ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, January 25, 1997 TAG: 9701270034
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
DATELINE: BLACKSBURG
SOURCE: KENNETH SINGLETARY STAFF WRITER
MEMO: NOTE: Also ran in January 30, 1997 Neighbors.
Roy Jennelle was a 17-year-old Blacksburg boy who needed his father's permission when he joined the Navy in 1944. Little did he know that his decision would put him in the middle of the battle at Okinawa and on two ships that were sunk on the same day.
And little did he know that the Purple Heart he deserved for his injuries would take almost 52 years to reach him, arriving only Thursday.
Not that he has been keeping track. He was injured in the spine and legs, but lots of soldiers and sailors were hurt worse in World War II, and he was modest about his war experiences.
He could have received his medal, awarded to American service people injured in combat, in 1945. A ceremony was scheduled at the hospital in Norfolk, but it was a few days after his discharge. He said, "Just mail it to me. I'm ready to go home." The medal never arrived.
But last fall, his wife, Marie, decided his Purple Heart would be a perfect surprise 51st-wedding anniversary gift. She contacted Rep Rick Boucher's office and learned they would need her husband's signature to access his military files.
So she waited until a day when he was in a bright mood, and asked him to sign a sheet of paper without reading it, something he would not normally do. Boucher's office was able to deliver the medal within two to three months, calling her periodically with updates.
The timing of the medal's arrival is significant in another way. Only in recent years has Jennelle, 70, been able to talk about his experiences, which had been evidenced mostly by silence and nightmares.
Then, one evening on their back porch in 1989, their son asked Roy Jennelle to tell his story, to let out the demons he had inside. "He had been fighting the war since 1944. He wouldn't talk about it to me, to our children," Marie Jennelle said. "Actually, I have been fighting the battles with him for all these years."
"We sat out there, I guess, for four or five hours, way into the night," Roy Jennelle said. Their son, Arthur Joseph Jennelle, who is a high school principal in Pennsylvania, wrote his father's story in a 45-page, single-spaced book.
Jennelle was a seaman first class on PGM-18, code name the "Sardonic," a converted patrol craft whose job was to provide support and anti-aircraft cover for mine sweepers as they cleared lanes for landing and supply ships attacking Okinawa. Jennelle's job was to man a twin 40-millimeter anti-aircraft battery.
On the morning of April 8, 1945, a week after the invasion of Okinawa had begun, Jennelle was in the chow hall of his ship, having breakfast after finishing a four-hour watch. He had removed the life jacket he had worn during his watch.
Suddenly, "without warning, they were rocked hard by an explosion," Joe Jennelle wrote. "No one knew what hit them. Roy was slammed all the way across the chow hall into the wall behind him." The impact injured Jennelle's spine, but it would be months before he realized it.
The ship had either been hit by a torpedo or had struck a mine. Soon it was listing on its side, and the captain ordered the ship to be abandoned. Jennelle went overboard, where he was forced to tread oily water for hours. Horribly burned sailors were around him, but he could help none of them.
Finally, a minesweeper approached to rescue the survivors. Jennelle grabbed a rope hanging over the side and was trying to pull himself aboard when that ship exploded. It, too, had apparently hit a mine.
Jennelle was thrown back into the water. Many of the sailors on the minesweeper, including his comrades from the Sardonic, were killed. Planes flew over and dropped life jackets, but they fell out of reach and were carried away by the wind. Jennelle spent eight to 10 hours treading water that day before he was pulled aboard a motor launch from a communications or supply ship.
Eventually, Jennelle was transferred to a troop ship for the trip home. On board, Jennelle found he was sailing home with two other service men from Montgomery County: James Spradlin, also from Blacksburg, and David Jones, an officer from Christiansburg.
Yet even headed toward safety, Jennelle found a stark reminder of the horrors of war: a kamikaze plane stuck out of the ship's heavily damaged superstructure, a victim of an earlier suicide attack from the Okinawa campaign.
LENGTH: Medium: 83 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: Roy Jennelle displays his Purple Heart. color.by CNB