U.S. NAVY

Howard Cotrell Jr.

It was the death of his mother that spurred his father to go in on the purchase of a 30-foot cabin boat to cruise around Naragansett Bay, instilling in an 11-year-old Howard Cottrell Jr. a love of the water.

Cottrell, now a Bucksport resident and grandfather of four, including a Marine, was born Feb. 18, 1926, in Warwick, R.I.  When he was 16, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and he wanted to do something about it. He tried to enlist, but was told to go home.

Impatient to serve, Cottrell left high school after his sophomore year for the employ of Pratt and Whitney, an airplane engine manufacturer in Hartford, Conn. The company sent him to machinist school.

In 1943, soon after his 17th birthday, he tried to enlist again. The only problem was, he was nearsighted. He was rejected again. So he hatched a plan.

The eye chart was on the wall next to the main doorway, easily accessible.

“So I memorized it,” Cottrell said.

It worked and he passed. Once he was safely in boot camp, he admitted to cheating.

“They said, ‘If you like it that good, you can stay in,’” Cottrell said.

The Navy sent Cottrell to school in Boston and to work as a machine shop instructor in Newport, R.I.  Then Cottrell headed to Norfolk, Va., and the troop transporter U.S.S. West Point, a converted luxury liner built in 1941 that would end up carrying more than 350,000 troops during its tour of duty.  In case of trouble, the ship had five cannons and 80 Marines in their early 20s to defend it.

“They were a loud bunch of guys,” Cottrell recalled. “Most of them had been in Guadalcanal and Tarawa.”

Once, the Marines set up target practice on the former shuffleboard courts on the upper deck, aiming along the rail.

“The Marine captain said ‘Ready, fire!’” Cottrell said. “Nobody had a target.

They blew the railing right overboard.”

Through 14 Atlantic crossings, Cottrell served as a machinist third class, working in the boiler, refrigeration and steering rooms. The latter was locked in the back of the ship, about 32 feet below the water line; if the steering room up top was destroyed, you could steer the ship from below.

It only took five days to cross the entire ocean, Cottrell said. The ship could reach top speeds of 38 knots wide open and do 11,000 miles without refueling.

“We didn’t have any convoys because we went too fast,” Cottrell said.

Cottrell married his wife, Ruth, with whom he raised two sons, during a brief leave.

“When the war was over in Europe, we had to rush troops from Europe down back to the States to get ready to go down to Japan,” Cottrell said.

The West Point loaded up with troops in New York and by the next day was blasting through the Panama Canal readying to invade Japan.

“We was in on the thing because we had the troops there,” Cottrell said. “[The officers] said, ‘It’s going to be hard because they fight hard. We figure 1.5 million casualties on our side and about 13, 14 million on Japan’s side,’” said Cottrell, who lost five dear friends of his own during the war. “We had 28 radio experts and they were all volunteers.  They were going to take them in on submarine and land on Japan’s soil and they said, ‘We don’t expect to see you. You’re expendable.’ They were a happy bunch of guys when they dropped the bomb.”

That, Cottrell said, was a surprise to everyone on the West Point.

“Only the big ones knew about that because they didn’t know it was gonna work,” Cottrell said.

Correll said he’s concerned about the United States’ current war in Iraq.

“I think we’re getting into places we shouldn’t get,” Cottrell said. “It’s only my opinion. Back then, we were in trouble.”

A few years after the war, outside a store in Brewer, Cottrell met a woman gathering signatures on a petition against atomic bombs.

“To tell you the truth,” he told her, “I wish we’d had about 40 of them on December 7, 1941. I’d drop them all, because war is no good. It just wrecks everything.”

After the war, Cottrell worked as a machinist for Brown and Sharpe, overseeing a chicken business in Maine and finally at General Electric in Bangor, before retiring in 1986. Ruth passed away in 2001. These days, Cottrell makes and sells little wooden trucks and boats as a hobby.

As for the West Point, a company bought the well-worn liner and removed all the Navy badging. It’s too bad, Cottrell said fondly, that it’s probably been scrapped by now.

“I’d like to take another ride on it,” he said.

— By Ashley Meeks