In 1944, fresh out of boot camp in Michigan, eighteen year old Seaman First Class Harold Walters joined the crew of the USS Pecos, a tanker, headed for the Marshall Islands, then Pearl Harbor, and ports of call throughout the south Pacific.
“I was in all the islands in the south Pacific except the Solomons,” Walters explained. “But one of my brothers was in the Solomons,” he added.
The first USS Pecos had been bombed and sunk in March of 1942. The second USS Pecos, where Harold Walters spent so many months at sea, was acquired by the Navy in August of 1942. The tanker provided refueling for cruisers, destroyers, planes and other craft.
“Our ship bunks were made of metal and wire; and we had a two inch thick mattress made of wheat straw (donkey breakfast) covered in plastic,” the Navy... .man winced, recalling the ship's sleeping quarters. “We slept outside in the hammocks, most of the time,” he laughed.
“I never had a set of dog tags,” Walters recalled. “We were what they called ‘ghost fighters'; nobody was supposed to know where we were; we didn't exist,” he explained.
Young Seaman Walters spiked a temperature of 106 when he came down with a case of jungle fever.
“They just wrapped us in rubber sheets and sweated it out of us,” he said.
Walters experienced enemy fire for the first time, while on a shakedown cruise, testing the weapons on a ship.
“All I could think was that I don't even know these people, and they're trying to kill me,” Walters said, describing what he refers to as his “baptism by fire”.
Later, while anchored off Saipan, refueling warships, the Pecos and her crew endured hours of overhead fire.
During September of 1944, the Pecos was again in harm's way, when they supported the Palau Islands invasion, fueling bombardment and transport craft.
“Do you know what invasion currency is?” Walters asked, as he opened a box of envelopes full of small paper bills that looked like Monopoly money printed on both sides.
“When a place is under invasion, their currency is no good,” he explained. “The military issued temporary money called invasion currency. The stuff had no value except on the day it was issued. They issued a different color currency every day, and that's what we had to use if we bought anything in a town.”
“I'll bet you don't know about the ‘flying five' either,” Harold Walters challenged, eager to provide another war time economics lesson. “We'd line up at the paymaster's window and they'd give us five dollars. Then we'd take three steps to the left and exchange that five for shaving soap and lotion, toothpaste, and such. That's why they called it the flying five. It flew away as quick as we got it,” he added with a big grin.
In early January, 1945, while in route to Mindoro, the USS Pecos was attacked by Japanese aircraft. The tanker sustained damage from bombs exploding near by, and a dud bomb hit and bent one of the Pecos booms.
A Japanese suicide plane crashed into an ammunition ship, near the oiler, causing a blinding explosion, and the Pecos returned fire on the attackers.
“We shot down two planes,” Walters recalled.
The Pecos was responsible for providing fuel for other craft, but Walters reports there were times when fending off enemy fire became as routine a part of the day as their fueling duties. Only a few days later, the Pecos would be under attack by Kamikazes again.
“They waited till we were blinded by the sun and couldn't see them, then they came at us. A bomb went in the water not a hundred feet from us.” the seaman explained.
After the Philippines, Harold Walters and the Pecos moved on to Okinawa, to fuel the destroyers serving as picket ships. Once again, the assignment held more than the Pecos crew bargained for, as they headed into a typhoon, and another air raid.
This time, Kamikaze pilots attacked five radar picket ships but the Pecos was not hit.
“There must have been 250 planes, flying not six feet over the water,” The veteran seaman recalled.
The Pecos finally returned to California, after seventeen months at sea; but when the fighting ended, they headed back to Japan, to fuel the Navy vessels in the harbor.
After 48 months and 28 days of service in the U.S. Navy, Harold Walters came home.
Born in Hazard Kentucky, coal mining country, he was one of seven brothers who all served in World War II, and made it back home.
“Growing up, I remember my dad telling my mother, your kids and my kids are fightin' our kids,” Walters laughed.
“When the Pecos was in Okinawa, I met up with a cousin of mine I hadn't seen in years. When he asked what I was doing there, I told him I was just trying to get out alive,” the veteran seaman recounted.
Today, the issue of military personnel readjustment to civilian life, particularly after serving in a war zone, receives much needed attention; but Walters reports support for that kind of thing was not routinely made available to returning WWII veterans.
“I did a lot of drinking,” he confessed, when asked about his post war adjustment.
After the war, Walters worked as a welder, attended college, and became an industrial engineer. He worked in law enforcement, in Pensacola Florida for a while, but he soon decided he wasn't happy with Florida or law enforcement.
Harold and his wife Barbara met at a park, and have been together for over 28 years.
“We have 13 grown-up kids between us,” Barbara added. The couple laughed as they lost count of the number of grandchildren and great grandchildren, estimating at least eighteen of each.
Today, the Walters have a cozy home in Hermitage Springs, where they grow most of the food they eat; and Harold has been known to shoot a deer in the woods from his back porch.
Barbara keeps the pantry stocked with home canned goods, and has two freezers full of venison, fish, and anything that Harold's hunting expeditions provide. Harold attributes his medication-free health and vigor at 81 to living off the land.
“We don't buy much of anything to eat from the store,” Harold reported. “We've placed first at all the fairs-Macon County, Clay County, and even Tompkinsville, Kentucky-with the things we've grown,” he added proudly.
Everyone can have a chance to enjoy Barbara's homemade goods by visiting her booth at the Macon County High School Tigerettes' Christmas Craft Fair, where she will be selling homemade jam, jelly, and candy, along with her daughter's homemade scented candles.
World War II Navy combat veteran, and retired industrial engineer, Harold Walters is a straight shooter, with strong opinions on government, politics, and world affairs; but he also does some itinerant preaching these days. The avid reader of the Greek and Hebrew languages, and diligent student of the Bible, is quick to credit everything good in his life to God's unfailing love.
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