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Show EDWIN CANNO ' ED ' WI DER R 22,2 l BEC: Really? NED: Yeah. I mean, ages just kind of blended. Seniority didn t. If you were a chi f petty officer or a commissioned officer, why there were levels. But nobody ever worried about me not being older or anything like that. We had too much else to worry about. BEC: Yeah. So did you find yourself having people seek your counsel a lot? NED: Yes. I did. And that wasn't publicized as what I was going to do. I just said, "Let me hold services and do this little thing here." But I had, oh, maybe a half a dozen or more say, "Hey, I'd like to talk to you about something. Would you ... " And, you know, they'd talk about their fears. But that was a minimum. It wasn't like having a chaplain's office and you come in. In fact, I guess there were some people didn't really know that we had that. We had over 300 people on our ship. My duties were to hold those services, arrange the program, get that printed up and then when we had those deaths and recovered the bodies, I officiated at the sea burial of those shipmates. And that was tough. All wrapped up in canvas. And I can just see them put them on this thing, the flag over them, and they'd slip out from under the flag in this canvas bag that was loaded with weights so it would drop in the ocean. I've often wondered why we-of course the war was still going-why we didn't do something about bringing them back. But, man, people getting killed all over the place, it just wouldn't have been practical. BEC: Yeah, I imagine so. NED: The same day that we were shot-May 1 0-is the same day Ernie Pyle, the great writer, you've probably never heard of him, was killed in an attack near Okinawa. BEC: I've heard of him. NED: Oh, have you? He was a favorite writer, war writer. He was from New Mexico. He was killed that day by a kamikaze plane that hit a ship in port there at Kerama Retto 27 |
