A Sister's Love and Loss of Three Brothers

This is will you be even this is no American stories we tell stories about everything here on the show in the second world war US possessed 164 destroyers. One of those destroyers USS James Sullivan's great uncle John Gallagher served on the Plunkett and inspired by the story. John's brother Eddie would tell wrote a book on the Plunkett and the men who served on her old unsinkable five men in the indomitable run of the USS Plunkett here is James with the store when I was a kid growing up in Quincy, Massachusetts just outside Boston. My great uncle Frank Gallagher used to talk or tell this one a story more than any other story from the war. Frank was one of the four Gallagher brothers are final for the one way the second world war in coincidently Frank met two of his brothers on on two different occasions over there on this one occasion it was just before the allies went to Anzio was fourth amphibious landing of the war in the European theater and Frank who was a medic in the Army in the fifth Army. He was getting ready to going in. His brother John, who was water tender boiler man in the Navy who mended 20 mm gun in general quarters battle stations when they were in combat.

His brother Frank's ship destroyer USS Plunkett was in the harbor in Naples and so Frank stole away from his unit making preparations to get on the way they were told there was typhus and Naples. They were allowed to go in there but that never stopped Frank and made his way into Naples with the 5 gallon Jerry can have fillable Italian red wine and non-Frankie was falling off it on the way. It is a little bit glorious with the wind and he went to the skiing which was the flagship of the task force that would have to Anzio in heat, he called up to the sailors on databases I'm looking for the Plunkett is out here and they would tell him where it was, but they told him it was in the area and that was all he needed. So Frank and I was walking along, I mean that that the dioxin appears in Naples.

Now they're getting ready for an invasion and it's just it's mayhem down there, but he gets down to this little terrace in the seaside neighborhood of Santa Lucia in p.m. he jumps into a bungalow little wooden boat manned by an Italian boat any yes the guy rolled out into the harbor and this guy you know who's this American soldier jumping into his boat. He doesn't want any part of it and Frank is now like a cities get the whining and so he makes this guy roll them out guy does. Rosenbaum, Frank is is is rolled out now among this is fleet of ships in Naples harbor. You've got mom Vesuvius up to the off one end of the bay and its itself actually coughing smoke now because you know it's it's about to rock to the couple of months later, in any of got dozens of ships getting ready for this vision is Frank is now on the lookout for a destroyer.

It's a two-step ship. It's about as long as a football field plus most of its and zones and he's knee knows that the hall number.

The number on the bow of the ship that identifies which destroyer it is. He knows the Plunkett is four 3180s looking for that and don't you think he found the Plunkett so he has to the boatman roll them up to the fantail which was because the ship was weighted with about 265 men plus a dozen officers and all their fuel and everything else.

It sat really low in the waters fantail was about 4 1/2 to 5 feet above the waterline and Frank with his 5 gallon can of of redline images to climb up onto the fantail observes no protocol right you know you're supposed to go up last for permission to come aboard the Franks and the Army doesn't pay attention to any that he climbs up to grab them right away. Of course, coincidently the ship is called the general quarters because it stopped now in dominant dusters with perilous times for an Allied shifter in the war because that's when the enemy bombers like coming out of the sun and try to get the ship so they call the ship to general quarters and Frank now. They've also called the captain down to the to the fantail because who's this way would you soldiers just climbed up on the ship they call the captain down in that the captain is Eddie Burke. He said 36 years old grew up just outside Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, was an All-American football player at the US Naval Academy and he was a boxer to be gloss the title boat is a light heavyweight in 1928, so Perkins done a real imposing figure it out. 6 foot tall hundred and 85 pounds in and he starts relating to Frank whose all of 5 foot eight, 5 foot 950 pounds in Frank is there, getting dressed down one of the sailors is on the ship there all watching you know from where they are at their balance issues. One is looking at the fantail. He's looking 80s looking. He thinks that looks like my, my brother Eddie realizes it's his brothers and he jumps out of his gun company runs back to the fantail and addresses. Capt. Burton says that in fact yes this this man is my brother so Frank told that story his whole life and he died at the age of 99 in 2012.

In that story languished a little bit for a couple years you Frank's nieces and nephews of his children and grandchildren. Each of us had heard it so many times the story of that reunion that you know you could sat us down in front when I can burn the scammers and we could've told the story the way Frank had so a little after he he passed. I was on the verge of a family trip to Italy. My wife and our two kids were heading over and done.

We originally had Pompeii on our itinerary but when we got down to the logistics of it and realize just how big the day it would be to tinted to get to Pompeii my wife.

He told all that and then all of a sudden there's Anzio and we decided to go to Anzio and when we decided to go to Anzio. It hit me. Then I wonder if any of the men who was still who are on the ship Anzio are still living in. That's how this whole thing again because I jumped on the phone and started calling frantically almost as if I've been waiting my whole life to start making these calls and even listening to James Sullivan by the way, you can pick up James's book unsinkable five men in the indomitable run of the USS and Amazon. Any other place where books are sold. When we come back more James Sullivan story of the USS under the battle of Anzio and more here on our American story boat if you love the stories we tell about this great country and especially the stories of America's rich past. Know that all of our stories about American history from war to innovation culture and faith are brought to us by the great folks at the place for students studying all the things that are beautiful life all the things are good in life. If you can't get the Hillsdale bills that will come to you with their free and terrific online courses to Hillsdale.edu to learn and we returned to our American stories in our story on the USS Monk may be destroyed in World War II when we last left off James Sullivan freshman trip to Italy with the Plunkett had served during the war was making calls to surviving veterans, which served on the ship during the time his great uncle John was on board let's continue with the store. I started to think, you know, wouldn't it be miraculous if there was still a man.

It's all the way 2016, 70 years after the war. So would it be something if I could connect with a man who had been on the Plunkett and Anzio and so it began there the first man that I connected with unions. The Plunkett sailors did. From 1982 all the way up till 2011 I found a webpage about that last reunion and there was a men's phone number at the bottom of that page I format and in the number worked in English it is 97 and I told him that I was trying to connect with someone who's been on the ship it Anzio. He had not this man Ted Mueller had come onto the Plunkett after Anzio, but he said you know there's this one man lives just outside St. Louis who was on the ship and Anzio.

Real nice fellow and I'm sure he talked to so he gave me his phone number is. He had a home phone and a cell number which I thought was just great is this another guy in his 90s. He's got a cell phone and I called him one morning and Saturday morning and that he was at home show and I thought that was great to not only is he carrying a smart phone in his pocket but he said in a home show.

Could he be doing their shopping title for a new backsplash or something. This is a guy that doesn't give up so I talked to him for for some time about the plug into it it, he began to take you to some of these old guys that they cut they got their stories in. You know once you touch that they begin to talk to you about about some of their experience if they do talk about it. Sutures started to talk to me about that and he said look I would love to talk to you more about this but I'm I'm out right now.

Can you give me a call in the morning on my home phone I set out with none before I let them go told of my uncles name is John J. Gallagher in the silence on the other end of the phone and I know he's rummaging around at 70 years, you know, and if there were 300 men on this destroyer and in I'm thinking the silences he does not want to disappoint you begin to feel bad because I put them on the spot is I know he didn't want to disappoint men. I think the calls drop that I'm full of life all the way to look to see if the connection was still live in it was in.

Then I heard his voice come back to meet in his voice. There was a smile is as the moon, and he said China Gallagher was a very good buddy of mine and so it was at that moment that I realized you know this is a story I think I'm going to have to tell I have a sense of the Plunkett's place in the history of World War II in the European theater. The discovery of these men stories, I bumped into a Navy, some Navy documents. Toward the end of the war, in which different Navy commanders would reference the fact that in the history of the of the conflict in the European theater. They could not recall a battle is so relentless and so savage is the one Plunkett had endured it Anzio. The Plunkett story was the story of the most harrowing engagement of the U.S. Navy ship and the German Luftwaffe during World War II. Mostly during the amphibious landings and in Europe at Salerno in Sicily before Anzio German bombers dive bombers the torpedo bombers.

They would sweep in over the roads that the acreage where you know the ships with the landing craft would take a minute into the beaches and the in the Germans were opportunities for whatever whatever ship came in their sites that's that's where they release their stick about most of these engagements in a world matter of just two or three minutes, sometimes five minutes what the Plunkett endured because the Germans change strategy in early 1944 the word were they had decided not to to conduct the sweeps over the process, but they were going to begin to focus on a single ship and for some reason in the late afternoon light of of January 24, 1944. What what the officers in the Navy believes is they had misidentified the Plunkett as a larger ship the cruiser the booklet because the profiles when you're looking at them from from way back are are similar in so you had you had a dozen that were there were 12 or 14. The accounts are not exact on this but you had from 12 to 14 German bombers focus on the Plunkett in Indy. They stayed on the ship. They put that chip for 25 minutes which is just an eternity in self through this this ship, which is is as much trauma as you can imagine, you had torpedo bombers you had dive bombers in you had radio control bombs coming at the the ship from highflying bombers. You know you have that going over 25 minutes and you had Capt. Burke on the bridge navigating like a mosquito in the rain. These bombs that were falling on his ships and in the meanwhile dodging torpedoes that were coming out of as is the is the torpedo bombers bombers of the accident from their bellies and insulin. It was just an incredible spectacle and what Burke achieved it would earn him the Navy Cross and without hope. But the men on that ship did that day was well call it the most harrowing, but it was it was the most dramatic naval episode that I never encountered a book that in my research of ships of war in the European theater.

But you've got in the midst of all this total is one man on the wheel.

He was an enlisted man seen in his name was RL Klein and they call him skanky because you know if you miss shower now and then hitting you get a nickname in the Navy and so Skokie got that and he said in a food at 25 minutes.

Burke it was is noisy as all get out 27% of all the 20 mm ammunition fired by the Plunkett scholars during the war were fired at Anzio 5 inch guns you know they will pounding continuously for 25 minutes. The ship had a 1.1 inch gun until it was is noisy as all get out in Burke is striding back and forth on across the bridge from one wing you could go outside the bridge on one side of the ship and go across it.

On the other side and he's on the lookout in a with his lookouts for torpedoes and he's trying to process all of this information in the midst of despair is battle is almost like in an algorithm he's got so many things to factor into what was cookies. Remember most about Burke was that when he gave an order.

It was it conversational volume. I mean, if ever there were a situation in which you know you might you might let some urgency creep into your voice it was.

It was this one, but Burke was is unflappable as you want in a commander and what Skokie remembers. He says I can still hear him hard right hard left that's that's what the Plunkett was doing no in the midst of this ballot. What can Brown was coordinating the ships gun battery to to try to bring down these bombers that were were harassing ship so that so that's what Burke was doing.

Can Brown in and Capt. Burke. These were two men that both naval Academy graduates who came from different worlds mechanic grew up in in the suburb of Glen of Chicago, Glenallen really had no ambitions for the Navy is a young man he came from his father was a Royal typewriter salesman. They were fairly well-off silken had his own car to drive the wheels off that and he is to say all over you going down to Champaign to what I school best will� Trying to read as much fun it is humor out of his life as possible. You can see that I have pictures of him as a teenager and as a young man in and you can see that you know that he was a really well humor guy and in no limit for that sort of lifestyle Burke on the other hand, was was his grimaces guns in all and a Navy All-American on the football team. He was the grandson of a coal miner in Indian, look like you know the guy who just dug himself on the mind only forged features and and hard-bitten in you don't quite see a smile on Burke's face.

He looked his grimaces, guns and data and then you got can you know happy-go-lucky.

He said he's the gunnery officer in and they got off on the wrong foot. Those two and you're listening to James Sullivan tell the story of the US on. By the way, he's also telling the story of the battle Anzio and this was no little battle in movies. We captured the Pacific and certainly the European theater. What gets overlooked often as the African and in the Italian campaign more of the story of the USS Plunkett on our American story, and we returned to our American stories in our story on the USS Lincoln we last left off the Plunkett was engaged in a harrowing battle Anzio the German Luftwaffe James Sullivan was describing the cast of characters on board the ship fighting for survival.

Let's continue with the story and the look into the lives of these men can was all about. A joke is indignantly admitted as much a and Burke was all business in and so those two guys started butting heads as soon as Burke got on the ship in February of of 43 and they buy heads all the way to Anzio and then everything changed between my senses that on the Plunkett these men became galvanized by their experiences at Salerno Inn on Sicily. During those two first to amphibious landings in they learned how to work together whenever can Brown talked about what happened to them.

It is zero heat. He was always talking you know using metaphors from sports about the teamwork and he he looked it several different men on that ship and inward reference the fact that he saved the ship.

I thought well I thought you said the other guy save the ship but he credited so many people for having done with Jake. Thoughts always talked about is his job. You know, we were all just doing our jobs at the gym was really insistent on that.

That fact know because I think when we look at it.

It's just so easy for us to see these men as emissaries of the greatest generation and we think that there was something superhuman about what they had done in Jim and Ken, especially in a wood would go to great lengths to insist on the fact that what they did on the ship was work they were doing their job and they did it together and I think that the pride that they felt was in there with her ability to work together as a team they begin to read and understand each other. No one, perhaps more so than Mark who had to understand what was happening with his 45 inch guns in the midst of battle in his 1.1 inch in the independent organization of the of the six men on the 20 mm guns on the ship permit to. He's anticipating all of that and factoring that in the ship speed and he knows what he can get out of the men in the engine room not only he knows what he can get out of the men in the engine, but he knows what he can get out of his his his men who were in the fire making the steam is going to drive the ships engines, and so she was able to conduct or wield that ship almost like a man with a sword committed all sort of at the end. In my mind. To what Eddie Burke was able to do with his ship on the project and Ken would say the same thing you know, Ken, who always referred to as Burke had the utmost respect for for what Burke did and he would receive the Navy Cross, which may not have been quite enough. You know, when you look at the entirety of of what happened during the battle, but don't put it all boiled down for many of them into what Burke was able to do the way he was able to harness all those disparate men hundreds of men to harness to know their capabilities to know them intimately into wield that you know is he went toe to toe with a dozen German bombers you know in the Army. You know those guys that were on the front lines are in the forward ranks of the guys on patrol walking point.

You know it was a little more hairy for them than for for anybody else in their company but on a Navy ship. They were all walking point. You know it when the ship was hit.

You know it wasn't just the guys who were topside. In fact, it was probably more perilous for the guys in the fireman's in the engines below decks. He didn't have a chance to get up so they were. They were all walking point.

That's the thing about about a destroyer it's it's it's right out there. It's kind of like the Minutemen behind the stone wall. The Clinton point in the jungle. No one in when they when they got hit Inuit jail whether the Maddox was hit into 202 men went down that at Salerno. The Rowan was hit by a torpedo 211 men and offices offices went down so it was that it was dangerous enterprise. That battle went on for 25 minutes but that the ship was hit in Anzio and terrible loss of life in John was in that gun tub on, but he survived the blast into he was carried up to the wardroom they had to battle stations, dressing stations, one of them was the wardroom which is where the officers met for dinner they have on the table. It was a doctor, Dr. Wesley cannot was there and they had a number of men in there I don't know exactly how many but it's likely there was room for five, five or six men on one on tables in the wardroom and he had been riddled with shrapnel in the back from the explosion in one of the ships gun captains who within one of the 5 inch gun turrets the gunboats.

His name was Jim McManus. He was from Fall River, Massachusetts, and he had been wounded and he came up to try to get some help from the doctor and the doctor had no time for Jim it was a triage situation and so many of the men were desperate straits and Jim got up there pretty quickly realized that it wasn't getting any help there and he recognized Gallagher over on one of the tables and he had an IV. Jim could see that he had stuff coming and he could see that there was more blood on the floor beneath the structure than it was coming into John and he says to John Chung what the hell are you doing here and he sees John looked at him. He just grinned and he said those Germans can't kill me. I'm a tough Irishman in any was a tough Irishman, but the but there wasn't enough blood it all 100 that night.

Dr. Wesley cannot list it is is resting and that was it for Johnson. The Germans got them in the end, but the we haven't forgotten you know each of the men was going to process their experience in the pocket in different ways.

I think of the June felts them for a year and 1/2 feet. He bumped in the engineering department in the bunk right below John Gallagher and he said you know we just we became really good friends and you get to know somebody. He says I know I could identify him by the way he breathed that night. I could identify him by the impression that he made in the springs of the of the bunk above me know if you put somebody else in that in the bunk was John Gallagher so that the men had this just this intimate relationship I'm in there there on this relatively small ship thrown together in in in in these perilous circumstances as they develop a camaraderie that that you can't replicate outside the circumstances of war when they got into Brooklyn, 1/3 of the men who'd been on the Plunkett requested transfers because if you've been on a ship that's been hit. It's almost like bad luck or you know they would. They were there were traumatized is no question about that and I think about the Plunkett no that word. The invocation of that that word has always been wholly in the halls of my family. We would say the word. When we were kids. There was an oil portrait of John in the parlor walls this the Victorian home buses Dorchester neighborhood that he grown up on there is a there was upstairs in the second floor hallway.

His Purple Heart that hung in a small shadowbox beside a black and white picture of the ship on the back of which there were 93 signatures of the shipmates he collected their names their ranks and hometowns in ink of the legacy of of of all that this ship is representative of of this Herculean effort that we had made as a country back in the 40s and you're listening to James Sullivan knowing the story of the USS by the way destroyer on the play battleship Miller destroyers, but in real life. My goodness, the responsibility of a destroyer can't make it up.

Basically in charge of protecting the convoy. The fleet small job and that's why the Germans wanted to get that destroyed in the destroyer you get the fleet get the, the story of the unsinkable USS Plunkett. Our Americans and we continue with our American stories, and now we bring you the story of Edie hand, a friend of ours whose life was shaped by both a lot of love but as you're about to hear a whole lot of loss using. It was a setting in northwest Alabama to slacken enough sisters love for these three young boys, David, Harry and Philip every afternoon after school we would get off our school bus and run inside in get us a doodad cookie and hit the barn. I would that let my horse my horse was named trigger and I named trigger because of Roy Rogers and Dale Evans, David saddle up his horse name spotting client because he left the Lone Ranger and Tonto and then Philip. Now he saddle up his horse. He had little Shetland pony, and he named his horse probably because he was in love with her Avon lady. And then there was Philip. He was just too small to have his own horse so I would throw him on the back with me. We would head to the Indian mounds and on our property. We had about 40 acres and we would get to the top of the man's and it was really a wonderful place to lie down and let the horses wander around and we would start talking about our dreams that David he was going to be a racecar driver. He was a great altar and he was really funny to return his hat around backwards and he would get his pocket knife out and start cutting holes in his hat all the time. I can bigger pull his curls through it and really pick up of time, stressing down the road. He has one can make the sport might have raised had rather large arms and she had one hanging out the side of the window and she was smoking a cigar that we just had a field day with Ruth McGinn and then there was Philip he was really kind of shy. He felt like he was needs to know how to get involved with people in my mother's brothers were seniors and songwriters and we come from the history of the late Elvis Pressley of that family on our grandmother's time. He sat think I'm just going to grow up and be a songwriter and maybe drink a little place because it seems to get all the girls coming around so we said, I will why they have her in. Now he was gay. J but I learned from him about pleasing moments in line and devise that way he tried to seize moments if it was named football if he wrapped a band for baseball game going to be the best could be always practicing to be the best and sees every moment of something that could be great not good.

And then there was hearing think I learned the most about life from him. He taught us about courage you want to grow up and become an architect as an dad's dad was a builder.

He built buildings and homes and Terry said he was being a doctor techie went to build all kinds of skyscrapers, buildings, and we said now we barely can say the word begin a day. This, though it was canna cool to hear everybody share what they were venting and they would say though Edith U can day. Well I'm I'm in a right other people and I'm going to be a movie star and then I will share what were going to daisychain your mansion one day okay and so we teased each other and our mother. Her name was to that her mother had named her ripples so we would call her written, which he hate that when we were on that Indian mounds in written, it would get really loud when she was about the fifth or sixth M 1890 well we, as a boy to skid up at Stanford to go home with dips on her last screen. Yes, that we would know mount up, get those horses back to the barn to go have dinner. It was a wonderful way of growing up in the simpler times but I guess I just didn't realize that what was happening in my life and what I was learning from them. It was my only time that I was can have with him because they would � young David died at the age of 19 in a car accident. I was a senior in college. I was devastated that particular time in my life.

He was my best friend and he was the most important man in my life, though it took me a year just because I get back into the groove of life, and he was the first one in our family. He passed away 10 years later my brother Philip was killed in an automobile accident.

I remember what a horrible time it was that my father call me in, he said, and your mother and I just can't go which you, and identify your brother Aygestin realize how hard that would be. I drove to North Alabama and identified the body. It was just so hard seeing how life really wise one day be for someone in the next they're not part of your life, washing their last load of clothes. Then I guess to me the last one. The strongest when Terry they found he had an aneurysm in the middle of the brain and Terry had brain surgery and I'll never forget the courage to ignite his neurosurgeon came out and said I don't know if we can save him and then have to leave his head open with and try to go back and one more time. Would you like to see him.

I remember my mother was inconsolable and my father was with her and I went to be with him.

It was like a war zone for me had never seen anything quite like I saw in that ring the UAB Hospital and everything that campaign before his hands were strapped down and I remember he said you have to save me. You have to say and I could not save him and I stayed with him as long as I could not prayed. I tried to comfort him. There was no way to comfort him. I when I sent message you have to do something for him to have to do something is on putting in a rain. You can stay with him all night. I don't know that he'll make a proven track search again tomorrow.

I remember I didn't think he would make it either that he went into the surgery they lost his hearing. He lost his taste. Several things went the same.

They sent him home more of a broken man didn't think he would live very long, but Terry watching him by life taught me so much about courage of how he wanted to live as best he could. That my father built a ramp in his sunken Dan that he built his home with his own two hands on his land. He talked every day or listen to country music and he realizing them at the doctor that he was can be losing his I never saw someone that much determination in that flat I fixed in a dizzy time for him and I set out on these letters will make it work though that is the way we communicated in the state one day. I am going to lose my voice would you promise me that when my time comes, would you come and hold me and I want you to tell her story one day that the Blackman boys that are life would be an encouragement to tell people it's important to be kind to one another. Enjoy the simpler things of life. It's not all about the money you can make it is what we do for one another and how we encourage one another, you know, and I am glad that God allowed me to be April and I got the call I wasn't there at that time to come and I held him in my arms.

Now they are all bearing under that big Oaktree and in the loss of these three young boys did me a long time but I know this no matter what season of life are in or what hardship we convey our heartbreak that there is something beautiful to come out of it.

If we look for that and that he's been my saving grace, and you just heard EV hand story is not a dry eye in our room and what a story about remembrance about family, how he fought for life taught me about life. She said about her brother Terry. Be kind to one another. Enjoy life. It's not all about the money. What a beautiful story to said story eating hand story here on our American story. All