Two LST rides. One long and peaceful, one short and violent.

LST stands for Landing Craft Tank. Some people who served on them said that it stood for Large Stationary Target! When I was wounded on Peleliu I was separated from my outfit. I ended up, after a long slow troop ship journey from the hospital and recovery on Guadalcanal, at Hickam Field in Honolulu. My outfit was nowhere to be seen. I did visit some of the paper work staff who were stationed across the island of Oahu. I remember hitch hiking through some beautiful Hawaiian scenery to visit them. (I went over the Pali.) I was put on a LST to go to Leyte. I was led to believe that my outfit might be there.

It was over 5000 miles to Leyte. At around 5 miles per hour it took six weeks to get there.

What to do for six weeks? I was so young that I did not even drink coffee. I later learned to drink coffee in Korea. This LST was brand new and manned by the Coast Guard. It had a faucet in the wall outside the kitchen that dispensed hot coffee all day. I played pinochle all day every day. What a long peaceful ride.

I remember getting off the LST and searching for my outfit all up and down the beach. It turned out that they were in New Guinea! You can imagine how a teen age boy looking for his buddies felt. After some tent time in a casual camp I was put in a company of combat engineers preparing to invade Okinawa. (That is another story. This blog is about LST rides.) My Leyte landing ended my first LST ride.

My second and last LST ride was from Okinawa to Korea in October, 1945. Loading of our LST was interrupted by Typhoon Louise. I was talking about the Typhoon the other morning at coffee and have since googled it. I knew that it was big storm but Mr Google really opened my eyes.  We were loading the ship via the landing ramp when word of the storm arrived. I was on the beach. With great alarm we were told to get on the ship fast. I was the last man to go up the ramp. I can remember the ramp coming up and the doors closing behind me. Sorry, my picture shows people unloading, but you get the idea. Our wise skipper was taking the ship to sea to ride out the storm.

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Typhoon Louise was on October 7, 8, and 9. It veered at the last minute and went straight across Okinawa. All the wind velocity measuring devices broke. Some estimate that there 200 mph winds. Some said that were 60 foot waves. That is high. You did not stand on the deck to see them. It was even dangerous to move around inside the ship.  A naval historian said that Typhoon Louise was the worst storm ever encountered by the US Navy.

Hundreds of ships were either damaged beyond repair or lost. The loss of life was surprisingly low (43). However, 80% of the housing on Okinawa was blown away or damaged. Quonset huts blew away. The rounded design of a Quonset supposedly made it wind proof. Wrong! Tent cities for 150,000 troops blew away. I recall that we rolled all of our tent sides up and raked the whole company area, before we left, so that it would be ready and neat for new occupents. The tents all blew away. After the storm passed we came back to the beach and finished loading up. We then sailed to Inchon, Korea. The trip took a week or so,

This storm would have caused much trouble for the planned invasion of Japan. Thank goodness the war was over.

My tent buddies and I in front of tents soon to be blown away.