Interview with Robert Dailey [June 13, 2002]

Harold Phillips:

Oral history interview of World War II veterans, conducted by Harold Phillips of the Handley Library Archives and the Winchester-Frederick County Historical Society. Today is the 13th of June, 2002 . The veteran is Mr. Robert Dailey. Go ahead.

Robert Dailey:

Okay. I was deferred to --

Harold Phillips:

Why don't you start with where and when you were born.

Robert Dailey:

I was born between Whittaker and Cross Junction with an address of Cross Junction, Virginia, where The Summit is now located. And I went to school at Redland through the 7th grade, and then Gainsber (ph) became my high school, and I graduated from high school, a class of 13, in 1939.

Harold Phillips:

Did you go to work then or --

Robert Dailey:

Yeah, I went to work. I worked for the Highway Department one summer, and then I went to work for Brathway (ph) Brothers who had an orchard, and did orchard work and farming, and they ran a canning plant. They canned such things as tomatoes and so on, so forth.

Harold Phillips:

Were you there when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor?

Robert Dailey:

Yes, I was. And I was deferred to work because of producing food stuff. Well, I worked there until -- well, it was the spring of '45, where they put me in 1A because some of the guys were coming home then could take my place. And I was inducted in the Service at Roanoke on the 25th of June.

Harold Phillips:

Of '45?

Robert Dailey:

Of '45. I went -- I went to Great Lakes, spent nine weeks in boot camp, and had a short leave home. Then I went to the West Coast, and I was there a few days, and we headed for the Philippines. Of course we didn't know where we were going at the time until we got there. But when I got there I was assigned to Manicaney (ph) Island which was a ship repair base. And I was in the small boats division which was a -ton dry dock.

Harold Phillips:

Did you have any training or prior experience with that type of work?

Robert Dailey:

No, I didn't. I was in farm work. But that's where I was assigned, and so the guys was setting the docks up for the different boats, we could take anything up to 400 tons, and we had three dry docks, and he had enough points to go home, and they had nobody to set the docks up, so a chief ______ carpenter by the name of Sommerfield (ph), he come up through the ranks, he asked me if I -- I could set the docks up, if I had any carpenter experience. I said nothing but rough carpenter work. And he said, well, I'll help you, and I soon found out that I was on my own because he couldn't even read a blueprint. But the first thing I set up was a dry dock for a coast guard cutter.

Harold Phillips:

And you were graded a seaman first during all that?

Robert Dailey:

That's right.

Harold Phillips:

And they trusted you with all of that --

Robert Dailey:

That's right.

Harold Phillips:

That was a lot of responsibility.

Robert Dailey:

And you had to set up a row of keel blocks, and it had to be just right, because the keel of a coast guard cutter is wooden, and if they're too high or too low it'll break the keel.

Harold Phillips:

Yeah.

Robert Dailey:

And you have to watch that sonar bulb, the build up blocks on the side, what they call bilge blocks, curve to the side of the boat on ratchets. You staple the block together _______, and your ratchet goes in to keep the boat from tilting over, and so I got it set up, and it worked okay.

Harold Phillips:

How long did it take for you to get it set up?

Robert Dailey:

Oh, I probably worked on it about three weeks.

Harold Phillips:

Had the war ended yet or --

Robert Dailey:

Oh, well, right at that time it hadn't, but then -- but it was right close to the end of the war there, and then I set up another dock for yard tug. You ought to see one of those out of the water.

Harold Phillips:

Yeah.

Robert Dailey:

They're all _______ (laughing).

Harold Phillips:

(Laughing).

Robert Dailey:

And then I set up a -- they had another dock, it was already set up for picket boats, that's crash boats that go out and get down flyers. I went, they had a Navy boat -- they had two boats, they had an army boat, they were about 75-foot job, make a nice yacht, had mahogany decks and all that. They were beautiful. But the flyer was there. I got to tour the Missouri in dry dock. Now that's a big hunk of steel out of -- out of the water.

Harold Phillips:

Yeah. So you don't -- another dry dock --

Robert Dailey:

Oh, yeah, it was on AB at DS5 which is sectional dock. It took five sections to hold it.

Harold Phillips:

To hold it, yeah.

Robert Dailey:

And it -- they were -- they were overhauling it. Now at Manicaney Island could handle anything from a _____ _____ ?murray? to a battle ship.

Harold Phillips:

To a battle ship.

Robert Dailey:

And they had -- they had different shops there. They could rebore and resleeve a 16-inch gun if necessary. They could do -- they had pipe shops, they had electrical shops, a little bit of everything there.

Harold Phillips:

After you had the docks set up, did you work at repairing the vessels then?

Robert Dailey:

Oh, no, no. They had crews that do that. No, our job was to maintain the docks. It normally, if we weren't getting ready for -- to dock something, it would take two to three hours to maintain the docks. We had to start every motor every day because of the humidity. And then the rest of the time we ?played? (Laughing).

Harold Phillips:

But you had to actually take the pontoons out, put them under the ship --

Robert Dailey:

No, no. No, it went down --

Harold Phillips:

On its own? Once you got it built it went down on its own?

Robert Dailey:

Yeah, they let -- let it -- they took those three-inch pipes and put them down and let water in the pontoon.

Harold Phillips:

Yeah.

Robert Dailey:

And then the ship would come in and we'd get her where we wanted her, or the boat would, not the ship, and then they'd blow the water out of the pontoon, and that would raise the boat up.

Harold Phillips:

Yeah.

Robert Dailey:

That's the way the dock is. It was a very simple arrangement.

Harold Phillips:

Did you have any incidents on your way overseas?

Robert Dailey:

No. Whenever we stopped at Eniwetok, which the hydrogen bomb was exploded later, you know --

Harold Phillips:

Yeah.

Robert Dailey:

-- it was just a sand bar. We were there six hours for refueling. We weren't even allowed off the ship.

Harold Phillips:

Did you have any trouble with typhoons or anything like that?

Robert Dailey:

Well, when I got on Manicaney Island, flying two baker of typhoon warning. In other words, there was a typhoon in the vicinity, and it was raining up a storm, and we were over at the receiving station about 15 miles away, and they took us over there in a boat and dumped us out on the main pier, and nobody met us.

Harold Phillips:

(Laughing.)

Robert Dailey:

Now that was interesting.

Harold Phillips:

Yeah. What did you do?

Robert Dailey:

And the rest of the guys were about , 20 year olds, and I was 25 at the time, so I ____ looked up the street there and there was a polos (ph) marshal's office there. I said, well, I don't know what's going on, but I'm gonna find out. So I walked up there in the rain and asked the promo (ph) marshal why nobody had met us. He said, we didn't know you were coming. They didn't let us know. So we got a truck and took us up an old Jap barracks up on the back side of the island. We had to live there for three days until they could get us assigned. But it was______it was really snafud, but they got us assigned.

Harold Phillips:

What were your living quarters like? Where did you live?

Robert Dailey:

Well, we had -- we had the two docks and three pontoon barges, and had a quasi hut on one, had quasi hut on another one. The one quasi hut was our living quarters, and the other was where we ate, and our recreational hall, and then the pontoon place in between was our work area, had a little wooden shack there we kept our tools in, and the officer had a little quarters in the back of that where he lived, and we ate, we had to go into the mainland which was about 500 yards away, and _____ 8::00 in the morning and 1::00 in the afternoon, even though we were on board ship, and there had to be two on guard duty at all times there.

Harold Phillips:

So you had to go ashore then --

Robert Dailey:

Yeah, we had -- we had small -- we had small boats.

Harold Phillips:

Small boats to haul you back and forth?

Robert Dailey:

We could run them.

Harold Phillips:

You ran them yourself --

Robert Dailey:

Oh, yeah, oh, yeah, yeah, but then when -- I stayed there until latter part of April, and --

Harold Phillips:

'46?

Robert Dailey:

'46, and they were starting to close the island down. The Government had a contract that all the equipment that they furnished could not be sold in the U.S., it had to be destroyed. So they were loading it up and taking it out to _____ in deep water, and they were starting to do that when I left. And I came back to the States, and the railroad strikes were on, so they canceled all leaves. One interesting thing was we were on Treasure Island, and the -- they announced the ?success? and ordered us all out on a drill field, and said anybody that weighs 165 pounds or more, fall out over here. Anybody under 165 pounds, fall out over here. Anybody with railroad experience, fall out over there. They were getting ready to take over the railroads. And the railroads got wind of it, so they canceled the strike. So they secured us. We never did take over the railroads.

Harold Phillips:

Why the separation into different weights?

Robert Dailey:

Well, the big guy -- the big guy, they had hard hats and bellies. The small guys had carvings with live ammunition. And the people with railroad experience was gonna run the trains. That's why they separated everybody.

Harold Phillips:

Did they ever get to the point of issuing billy clubs and ?car beams? and all that?

Robert Dailey:

They were right ready to when they secured. They were -- we were getting ready to load. They had them on the trucks that we were going to go on. That's how close it was. Because my leave was canceled, so I was reassigned. I was reassigned to an LSD, a landing ship dock, number 3. And we were -- our home port was off of Marcus Street Pier in Oakland Bay there. We'd anchor about a half mile off, and we made trips up and down the coast hauling different equipment. I've been to every major port on the west coast. I went down to San Diego and up to Portland, Oregon, Astoria, Oregon, all up and down the coast. And, in fact, I was up to Portland, Oregon on three different occasions.

Harold Phillips:

What type of equipment would you be hauling?

Robert Dailey:

Well, yard tugs or just -- see, the LSD was the mother ship in landing, and we normally held the landing boats and take them close enough to shore that they could reach the shore in a battle, but they were using them just to transport stuff that needed transporting now. And we took part in this Centennial of Monterey, California, and they put -- the Navy put on a show there. I was cox (ph) man in one of the landing boats, and we took -- had a sand bar off Monterey. They had fixed charges out there and this -- this cruiser come in and fired blanks, and the fixed charges went off and the black smoke and planes would fly. Then we took off for the sand bar with the Marines. And then after the show was put on, and we came back, and we brought them back, and then civilians could visit our boat.

Harold Phillips:

And you were the coxswain on that?

Robert Dailey:

I was coxswain on one of the landing boats.

Harold Phillips:

For people that don't know what that is, what --

Robert Dailey:

I drive the boat. (Laughing.)

Harold Phillips:

(Laughing.) You were the man, as they say.

Robert Dailey:

But --

Harold Phillips:

And where did you get that experience?

Robert Dailey:

Well, we grow -- we had three different craft on the dry dock in the Philippines, and all of us learned to drive them, and so then towards the end of July, our -- the -- the landing ship was going to be decommissioned, so I was on draft to come home. Of course, they added my leave. I hadn't had -- I got home on the 31st day of July, about midnight, but according to them I was in the Navy -- I was almost in the Navy a month after that because of my leave I hadn't gotten, they paid me for all that.

Harold Phillips:

So you were actually released the end of August '46?

Robert Dailey:

Yeah. Thereabout.

Harold Phillips:

Yes. Did you have any contact with home or people from home while you were overseas?

Robert Dailey:

Well, there was two people. One I went to school with, and another from our area that I met there in the Philippines. You always run into somebody. But they -- they had a lot of -- see, the Navy thought the war was going to last two years a lot longer than what it was. And it was too far to take ships back to Hawaii to repair them or to the U.S., so they'd take them down there, but ______ came the islands in the _______ a few hundred miles from the equator. It was hot there.

Harold Phillips:

Yes, it was.

Robert Dailey:

And it -- it was raining here and now, but we've never seen rain here. The monsoons hit there and it rained for six weeks.

Harold Phillips:

Were you married at the time?

Robert Dailey:

No.

Harold Phillips:

No.

Robert Dailey:

No, I was single.

Harold Phillips:

And did you have any -- somewhere I heard of an incident of you unloading some ginger products. Was that you? Some _____ _____ applesauce or something?

Robert Dailey:

Unloading -- well, no, I'd do supplies for the dock after the guy did it ________+ and ______+ and stuff, and he said would you like some fresh apples? And I said, yeah, I'll -- how are they packed? He said they're a bushel H.F. Bird (ph).

Harold Phillips:

H.F. Bird, very good. I had heard something like that. I couldn't remember what it was.

Robert Dailey:

Yeah, H.F. Bird apples.

Harold Phillips:

They were very good, I'm sure.

Robert Dailey:

Yeah. But -- oh, yeah, we enjoyed them. There was 11 of us there on the dock, and a bushel of apples lasted a while.

Harold Phillips:

What did you do after you got released from the Navy?

Robert Dailey:

I -- I was pay master in a labor camp, but ______ was just a temporary job. And then I went in the ACP office and ran the ACP, the ______ consolation program office, from December '48 until '55.

Harold Phillips:

Did you use the G.I. Bill?

Robert Dailey:

No.

Harold Phillips:

You didn't need it at all?

Robert Dailey:

No, there wasn't any reason to.

Harold Phillips:

Did you join the American Legion or the VFW?

Robert Dailey:

I joined the VFW, and I was coming up through the offices, and -- well, I'll be very frank with you, I don't know if you want to put it on here or not, it got too rough for me. And there was six of us resigned at one time. (Laughing.)

Harold Phillips:

(Laughing.)

Robert Dailey:

We didn't like the way --

Harold Phillips:

________+.

Robert Dailey:

You know, you can understand that. I belong to the American Legion now.

Harold Phillips:

Did you get active in politics in any way?

Robert Dailey:

No. No. Then after I got out of ACP, I was an insurance agent for five years, and worked for Virginia Farm Bureau, and then I went with Crown Cork and Seal as first -- first and only job there on cost control on the plant because they had -- the Shockus ph) was billing the time and material, and I had to sign all the payroll and everything.

Harold Phillips:

You did all of this with your on-the-job training type of thing?

Robert Dailey:

Well, I had no training for it. I just did it. And so Shockus said, well, you'll have to sign the payrolls, you just keep the payroll. The foreman for Shockus was Sherman Sharp. He was a very nice guy, and we got along excellent. We didn't have any problems at all. And I'll tell you, I signed for a lot of stuff to go in that building, and then after the building was built, I set up shipping department. I got - went with the ?wedding? bureau, set up weight standards and all that, and then ran the shipping department for a year, and then they pulled me up to the front office as purchasing agent, and I'd go back and oversee them occasionally, and then when I left there I was purchasing agent at Crown. I was there 27 years.

Harold Phillips:

Did you maintain contact with any of your Navy buddies?

Robert Dailey:

No, I don't know where any of them are. There was only ten of us out there, and I have no idea where they are.

Harold Phillips:

And what awards and decorations did you receive while you were in the Navy?

Robert Dailey:

I didn't receive any.

Harold Phillips:

Good conduct?

Robert Dailey:

Well, I had good conduct, yeah.

Harold Phillips:

And the Asia Pacific ribbon?

Robert Dailey:

Yeah, a ribbon without a battle star because I wasn't in a battle.

Harold Phillips:

Yeah. And was your highest rank coxswain, mason, or --

Robert Dailey:

No.

Harold Phillips:

-- you were just acting as coxswain?

Robert Dailey:

I was seaman first class. But I would have gotten the rank if I had decided to stay with it, but I didn't stay. I was more interested in coming home.

Harold Phillips:

Yeah. Is there anything else that you would like to add?

Robert Dailey:

No, not that I know of.

Harold Phillips:

Was -- do you think that your time in the Navy was of value to you?

Robert Dailey:

Oh, yeah. It was very interesting. I learned -- I learned a lot of things in the Navy.

Harold Phillips:

Well, Robert, thank you very much.

Robert Dailey:

Okay.

[END OF TAPE]