THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, September 25, 1994 TAG: 9409230218
SECTION: PORTSMOUTH CURRENTS PAGE: 08 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: OLDE TOWNE JOURNAL
SOURCE: Alan Flanders
LENGTH: Long : 112 lines
``Steaming along at about seven knots in groups of 20 ships or more doesn't exactly give you a good feeling when you know there are German submarines on the prowl.''
Harry A. Clark now sits back in his easy chair and reflects back over 50 years from his Taylor Road home and ``counts my blessings'' that he's here at all considering where he was in 1938. ``I didn't bank on having a front row seat for the beginning of World War II,'' he admits, ``but those of us who signed on the Moore-MacCormack steamship lines in New York were headed for a ringside seat as Germany sent her submarines across the Atlantic to prey on convoy shipments to Europe.
``Once they started sinking ships heading from Iceland to Russia, then called the Murmansk runs, we knew every night that we were in their cross hairs too.''
Being in the line of fire spurred Clark to take up the Navy's offer to convert his wartime merchant marine experience into a commission that would place him on the other end of the firing line.
``Most of us in the merchant marine who had training like I had at the New York State Merchant Marine Academy had a feeling that we were going to get involved one way or another,'' Clark said.
That feeling came to reality all too soon when he signed aboard the freighter SS Virginia. ``She was sent to Newport News during President Franklin Roosevelt's Good Neighbor Policy towards South America, refurbished, and then recommissioned as the SS Brazil. I was just 23 when I saw the famous German pocket-battleship Admiral Graf Spee after she was clobbered by the British and forced into the port of Montevideo in 1939. We sailed past her several times when she had the German flag and swastika flying from her stern and mast. It sure gave us an uneasy feeling to watch our German sailors on board the Virginia wave and cheer the Graf Spee's crew as they lined the pier to cheer back and sing their national anthem. But we were still neutral and had a giant American flag painted on both sides of our bow to make sure the Germans saw it,'' Clark said.
``My first real Navy assignment was as a junior navigator on a Navy oil tanker, the USS Sapelo. On Dec. 7, 1941, I had the midwatch the night we received the message that the Japanese had hit Pearl Harbor. We had been steaming from the Norfolk Naval Shipyard to the Gulf of Mexico and then returning oil to the supply station at Craney Island. It was then that I got my orders to head for Argentia, Newfoundland, and join the convoys that formed up off the coast of Maine.
``It was while cruising in those waters toward Iceland that we began to see the real costs of the war. One night I remember hearing what sounded like two large claps of thunder, coming just minutes apart. Then hours later on a zigzag U-boat evasion course, we started coming across all kinds of debris in the water. First you saw pieces of wood, then a life buoy, and then sailors scattered all over the place and maybe a piece of a lifeboat.''
If you stopped to look for survivors, Clark said, it was a near guarantee that you would be the next target. Once the American escorts such as the Sapelo got to Iceland, they handed off the convoy to their reliefs who took them farther north.
``I knew we were ducks in a barrel once the German wolf pack caught us,'' Clark recalled, ``so the first time I got a chance, I volunteered to submarine service myself. I figured if someone is shooting at me from below the surface, well, I'll just learn to shoot back.'' However, because the Navy was short of seasoned instructors, Clark was promoted to lieutenant junior grade and sent to submarine school at New London, Conn.
During an interim assignment, he returned to Portsmouth and met his future wife, the former Jacqueline Allen, daughter of a then-future U.S. Coast Guard district commandant.
Clark's next assignment took him to Key West, Fla., where he joined the newly formed anti-submarine warfare school as an instructor on World War I-vintage submarines called ``R'' boats.
``Our job was to sail out of Key West and become the target of the Navy's destroyers, subchasers and patrol craft. In turn, we took bearings on them as our target and made runs at them with dummy torpedoes.
``Boy, were those old subs cramped with 30 crewmen and four officers! No place to sit down, no room to sleep, and hardly enough room to turn around. Our equipment was antiquated by today's standards, believe me, with only rudimentary sonar that maybe covered 1,000 square yards.''
Just over 6 foot, and still trim enough to wear his former uniform, Clark stares straight at you with his piercing blue eyes that only break contact when a memory becomes a little too vivid.
Such as when he recalled an afternoon off Key West in March 1943 when things began to go terribly wrong on a routine training mission.
``We were out as usual on a Saturday with another boat, the R-12, getting ready to make another practice run on a target. Suddenly we got the message to cancel and return to port immediately. The R-12, which had been cruising on the practice area next to us, had gotten into serious trouble. When we returned to Key West we heard the news that for some mysterious reason she had suddenly plunged sharply from the surface leaving her skipper and two others stranded on her bridge. Even though they escaped and were later rescued, the R-12 quickly flooded and sunk from sight like a rock. I'll never know what happened that day and I'll never forget how that message came to me . . . `Submarine down.' ''
A half century later finds Clark, now 77, looking back without regret over a career as merchant marine master mariner, World War II and Korean War vet, Navy instructor and oceanographer.
Having closed his ocean surveying business in Norfolk more than a decade ago, Clark still hasn't broken his maritime ties as he rises early twice a week to drive to Newport News where he serves as a volunteer docent at the Mariners' Museum.
``Guess people still want to hear the stories of an `old salt','' he says with a sly grin and a light in his eyes that still long for horizons far out to sea. ILLUSTRATION: Photo by PETER D. SUNDBERG
Harry A. Clark now sits back in his easy chair at his Taylor Road
home and reflects about his naval career, including the time he had
a front row seat during the submarine warfare of World War II.
by CNB