USS BAYFIELD APA-33

By Vinny Del Giudice

The U.S. Coast Guard played an active role in the Atlantic and Pacific theaters in World War Two – and my father’s service as a war-time Coastie illustrates this. Semper Paratus and then some aboard the USS Bayfield APA-33.

Vincent J. Del Giudice (1921-2003) was a pharmacist mate - a "medic" if you will - on the Coast Guard-manned attack transport, which landed troops and evacuated casualties at Normandy and Iwo Jima and participated in the amphibious operation at Okinawa as a decoy. We can toss in an anvil, too, as in "Operation Anvil" in southern France. Bayfield also made a variety of port calls. Oran, Algeria, for one.

My father was a 20-something college student from the gritty mill town of Paterson, New Jersey, when he enlisted in 1942. It was that or be drafted into the Army. His draft number was up. He studied chemistry at New York University, labored as a soda jerk and assistant chemist in a Paterson pharmacy, was single and lived with his Italian immigrant parents. The son of a barber from Naples attained the rank of Coast Guard petty officer once the war was almost over - but at a steep cost.

In America's rush to war post-Pearl Harbor, early attack transports were converted from existing cargo or transport ships for the Coast Guard and the Navy. The drab, battle gray Bayfield was originally laid down as SS Sea Bass on Nov. 14 1942 in San Francisco and  converted to an attack transport in Brooklyn, New York. There was nothing sleek about it. Bayfield was all bulk. Sturdy and tough.

The completed ship was commissioned on Nov. 20, 1943 with Captain Lyndon Spenser, U.S. Coast Guard, in command. Bayfield was declared ready for sea on Feb. 3, 1944, equipped with motorized "Higgins Boat" landing craft strapped to the decks and ready to send off the infantry and Marines and evacuate and treat their casualties. You've probably seen photos of those boats in action. The ramp crashing down. Soldiers charging into the surf. 

At D-Day, Bayfield served as the flagship at Utah Beach for Navy Rear Admiral Don Pardee Moon, and landed the 8th Infantry Regiment and 87th Chemical Battalion. At Iwo Jima, Bayfield landed the 4th Marines and served as a hospital and prisoner-of-war ship. At Okinawa, the Bayfield, along with other vessels in Demonstration Group Charlie, simulated a landing away from the actual assault at the Hagushi beaches to throw off the Japanese. The ruse failed.

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My father recounted his time at Normandy in the book D-Day by Stephen Ambrose and in an oral history. Ernest Hemingway said “never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime.” Wartime CBS Radio correspondent Edward R. Murrow called it "organized killing." My father would concur.

In the cramped Bayfield operating room, it was blood, bone and goo. My father helped a ship’s surgeon amputate “one leg below the knee, the other above and both arms’’ of an American soldier who stepped on pair S-mines simultaneously. A quadruple amputee. Stop and think about that. Another suffered a traumatic brain injury - and my father said he naively tried to repair the gruesome damage with his fingers.

Medics painted the letter "M" in iodine on the foreheads of the casualties administered  morphine - with the pain killer flowing that day almost as freely as the ammunition raking the beach. They used morphine for comfort and to hasten death in those too ruined to repair. For surgery, drops of ether over gauze served as anesthesia, administered and monitored by medics just a few years out of high school.    

In another instance my father – armed with a pair of scissors and sulfa powder - amputated fingers “dangling” from the hand of a wounded German corporal. He thanked my father for the snip, the makeshift surgery, with a smile and a “danke schon!” For that German the war was over and he still had a few knuckles to be grateful for.

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My father spoke of heartbreak. Medics sewing the deceased into weighted canvas body bags for "burial" at sea. The medics also patrolled scarred beaches retrieving the dead - "graves registration" they called it. Clipping dog tags of the dead. He saw the worst in men. He recounted battle-weary Marines beating a prisoner of war on Bayfield's deck somewhere in the Pacific.
 
My father also spoke of the depths of despair. Rear Admiral Moon committing suicide with a gun in his Bayfield cabin a few weeks after Utah Beach. My father the medic mopped up the scene. Battle fatigue was considered the cause of death. There were flashes of dark humor, too. Port calls. The ship's chaplain handing out condoms. Few takers. Sick bay calls up after Bayfield was underway again.

The ship's loudspeakers often rasped the alert "general quarters." But Bayfield, itself, was unscathed considering the violence encountered along the way - practically circumnavigating the planet. There was a near miss with a crashing, burning, screaming Japanese Zero, and a Bayfield sailor died on the beach of black, volcanic sand at Iwo Jima. "Souvenir hunting," my father said.

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After the war, my father told me he didn't speak about his experiences in the Atlantic and Pacific for 20 years. It had a profound effect. He survived and valued peace and diplomacy. He didn't want his kids enlisting. He said he had seen enough for all of us after I expressed an interest in the service in high school.

After receiving his discharge papers in Oakland, California, he went onto Creighton University in Omaha on the GI Bill, a brief stint in law school and dropped out to attend medical school in Italy. He spent more than 40 years as a physician and surgeon in the North Jersey communities of Paterson, Haledon and Wayne - truly beloved by his patients.

Let me be perfectly frank. We revered his service. Revered it. But, like oh so many veterans, "The Big One - Dubya Dubya Two" never ended for my father. It contributed to emotional problems. He suffered war's pain to his dying day in 2003. Volcanic anger. Too many Manhattans. More than I wish to write. To those who glorify war, please reconsider.

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If you or someone you know is struggling with thoughts of suicide, please call the National Suicide Hotline at 1-800-273 TALK (1-800-273-8255).