Preserving The Oral HistorIES of Combat Veterans
10:07 | On his second trip aboard the SS Joseph MacKenna, armed guard John Laster experienced his most intense combat of the war when his convoy suffered a heavy air attack off the coast of North Africa. Part 1/2
Keywords : John Laster US Naval Armed Guard Liberty Ship Mediterranean SS Joseph McKenna SS Paul Hamilton
"Jawga Boy" John Laster enlisted in the Navy and was trained to be an armed guard, a member of a gunnery crew protecting vital war supplies on Liberty Ships.
A Liberty Ship carried 28 gunners on board. John Laster was a loader and served on all the different guns. With the 3 inch 50 AA gun, they could put out 6 shots in 9 1/2 seconds. "Not bad for a bunch of country boys!"
John Laster recounts a humorous story of a drunk Merchant Marine officer trying to smuggle two bottles of whiskey aboard ship while in the Panama Canal. He wound up being shot and lightly wounded by a guard who was later billed $1.50 for the bullets.
His first ship assignment and voyage was memorable. Naval Armed Guard John Laster was knocked out by a loose firing lanyard and, later, had to help round up 500 monkeys, who were bound stateside for research, after their cage broke open.
The training continued after deployment for Naval Armed Guard John Laster. He recalls gunnery training in a tent in the Iranian desert, firing mocked up guns at projected combat films.
As John Laster steamed into The Mediterranean aboard the SS Joseph McKenna, German soldiers tracked it through the Straits of Gibraltar from positions in the hills above. Just out of New York on the return, a ship ahead suffered a sub strike.
When the Liberty Ships he was guarding rode the really big waves, the entire ship would tremble, according to John Laster. He remembers being more afraid of storms than the enemy.
Naval Armed Guard John Laster was proud of his proficiency at his task of loading the deck guns on Liberty Ships. He describes the procedure and details the guns and different shells.
During the intense air attack experienced by Naval Armed Guard John Laster, he saw the SS Paul Hamilton hit by an aerial bomb, causing a mile high plume of smoke. "One second they were there, the next they were not." Part 2/2
In the port of Naples, there was a system of warning lights to signal gun crews whether they should fire at enemy planes or let the port gunners take care of them. Unfortunately, recalls John Laster, the crew of a French ship did not heed the lights.
The war in Europe ended while John Laster was aboard the SS Arthur Dobbs. Planning a night of drunken celebration in Calcutta, where he was docked, he wound up on Shore Patrol duty instead. Then, back in Egypt, he was assigned to the SS Glenn Curtiss.
The SS Arthur Dobbs had the toughest armed guards in the fleet, according to John Laster, so tough they were thrown out of Egypt after an epic bar fight with British soldiers. Assigned to the SS Glenn Curtiss, they finished war duty in Tinian.
John Laster never felt the enemy "had anything big enough or good enough to keep me from coming back...I am still here, some of them are not." He swears he is ready to go back and he urges vets to leave a history and a record as he has done.
