Robert W. Gavin US Navy USS California |
Lt. Robert W. "Bud" Gavin had been on duty all night Dec. 6 and tumbled into bed at 7 a.m. A few moments later he was wakened out of a sound sleep by the call to battle stations. They weather was very warm and Bud dashed to his station in the control room clad only in his shorts and undershirt - the only clothes he was to wear for days. On the way down the ladder, one of his friends passed and said: "This is the real McCoy, Bud." "No," answered Bud with a laugh, "I think this is just another practice." But he changed his mind when he reached the control room and the first torpedo hit. "You won't believe it," Bud later told his father, "but the torpedo shook our big ship just as a dog would shake a rat." This torpedo went directly through the side of the ship and struck the only boiler that had any steam, killing all the men in that engine room. All the lights and power went off and Bud immediately detailed his men to try to get the other boilers touched off. Another torpedo hit the ship but the men succeeded in getting the lights on, although no power was generated on the California after that. Then they were struck by an aerial bomb but still Bud and his boys had an idea they were badly hit and never thought of quiting. Then came the call to abandon ship. Bud refused to believe the order, for the attack had only begun 18 minutes before. Trying to verify the order, he called the captain's bridge and got no response. After trying to telephone all stations on the ship's inter-communication system, he finally contacted the highest point on the ship and was told: "Yes, the ship is being abandoned. For God's sake get out of there and get out quickly." Bud and his men broke through one steel door of their compartment and discovered the ship had sunk so far into the water that they were trapped. They could feel the ship settling down until it hit the bottom of the harbor. A jug half full of water was on the work bench and bud marked with black mechanics tape the water lever on it. After some time the level had not changed and Bud told his men he knew they were on the bottom, but that the ship was lying on its side. While his 12 men stood tensely waiting, knowing that death was awaiting outside the steel door, Bud, the only officer left on the ship, called repeatedly every station on the California and finally located seven men on the front end of the vessel. As a last resort, he called the room next to his, which should have been unoccupied as it was merely a ventilating room. One man answered. He told Bud he had jumped into that room and closed the door which he could not open. The room was half full of water. "There must be a ventilation shaft in that room," Bud told him. "Since the room is not completely flooded, that means the ventilating shaft is sticking up above the water. Climb up the shaft and see if you can get help." The men waited for an hour, then an hour. Finally, the man in the next room called back and said he couldn't climb up the shaft which was little more than two-foot pipe reaching up through three floor levels. "It isn't a case of whether you can or not," Bud shouted back at him through the telephone. "You've got to do it. Any minute the water might come down that shaft." Patiently the man began to climb again, bracing his back against one side of the smooth shaft, his kees and arms against the other. Inch by inch he pushed himself up. When he reached the top, huge "baffle bars," iron gratings, barred his way. He could move no further. Hours and hours passed by. The 12 men and one officer waited without a sound in the trapped compartment. Bud's only thoughts besides trying to plan a way out, were of his mother and father. Oil fumes were filling the air and the water was slowly rising around their waists. From time to time he made each man go to the crack in the doorway and breathe the water that came spurting in like needles in order to give them at bit of fresh oxygen. He used every method he could think of to keep them on their feet, for once down in the water a man could not live. "The lights were still on," he told is father. "It was a terrible job to keep the water from the cables for if that had happened there would have been a short in the circuit. It would have been a thousand times worse to have been down there in complete blackness." Bud estimated he and his men had two hours to live. He told them so. Not one man spoke. In that moment he smelled something burning. He looked up. Twelve pairs of eyes followed his to the ceiling. An acetylene torch was cutting through the steel. It took many precious minutes for the torch to eat its way through the two inches of steel. The man with the torch deserves all the credit for their rescue, Bud declared. He had to burn his way through steel compartments down to the third deck level. Many of the compartments were filled with gasses which might have blown up at any instant. In the excitement, the first man to leave the comparment was hauled through the red-hot steel and was badly burned. Despite the urgency of speed, Bud made the men stray water on the jagged ceiling opening until it was cooled off, before he would allow the next man to leave. The man in the adjoining compartment was still hanging on to the metal gratings at the top of the small ventilator shaft when they found him. Unable to get out, he had hollered enough to attrack attention and boats from the shore had come to the rescue. "Coming out in a small boat was no small feat in itself," said Bud. "It sounds easy in the telling, but you must remember that bombs were falling all around." The seven men in the front of the ship were rescued, and Bud, the only officer left aboard the crippled California, was the last man to leave the ship, an honor usually accorded the captain. The day after Pearl Harbor, the Gavin family received a cablegram from Honolulu simply stating that Bud was safe. They were joyous and until New Year's Day, had no indication of the narrow escape he had had from death. On New Years's Day they were visiting in Bremerton when a Naval officer notified Bud's father, Park P. Gavin to come immediately to a ship which was in drydock and bring some clothes for Bud. Mr. Gavin went to the ship and was taken to Bud's room. In a few moments, Bud arrived, surprised almost to tears to see his father. Then the story was told. Bud's chief worry was about the $700 in Navy uniforms which had gone down with his ship. Since the fateful day he had worn nothing but his shorts and undershirt until his friends had loaned him a pair of trousers. Although the government issues clothing to enlisted men in the Navy, all officers buy their own clothes. At 4 p.m. on New Year's Day, Bud left the ship to set foot on the United States. At 5 p.m. he was married to Miss Barbara Dunbar of Bremerton, daughter of a Navy captain. "My first thought after the rescue was completed," he said, "was of the men of Wake Island. I know many Boiseans are wondering why the Navy didn't go to their defense immediately. Now they will know why I couldn't go." When Bud first asked about the situation of Wake Island on the afternoon of Dec. 7, somebody answered: "Why there are 350 Marines there." "Hell," said Bud. "There are also 350 of my schoolmates there." |
Information provided by Sharon L. Gavin |
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