69-years later, Merchant Marine still seek full recognition

PALMER — It didn’t matter at all to German Cmdr. Walther Kolle that the mariners onboard the Tillie Lykes were considered civilians by the U.S. government.

Silhouetted against the gray morning sky, the U-boat 154 commander took careful aim and fired a torpedo at the ship’s engine room, where a young Eldon L. Gallear was on duty 30 feet below sea level.

Gallear, 88, says he still doesn’t know how he found his way through the smoke and flames that day. Injured and half dead, he said Brazilian deckhands got him off the deck of the sinking vessel and into a lifeboat.

He said he’s not sure how long he floated there.

“I was alone in the life raft, and I don’t know for how long. My four friends had been rescued by native island fishermen, and I guess they figured I was dead — as much blood as had drained from the gash in my side, between the raft slats and into the ocean,” Gallear said in the book “Perilous Tide.”

As it was, he floated, baking in the sun and on the verge of death long enough for sharks to surround the raft in the warm Caribbean water.

Before they could make a meal of him though, an anti-sub seaplane crew rescued Gallear and flew him to Panama.

Alaska Greatland Chapter’s first meeting is today

Cmdr. Gallear and Jack Straayer of Palmer are two of just a handful of Merchant Mariners who served during World War II and are still living in the Mat-Su.

Both men will be at the Alaska Greatland Chapter’s first meeting, from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m., today at the Alaska Veterans and Pioneers Home, 250 E. Fireweed Ave., Palmer.

They are two of more than 250,000 sailors who served in the Merchant Marine during World War II. Although they were not considered members of the U.S. armed forces, the Merchant Marine had greater odds of dying in action than service members in the Army, Navy, Marines and Coast Guard, Gallear said. One in 26 Mariners who signed up to serve was killed during the war.

Both Gallear and Straayer had their ships shot out front under them, but continued to serve. After his wartime service, Straayer went on to serve in the Navy and Coast Guard, too.

“I’ve always been wet,” he said during a 2011 interview.

He was about 15 when he learned to sail on Lake Michigan with the Sea Scouts. He was not quite out of high school when seven or eight of his high school friends joined the Merchant Marine together on the day he turned 17.

By his 18th birthday, he’d been around the world.

“The war started,” Straayer said. “I was a young fellow and wanted to be part of it. I wanted to see the world.”

He said he decided to join the service toward the end of the war, “If you can’t shoot back it’s no fun.”

During the war, Merchant Marine vessels carried troops, food, guns, airplanes, bombs, shells, tanks, loads of Jeeps, gasoline, ammunition, vehicles, medicine — the sinews of war, Straayer said.

Jack and Gina Straayer were married after the war and moved to Alaska in 1976.

When Tony Knowles was governor, Straayer said the governor heard that he’d dropped out of school decades earlier to serve in the war. So, Governor Knowles arranged for Straayer to receive an official state of Alaska High School diploma.

“I’m pretty proud of that,” Straayer said.

Though he is proud of his service in the Navy and Coast Guard, Straayer said he is most proud of his unsung service to the Merchant Marine.

“We had the highest casualties and no one knows about it,” he said.

Few Mariners remain

With each passing year, fewer Mariners remain in the Mat-Su, Gallear said. As head of the Alaska Greatland Chapter of the U.S. Merchant Marine Veterans, that’s why Commander Gallear organized today’s meeting at the Alaska Veterans and Pioneers Home in Palmer.

“We’re all old,” Gallear said. “I’m 88.”

He said the seamen who remain are scattered from Ketchikan to Barrow, with four or five guys living in the Mat-Su.

Salty veterans like Gallear and Straayer speak with pride of the service to their country during World War II. But it’s pride with a twinge of pain.

“Uncle Sam just completely forgot the Merchant Marine,” Gallear said, head bowed, voice breaking. “There are just a few of us old guys left. We’re the only ones that got it in there.”

Chapter secretary Rose Gallear and Straayer will be at the meeting today to greet people at the admittance table when the door opens around 9:30 a.m.

Gallear said he got hooked on the sea at about age 13 and decided to join the Merchant Marine after his Aunt Gertie married Capt. Jim Barber. They honeymooned at the family dairy farm in Wisconsin, and Barber, a retired master of a fuel tender who sailed the Inside Passage from Seattle, regaled the farm boy with sea stories.

“I was tired of cows and the farm life. I could see no future in it,” Gallear said.

He ended up in Alaska after the girl named Elaine he was courting said she’d never marry a sailor and he took work on the first vessel available, as a second engineer aboard the SS Angoon.

In the Port of Anchorage, he watched the sunrise and thought about what it might be like to one day leave the sea and settle down, maybe marry Elaine.

The sunrise was beautiful as it came up over the mountains on May 18, 1946. It was a blue-sky day beyond compare, but the lure of young love trumped all.

“Ah, the heck with it,” Gallear said, tossing his coffee and mug into Cook Inlet.

Gallear went below deck, packed his sea bag and walked off the ship headed for downtown Anchorage, where he got a room and a job working for the city of Anchorage.

He radioed the news — and a question — to Elaine in Seattle. “Will you marry me?”

Days later, she sent a telegram back, “Yes.”

The two shared four years of marriage and three children, but Elaine died after the birth of their third child, Gallear said.

He worked around Alaska keeping the generators humming and the lights on at remote power plants in the Aleutians and on Shemya.

Still seeking official recognition

It took a lawsuit by two former Mariners to reverse the denial of benefits by the Civilian Military Service Review Board set up by the Department of Defense. The judge ordered the board to reconsider its denial of benefits and veteran status was given to most World War II Mariners on Jan. 19, 1988.

President Roosevelt and Gen. Eisenhower were supporters of the Merchant Marine, Gallear said.

History notes that as President Roosevelt signed the GI Bill in June 1944, he said, “I trust Congress will soon provide similar opportunities to members of the Merchant Marine who have risked their lives time and time again during war for the welfare of their country.”

But no bill has been passed in the 69 years since to do so, Gallear said.

He said it is this inequity that he and his fellow Mariners like Straayer would like to see corrected. Mariners still seek full, official recognition for their heroism and vital role during World War II, Gallear said.

“For some reason, Congress paid no attention to us,” he said.

“It’s just a hard thing to understand,” said his wife, Rose Gallear.

“It’s a forgotten chapter in history,” her husband replied.

Contact Heather A. Resz at 352-2268 or heather.resz@frontiersman.com.