Nicholas MERSCH

MERSCH

Posted By: Sarah Thorson Little (email)
Date: 4/6/2010 at 08:25:51

Nicholas Mersch, Eagle Grove
Navy vet served from 1939 to 1944

By LINDSEY MUTCHLER, Messenger staff writer
April 1, 2010
Fort Dodge Messenger, Fort Dodge, Iowa, copyright

Nicholas Mersch joined the Navy when he was 18 years old, beginning in 1939. He served for six years, and was actually on a waiting list for six months before he was enlisted. Shown here are photos Mersch has saved from his time in service.

EAGLE GROVE - Joining the Navy was completely voluntary for Nicholas Mersch. A year after graduating from Eagle Grove High School, a friend of Mersch's talked him into enlisting. "I didn't know what I was going to do, and I wasn't smart enough to go to college," Mersch said. "I had a friend who said to me one day, 'boy you oughta join the Navy.'" So in the summer of 1939 Mersch signed up to serve in the United States Navy. The young Iowan was on a waiting list for three months before he was sent to the Great Lakes, Ill., for boot camp. Training lasted four weeks, but four days into Mersch's training, Germany invaded Poland.

"I was in the Navy for four days, and Hitler took over Poland that day," Mersch said. "Everyone knew we'd be going to war. It was kind of scary. That was something else."

It would be two years before the U.S. officially entered World War II. After Mersch completed his training, he boarded the USS Colorado in San Francisco and traveled to Hawaii.

"Of course I got seasick the first time," Mersch said. "I was on the battleship for a year and half."

Then in 1941 Mersch came back to the states as a seaman first class and went to Keyport, Wash., Naval base where he dove for torpedoes. The naval base specialized in torpedo production, overhaul and testing. Sometimes as many as 100 torpedoes were produced and tested in a single day, according to the Historical Naval Ships Association's Web site.

"I stayed at their torpedo station to check torpedoes," Mersch said. "I qualified to be a deep sea diver with the basket and all that, for $10 a month."

The torpedoes were 110 feet long. Mersch would dive and tie a rope around them so they could be hauled out of the water and be submitted to further tests. Torpedoes weren't the only ammunition with which Mersch dealt. He traveled with a land-based outfit to Bougainville and Guadalcanal, two islands that created the north and south end of the Solomon Islands, part of New Guinea. The Navy's code word for the group was Acorn. The Japanese had taken over the islands and were constructing naval and air bases. The men in the Acorn units were used to rapidly build and operate new airfield facilities or to rehabilitate captured airfields according to "Patrol Aviation in the Pacific in WWII" by Capt. Albert L. Raithel Jr.

"I got on a ship in Los Angeles and went to Guadalcanal, an island already taken over by the Marines," Mersch said. "Then Thanksgiving Day 1943 I went to Bougainville, that was already taken over by the Marines."

While the waters were relatively quiet, according to Mersch, one Japanese plane attempted to derail the mission. On their way to Bougainville, Mersch said the Japanese "dropped a bomb near a ship right along side of us."

"He dropped the bomb and flew off," Mersch said. "No one got a shot off on him."

But being below deck on the big battleship manning one of its gun's 16-inch barrels was Mersch's job.

"Our battle stations were down to the bottom of the ship," Mersch said. "That's where they put me. I thought I'd never get out of there. For battle practice I'd be down on the bottom and the shells weighed over a ton. During target practice those shells would ricochet off the ocean. They had a lot of power behind them."

Mersch said he was never shot at by the enemy, "it was more routine stuff" that he completed in the Navy.

"I really don't think I did anything to be honest with you," Mersch said.

Even though he never saw active battle, Mersch remembers coming home clearly.

"We were coming back to the U.S. and as we crossed the equator, we heard FDR had died," Mersch said. "We were playing poker on the deck and I hit an inside straight. That's no kidding. We were heading to Jacksonville, Fla., that's where I got out of the Navy after six years and 21 days.

"I had joined for six years, and some guys would jokingly ask me what crime I had committed to serve for so long."

While those memories are long ago, Mersch said he's looking forward to seeing our nation's capital this May.

"It's some place I never expected to go," the 89-year-old said. "I'm thankful because people think we ought to go."

Contact Lindsey Mutchler at (515) 573-2141 or lindsey@messengernews.net

http://www.messengernews.net/page/content.detail/id/523695.html