He stood, his back straight, his brown eyes clear, his white hair neat, and looked out on the undulating surf of Lake Michigan.
“Yes I was,” Richard Hall said quietly.
The brig consisted of seven cells and at the moment held four prisoners, all of them sailors. Three were confined for relatively minor violations, and one was awaiting transfer to the navy prison at Portsmouth, Virginia. What he’d been charged with, when you got down to it, was homosexuality.
They enlisted in the marines in the summer of 1941. Richard says, “We joined the day after Hitler invaded Russia. Everybody was apprehensive about the situation. The draft was on and war was coming and we were going to go one way or the other. We were doomed. The Depression was on and there were no jobs. We thought by joining we could have a little better selection than by being drafted. We chose the marines because one day we saw a recruiter in his dress blues and he was a knockout. We didn’t know much about it. You know how stupid you are as a teenager. We never thought when we went in we’d be on a battleship.” A picture of the twins with the commanding officer of the recruiting station ran in a Kansas City paper. “It was extraordinary,” Richard says. “Papers had this fixation for twins. Some of those towns, of course, didn’t have a lot of news.”
The casemate Richard was swabbing overlooked the quarterdeck, the rear area of the main deck that held two of the West Virginia’s four main batteries. These were the great enclosed turrets containing the ship’s mammoth 16-inch guns, two per turret. These guns made the West Virginia one of the most heavily armed ships in the world, capable of firing shells almost 20 miles. Strategic theory of the time held that this firepower made battleships the most important vessels in the fleet. This thinking was based on the experiences of the British and Germans during the Battle of Jutland in World War I, but it was flawed. Modern airplanes could deliver shells much farther than the largest shipborne guns.
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
The “Now hear this!” announcements on battleships were preceded by bugle calls that Richard and Harold Hall–who’d both been on the West Virginia only six weeks–were still trying to memorize. This morning the West Virginia was sitting in the harbor with 69 other combat ships and 24 auxiliaries. Fifty-five percent of the officers–many senior–were ashore at 7:55 when the first Japanese planes arrived. The bugle Richard heard while he was lamenting the freshwater situation called “fire and rescue.” “There was the bugle, then the announcement ‘Away fire and rescue team!’ And then, I think, we had just heard the fire and rescue call when almost immediately they sounded the bugle call for general quarters.”
Richard Hall is modest and honest. He tries to separate what he is sure he experienced from memories influenced by what he’s since read or heard. He selects his words carefully.
