U.S. NAVY
Stanley Hardy
When 18-year-old Stanley Hardy traveled from his home in Little Deer Isle to Ellsworth to register for the draft, he already had been sailing the high seas for five years. It surprised no one that after dutifully registering for the World War II draft, Hardy walked across the street and enlisted in the Navy.
Hardy left school at 13 to work on barges off the Maine coast. Eventually, he was working barges — converted sailing vessels — as far south as New Orleans and on to Cuba.
While in Cuba, Hardy was hired to work on a small tugboat headed to Puerto Rico, after the boat’s entire crew quit. After a year in Puerto Rico, Hardy returned to Maine just before the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor in 1941.
He spent 1942 on an oceangoing tug until returning home at the beginning of 1943 and signing up for the draft, at the same time volunteering to serve in the Navy. “They called me right away,” Hardy said.
Hardy’s knowledge of the sea, much of which he learned from a great uncle in Belfast, would serve him and his country well. After six weeks’ basic training in Newport, R.I., Hardy was assigned to the destroyer U.S.S. Hall. Hardy was among the crew that commissioned Hall on July 6, 1943. He served aboard the destroyer until she was decommissioned in San Diego in December 1945.
Hall’s first assignment was to escort President Franklin Roosevelt and other dignitaries to the Teheran Conference. Hall was one of three destroyers that rendezvoused at sea with the battleship Iowa, which carried Roosevelt to the historic conference.
Ordered to the Pacific, Hall arrived at Pearl Harbor on Jan. 11, 1944, and left there 11 days later for the capture and occupation of the Marshall Islands.
At the time, Hardy was rated Seaman First Class and served as coxswain over the captain’s gig, a whaler used primarily as a lifeboat but employed for other uses in war. Hardy took charge of the 26-foot, double-ended boat mostly during bombardment close to beaches and when the boat was used to escort larger vessels.
One time during the month-long invasion of the Marshall Islands, Hardy was commanding the small boat, which had been launched to rescue a downed Marine flyer. “That was a tricky operation,” Hardy said. “After we picked up the pilot, they started firing from the beach. I could see shells hitting between me and the ship. “We rescued the pilot — got him in the boat. He was pretty happy to get hauled out of the water.”
Hardy got the small boat back aboard Hall, but the tense situation turned for the worse. “We had taken the boat out of the water, turned the destroyer to head out to sea and got hit in the broadside,” Hardy recalls. “We took some shots close aboard,” he said. “One hit us right in the broadside, and we lost one man, killed with shrapnel.” One shell tore a big hole in the ship’s broadside, Hardy said, adding that the hole was “just barely above the waterline.” Crewmen blocked the hole with mattresses and returned to Pearl Harbor where the damage was repaired. From there, Hall made two fueling voyages, escorting tankers as they fueled the fleet while under way at sea. “We were always out there in no-man’s land,” Hardy said. “That was pretty boring.”
It would heat up again for the Hall crew, however.
In late November 1944 Hall made her way to Humboldt Bay, New Guinea, to join the 7th Fleet for the invasion of the Philippines. Just before heading to the Philippines, Hardy was taken off coxswain duty and assigned the job of quartermaster, which meant all his duties would be performed on the bridge of the destroyer. As quartermaster, Hardy was in charge of communications, navigation, signaling and keeping the ship’s logs. “You pretty well know what’s going on all the time because you had to write it all down,” he said.
Hall saw a great deal of action in the Philippines where she operated as an escort and screen ship, often offering intense fire as Japanese planes bombed the first wave of assault troops.
At Lingayen Gulf “we went through one of the typhoons out there while escorting converted, small aircraft carries,” he said. “In a storm like that the quartermaster takes the wheel. With seas almost against the pilothouse, I had to stay head into them. We did broach once.” He said the pounding sea broke apart one of the ship’s bilge keels and half of the keel came up alongside the ship. “I probably got scared there,” Hardy said. “Once she rolled down so hard I didn’t think she’d come back up. One destroyer from the task force capsized. It was the worst storm I was ever in.”
On Feb. 15, 1945, Hall headed to Iwo Jima. Hardy said they were the first of the fire support group of ships to arrive at Iwo Jima, and Hall provided cover for underwater demolition teams sweeping the beaches for mines. “This was close fire, escorting them,” Hardy said of the cover provided by Hall until troops stormed ashore on Feb. 19. Action mounted for Hall as she departed for Okinawa March 21. She began patrolling off that “fiercely contested” island four days later.
The Navy credits Hall with driving off two Japanese torpedo boats with gunfire on March 30 and with shooting down two enemy aircraft on April 6. “We were bombarded by suicide planes up there,” Hardy said of the battles at Okinawa. “One incident really shook me.”
Hardy was at the wheel of Hall as enemy planes were coming in. When general quarters rang, he was relieved from steering the boat to report to his battle station as a loader on the ship’s number 1 five-inch gun. “I stepped out of the pilot house,” Hardy said, “and I could see the Rising Sun on two planes. Those were the two we shot down.” He also remembers torpedo boats at Okinawa, which he describes as being “like suicide planes, but boats.”
He said the torpedo boats came mostly at night, and he recalls the night one struck Twiggs, another destroyer in his squadron. “We saw the explosion, just 600 feet away,” Hardy said. “We were close.” Again, Hall went into rescue mode, rescuing 48 survivors from the stricken Twiggs. Hall then sailed for the United States and was in overhaul in San Diego when news of the Japanese surrender was announced.
Hardy was released from active duty Feb. 16, 1946, and married Eunice Gray at her father’s house in Brooklin on March 10. They live in that house now. “We didn’t waste too much time,” Hardy said.
Hardy had met his wife when he was 16 while roller-skating in Sedgwick. They were “just friends” until Hardy went in the Navy, he said. “Most of our getting to know each other was by letters,” Eunice Hardy said. “All the time he was away, we corresponded.” After they were married, they moved to Merrimac, Mass., and Hardy worked in leather shops and shoe shops in Haverhill, Mass. “I think he hated to give up the sea,” Eunice Hardy said, “but if you’re going to have a family, I don’t want a husband in Guam.”
Hardy quickly worked his way up to foreman and had a 38-year career in a leather tannery. They raised three children and have six grandchildren and three great-granddaughters.
— James Straub
|
