The maX-Files – Page 1

This page is a collection of facts, deductions, and other tid-bits that I have found on the internet in the course of my search, that may or may not relate to my father’s military service. As such, I will, hopefully, be updating this page very often.

Note 1: Max 3-3165
On the back of the photo that my father carried in his wallet was printed “max 3-3165.” I initially took this to be the phone number of a friend of his named Max. But one day, I typed it into the Google Search engine, and one of the hits was to a phone number for the Freedom of Information Office at Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama. The page was an on-base listing of phone numbers at Maxwell AFB. To dial the FOIA office, a person on base merely had to dial 3-3165. For persons wishing to dial the office from off-base, a person would dial 953-3165.

This seemed to make sense to me. If my father had been involved in some sort of paratrooper activities, that were classified, he might have to make any inquiries through an Army Air Corps base. I began to think that perhaps “max” was a reference to Maxwell AFB. And this would also imply, that my dad was actually on that base, at least for a while. Otherwise, he would have had to dial the prefix. I also guessed that my dad had written the number down prior to July 4, 1966, the date the Freedom of Information Act became law, perhaps as far back as 1945. I wondered what office it might have been at that time. I figured that the Army probably didn’t change their phone numbers very often, so whatever it was, it probably served a similar function for the servicemen as the present-day FOIA office.

Note 2: U-boats lay mines in the NY Harbor
[Ref: http://www.geocities.com/fort_tilden/uboats.html ]

According to Samuel Eliot Morison’s book “The Battle of the Atlantic”, The German submarine U-608 laid 10 mines in the NY Harbor on November 10, 1942. The first mine was discovered by a sweeper and the NY Harbor was closed for a period of two days, the only time the harbor was ever closed during the entire war. This corresponds to data from the War Diary of the Eastern Sea Frontier dated November 13, 1942.

“At 1117 Hours, Minesweeper YMS-20 witnessed an under water explosion two miles from Ambrose in 40-25-42N; 73-44-00W, bearing 170 degrees True from minesweeper, range 300 yards. YNS-20 considers explosion actuated by reverse pulse. Column of water 200 feet high was seen. EDC reports all Army mines have been accounted for. Explosion evaluated as magnetic mine or old depth charge. Port entrance closed until 1800/14 while twelve minesweepers operate in area”.

I reference this link because, by coincidence, the explosion occurred in New York Harbor at exactly the same time my father was recorded AWOL from the MTBS station in nearby Melville, Rhode Island. According to US Navy documents that I obtained from the NPRC, in addition to AWOL, my father also plead guilty to taking and causing damage to an automobile belonging to one John Hogan of Usher Place in Bristol, RI. There was no mention, however, of how far the car had driven or where the damage occurred. One month later, my dad was discharged from the Navy with a Bad Conduct Discharge.

Note that this was not the first time my dad got into trouble in the Navy. He had two previous Captain’s Masts for AWOL, and served 5 and 10 day punishments in solitary confinement, on bread and water for each. In neither case, however, had he stolen a car. I don’t know if my father had a driver’s license at that time.

Note 3: JFK – Reckless Youth by Nigel Hamilton

I began reading this book hoping to get some background information about the base at Melville, RI. I also hoped to confirm my dad’s story that he had been there at the same time as JFK. Sure enough, the dates listed in my dad’s US Navy Service Record coincide with the dates that Kennedy was there. The author of the book relies heavily on letters written by and to Lt. Kennedy, to reconstruct his biography from this period. I found some of it to be very interesting…

For the record, my father arrived at MTBS in April, 1942 and was being held in the brig continuously from November 10, 1942 until his discharge on December 9. According to this book, JFK arrived there on or about September 29, 1942. Note also, that this is shortly after Mr. Kennedy’s assignment with Naval Intelligence, and his association with Inga Arvad, which he still maintained. I’m just saying…

Following are some notable quotes from the book:

“Fred Rosen, Jack’s friend…recalled how at Melville ‘Kennedy was the only one with a car….Some of the officers would stay on the base…and some of us would go to Newport – we weren’t too far from town. And we’d pile into Kennedy’s car, oh, five or six of us in this convertible, and go to dinner. We’d have marvelous times in Newport. And on weekends we’d go down to New York; he and I would go down to New York almost every weekend’…. ‘We’d go down to New York and we had to catch a train at Grand Central sometime in the middle of the night to get back to base for our morning exercise around six A.M.’” [pg 508-9]

“Jack was boiling with rage, certain that Harllee [Senior Instructor] was keeping him at Melville…as a useful name.”

“Jack’s disappointment was mitigated, however, by the fact that he’d finally managed to engineer a place for Torbert Macdonald at Melville. The Naval Inspector’s Office in Boston was only too glad to see the back of Macdonald. As Jack’s mother heard the story, Torb had been in a dreadful mess again. It seems some woman, who signed herself ‘A Conscientous Taxpayer’ complained that one Torbert Macdonald was using a Navy Station Wagon to call at a certain number on a certain street every day…The street and number turned out to be Polly Carter’s house…all very complicated.’”

“If Harllee thought that Jack was going to take his “shafting” (navy slang for unpleasant orders) without a struggle, however, he was very much mistaken. With the help of his grandfather, Jack quietly arranged an interview on November 29, 1942, with the all-powerful Massachusetts senator David I. Walsh, chairman of the Senate Naval Affairs Committee.”

Note the date of this correspondence with Sen. Walsh. I found the timing of this especially interesting because all of my father’s Captain’s Masts were conducted by Lt. D. J. Walsh, and later Lt. Cmdr. D.J. Walsh. Both my father and Lt. Kennedy were having trouble at MTBS at precisely the same time, and both cases were resolved by somebody name Walsh.

Walsh was impressed by Jack and his grasp of war strategy and international relations. ‘Frankly, I have not met a young man of his age in a long time who has impressed me more favorably,’ Walsh subsequently wrote to Honey Fitz [JFK's Grandfather]…

‘It was a distinct pleasure to see you on Sunday,’ the senator wrote to Jack, ‘and I am looking forward to keeping in contact with you, and will try to be helpful in the matter we talked about as I am returning to Washington today.’ He informed Jack that he was ’sending under separate cover a book which I thought might interest you, entitled New World Horizons. I am sure the distances portrayed on the maps will be informative and will help you to follow the war more closely.’”

“‘I was damn glad to get out of Melville,’ Jack wrote to Billings afterward. ‘That job of instructor you can have. That Newport was a different Newport than that which your family dominated in the years before ‘jerry started his big stinks,’ if I have quoted you correctly.’”

“Unwilling to rely on naval bureaucracy or allow time for his father to interfere, Jack had already telephoned Washington and had spoken to Senator Walsh. The good impression he’d made the previous November now paid off. Even before Jack’s formal application for transfer was processed, Walsh had set the wheels of the navy’s personnel department humming.” [that is, to put through his transfer to the Pacific in February 1943]

To a friend in North Africa he wrote: “Rip Horton…was currently in the Quartermaster Corps but was ‘contemplating going into Paratroopers’”

Though not written in the same time-frame, but several months later, I found the next quote interesting, because my father came from Scranton, PA, and that is where he had supposedly driven while he was AWOL:

“On stationary headed ‘Mark Hopkins Hotel, Nob Hill, San Francisco’ Jack wrote at the end of February 1943 to Billings’s mother, asking her to forward to Lem in Africa what would ‘probably be my last letter to him for a good while.’ In the Harvard Alumni Bulletin for that month Jack claimed to have seen a picture of American Field Service personnel in the desert, and although they had ‘Lem listed as Somebody O’Malley Toole from Scranton, PA,’ Jack was positive it was (Lem)…”

Note 4: Maru and Nannie

I did a web search on the words MARU and NANNIE that my father had scrawled on the back of the photo that he carried in his wallet. It led me to the following web-page, an obituary index from the Weirton (WV) Daily Times for the year 1943. The last time I looked, it was still there:

http://weirton.lib.wv.us/hancock/weir/maryhweir/reference/obitlist/1943.html

I found this interesting for several reasons:

1. 1943 is the year my father was inducted into the Army, after being discharged from the Navy.
2. The fact that an obituary index from that year would even be posted on the internet.
3. Each obituary entry refers to an actual obituary message that was placed in the Weirton Daily Times on the day referenced, but these are seemingly unobtainable now even from several archives that maintain copies of the Daily Times.
4. These are the actual entries as they appeared in the index, that contained the keywords Maru and Nannie:

Maru, Musto 36 04/06/43 Holidaysburg
Lyons, Nannie 88 01/08/43 Wellsburg

Note that the first entry for Nannie Lyons would have appeared in the newspaper on 1/8/43, the date of the obituary. The reader would have read that her age was 88 at time of death. If you count 88 days from that date, you come up with 04/06/43, the date of the obituary for Musto Maru.
5. I also found it interesting that the Index contained the dates of the obituary itself. Wouldn’t it be more useful to genealogists and family tree researchers to have the date of death?