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beers and two hours on an uninhabited island after we had been out for thirty days on the carriers. We never had Bob Hope and the girls put on a show anywhere that we could view in the nineteen months that we were out there. I don't even remember seeing a woman from the time we left Pearl Harbor until we went back through on our way to the States, never seen a woman. MR. MORRIS: Were you married at the time? MR. REDLE: No. We never seen a native even, we never got on the beach at Okinawa. On the MC KEAN we went into these islands, like the New Hebrides and New Caldonia and stuff, and the natives would row out and they'd bring a bunch of bananas or something and they wanted mattress covers or something like that. They liked that fluff. They'd trade you a couple bunches of bananas for a mattress cover. One of the scarier experiences I had was when a friend and I were sitting on the fan tail talking about when we were screening carriers in the task force and we looked up and saw the bow of this carrier just aft of the fantail on our destroyer. It was a very black night and visibility any distance was very poor and somehow our officer of the deck on the bridge had missed the zigzag course and we were going right through the task force formation. Of course, we were running without any lights and darkened ship conditions and there was a lot of activity in the task force with all ships having running lights on until we resumed our screening position again. I presume the officer of the deck on the bridge received a severe reprimand on his position there. From the fantail of our ship that carrier looked like a skyscraper above us. If they had hit us traveling about twenty-five knots they would have sliced right through us. Another thing I wanted to mention on this was one of the worst things that we run into was the typhoon that we got into in December of '43. It was one of the worst typhoons they had out there at all and Bull Halsey who was in
charge of the task group at that time thought we were getting out of the core or the center of the typhoon. Actually, they never had known instruments like they do now and we got right in the center of that. MR. MORRIS: The fellow I spoke to just before you, Bill Mien, he said the same thing about that typhoon and Bull Halsey getting them in that. He had the same complaint.
The National Museum of the Pacific War presents an oral interview with Richard Reedle. Reedle joined the Navy in January 1942. He served as a boatswain’s mate on the USS McKean (APD-5). Reedle describes how his ship landed Marine Raiders throughout the Solomon Islands. He also discusses being critically hit by an aerial torpedo and being the last man off before it sank. Reedle then joined the crew of the USS Preston (DD-795) and became a captain of one of the five-inch guns. He describes providing gunnery support at Okinawa and screening carrier task groups. Reedle also discusses kamikaze attacks and going through a typhoon. He left the service in November 1945.
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