Many who join the U.S. Navy often cite their desire to sail around the world as motivation.
For James “Jim” Gardner, who enlisted during World War II in 1942, that was only part of the reason.
The other motivations? He had brothers in both the U.S. Army and U.S. Marine Corps, and he knew that if he went into the Navy, he wouldn’t end up having to sleep in the mud somewhere.
“The Navy had the nicer beds,” Gardner said.
After growing up along the banks of the Mississippi River, he also had a love for boats and the water.
While the beds were nicer, little did Gardner know that he would end up witnessing first hand both the D-Day invasion at Normandy, France, and the island hopping campaign in WWII’s Pacific Theater.
Originally born in St. Louis, Missouri, on Feb. 27, 1925, Gardner is now preparing to celebrate his 100th birthday on Thursday, Feb. 27.
He and his daughter, Mary Fleming, met with The Chronicle on Tuesday, Feb. 18, at the Village Concepts of Chehalis Woodland Village assisted living facility to talk about his life experiences, military service and his upcoming public 100th birthday celebration.
A former resident of Tenino, Gardner will have his public 100th birthday celebration at the Tenino No. 564 Fraternal Order of Eagles, located at 349 Sussex Ave W. in downtown Tenino, from 1 to 4 p.m. on Saturday, March 1. The public is invited to attend.
“I’ve got a lot of family coming in from all over the country, too,” Gardner said. “Ohio, Missouri, Texas, New Mexico, Idaho and Oregon.”
Having grown up in St. Louis, still too young to enlist when the Imperial Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, Gardner enlisted in the Navy as soon as he graduated from high school a year later in 1942.
“One of the things he likes to say is when people ask him what his job was in the Navy, he says ‘Cruising the islands in my uncle’s yacht,’” Fleming said.
The uncle was “Uncle Sam.”
Fleming was assigned to be a quartermaster on the USS Tide, AM-125, an Auk class minesweeper ship. Construction of the Tide had yet to be completed, so Gardner and his fellow sailors waited at the Navy’s old shipyard in Savannah, Georgia, for the Tide to be launched.
It was finally launched on Sept. 7, 1942, and after the Tide’s sea trials, Gardner and the rest of its crew set out across the Atlantic to provide escorts for supply convoys.
“We’d escort the ships into Gibraltar and Casablanca, North Africa and Italy both. They needed supplies and we escorted them across the Atlantic,” Gardner said.
Then, in August 1943, the Tide sailed to New York and began providing escorts for tanker ships along the Navy’s Eastern Sea Frontier stretching from the Canadian coast south to the Caribbean.
“I got to see most of the Caribbean islands,” he added.
In 1944, it was back over to European waters for the Tide, which pulled into the port at Torquay, England in March 1944.
There, the Tide escorted supply convoys and worked with British Royal Navy minesweeper ships to clear the English Channel in preparation for the D-Day invasion.
On D-Day, the Tide was assigned to the Navy’s Minesweeper Squadron A off the coast of Utah Beach. The Tide and its sister ships in the squadron continued minesweeping efforts, clearing the lane for fire-support ships.
“When you’re young and stupid and don’t know any better, it’s just another day’s work,” Gardner said.
On the second morning of D-Day, June 7, the Tide was minesweeping near Îles Saint-Marcouf when it struck a mine, which exploded with enough force to lift the 904-ton vessel out of the water, blowing a huge hole in the Tide’s hull causing irreversible flooding.
Gardner was on the ship’s bridge at the time of the explosion. The blast blew him off the ship and into the waters of the English Channel, leaving him clinging onto floating debris to survive.
Some of the Tide’s sister ships attempted to aid and tow the stricken ship, but the Tide was beyond saving and the strain of towing broke the ship in two. It quickly sank minutes after the last survivors had been taken off.
After spending some time recovering in a British hospital, Gardner was assigned to the Navy’s Auk class minesweeper USS Toucan, AM-387, which after being launched in September 1944 from Cleveland, Ohio, sailed for the waters of the Pacific Ocean.
“I got to see both ends of the world and both theaters of war,” Gardner said.
It first began with minesweeping operations in the East China Sea and near Korea.
Toward the end of the war, the USS Toucan was operating near Okinawa when the Imperial Japanese forces finally surrendered.
“I had anchor watch, and I went down to tell the captain that on the radio they said Japan had surrendered,” Gardner said.
He and his fellow sailors wanted to celebrate the good news, but didn’t have time to.
“We wanted to ring the ship’s bell and blow the whistle and everything, but then suddenly, red alert, we’re under attack,” Gardner said. “There were some wise guys on the radio going, ‘Don’t they know the war’s over?’ But there’s somebody that doesn’t get the word, right?”
That somebody was a Japanese torpedo bomber pilot who struck one of the ships the Toucan was escorting.
“The (USS) Pennsylvania took a pretty good hit, it killed 20 sailors,” said Gardner.
Following that attack, Gardner’s wartime duties still weren’t over despite WWII having officially ended. There were still many enemy mines surrounding ports throughout the Pacific that needed to be sweeped.
Following WWII, Gardner remained in the Navy and became a mechanic assigned to a Navy PB4Y-2 Privateer bomber squadron in Guam. The Privateer is a version of the famous Consolidated Aircraft B-24 Liberator bomber modified for naval use.
Then, the Korean War began in 1950.
“At that point, I had been in for eight years, most of it either overseas or on a ship. So they decided it was time for me to go ashore,” Gardner said.
He ended up being assigned to the Navy admiral’s staff headquarters in San Francisco, California.
“I got to rub elbows with a whole bunch of high ranking military, but politicians, too. One admiral told me one time, ‘When you put that second (admiral) star on your shirt collar, you’re no longer a nautical man, you’re a politician,’” Gardner said.
It was one of his last duty stations in the Navy that brought him to Lewis County, when he was assigned to be a Navy recruiter in Chehalis in 1960. He retired in 1962 after a 20-year career.
Following his Navy retirement, the family briefly moved back to St. Louis even though Gardner wanted to stay.
“We went back to St. Louis, but I hated it. I didn’t want to go back but (Mary’s) mother and my mother pressured me into going back there and getting a job,” Gardner said.
Being out of the military afforded him new freedoms, though, including being able to get fired from a job, which happened to him in St. Louis.
“Blessing in disguise,” Gardner said jokingly.
Upon moving back to Lewis County, Gardner worked at the old Yard Birds Shopping Mall and served in the Lewis County Sheriff’s Office before once again sailing the seas while working for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
“NOAA had just been formed … I got in on the ground floor and got a good job, cruising the islands on my uncle’s yacht again,” Gardner said.
Though he can no longer sail himself as he is legally blind, Gardner keeps a photo of the NOAA ship he used to sail on next to his family photos in his room at Woodland Village. He also still strums out tunes on his mandolin.
“It’s just something to entertain myself,” Gardner said after playing a couple songs on Tuesday afternoon.
To learn more about Gardner, read about his time in the Navy in “The Fate of the USS Tide: The Forgotten Sailors of D-Day,” by Mark Zangara, available on Amazon.
