’t the dredges of the earth,
but I was on board ships with guys with one eye,
and I remember the second officer of one ship I
was on had only one arm.”
Dyer soon found himself aboard The Marine Raven,
one of 75 troop and cargo transport ships built
by the U.S. Maritime Commission in support of
the war effort. The single-screw, steam-powered
C4 ships were fixtures of the convoys that took
men, munitions and supplies to Europe through
North Atlantic waters infested with German
submarines.
“The Marine Raven had seven cargo holds — two
for supplies and the other five for bunks,” Dyer
said. “We had 3,200 troops on board when we left
Boston for Halifax, where we were organized into
a convoy of 78 ships, including some Liberty and
Victory ships.
“At the late point in the war, they didn’t seem
too concerned about German subs, although they
did torpedo five of the tankers in hopes that
the other ships wouldn’t have the fuel needed to
go on.”
“We always had destroyer escorts with us, always
circling the convoy in search of submarines,”
Dyer said. “There were quite a few ships sunk
not too far off Halifax. Those German submarines
were everywhere, and nobody wanted to get on
ammunition ships or tankers. There weren’t too
many who survived the sinking of tankers,
because you would get that oil on you and burn.”
Although his ship was capable of 17 knots, it
headed toward England at six knots, the speed of
the slowest ship in the convoy.
“We traveled without lights, with one ship
within 500 feet of the next one,” Dyer said. “We
never had any accidents, which is probably
because we traveled so slow.”
The crossing required 16 days. The return trip,
which brought 1,600 wounded soldiers back home
from Europe, didn’t involve a convoy and
required little more than a week, he said.
Dyer’s next WWII assignment was aboard a Liberty
Ship, the King S. Woolsey, which carried five
holds of grain from Portland to England.
“We also carried boxes of gliders and four train
engines with tenders,” he said. “We wound up in
a bad storm. When she would roll, she would lay
right on her side, and it got so rough it felt
like the ship would fall apart any minute. We
did lose both gangways and one of the
lifeboats.”
Before the King S. Woolsey returned to America,
Germany surrendered. Soon thereafter, Dyer left
the Merchant Marine and joined the U.S. Air
Force, where he put his marine skills to use
aboard 63-foot vessels designed to rescue downed
pilots. His Air Force assignments took him to
posts as diverse as the Gulf Coast and Alaska.
Dyer left the Air Force in August 1953 as an
airman first class, returning to the Merchant
Marines. His assignments over the next 36 years
included supporting U.S. Air Force efforts
during the Vietnam War and taking tankers of jet
fuel from Saudi Arabia to Japan for
redistribution to airfields involved in bombing
campaigns.
“The Merchant Marines were never recognized as a
military source until after World War II, when
we were praised highly by Eisenhower,” he said.
“They finally gave us a U.S. Coast Guard
discharge, and it gave us the G.I. Bill, which I
used to buy this house.”
Four years after leaving the Air Force, Dyer
married Ramona Young of Corea. The couple
celebrated their 48th anniversary in August.
Dyer is a member of American Legion Post 207 in
Trenton. |
