NEW ORLEANS (AP) – It was the end of the line for the battered hulk of a PT boat at New Orleans’ National World War II museum, and an appropriate setting for the final reunion of a group of veterans who served on such vessels.
The 16 elderly survivors – down from 21 last year – of Peter Tare Inc., an organization for former officers of PT boats, lined up next to the boat Friday, taking one last sail down memory lane.
For them, World War II is really almost over now.
“It’s sort of pitiful the way the crowd has dwindled,” said William Paynter, 90, who commanded both a PT boat and a squadron in the South Pacific.
“The executive secretary is just getting over a stroke and it seemed like the best time to do it,” he said of this past week’s reunion.
The group, which began meeting in 1947, has better than $25,000 in assets, Paynter said. Originally the plan was to turn the assets over to the sole survivor, but as the years passed, that seemed impractical.
“We began to wonder how we would do that,” he said. “The funds would be in the bank, but there might not be anyone to sign a check.”
Now they plan to turn it over to the P.T. Boats Inc., which has restored and displays a pair of PT boats at Battleship Cove in Fall River, Mass.
Peter Tare, so named for the phonetics used to designate letters in World War II – P, Peter; T, Tare – was formed for officers on the small boats used to harry the enemy during the war. The most famous members were former president John F. Kennedy and former supreme Court justice Byron White.
The boats, with their roaring engines, were frequently called motor torpedo boats. The two most popular types were the Elco, made in New Jersey, and the Higgins, made in New Orleans. They were small, made of wood, and fast – capable of going 45 to 60 miles an hour.
“People ask me if I have a sailboat or a motor boat,” said Ed Jepsen, 90, of San Francisco. “I tell them I was spoiled for that when the Navy gave me a crew of 16, three 1,500-horse power engines and all the fuel I needed.”
Somewhere between 60,000 and 66,000 men served on the boats, 331 were killed in action and out of 531 PTs in US Navy service, 69 were lost.
PTs traveled both alone and in pairs or squadrons. They operated in the Atlantic, Mediterranean, English Channel, Caribbean, Aleutians and the Pacific. Typically they attacked at night, making a quick hit on a target and speeding away before the enemy could retaliate.
“We were a glamorous group,” said Tom Kent, 86, a retired lawyer from Queens, N.Y. “Iron men in wooden ships, to paraphrase the poem. The knights of the sea.”
Kent had read what he described as a glorified story on the PT boats in Life Magazine. “I said “this is for me.’ And it was.”
During 60 reunions, the stories have flown. Battles were fought again, memories trotted out to thrill a willing audience.
“To hear us tell it, we single-handedly won the war,” laughed Robbie Robinson, 91, of Springfield, Mass.
In the Solomon Islands, where Robinson commanded a PT boat, the Japanese would attack on moonless nights, he said.
“We didn’t have radar and neither did the Japanese,” he said. “So it was a giant game of cat and mouse out there, sneaking up on each other, getting in the first shot. Heady stuff.”
Most of the PT boats were destroyed after the war.
“We stripped then of everything we could use and then pushed them up on a beach and burned them,” said Dave “Hogan” Levy, 88, of Rochester, N.Y.
Today roughly 18 PT boats have been located, most of them in poor shape.
In addition to the two restored boats at Fall River, the Admiral Nimitz Museum in Fredericksburg Texas has one on display near the battleship Texas outside Houston. Another PT boat is currently being restored in Oregon. The hulk at the D-Day museum will be restored and put on display, said museum spokeswoman Clem Goldberger.
The former PT officers also show the wear and tear of age. Their hair is gone or white, hearing aids fill many ears. They use canes to get around and even then they frequently miss parts of conversation.
But their eyes still gleam when they remember their war.
“We were a daring group,” Kent said. “Bold and daring. I still have my memories.”
On the web:http://www.petertare.org/menu.htm
http://www.ptboats.org/07-0-05-museum.html
http://www.ddaymuseum.org/
AP-ES-04-20-07 1425EDT
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