Reuben James to Davy Jones

Gunner's Mate Walter Sorensen of the Reuben James sat down and scrawled what was perhaps to be his last letter:

"Dear Sis," he wrote, "... I think we will make another trip to Iceland before we go to the Navy Yards. I sure hope I can come home on leave even if it is only for a few days. . . . We sure don't get much time in any more. . . . We are here only until Thursday morning and then back to Portland. From there I don't know. . . ."

From there the Reuben James picked up a convoy and worked up toward where it was chilly. Walter Sorensen did not know where she was bound: some of the guys said probably Russia; others said no, just Iceland again.

On the way there was the usual routine for Walter Sorensen: cleaning the breech-blocks and oiling the six 3-inch A.A.s, checking the trip-mechanisms for the ash cans (depth charges all set because the waters up around Iceland were, as the boys said, "stiff with subs"). It was hard work. The whole crew had been ordered onto Condition Baker--watch and watch, four hours on and four off.

Still, there was time in the watches below to cork off and think about what it's like to be in the U.S.N.

For Walter Sorensen, 19 years old, six feet tall, yellow-haired and hopeful, it was good fun. It had not always been. He went into the Navy at 17--two years ago --just to get away from the tired smallness of his father's farm on the outskirts of Omaha. But the Great Lakes Naval Training Station had been grim: the inoculations made him sick, being away from home did too.

Later he started moving, and that was better--Key West, Costa Rica, the Virgin Islands. Sorensen studied, took some exams, got two promotions. Within a year and a half he was hauling down $62 a month.

They put him on the Reuben James. She was one of the old four-stacker crack-erboxes that were finished too late for the other war; she was two years older than he, and shrewish in a choppy sea. But he got to like her, learned to refer to her as Rube and developed a heap of respect for the commanding officer, Lieut. Commander Heywood L. Edwards. That name Heywood did not mean a thing: it was better to call him Tex and pay heed to his calm voice: he was six feet two and used to be an Olympic wrestler.

Walter Sorensen heard the story of the original Reuben James. They said he was born in Delaware in the big year, 1776. He went to sea just like anybody and got to be a bosun's mate. In the fighting against the pirates of Tripoli in 1804, he did his big deed. There was a fierce hand-to-hand fight one day. James's boss, Captain Stephen Decatur, was knocked down by a Tripolitan. Another pirate lifted his scimitar to kill the Captain. James dived and took the blow on the back of the head. Captain Decatur said if he would only recover, Reuben James could have anything he wanted. Decatur expected his bosun's mate to ask to be an officer.

Said the original Rube: "Please, sir, I don't want to have to roll up my hammock in the mornings ever again." He recovered, never rolled his hammock.

Walter and the others on Rube had been plenty sore when people claimed there never was any such hero as Reuben James. That was when they named destroyer 607 (laid down at San Francisco last July) Daniel Frazier. Some scholar had dug into the books and found that the Rube James yarn was a phony; that the name of the hero who saved Stephen Decatur was really Daniel Frazier, and that was why the Department called 607 the Daniel Frazier. The boys on Rube refused to believe it.

Nowadays life in the Navy wasn't so hot. No furloughs, too much worry and always the chance of getting what the Kearny got, or worse. No chance to save money because he sent all he could to his three brothers and three sisters. ("Say," he had written, "you kids spend a hell of a lot of money. You better start saving some of that money in the bank if you have any left.") Not much prospect of marrying. ("I hope it's Lee if we are still going together when I get out of the Navy.") Not much chance of getting out of the Navy--certainly not while Rube was putting her nose into cold waves somewhere west of Iceland. . . .

Somewhere west of Iceland the Reuben James was sunk. The Navy merely said ". . . by a torpedo during the night. . . ." Walter Sorensen was aboard when the torpedo hit. Rube had none of the Kearny's fancy compartmentation; she just holed and sank, and Walter Sorensen went into the sea with her.

At 5424 South 55th Street, Omaha, early this week, Walter Sorensen's sister Anna still did not know for sure whether Walter was dead. She only knew what she read in the papers: of 142 men aboard, 45 men had been saved, eight of them injured. One body was recovered. One man died after being rescued. The Navy Department had "little hope" for the seven officers and 88 men who were unaccounted for.

Among the 88 was Walter Sorensen. When a reporter asked Anna how she felt, she said a casual mouthful about one American boy who risked a lot for 62 bucks a month.

"Oh, I wouldn't know. It was his duty. He did what they told him to do."

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