Interview of John McNeill
Transcript Number 076

July 31, 2001

We're in the Columbus County Library in Whiteville, North Carolina. Today we are talking to John A. McNeill, Sr. who was in the US Navy in the Pacific in World War II. 

I graduated from the University of North Carolina in 1940 and worked a year. I wanted to do something the 7th. Pat Sears walked into the drugstore and said, "John, the Japanese have attacked Pearl Harbor." It was difficult to believe. I thought perhaps a bomb, maybe, certainly not as bold a move as this. The next morning when the President declared war, I was in the recruiting line in Raleigh with Pat Sears. They accepted Pat, who had had prior naval experience. I was told that I was not tall enough to be in the V-7 program. There was no amount of arguing that had any effect. 

I came home and visited several other recruiting stations, but I received the same answer. In Greensboro I was told that it might be possible to stretch the one and three-quarters inches I needed. So, after talking to an orthopedist, I began a series of exercises. The most effective one, as a method of stretching, was to tie your feet down with towels in the bed and just pulling against them all night. I was amazed. I began to grow and reached an inch. Now, of course, this height is very temporary. It only lasts an hour or so.

INTERVIEWER: (Laughter.)

So I went to Charlotte where I thought they had not heard of my problems. And I was tall enough. The doctor, however, was late getting there and I shrunk up. And I, although the Air Force doctor had measured me, the doctor said he must see for himself, so he said, "If you'll come back Monday I will see you when you first come. I'll call you at your hotel." And so I went back and stretched all night, called a cab, laid in the floor, and aroused a recruiting station full of photographers and nude people. I was actually slightly over 66 inches. And, well I was accepted and was assigned to the V-7 program.

I received my orders and went up to Columbia University for a 30-day sort of trial as an apprentice seaman to see if I could qualify as a midshipman, which I did. There were about 600 candidates at Columbia University, and we were subjected to lots of trials that would separate those not suited to have a career in the navy. And maybe 20 or 25 per cent of the candidates were dismissed. I survived and was appointed midshipman, and had three months of, you know, the 90-day wonder program. Study was largely in four categories: seamanship, ordnance, navigation, and leadership. There were frequent wash-outs for various reasons, but I managed to survive this and was commissioned on August 7, of 1942.

I was assigned to the amphibious force, and arrived in Norfolk and was immediately put aboard the Samuel Chase, an APA or an attack transport. And there we were asked to fill a little form out about any experience we might have had with boats. I elaborated on my vast experience with sailboats and canoes.

INTERVIEWER: (Laughter.)

Much to my surprise, the next morning I was a flotilla commander. No one else had even been in a boat. This didn't last long because they didn't need flotilla commanders. So I saw this terrible looking ship sailing down the bay with the numbers 001, and I asked the training officer what it was. He looked it up and said it was an LCT mark five, 115 feet long, 30 feet wide, crew of ten with one ensign as commanding officer, rather officer in charge since they hadn't been commissioned. I applied and was accepted and I immediately began training in amphibious warfare in the Chesapeake Bay.

After a week or two they assigned crews, but the crews were a lot of rough men to pull for a crew, so I'd wait until the new recruits came in. But I noticed one day there was a brig or a jail. So I went over and found that these men were there for trivial causes, over leave or drunk or something, so I asked if I could recruit a crew, which I did. And it was the greatest thing that ever happened to me. It was a remarkable group of kids. Every one of the boys that I picked had volunteered on the 8th of December. 

They wanted to be called the Pearl Harbor Avengers. I had the most enthusiastic group of men you can imagine. They were, some or all were very young, and several had had extensive experience in mechanics and electricians and construction and so forth. And it was a, I never had any insubordination. I never had to have a Captain's mast. These men were just remarkable. They were enthusiastic about winning the war. They wanted to fight Japs, and I was a fortunate officer.

We went to San Francisco and I asked if we could have the first ship. So we actually had the first amphibious ship in the Pacific. And I thought, we only lasted a day and they gave me another one, the second one. I never was told why except they had seen me running around the harbor. They called me into the Port Director's office and said the admiral wanted them to ask me a question. And he said, "Frankly, things are desperate in the South Pacific. 

That Cactus, which was the code name for Guadalcanal, that we desperately need these large landing craft there. You're not able to steam under your own power, and we have no crane that can lift you off of another boat. So would you volunteer to be towed out?" Which, with that I went down and told my crew. I said, "You have an option. If you want to do this, you step forward." Every man stepped forward. Shortly, that next day, we were taken in tow by a Liberty ship and headed for the South Pacific. Not one of us had ever been on the ocean before.

The Liberty ship that was towing us, headed on a southwesterly course for Australia, actually New Caledonia. And the first few days we got along fairly well. We ran into one of these little hurricanes that spring up from Panama and come up toward Hawaii. And the ship was having a really hard time. We survived a day or two of it, bounced some kids out of the boats, and not able to do anything, but finally on the second day of the hurricane we snapped the tow line. We were adrift. Of course you couldn't see anything. I got the engine started, and I had no navigational equipment or charts except the front of a newspaper with a map of the Pacific on it. I headed east as best I could, but you had no control over the ship. You were just at the mercy of the waves. But late in the afternoon, six or eight hours later, suddenly the mists in front of us - through the mists we saw the Huey Young. They fired a line over us. 

We caught the line and pulled the hawser over, and he stabilized us and ordered us to abandon ship. Well, we, I got my crew and stuffed all the crew's records in my shirt, and we got in a life boat which immediately was flipped by the towing line. And so the men were in the water, but the captain of the Huey Young had thrown cargo nets in the water, and they were attached to the rigging on the ship. So everyone got a hold of a net, and they pulled us back to the ship. Somehow in the confusion, a huge wave came by. I came up on the weather side of the ship, with the boson's mate. 

We were dashed against the side and he was stunned. So we made several attempts to climb the ladder, but he would pass out before we could get him up. But finally we went under the ship on some kind of a huge wave and came up on the lea side and got back on deck. So we were taken out of the storm. The Huey Young was bounced around for a day or two, but we managed to survive that.

We went to Noumea, in New Caledonia, where we were put in a survivors camp. The Navy, in its traditions of course, segregate the people. So I was put in a tent called "surviving commanding officers." And I found myself in the company of all these captains and commanders of the ships that had been sunk at Guadalcanal. They didn't treat me too bad. They were very cordial. I was made a courier, and I carried secret mail around the harbor. 

Finally, one day I looked up and saw my ship coming in - a piece of it on Liberty ship. They unloaded it, we put it in a dry dock, and I got the crew back together. We welded it together and began outfitting it. The third day, we had a message from Admiral Turner asking us to come alongside his flagship, which I did. We were, as we laid off, the captain's gig came along with Admiral Turner, Admiral Fore, Admiral Halsey, and a dozen captains and commanders. They wanted to see what this big landing craft was like. 

So I was relieved of command and one of the captains would circle the ship and land and so forth. After a small collision with a cruiser, they had me to demonstrate a few things on the LCT. When it was over we returned to the flagship, and Admiral Halsey came over and put his arm around my shoulder, and he said, "Get her ready, Skipper, as quick as you can. I really need you here at Guadalcanal." I was indeed honored that I was spoken to by Admiral Halsey.

By this time they had gotten 12 ships in and assembled, so the first six sailed two days before Christmas. We sailed the day after Christmas in '42, and we arrived at Guadalcanal about seven days later. I was there on the first day of January. The battle, of course, had started in August, and it went on for about six more weeks. I was delivering gasoline. I took 900 barrels of gasoline to Henderson Field. So we unloaded and immediately, we were in such great demand, our LCT's only made about 6 miles an hour. We could come alongside a freighter or transport. We could take seven trucks, we could take five tanks, but we seldom ever used tanks. We could take 150 tons of cargo, sometimes 200 tons, and put it on the beach, several times a day. It made a remarkable difference in being able to get supplies ashore.

We, of course, were subjected to some artillery fire. It was never real, real heavy, because we had supporting vessels to answer them. We, at night we never fired because it just gave our position away. We just got against the shoreline and hid. Aircraft were our biggest problems, and we had - my story, I wrote my story, and it lists more than a hundred air attacks that we had aboard the ship. But we were never, or seldom, the direct target. 

It was something larger there that the aircraft were after so we were spectators in most of these things. One day they decided that we needed to land a regiment behind the Japanese lines. And, well this was a real adventure. We were supposed to go around to the other side of the island and put part of the 43rd Division ashore. Which we did. Five LCT's were escorted by three destroyers. We got our men ashore. Immediately, I was asked to go to the bridge and a radio was telling me that there were 21 unidentified ships in my area. That was the Japanese response to our landing, we thought. 

So we made best speed and I saw, what I thought to be an American soldier on the beach who waved at us, called us in. I thought this is some Jap trick, so I was going to ignore it. The destroyer behind me said, "Go ahead in and pick him up. We've got you covered." And we went in and dropped the ramp and this man walked up on the deck. He looked at the bridge and said, "John McNeill," and it was George Watson, the captain of the football team at Carolina in 1939.

INTERVIEWER: (Laughter.)

He had been cut off behind the lines. He won the Distinguished Service Cross for sending all the intelligence reports back on the thing. Anyway, we retracted from the beach and tried to get about 35 miles back to our base. And as darkness came, just before dark, they sank - 14 dive bombers came on us, and sank my escorting destroyer, The Haven. But most of the survivors were recovered. We managed to elude them all night, playing zig-zag and so forth. It turned out to be the evacuation of Guadalcanal. 

We thought it was a reinforcement, but this happened on three nights. They came down and took the last 16,000 Japanese off the island. Next morning I was sent up to look at the beach. I took a group of Marine officers up there. All these old boats in the water - little six-foot boats that were used to take them off the island and pick them up at sea. Well, we went among them and found they were, that they had evacuated the beach. There were no one on the beach and the Army troops were beginning to walk up and so we just realized the battle was over. We immediately began reinforcing the island. Lots of ships came and we worked day and night getting troops and materials ashore. 

In about three weeks we were told that we would invade the next group, the Russells. And so we got together what we called the "Spit Kit Expeditionary Force," made up of large destroyers, no transports, we had a few LCI's came out, so we went out with the destroyers and found they had evacuated the Russells, so we had an easy time of that. But we built two air strips, which were a great protection for the people at Guadalcanal to have two fighter strips up 40 miles closer. 

So we made probably 30 or 40 overnight trips to the Russells, and it went along fairly well. We could make the trip in about 12 hours. So we'd leave about dark with a load, and like I said, six or seven trucks and maybe 150 troops. We carried food, fuel, and ammunition. We were never threatened by surface vessels, but we were harassed constantly by aircraft, because they could see the phosphorescence of our wake. So they'd come along strafing at night, but we'd, you know, put sand bags across the stern and we were pretty well immune to that. 

Anyway, the Russells campaign went along fine. The Japanese resorted to heavy air attacks against the Guadalcanal area for a number of months. Sometimes there would be about three hundred aircraft, and we would lose some of the larger ships, but I was never hit. I did not receive anything more than shrapnel, and so we got along fine.

The second operation began against the Central Solomons - the New Georgia campaign. I participated in that. Made several trips up there, and one of the Army divisions ran into problems ashore at New Georgia, so it needed tanks, which we hadn't used before. So I took six tanks. I don't remember how I got six on board because it was usually just five, but we got right behind the lines and got the tanks ashore. We got a lot of artillery in and we broke the line and were able to capture the airstrip. 

We had, like I said, a remarkable group of people. Friendship with the skippers of the other LCT's was probably about the strongest I ever had. As a matter of fact, we still meet each year, and have since shortly after the war. There are five of us left still able to travel. We plan to meet at Newport in October of this year, again. They were quite remarkable people. These were the young people, largely ensigns. As we got promoted most of us became 2nd Lieutenants. I did meet a lot of wonderful people. 

One day I saw a PT boat. As it came close by I recognized the captain as a man who roomed next door to me in school. So he hollered over, "Come to my tent tonight." The PT boats operated at night, and slept during the day. It was so hot they couldn't stay on the boats, so they slept in tents. So I went over late in the afternoon and met all these PT boat skippers, and they were in the mud. Their cots were just sinking down in the mud, and they were walking through the mud. I remembered every time I unloaded gasoline at Henderson Field that we had all these boards, just hundreds of boards to put on the tanks. So I picked up about 20,000 feet of lumber while I was over with the Seabees and they made tent platforms and walkways while I was on this little island, Macambo. So, next time they came in, an officer came over and said, "I want to speak to Ensign McNeill." He came over and said, "I just wanted to thank you. My name is Jack Kennedy, and I wanted to tell you how much we appreciated the lumber you brought." 

Well, I was fascinated with the PT's. My ship only made six miles an hour, so I thought, "Well, I'll ask Joe if I can ride on a PT boat one night." And he asked his commanding officer, and he agreed, and so I went to the briefing and we were told that we were supposed to go up to the next island, in the harbor, and see if we could draw fire - just to tell if it was occupied or not. Then come back and patrol the rest of the night. There were no friendly ships in the area, so you fire torpedoes at anything you see. Well, we went into the harbor and drew no fire. We came out and began our patrol. About midnight, Joe said, "John, I'll leave you in command. I'm going below with the Executive Officer and we're going to have coffee." 

So, it was great, being in command of a PT boat with all that power and all the torpedoes and so I was standing up there in all my glory, looking at the horizon. Suddenly there was a ship. And so I looked twice, and I could see that rigging, and about that time one of the look-outs reported it. And so I sounded the general alarm and called for the captain and the men came, we got all engines going full-speed. We got up to about 42 knots, headed directly for the target, but Joe had not come to the bridge. And so the chief torpedo man was asking me about the speed and course and so forth, that the target was, and I was guessing, of course. He said, "We have the solution and we're ready to fire." I said, "Well get the Captain up here. I can't give you authority to fire the torpedoes." Well, he didn't come, and finally the chief said, "They'll be shooting at us in a minute." 

INTERVIEWER: (Laughter.)

McNEILL: And I looked him in the eye, and I saw one of the sailors smile at me. I knew they had tricked me. I remember that what I was looking at was a rock. It was on the chart. Incidentally, it had two palm trees on it and it looked just like a ship. And they had maneuvered me around during the night so that they went below and I saw that ship. Well, it turned out to be a gag they pulled on all the new officers and so forth.

INTERVIEWER: (Laughter.)

McNEILL: Anyway, we enjoyed riding fast one time. So, after the New Georgia campaign, I was relieved and given orders to come back to the United States. We found, four of us found passage on a freighter and came back to San Francisco and were immediately ordered to Solomons, Maryland, urgent orders. We got there and found that we were supposed to train the new crews for the European Theater. This was during the Normandy build-up. So we stayed at Solomons, Maryland, through the first half of '44. 

We spent our time training new crews. Then we were given a choice of , "Do you want to go back to LCT's? You could be a group commander or a flotilla commander or something, or you could get an LST or some larger ship." My commanding officer, who I had served the entire war with, wanted to go back to the Pacific and asked me if I would take command of one of his groups, which I did. And so, he had three groups and we went down to New Orleans, outfitted the ships and went to Pearl. All the other operations were being managed from Pearl - so much activity. We were really in the way until our time came. So we would go out to sea for a week or so, and come back. Finally they called us in one day and said, "Could you steam those LCT's to the Philippines?" That was 5,000 miles. Well I said, "No." Most of the other ones said, "Yes." So I said, "You've not been in a hurricane." And my buddies said, "Well, that's the only way for us to go." 

So we steamed the 36 LCT's from Pearl to the Philippines. We stopped at Johnston, Majero, Eniwetok, Guam, and another island, but it took 37 days at five miles an hour. So, arriving in the Philippines, the battle, the assault phase of the Philippines was just ending. There was nothing but a few air raids. We did not land any combat troops. The operations officer for the flotilla, and we were largely moving freight around the islands, and preparing for the, what we knew to be the assault on Japan. Before any actual training started, in July of '45, it became apparent that the whole war had accelerated to the point that it was possible to end it sooner than we had really figured. 

All of us thought it would last until '48. And, so, the amount of material that came into the Philippines, after Europe was secured, was astounding. There were a thousand ships in the harbor we were in. It was just unbelievable the amount of equipment and the number of troops and the new ships and the new airplanes. We began to get optimistic about it ending, but we realized that, in our experience, the Japanese would never surrender. 

I had picked up three prisoners during all my years out there, and only one of them was able to, really able to surrender. We found him in the water, a Zero pilot we shot down, and had picked up. The rest of them were wounded and were not aware of what was going on. So we figured we'd have to kill them all. And suddenly the atomic bomb went off. I had had lectures on atomic energy at Chapel Hill, so I was vaguely aware of what the power was. So we became elated. We were pretty certain that we could defeat the Japanese, possibly without an invasion. I know today there's some regret about using the atomic bomb. My only regret was that we didn't have a hundred of them. But, I thought we would save a lot of Japanese lives, because they would die and we would lose maybe a million of our men. So, I was glad. 

The night of the surrender we were at a movie on Lucerne, a little flagship we had, and I was sitting beside my commanding officer, with whom I had served since the very beginning. The movie stopped and this voice came on and said, "You will now hear from Admiral Carter, the senior officer present." And the voice came on the PA. system and said, "This is Admiral Carter. I have just received a message from Admiral Nemitz which states that the Japanese have surrendered. I hereby authorize the expenditure of all pyrotechnic ammunition."

INTERVIEWER: (Laughter.)

McNEILL: What followed was impossible to describe. The thousands of ships there, about two thousand, all had star shells and pyrotechnics and so forth. And no fireworks display you have ever seen could compete with it. Every sound-making device possible went off. The fifty or sixty fleet tugs who could put up five or ten streams of water, the ships all got underway - just making figure-eights all over the place. It was just the greatest celebration in the world. The commanding officer, the first thing he said when they said, "They surrendered," he said "McNeill, you can go home tomorrow." 

INTERVIEWER: (Laughter.)

McNEILL: So, I, with all my time in the service, it took about all the luck I had to get me home. But on the 5th day of September, I opened the drug store. I went across the street, met Margaret Powell, married her, had six children, and lived happily ever after.

INTERVIEWER: All of the time that you were in the Service, in all the experiences that you had, again, take a look into the camera and tell your great-grandchildren what did you learn from all of that? What did you learn about humanity?

McNEILL: Well, I learned that man must learn some way of settling their differences other than war. We, I don't know how we can do it because war has been going on all this time. But you read Tennyson, and he said, "When I look into the future as far as you and I can see, saw the glories of the world and all the wonder that would be -" And he went on about the air and finally said, "'til the war drums throb no longer, 'til the battle flags are furled in the parliament of man, the federation of the world." 

Maybe we can do that. Maybe we can get together. Maybe we can have some sort of government that doesn't believe in war. I don't know how far that is away, but what I learned was that those boys in my crew, when the situation became - justified it, they could meet any challenge. They had the will power. They had the ability. They had the determination, and so I've got a confidence in America that nothing could destroy, l don't believe. I believe that we cannot be defeated. We will have moments of weakness and so forth, but when real challenges come, we have found that freedom, liberty is so great that we'll make any sacrifice to preserve it.