His Name was Jack Hale

By Larry Newman MM1

"Don't miss the Gooney Birds at Midway," Jack Hale told me. "You'll never see the likes again." I was a fresh faced boot who had reported on board the Hanson after the Christmas holidays of 1954.

Jack had taken me under his wing and had become a self appointed mentor to me. I'm not complaining, mind you, he was a god-send to this green-beanie with the green face. My first time at sea was when the Hanson set out on deployment in June 1955.

Talk about sick, I got so seasick I thought I would die one second and hoped I would in the next. I spent the first week trying to get my sea legs but it seemed all I could do was hang over the safety rail and hurl. Day after day I would struggle up to the main deck just outside the E division compartment and empty any gastric juices that might be left in my stomach. I had given up on eating. The mess deck was in the bow area of the ship and I knew I couldn't make it all that way and if I could whatever I had managed to choke down would come right back up in a short while.

That was where he found me, this tall, lanky machinist mate 3rd class. I felt a hand on my shoulder and looked up into a kind face with blue eyes and a blond shock of hair. It was Jack Hale and he was smiling. "Kinda rough, huh?" he said. I groaned an affirmative to him and fixed my eyes on the far horizon. It seemed to help. "You've got to eat," he said, "you can't keep up dry heaving, you're going to hurt yourself and get real sick. Here, eat this." Jack handed me a soda cracker.

"I'll just hurl again," I told him. "That's okay," he said as he handed me a whole box of soda crackers, "then you eat some more. And when you eat all of these I'll bring you another box. We've got to get you on your feet." And so it went. I think I went through two boxes before Jack pronounced me to be a sailor worth his salt. Those crackers really worked, as Jack had assured me they would.

Jack and I worked together in the after engine room and after he rescued me from the fish feeding routine I felt like I had made a good friend. He was the type of person who took pride in doing things right and was always cleaning, painting, and polishing when time permitted. He wanted the AER to look sharp!

One project Jack took on was cleaning the deck plates that formed the walk ways and catwalks we used to get about the machinery we tended. Engineering spaces on a ship get dirty real fast if you don't keep at them constantly and the deck plates in our space were very grubby. We were dock side at Midway Island. Jack and I had begun to clean and polish the deck plates on the upper level. They were turning out looking like new plates, all bright and shiny and Jack was pleased with our work. We used large wire brushes and a strong detergent to clean them and the job was taking longer than Jack had intended. He told me to go on to chow he would finish up. Which I did, leaving him alone. I had been gone about thirty minutes when coming from the mess deck I saw a crowd milling around the After Engine Room's outboard hatch. I asked what was going on. The Chief told me it was Jack Hale. "What about Jack," I replied. "Well," he told me, "Jack's been hurt real bad, real bad." While I was away eating my dinner, my new friend Jack Hale died in a freak accident. What actually happened is not known. This is what has been determined from the information gathered, as I remember the event.

Jack had wanted to get both the upper and lower level deck plates cleaned that day. Realizing it was taking longer than he had figured he decided to speed things up by employing an electric wire brush. He started using this after I had gone to eat. To clean the plates we would pour a quantity of the cleaning agent onto the plate and then wire brush them until they were shiny clean. The water and the electricity didn't mix. I appears that Jack received a severe electrical shock that knocked him out. He fell with his temple resting on a super heated steam pipe. How long he laid that way i not known. Anything the shock had failed to do to cause his death, the steam pipe finished. Jack Hale was gone.

I didn't miss the Gooney Birds Jack, but I sure do miss you!