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Pacific Seabee: Ship went down from torpedo; only one died
Journal photo by David Rolfe
Odell Grose, 87, of Yadkin County laughs as he tells stories about his time in the Navy in the Pacific during World War II.
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Published: May 25, 2009
YADKINVILLE - It was December 1944. As World War II slogged on in the Pacific, Seaman apprentice Odell Grose found himself on a transport ship that had recently arrived in the Philippines.
After weeks at sea, his feet still had not touched solid ground.
"I worked in the chow hall every day on the way over serving bread," Grose said. "I was the slicing man."
One day, Tokyo Rose -- the English-speaking radio voice of the Japanese -- sent a message.
"Tokyo Rose said, ‘I'm going to send this ship and the men a Christmas package,'" Grose said. "She sent the package Christmas Eve."
Grose remembers the time as sometime after 8:30 p.m. He had just stepped out of the shower when he and the hundreds of other men on the ship heard and felt a massive "BOOM!"
"After that, all hell broke loose," Grose said.
Grose would find out later that a torpedo dropped into the water by a Japanese pilot had struck the ship, and the ship was going down. The ship was just a few miles from land, and the crew steered the ship that way.
"They pulled up to shallow water," Grose said.
Everyone went over the side into lifeboats. Grose made it safely to land and spent the night sleeping on a bench in a church. The only death that day, Grose said, was a 19-year-old man who had been in the ship's hospital, near where the torpedo struck.
Grose was in the Seabees, and, from there, he was sent to help construct an airbase for U.S. bombers.
"I don't know if they even had a name for it then," he said. "In 90 days, we had bombers going off the field."
He later helped build a hospital, sleeping quarters and warehouses. For most of his time in the Philippines, he drove a dump truck.
"Then I got put on a water truck to water dust down on the highways," he said.
Waiting for him back home in North Carolina, where he had been a farmer, were his wife, Hazel, and their three children.
Grose, now 87, was born on Christmas Day 1921. The fourth of nine children,
he started out in Iredell County where his family farmed, or, as Grose put it, busted rocks. When the family moved to Forsyth County, his wife became both a neighbor and a schoolmate.
"We just liked one another," Hazel Grose said.
On Oct. 3, 1939, Grose borrowed a car from Hazel's cousin, and they drove up to Hillsville, Va., to get married. By then, Grose, no fan of school, had graduated from high school.
"I went to school to get out of work at home," he said.
She was still in high school, and they didn't tell their families they were getting married because they knew their parents -- her father, in particular -- would be angry. Their plan was to get back in time for her to get home as if she were coming home from school.
"We didn't make it because the day wasn't long enough," she said.
Both sets of parents adjusted, and, after staying with his parents for a while, they found their own place. Grose worked for others for a couple of years before buying his own farm. When the draft board called him up for service, he was given a choice between the Army and the Navy.
"I would rather ride than walk so I got put in the Navy," he said.
When he went in on June 30, 1944, he said, they had 2½ children.
"Two and two-thirds, you mean," she said.
In any case, he was able to see their infant daughter, Linda (now Linda Stewart), between basic training and being shipped out. Hazel Grose and the children moved in with her parents for the duration of the war.
Before going on to the Philippines, the ship dropped off men in Australia and New Guinea.
"You stayed on the ship; you didn't get off anywhere," Grose said. "If they had, I would have walked back."
In early August 1945, the United States dropped two atomic bombs on Japan, and Japan surrendered later that month. On Nov. 14, 1945, Grose was discharged as a Seaman First Class with a Bronze Star.
"I sat there waiting 29 days for a way home," he said.
After he got back home, he and his family moved to Lewisville, and he got a job in the sales department at Sears, Roebuck & Co. in downtown Winston-Salem. After a stop working as a machine operator, he spent 45 years in construction, working both for himself and for others and ending up in Yadkin County.
Over the years, he talked little about his time in the service and didn't think about it all that much either.
"It didn't bother me," he said. "It was all done."
The generations that followed have also served their country in the military.
Odell Grose Jr. served in the Army, spending two years in Vietnam in the late 1960s. Grose's grandson Kirk Lee Grose fought in Operation Desert Storm in 1990 and is now in Iraq as a member of the National Guard.
And Grose's 12-year-old great-grandson Daniel Stewart is already talking about joining up.
"He's already decided he is going to be in the Navy like his Pappaw Odell," Linda Stewart said.
■ Kim Underwood can be reached at 727-7389 or at kunderwood@wsjournal.com.
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