USS Iowa veterans reunite

Antipodean Andy · Sep 14, 2008

USS Iowa sailors converge on Des Moines | DesMoinesRegister.com | The Des Moines Register

Sometimes they are war stories. Sometimes they are funny stories.

Yet when sailors tell stories of their ship - in this case, the USS Iowa - it's always a love story.

The Veterans Association of the Iowa is holding a reunion in Des Moines this week, the first time many of the former sailors have ever been in the state.

But the veterans spoke with intense reverence and affection for the 45,000-ton battleship christened in Iowa's honor. The bond between sailor and ship runs deep and strong.

"It's like a member of my family," said Richard E. Jones, a Korean War veteran and native of Memphis, Tenn.

"I've tried to tell my grandkids about it and ..." Jones, 75, said as he drew in a deep breath. Tears welled up in his steely blue eyes. "It's hard to explain how much that ship means to me," he continued.

Jones is among about 200 former USS Iowa sailors at the annual meeting in Des Moines. The veterans hold the gathering in a different time zone every year, but decided to visit their ship's namesake for the 65th anniversary of its commission.

When word of the former sailors' arrival in Des Moines reached the Iowa Legislative Information Office, a state agency that gives tours of the Capitol, it seized the chance to videotape the veterans' memories. The agency's staffers display an 8-foot model of the Iowa from its World War II days during every tour.

The staffers wanted to hear firsthand tales from the ship's crew and plan to continue their interviews through Friday when the meeting ends. Eventually, the agency hopes to edit the video and audio to make an educational DVD or Web site, said Craig Cronbaugh, the agency's director.

They'll have plenty of great stories.

Leo Sicard, an 82-year-old World War II veteran from Ellwood, Pa., was 17 years old when he climbed aboard the USS Iowa. The ship was first commissioned on Feb. 22, 1943, and Sicard was a "plank holder," or member of the Iowa's original crew.

Early in his tour, Sicard was assigned to be one of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's aides when the Iowa took Roosevelt and other top military officials to a conference in Tehran, Iran, to plan an attack strategy on Nazi Germany.

The teenage Sicard, along with another crewman, had to lift Roosevelt, who had lost most of the use of his legs to polio, from the docks into a wheelchair.

"I wet my pants I was so nervous," Sicard said.

"Roosevelt took one look at me and said, 'Don't you know any better than that.' He was a real gentleman, though. He said, 'Look, I zip up my pants. I talk just like you guys. Relax.' He tried to put us at ease, but I was just so excited."

Ira Stone joined the Iowa crew a few months after Roosevelt's trip. Now 83 and living in Bakersfield, Calif., Stone remembered a battle with a Japanese destroyer in the Pacific theater.

After trading blows, the Japanese ship exploded and sunk. The crew erupted in cheers.

The ship's captain came across the loudspeaker.

"He told us to knock it off," Stone said, "because that could have been us."

Months later, the crew heard rumors of a bomb destroying an entire city. A few days later, they heard it happened again. Soon after, they got word the Japanese had surrendered.

This time the captain let the crew cheer. That is, until a pair of unidentified airplanes approached the USS Iowa. The captain gave orders. "He said, 'If they close in, shoot them down ... in a friendly manner,' " Stone said.

Glennwood Ivy, a 74-year-old Burlington, N.C., native, joined the Iowa in 1956 after the Korean War. A Gold Gloves champion boxer, Ivy and his shipmates started a boxing team and competed with other U.S. Navy crews. The crew, feeling confident, challenged some sailors in Nova Scotia, Canada.

Ivy thought it was a bad idea. "These guys had represented their country in the Olympics," he said. "We were talking about good fighters."

His seven-member team took a pounding. Ivy's fight was fourth on the bill. The first three men were knocked out. Ivy held his own against his man, winning a split decision. "I was the only guy on the Iowa to win a fight that night," he said.

Even in peacetime, there were difficult days. On a trip to the Arctic Circle, the sailors were immunized for Asiatic flu. Half the crew got sick. Then the Iowa ran into a series of typhoons.

"The surges were so high you could hear the propellers when they came out of the water," Ivy said. "Guys couldn't even go topside to throw up."

Martin Palmiere, a 51-year-old from Pittsburgh, also served aboard the Iowa during peacetime, though it was hardly without dangers. In the 1980s, the Iowa motored in the Persian Gulf, escorting oil frigates that were getting blown up by Iranian attacks during the country's war with Iraq.

One night, the Iowa's sensors showed that an Iranian boat had targeted the ship for a missile strike. "So the captain ordered us to turn on all the radar and all our lights," Palmiere remembered. "They got one look at what they were dealing with and left."

During the 1980s, the USS Iowa served as a Navy "showboat." It traveled around the world and demonstrated U.S. military might by firing weapons and offering tours to local dignitaries.

On April 19, 1989, off the Puerto Rican coast, a demonstration turned tragic. One of the ship's 16-inch guns malfunctioned and exploded. Forty-seven crewmen died - the largest peacetime loss of life in U.S. military history.

Palmiere, who was nursing a hernia injury, helped put out fires, restore power to the ship and, eventually, carry bodies out.

"We laid (the bodies) out on tables in the mess hall," he said. "We had to use whatever we could to identify them - tattoos, markings on their clothes. I lost a lot of friends that day," he said.

Despite the tragedy, Palmiere, who served 25 years in the Navy, still loves the Iowa.

"My five years aboard that ship was the best five years of my life," he said. "I think about the Iowa every day of my life."
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liverpool annie · Sep 17, 2008

When Iowa was selected to ferry President Franklin D. Roosevelt to the Cairo Conference and the Tehran Conference she was outfitted with a bathtub for Roosevelt's convenience. Roosevelt, who had been crippled in 1921, would have been unable to make effective use of a shower facility. This bathtub remains the only one ever installed on a United States Navy warship.

Antipodean Andy · Sep 17, 2008

Didn't know that, thanks Annie.

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