An Early History of the Crew of LST1090 in World War II

Contributed by Roy Hockett, Radarman

The camp was raw and cold when I arrived in the fall of 1944. After checking in, I had to trudge about a mile across a field to my assigned Quonset Hut, carrying my sea-bag which weighed almost as much as I did. I was to find that all areas to which one had to travel during training were placed just as strategically.

I was, at that time, barely 18 year old Roy Hockett, Seaman 2nd Class, fresh out of boot camp at Great Lakes Naval Training Center.

The early days at Camp Bradford were spent on general assignment, which consisted of clean up and maintenance of the camp. I was, of course, too smart to volunteer for such jobs as "dive bomber" which was picking up loose debris on the grounds with a pointed stick or "truck driver" which was using a hand truck to load supplies. This is how I ended up one of the few left unassigned, and became a lumberjack, on one end of a cross-cut saw with a 200 pound Ole on the other end, clearing trees for camp expansion. That man, Darrell "Poncho" Herron, became a good friend and shipmate.

Some of us were allowed to try for Radio School, but some like me who couldn¹t tell a "dit" from a "da" were rapidly tossed out. I was transferred to Radar, became a RDM Striker, finished the course, and was assigned to a crew which became the crew of LST 1090.

The crew was assigned to tents while in crew training. The tents were equipped with a coal-burning stove. Unfortunately, there was no coal available. We slept fully clothed, complete with pea coat and doubled blankets. The Heads, housed in temporary wooden buildings, were unheated and had no hot water. It was fun shaving and showering. We were being trained, you see, for the South Pacific.

Our training progressed next to on-board experience. We were loaded onto an LST (The number is lost in memory) as an auxiliary crew for a cruise in Chesapeake Bay up to Baltimore, Maryland. We were allowed to perform all our drills in the freezing cold (more training for the South Pacific, I assume).

Baltimore was considered to be a good liberty town. Unfortunately, only part of the crew was to be given liberty there. The ship was tied alongside a dock, and quite a few men used "liberty lines" to solve the inequity. We didn¹t see much of Baltimore, as there were numerous bars close to the ship. This was considered a sailor¹s duty to explore these establishments which we did. We were very young. There were a few men who had reached the ripe old age of thirty, and they were called "Pop".

The trip back toward Norfolk was eventful, at least for me. One of the crew came down with scarlet fever, and I too developed a fever and reported to sick bay. Mine was later diagnosed as "Cat Fever" - a term they evidently applied when unsure, but at any rate the ship was stopped, the bow doors opened, and we were loaded into a LCVP and taken ashore. We were off loaded on stretchers, and placed in an ambulance. We waited - or I waited, the other man was out of it, for thirty or forty minutes while the driver went to visit his Mother or whatever, before we were taken to the hospital at Patuxent River Naval Air Station. There we went to the isolation ward.

It was a wonderful place. I felt fine after about 12 hours, being in a comfortable bed, a nice warm ward, and great food served by nice Nurses. I hadn't been warm in six weeks. I had to suffer through this for two weeks that being the isolation period.

My orders took me back to Camp Bradford via Washington D.C. I was a group of one, carrying my own records, so I managed a couple of days in Washington, before reporting back to Camp Bradford. Once there, I found that I was going back into the general unassigned pool. Begging and pleading to be returned to the Crew, I got no sympathy. I got up enough nerve to request an audience with the commander of the base, a Captain. He must have been so amused at a Seaman 2nd coming to him that he granted my request. I did want back in my old crew, but also, I sure didn't want another tour of beautiful Camp Bradford.

We did not find Norfolk a wonderful liberty town - too many sailors. The civilians hated us, and you could understand this. The streets, restaurants, shops, and, ah yes, the "Gaiety Theater" were packed with men in blues. We had weekend liberty from Bradford during our training, but it required riding in a semi-trailer with side doors and tail gate wide open, standing, or rather hanging on to your mates all the way to Norfolk. My mates and I would sometime take the ferry to Newport News, which was a bit kinder to us old salts than Norfolk.

The future crew of LST 1090 was loaded on the train, at long last, for our trip to Pittsburgh PA where we were to pick up our ship at the Ambridge Ship Yard in the suburban town of Ambridge. We found ourselves berthed in brick dormitories at Carnegie Tech. There were nice steam-heated rooms with good food at the College Cafeteria. It was Heaven.

The City of Pittsburgh offered great liberty for sailors, as good as Norfolk had been bad, and we found it was 100% - every night and all weekends. Just so we were available for muster in front of the dormitory the following mornings. We began to realize just how nice it was when cars were lined up in front of he dorm each evening with ladies inviting sailors to come to parties and for home-cooked meals. If we chose to take the streetcar to Downtown, the driver would cover the change box - no charge to sailors. It was, of course, our duty to behave in accordance with the common conception that civilians held about sailors. We would enter bars, and there were plenty in this City, and we found it very difficult to pay for even the first drink - someone there was always buying. It was difficult to stay sober, and some didn't try.

There was a concentrated effort to keep us busy each day. We would have exercises in the morning, movies, classes on various subjects - herded from one to the other, and repeats in the afternoon. After the first few days exhaustion had set in, it was very difficult to keep us awake during any of the activities. Most of the sleep we got was during the movies, very little at night.

Ships Control section, of which I was a part, was soon moved to other duties. We were placed around large chart tables and given Navy Chart Logs (I believe they were called) and huge stacks of addenda to the Logs. We were to bring them up-to-date, and I'm sure they had not been revised since the War of 1812. Trying desperately to stay awake, we would spend time marking out or revising paragraphs - only to find the next revision deleted the entire page. Necessary work, but dreadfully dull.

The ship was finally ready, and her crew boarded LST 1090 in preparation for the cruise down the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers to New Orleans. Most of the crew was berthed in the large crew compartment in the stern, below the main deck. However, some were separated by specialties and assigned to compartments along the port side of the ship, bilges and storage below and the main deck above. I was in a compartment, amidships on the port side, along with rates or strikers in various specialties, about twelve to a compartment. I was the only radarman, for instance, in that area. The bunks were in tiers of three - and we were pleased to occupy one when authorized. We were tired sailors.

The mast along with the radar antenna was lashed to the main deck, and a wooden pilothouse was installed on top of the conning tower. It was flood tide on the rivers, and we had to watch for clearance on each bridge. A river Pilot and his crew were in charge of the ship, and the Pilot and crew changed as we progressed. We anchored each night, and one of the nights was off Memphis. There were people waving from the docks. One was the wife of a crewmember. There was no liberty there, so all he could do was wave as we got underway. I don't know how she got the word as to when the 1090 would be there, but the crew felt for them both.

The 1090 sped down the river at floodtide at the fastest the ship ever moved, past Baton Rouge, and toward New Orleans. However, we had a slight hitch. I was starting out of the passageway, which ran across the ship in front of the galley, and toward the main deck on the port side when I was almost run down by sailors rushing in. We were receiving jolts as the ship hit objects, and then the sudden stop. I could see large trees through the hatch, and limbs and debris were scattered along the deck! We had run aground into dense forests. The river was high into the trees at floodtide, you see, otherwise we would have merely gone aground on the bank. Fortunately, no one was seriously hurt - a few bumps and bruises from tree limbs perhaps. It was unbelievable how far the steering casualty had caused us to run into the trees. The starboard side had trees alongside from bow to stern. However, we had enough clearance on the port side toward the stern to launch a LCVP which towed the stern anchor out into the river far enough to allow the ship to pull itself out of the trees. I don't recall if we had to use manual steering or if the steerage problem was corrected to allow us to proceed on down the river, and to our destination at Algiers Naval Station - across the river from New Orleans. We were later directed to Mobile, Alabama - to dry-dock for inspection as to any damage suffered in the grounding (or treeing) of the 1090.