USS Patterson Reunion Photo Project “Completed”
In an earlier post, I described a project that I started to digitize and post photos of reunions of the crew of the USS Patterson (DD392). The photos are from an album that was kept by my in-laws, Erwin and Marie Schroder. Erwin spent more than two years on the Patterson and served as her First Lieutenant when she sailed through the Panama Canal in late 1945, heading for New York where she would be decommissioned and scrapped. The Patterson was awarded 13 battle stars for her service. As best I can tell, out of the thousands of ships operated by the Navy in WWII, only 21 earned more battle stars. She saw action in many of the major campaigns including the Battle off Savo Island, Battle of Leyte Gulf, Battle for Iwo Jima, and the Battle for Okinawa.
I placed the photos into Flickr albums, one album for each year. I then made a Flickr Collection of the albums. Here is a link to that collection. I wish they had taken more photos, but those were the days before digital cameras and folks tended to be a bit more frugal with their use of film. I hope that by posting these photos some of the individuals will be identified by family members. Also, if anyone would like to use/make copies of the photos, feel free to contact me. I will be happy to grant permission. Finally, if anyone has additional photos that they would like to add to this archive, I would be happy to host them here.
There are quite a few pictures of the Patterson DD392 on navsource.org.
I believe they are official Navy pictures from back in the day.. Also, there is a resin model 1/350th scale of the Patterson DD392 at ironshipwrights.com… It’s challenging to assembly but is a pretty accurate model of the Patterson from 1944 til the end of the war.
Greetings, Steve!
I have several pictures that I sent to Navsource that they posted. One is the Patterson decommissioning party in NYC and 3 from the Philadelphia reunion taken on the Patterson (FF1061) that appear on that Patterson’s Navource page. I would love to have additional pictures from the reunions. I would be happy to credit you and your father. Was your father Eugene Figgins? I’ve seen the name on Muster Rolls. It looks like he arrived on the Pattterson about 3 months after my father-in-law. You could send photos to web@socpsy.com. I would love to have them.
Dave Johnson
I’ve got some pictures of past reunions that my dad took. Let me know if you would like me to scan them and send them in.
Tell me how to send you pictures that my dad had taken.
Yes, my Dad was Eugene Figgins. He joined the Patterson in San Francisco I think in the fall of 1943. Maybe you could confirm that for me? He was a radioman by trade. His battle station was the #1 5 inch gun or so he told me. He told me a few things about the war but like so many others, kept quiet about a lot of what he saw. He suffered from PTSD his whole life. He told me that he “lost it” during the kamikaze attack during the Okinawa campaign.
Given what I know about Okinawa, I can certainly see why sailors feared the kamikazes. I’ve read many pages from war patrol reports that described hits and near misses in very clinical terms, but anyone I’ve ever read about or talked to who experienced that situation described in in harrowing terms.
I found that your father was received on the Patterson on December 22, 1943 as a Seaman 2nd class (S2c). According to Henry Swyers’ diary, the Patterson pulled into Mare Island Naval Shipyard on the 21st, so that is where your father boarded the Pat for the first time. In October 1944, he was promoted in rate to S1sc. I found that his rating change to Radioman occurred in June of ’45 (at least that’s what I think I can decipher from a very poorly scanned “Report of Changes”. After the Pat was decommissioned in November ’45, you father was transferred to USS LSM-446 where he stayed until April ’46. That ship has a Navsource page if you’re interested. I can make copies of any of this documentation available to you if you would like.
Dave
Dave,
Sue Child here. E. Tom Child was my dad. My best friend. And my hero. I just discovered this treasure trove of information. And have spent the last couple of hours looking around at this site. I have many pictures of Patterson and her crew. May or may not have many reunion pics. Not certain on that. I do have a copy of the resumes that shipmates prepared for the 1990 reunion. There is some most interesting reading there. I am glad to provide copies of whatever you might like. I have many details on much of this stuff. Dad was nothing if not a keeper of details. We contacted Belleau Wood survivor Jerry Krim in maybe 2016. Had a good visit with him and his wife. He was the senior member of the thirteen rescued. And remembered making his report to Dad who was XO.
We were aboard a ship traveling to HI in December of ‘11. There was a Belleau Wood survivor aboard as well. He had been plucked from the water but did not know the name of the little boat that had picked him up. The “little boats” didn’t always get the respect they might have been due.
Oh my goodness. I am delighted to make this contact. Hope that you are still at it.
Sue
Greetings, Sue!!
So good to hear from you! Your father’s name is quite familiar to me as I’ve seen it so often on Patterson deck logs. Speaking of deck logs, I have a complete set of Patterson‘s logs from November 1941 through 1945 courtesy of some other folks that I’ve met from my website. I’d be happy to provide them to you if you like. What a treat to be able to talk to sailors that Patterson picked up out of the water!! You are correct. The little guys do not get as much specific mention as they should. I read a lot about the Pacific Theater in WWII and often the specific ships are named (carriers, battleships, cruisers), but then the destroyers are simply mentioned by how many were present. I guess that makes some sense when you consider that there were nearly 400 destroyers under commission during the war.
Regarding the resumes: Are they the ones that went into the two volume set of Patterson materials published by LeRoy Bergstrom? I had Erwin’s copy hardbound and digitized. We then donated the hard copy to the US Navy Library in Washington.
Alas, my work on Patterson has been pushed into the background. It was during my research on her that I discovered the old Navy tradition of writing the first deck log entry of the year in verse. That has led to the publication of a book. I suspect that you’ve seen mention of it on the website. Two colleagues and I are now working our way through over 10,000 deck log poems from the years 1947-1978. We are planning on another book and some articles for maritime periodicals. http://www.midwatch-in-verse.com
So good to hear from you!! Let’s stay in touch!
Dave
Oh gosh. How delightful to be corresponding with someone who even knows what we’re talking about! We come from a world of “who cares?” And the past is the past. And and and and. That, and the surety that none of us could possibly get it, may well have contributed to their nearly universal not-sharing. It was an experience common among them. They knew what each other were talking about. Because they all were THERE! With a front row seat. How to explain that to the likes of the rest of the world, many of whom did not care? And so they came home and lived their lives. They made something of themselves and added to the fabric of their country. They moved on from possibly the most impactful period of their lives.
That surely was the reason that the reunions were so important.
Oh to have known then what we know now. We would have asked many more questions. We would have delved way deeper. We would have made better use of recording devices. And so we are now stuck with the next generation. Stuck with each other. Because mostly those first-hand people are gone. But my. There are still many pieces to be picked up. I feel reasonably certain that I have never before last night seen the picture of the officers’ mess. There is Dad. Front and right. What a wonderful surprise. DAD! So young. So in the throws of life! So present.
I believe I had never before seen a picture of Captain Herring. Nor of the burial at sea. There are many things to be gained from being “stuck” with the next generation. For one thing, by now we are interested in SHARING. And some of you have the means to do so.
The photo of the burned man in the raft. The swimmer who had stayed with his buddy was Al Napoli. Within the last ten years, I contacted his son Al jr. His comment when I repeated the story to him of his father’s bravery — “that’s my dad!” I don’t know if he’d heard that story before or not, beings that so many of them just didn’t share.
Dad visited Mrs. Herring after the war. In Savannah? Maybe. These are the details we should have gotten. Too many missed. In about 1957 or 58, he visited Mrs. Burroughs (mother of John) who was killed by friendly fire. It was a very important contact to Mrs. Burroughs. There was so little information available to her other than that her son had been killed. I recently ran into what looks like her original letter to Dad. She was so hungry for details of the death of her only child.
The connections stretched over the decades. One evening in 2013, Dad called Mr Erly. He was the gunnery officer on Cassin dd372 on December of ‘41. He was 99 years old and living in some kind of facility on the west coast. He asked, “you were the redhead, weren’t you?” And then they had a very satisfactory visit.
Whew! The connections!
Re your current project, E. Tom kept a diary from late 1940 through maybe ‘43. With sketchy entries after that. I am aware of the first log of the year to be written in verse. His diary contains the entry from Caldwell dd605 dated 1-1-43. If you don’t happen to have that… but you surely do.
When you get to it, I think a first hand collection of Pearl Harbor descriptions would be a most interesting thing to put together. The information recorded in real time by real players of any big event might end up being entirely different from the event from historical perspective. The eighty year old remembers it differently than the 22 year old looking at it. Dad’s diary entry from December 8 is about as real as can be. Later on he would have been glad to scratch some of that hung-ho perspective. Oops. Scratching decades later not allowed.
Sorry. Have gone on and on. Stricken to realize that there are others out there who are still interested. Perhaps we are a bit like them. Not inclined to share with those who do not understand.
Yes. Roy Bergstrom materials. I was not aware that it had come out in any kind of finished form. I probably have many of the originals. What is chance that you would share the digitized version? My technological skills are nearly zip. What fun it would be to have that stuff at fingertips rather than in dusty box somewhere?
I would be delighted to have set of deck logs. I have some. Not all. That would be great!
Sooner or later we will publish ET’s diary. Is hard to know what to do with some of it. If read carefully, will come out other end a world war ll torpedo expert. If we opted to cut some of that — well, then it wouldn’t be complete, would it? We work on it in fits and starts. Important to get it finished before I’m dead. We always think there is time. And then a bus comes along….