#205： Seven Brothers, the Merchant Marine, and the War Against Hitler's U-boats
Episode Stats
Summary
In this episode of the Art of Manliness podcast, I interview William Jeroux, the author of the book The Mathews' Men: Seven Brothers in the War Against Hitler's U-boats. This book tells the story of the battle between the U.S. merchant marine and the German U-Boats, and how the merchant marine fought to try to cut off the enemy supply line.
Transcript
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brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast so you're probably
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familiar with the battles of world war ii fought in the european and pacific theaters thanks to
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shows like band of brothers or pacific on hbo but what a lot of people don't know is that there was
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a part of world war ii that was fought just off the coast of the united states and the thing was it
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was between civilians and the german u-boats and my guest today on the podcast has written a book
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about this often forgotten part of world war ii history his name is william jeroux he's the author
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of the book the matthews men seven brothers in the war against hitler's u-boats and it's about
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the war fought between the u.s merchant marine and hitler's u-boats that often happen like i said
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right off the coast of the united states what a lot of people don't know is that the merchant
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merchant mariners they were civilians they weren't actually soldiers but they had some of the highest
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casualty rates during world war ii as they were shipping supplies to soldiers across the war
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and they even got in the war involved in the war before the u.s were in the war as they were shipping
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supplies to great britain our ally a really fascinating podcast we also get into the title
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of the book the matthews men because as we'll see there was this county in virginia that supplied a
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huge amount of the merchant mariners that took part in world war ii in fact one family there's
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eight members male members of the family that were merchant mariners we'll discuss what life was like
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as a merchant mariner what life was like as a u-boat not very pleasant and yeah you'll have a lot of
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cocktail party campfire fodder after the show and just give you a heads up what my connection with my
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guest on skype was a little spotty when i was doing the interview so there is a little bumpy
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noise to the podcast we've done our best to edit it as possible to clean it up but just to just give
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you a heads up about that and to let you know also i'm about to release and about to be able to do
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recordings with a platform that developed that'll allow me to do remote recordings remote interviews
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while maintaining pristine audio quality i'm really excited about it and hopefully it'll up the podcast
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up even more so i appreciate your support and your patience and when you're done listening to the show
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make sure to check out the show notes at aom.is slash matthews and that's one t not two
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william geroux welcome to the show thanks thanks for having me all right so your uh book is called
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the matthews men and it's about uh the u.s merchant marine during world war ii in this war that they had
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with german u-boats uh that happened really close to the united states and it's something that a lot of
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people don't know about but before we get into that let's talk about the the merchant marine itself
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because i think people a lot of people have heard of it the merchant marine but don't know exactly
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what they did or what they do uh so what is the u.s merchant marine and why do we not really know
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why does the public not know much about it well they don't know much about it and the part of the
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reason is the merchant marine is uh is really now it's just a shadow of what it once was so it's not
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very much in the public eye anymore but the merchant marine it's the name it's confusing it sounds like
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a brand for the military but it's not it's a it's really sort of a loosely organized group of
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civilians uh private citizens mariners who sail ships normally for commercial purposes you know
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on cargo from port to port but in in world war ii and really in any times of war throughout the
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history of the united states the merchant marine really you know start to become sort of an
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adjunct through the military it calls war supplies it's the supply line and in world war ii that was
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very important it was uh they were really they hauled everything that the allied troops needed to
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survive and fight on in foreign battlefields i mean everything from fuel to guns ammunition
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planes tanks jeeps trucks food bug repellent medical supplies everything they were the supply line
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and this is where this is why they were such uh big targets for the the germans during world war ii
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yes the the uh the u-boats their mission was to try to to cut that supply line because the germans
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knew that if america could project its industrial power across the ocean um the germans were were
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do they weren't gonna the third reich was was not going to survive it so they they the u-boats were
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their way of that was really the most effective part of the german navy was the u-boats and that was
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that was their mission to cut the supply line if they could well yeah and that was another interesting
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do you think i mean i've heard of german u-boats um but i didn't really know much about them except
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that they were sort of submarines but sort of i mean what exactly is a u-boat it's not it can go
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underwater but it's technically not a submarine correct it's not a submarine the way we think of
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submarines today the nuclear subs the big ones that can stay underwater for months at a time without
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even communicating with the outside world the u-boats were they were you know diving vessels they
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performed much better on the surface but they were able to submerge for brief periods of time to
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conduct attacks or to try to escape um sewers and they there's sort of a mystique about u-boats that
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they were these you know the ultimate weapons but one of the things i try to do in the book is to show
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that they really had a lot of weaknesses and vulnerabilities they were uh uh they were slower than
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a lot of the you know most of the warships that hunted them and if they got driven underwater
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they were located by sonar or radar and driven underwater to to try to escape they were pretty
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helpless and they were dependent on the uh wiles the trickery of the u-boat commander to try to outwit
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their pursuers and figure out a way to get away from them and if they didn't they would the u-boat
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would be destroyed often by death charges and sent to the bottom uh often with all hands
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right i guess the these you mentioned the book that u-boats had some of the highest casualties
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uh during the war yes once the allies uh figured out or got the you know the technology and the
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tactics and the experience to to deal with them and really were able to go after them um
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uh the predators the u-boats quickly became the prey and by the end of the war it was a suicide
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mission basically to go out in a u-boat they were they were you know they were hunted they were uh
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their effectiveness was completely gone so much so that uh the head of the u-boat command admiral carl
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dunnitz um considered at one point just pulling them out of the war zones because they were just getting
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slaughtered but they they ultimately decided he ultimately decided that if they did that the ally
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you know the allies were doing a great deal of people and uh weaponry to to control them and if
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they were gone the allies could apply that weaponry elsewhere so they they kept them in the field
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basically to occupy the you know the the enemy and uh it's enormous losses to themselves and yeah you
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described life on a u-boat and it sounded absolutely horrible it was like i don't know why anyone would
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want to sign up to be a a member on a u-boat it was it was brutal i mean the air was foul the food was
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often rancid the um the u-boat was so cramped that the men literally slept on torpedoes that were stored
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under their bunks and the uh all the u-boats operating systems were so exact so demanding that
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everything had to be done you know for a certain way a certain sequence any deviation from that
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would doom the u-boat and that even extended the u-boat's toilets and if you there's one at least
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one example that i i described in the book where an improperly flushed toilet um ended up sinking a u-boat
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yeah i thought that was that was really i thought that was i mean it's funny in a sad sad way um
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so this is uh so the u-boats part of the mission early on in the war um even before america was
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you know officially in the war the uh the u.s merchant marine started engaging with these u-boats
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so what was the u.s merchant marine merchant marines uh role in world war ii even before the
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united states had actually officially declared war well um the british were um they were suffering
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terrible losses from the u-boat of course britain is a island nation depend on the on shipping to
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basically to supply everything and the u-boats were really hurting them they were sinking uh british
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merchant ships and killing british mariners uh faster than they could be replaced so winston
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and churchill asked uh uh president franklin roosevelt for help and roosevelt um found different
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ways uh short of being in a war to uh to to help them and one of those ways was using the you know
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mobilizing the merchant marine uh the u.s merchant marine to deliver goods to the british and uh at the
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beginning of the war hitler um or when he was first approaching the war he wasn't in that big of a
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hurry for us to join the war he had invaded russia and he really had a lot of had all the enemies he
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really uh more enemies really than he could use at that point so he was uh even though it was clear
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to everybody and particularly the u-boat commanders i mean they had to look through their periscopes of
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these american ships and see them delivering you know breaks basically breaking their blockade
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and not be able to do anything about it for political reasons um because hitler said don't
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you know do not sink american ships yet you know we're just you know we'll just we'll suffer the
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consequences of letting them deliver supplies and uh so this went on for for quite some time but
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america got you know more and more into it and pretty soon our our uh warships were helping to escort the
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big convoys across the atlantic and the u-boats started uh sinking some of our ships some of our
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uh you know destroyer and some a number of merchant ships and at first hitler uh would apologize you
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know he'd he'd say oh it was a mistake but after a while it just he just quit bothering to apologize
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and we were just slowly getting further into the the war before we were actually in it and for some
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people that were people that lived on the east coast it was a surprise that we got into the war
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uh because it was something that happened in the pacific rather than what was going on in the
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atlantic because it was clear that we were moving ever close to it and that you know the merchant
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mariners were on the front lines of the european war for months before we had like troops in the fields
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against the germans they were the front lines for uh you know a lot of uh 1942 and and again they
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weren't actually members of the military they were civilians right and they were yes facing the brunt
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of this uh like unofficial war the u.s had had entered uh against germany by being an ally of great britain
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yes and they were the they were the really the the tip of the spear although they really didn't have
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much of the spear most of the or really any the uh most of these merchant ships were a lot of them at
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the beginning of the world they were old you know they'd been built during world war one
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and they were uh they were slow they were ploddingly slow they were a lot of them were overloaded with
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stuff that they were never designed to carry and they were they were pretty much unprotected um they
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were sent out on the on the hope that they would get where they were going without
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encountering a u-boat because if they did they were they were sitting ducks and uh
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so this went on for for quite some time that some of the the ships were armed that they
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the navy would install gun tubs on these merchant ships and there were navy gun crews on there to
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man them but through no fault of these gun crews putting a gun tub on a merchant ship was not a
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good way to protect it from u-boats and a lot of these navy gunners died right alongside the
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merchant mariners when the when ships were torpedoed there's no record of a a navy gun crew ever
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sinking a u-boat so at what point did the the germans um start sending u-boats near into u.s
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water this was the thing that was really surprising to me because we often think oh you know the war
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really didn't come to america it was fought into the pacific and and europe but the german u-boats
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they got really really close to america during world war ii and so at what point did um the germans
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start swarming u-boats near uh american coast the first ones came here um in in early january uh like
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the second week in january five of them came here and uh they have done it the german the head of the
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german u-boat man wanted to send a lot more but um he was hitler and some of his superiors in the
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in the german navy um didn't want to send that money they had they many they had uh they the germans
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didn't have nearly as many u-boats as they wanted and hitler thought they should be deployed here and
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there and it sort of frustrated uh dunitz because he knew that he was a a master of his great gift was
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was to constantly be shifting the u-boats around into the uh what was whatever the weakest point in the
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allied supply line was he kept close track of this he monitored it and right after america got into
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the war the weakest point by far was the coast of the united states he wanted to put a lot more here
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but anyway they they came here in early january and just were ran roughshod i mean they were sinking
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a ship a day and then uh but they can only stay for so long they can only stay for a couple weeks and
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they'd run out of fuel run out of torpedoes so he would send another wave of them so he
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kept really just sending waves of u-boats you know they'd stay here a couple weeks and sink a bunch
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of ships and then they'd go back and a new a new group would come and they ranged from
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five to maybe a little over a dozen you know over the course of the first year of the war when they
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were really uh effective before we before we started protecting the uh the mariners with
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convoys and started defending our coastline and i mean what was surprising is like how close they got
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i mean you describe how there would be uh members of the u-boat you know they'd come to the surface
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and they'd get out and they could see like the skyline of new york city or see the ferris wheel
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at coney island um i mean they were that close yeah they yeah they were i mean they would be within
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there's a sunken u-boat less than 20 miles off the coast of uh close to the 15 miles off the coast of
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um nags head north carolina on the outer banks of north carolina which is a big tourist
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community and the the u-boats uh they they sank they torpedoed ships uh right within sight of the
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beach at uh you know at jupiter inlet florida they torpedoed ships right near the mouth of the
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mississippi river and then uh in the summer of 42 they even got close enough to um to land
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teams of would-be uh saboteurs on the united states so they got close enough to send these guys
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in a raft to the to the beach and to go ashore with the idea that they were going to find a factory to
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you know destroy or something so they they were they were right here and there was a lot at the time
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there was a lot of uh once it became clear that these u-boats were close there was a lot of
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worry in some of these coastal communities and rumors that you know strange lights on the beach at
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night or you know there were stories all of them bogus about you know strange men's bodies being found
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with you know german you know stuff in their pocket that identified them as u-boats but they're at um
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you know most of those stories were just they're just not true but it was it was sort of a paranoia
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right along in some of these uh isolated beach communities and but you said that the germans run
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ran roughshod over american ships the merchant marine ships um and it happened for a long time and why
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did it take so long for the u.s to really do anything about the uh the u-boats that were sinking ships
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off american coast well part of it was uh it was unavoidable the uh the united states was not
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uh despite this build-up we weren't really prepared for the war when it uh you know when it came upon
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us and we didn't have a lot of ships and planes to to use to patrol our coasts we have you know we
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were fighting the japanese in the pacific and we were helping these big convoys that would leave you
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on a very regular basis from maritime canada to britain those were still going on and they they
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needed protection but we did have some ships and planes but the uh uh admiral king admiral ernest king
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who had really operational control of the navy uh didn't didn't was hesitant to deploy what we did have
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to uh to protect the ships along the coast and he you know he he was just very reluctant to do this
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and one of the reasons i mean he did think about it but he felt that he had an idea that once we built
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enough new warships and planes that we could you know have these really powerful effective convoys a
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convoy being uh you know a ring basically a ring of warships or and and the air cover of planes
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protecting these helpless merchant ships and once once we had enough of those to that we could
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run convoys then we'd be that we'd run a really good convoy system eventually we we did but before
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that he was reluctant to run a weak convoy system he didn't want to send a convoy out just a a few
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ships that weren't well armed because his thinking was if we did that we're just making the u-boats job
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easier we're just assembling all the targets for them in one place and then we can't protect
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them but that really wasn't true and uh the british had already learned this the british had learned
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that any protection at all was better than nothing and in particular in the united states the only
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reason the germans were sending u-boats 3 000 miles across the ocean u-boats were precious you know they
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needed all they could get the only reason they were willing to send them this far the only reason it
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made sense is that the kills over here were so easy you know they could if they were in an unprotected
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stretch of ocean u-boats could just they were ship sinking machines they could ship one ship after
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another but uh so any anything we had done in those early months to to make it even a little bit more
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difficult for them to see merchant ships would have compelled the germans to you know to recalculate
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the costs and benefits of sending these u-boats all the way over here so uh this went on for quite
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a long time and finally admiral king got the you know and he was criticized during this time the
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british were complaining you know why are you why are we letting all you know why are you letting all
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these ships be torpedoed a lot of the ships were ultimately on their way to britain and the uh you
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know different people in the in the military the u.s military were they were noticing this and they
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said you know this can't go on can't you do something he kept saying you know we're doing
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all we can we'll get to it and finally in about uh you know maybe august of 1942 the convoy system
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started to take shape and the torpedoes of merchant ships just dropped immediately i mean the numbers just
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plummeted and it took a little while for the convoy there were still a few bugs in it or a lot of bugs
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in the system and and areas that weren't covered but after after uh you know august of 1942 things got
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better and better and by the spring of 1943 the allies had they had figured out they had the they
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had what they needed to really defeat the u-boats and that was that was really when the tide turned in
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the in the u-boat war i guess they developed new technology uh microwave
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microwave sonar was it microwave uh microwave radar that could be carried in planes uh uh prior to
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that a u-boat could you know on the surface could just uh it was you couldn't you know at night a
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u-boat commander could surface and they'd recharge the u-boat's batteries and or you know in cloudy
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weather they didn't have to worry about being spotted by a plane but once the uh planes had radar they
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could just you know appear without warning out of the clouds in the middle of the night and uh and
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strike a u-boat on the surface the u-boats did not have were not able to detect the planes quickly
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enough to avoid them so they that was when the u-boats started to become sitting ducks we also had
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different ships we had uh destroyer escorts we started the american shipyards were just cranking
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these things out and they were uh they were ideal for hunting u-boats and we had uh we had little
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escort carriers little miniature aircraft carriers that could uh they had enough planes that they
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could be like uh floating airfields and just sail in the middle of convoys and provide air cover
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as the convoy moved you know through the ocean and that was a great advantage because the u-boats it
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made it very difficult for the u-boats to do anything they had to anytime a plane came by they
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had to dive because they you know they it took them a while to crash dive plane was faster so
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uh and then they had hundred killer groups they had groups that were specifically designed their
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only job was to sink u-boats and those those groups it was a an escort carrier a group of destroyers
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and when they found a u-boat they could simply sit over it and drop depth charges and until they
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sank it so there was no escape the u-boat commanders had a hard time avoiding those guys because they
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didn't their killer groups didn't have anything that that was their only job was to sink u-boats and
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they sank a lot of them so you mentioned that you know the u-boats would torpedo these merchant marine
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ships um and of course there were casualties but they're typically survivors um and people were able
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to get off the boat before it sank what happened to the mariners after they were these surviving
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mariners after they were torpedoed well they would uh they would go home or make it home and uh
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uh they would go right back out on many of them go right back out on other ships they had 30 days
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basically at the end of the voyage to sign on with another merchant ship and if they didn't do that
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they became eligible for the draft and uh you know some of these guys they they simply didn't want to be
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in the infantry they didn't want to be in the armor and foxholes but for other men they you know they
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were they were patriotic they wanted to serve their country and they were mariners that's what they did
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that you know that was their life and they were um so if they could serve their and the and the nation
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needed these guys it needed them badly so they would uh they would sign on again even though they knew
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and i don't think when they got more started i don't think they realized how dangerous it would be
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but certainly by a few months in everybody that signed on to a ship knew that it was uh it was a very
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dangerous business a lot of these guys you know just went out there again and again there was one guy
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that got uh torpedoed 10 times over the course of the two world wars because uh it's even less known
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that the germans sent u-boats to american shores in world war one as well wow and so yeah i mean
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they were able to get back because i guess they would um to get on survival rafts lifeboats and
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what i thought was interesting is that the u-boats would often you know they'd come to the surface and
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they would talk to the merchant marine very like oh you know it's war you know we didn't no hard
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feelings against you but this is war you understand and they'd hand off you need any cigarettes you need
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any whiskey need any food um i mean i thought that was just it was interesting that they'd had these
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conversations with the the germans uh after they got their ship sunk it was it me i think that was
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really one of the most surprising things that i discovered doing research on the book and there
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were numerous encounters like this and it really depended on the depended on the character of the
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u-boat commander some of the u-boat commanders were utterly english they'd sink a ship
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and leave the guys out there to the you know to the mercy of the sea which often was there's no
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mercy at all but other ones and if you look at the the reports in the national archives you can track
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and you can see which commanders were not that way which commanders were their conscience bothered
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them they didn't want to leave these guys out there some of the the u-boat commanders had been
00:26:06.040
merchant mariners before the war and they were dedicating just thinking these guys ship that's
00:26:11.500
ships that's what they were doing but once you had men that were you know their ship was sunk they
00:26:17.080
were helpless they were on a raft and a lifeboat um some of these commanders they just couldn't bring
00:26:22.260
themselves to uh to leave them there to die without offering them somehow and that was the
00:26:28.920
directly against the orders of hitler and the e-boat command hitler uh wanted to thought they should
00:26:35.740
basically machine gun these guys in the lifeboats do but kill them somehow because to him uh it was
00:26:42.080
not just a matter of sinking ships but getting rid of these mariners and figured well if we kill
00:26:46.900
enough of them then they'll stop sailing and dunitz the head of the u-boat commander the man was a
00:26:54.220
little less cold-blooded but he you know he told these guys over and over again do not help
00:27:00.400
castaways do not help these guys in the lifeboat you don't have to you know go out of your way to
00:27:06.400
kill them but don't help them don't give them don't give them water to let nature take its course
00:27:12.840
but but a number of these guys did you know they just they were they were hundreds of miles thousands
00:27:17.860
of miles from berlin and they were in command of their own u-boats and they were you know they
00:27:22.920
they would do what they thought was right i thought the most interesting exchange was between a um
00:27:28.840
a u-boat officer and uh he was actually in america like he lived in america before the war
00:27:35.300
uh lived in new york city and he was a brooklyn dodgers fan and he asked the merchant marine like
00:27:41.280
how are the dodgers doing right right it's just it's just an extraordinary uh uh story and i i also
00:27:48.920
like the one there's a read this too where there's one of the guys uh one of the e-boat commanders
00:27:53.880
hands over a big 10 gallon jug of drinking water and along with some cigarettes and some
00:28:00.080
french cookies and everything and before he gives them the jug of drinking water he squeezes
00:28:04.940
fresh limes into the water to introduce vitamin c into the water to fortify these castaways in the
00:28:13.340
lifeboat against scurvy a vitamin deficiency disease in the event their lifeboat ends up having to be
00:28:20.180
at sea for a long time so some of the some of the stories are just but you know again there are other
00:28:26.540
guys who were just utterly ruthless and there was one guy who would sink ships uh and he would approach
00:28:33.400
the and the lifeboats and subject them to political tirades against uh president roosevelt for you know
00:28:40.600
from getting the u.s involved in war he'd say but ask me for drinking water ask roosevelt he's the
00:28:45.600
one that put you in this situation and he wasn't he wasn't entirely wrong so let's talk about the
00:28:52.460
title of your book matt the matthews men um the reason why you call it the matthews men is there was
00:28:58.460
a county in virginia called matthews county that produced a ton of merchant mariners and a lot of them
00:29:06.100
were involved in this war uh this u-boat war why did this particular county in virginia produce so
00:29:12.580
many mariners and that that went on to go fight or you know take part in world war ii well matthews
00:29:20.000
uh matthews county um had been producing mariners you know been like a cradle of sea captains and
00:29:25.840
merchant mariners since before the american revolution matthews is a is a beautiful place it's a but it's a
00:29:32.460
tiny isolated community on the on the shore of the cleaning sort of the shore of the chesapeake bay
00:29:40.020
and um for there's very little in matthews it's not on the way to anywhere there's no big employers
00:29:47.400
there and job opportunities have always been very scarce there you were either a fisherman
00:29:52.700
a waterman as we call them in that area or you were a farmer or you went to sea
00:29:58.140
and um going to sea you know all of these all of these men grew up around the water they all knew
00:30:04.540
how to handle boats you know since they were little kids so they were natural mariners and they
00:30:11.020
naturally gravitated toward the merchant marine because it was a uh a business where you didn't
00:30:17.420
need a lot of formal education and you could but if you worked hard and you knew your stuff you could rise
00:30:23.900
to the top of your perfection and that was a tradition in matthews and some families you know
00:30:28.500
that was it you were your birthright was to become a sea captain your father had been one your grandfather
00:30:34.280
maybe your great-grandfather so it was always part of the matthews uh uh just part of what the
00:30:41.420
community did and when world war ii came there were a lot of these guys that had you know had been in
00:30:47.340
the merchant marine for a long time and the war created such a demand for mariners that even the
00:30:53.420
guys who were fishermen or were farmers they were suddenly there were all these opportunities
00:30:58.040
of merchant marine needed men and anybody who knew about from a stern just about could get a job and
00:31:04.320
there were some companies even that that would go out of their way to hire matthews men because they
00:31:08.780
have a reputation as as great seamen so matthews was uh you know one matthews guys put it he said you
00:31:15.800
know we've been doing this for a long time and when the war came we just kept doing it and you know
00:31:21.580
the torpedoes just got my way for a while so you mentioned that you know in some families in
00:31:27.180
matthews it was like a birthright that's what you did and so you you talk about you follow several
00:31:30.900
families throughout the book but there's one family the hodges family that produced a like a lot of
00:31:36.740
merchant marine how many men uh served in the u.s merchant marine from the hodges family during world
00:31:42.120
war ii um well there were uh six of the the seven brothers were in the merchant were on ships during
00:31:55.180
the seven there was a the father captain jesse he was the patriarch of the family he he was a
00:32:01.320
captain of an ocean-going tub and all seven of his sons uh went to sea one of them got hurt
00:32:08.260
had to go ashore but several of their uh several of the brothers several of the seven brothers
00:32:14.140
sons um and also went to sea so i guess that maybe count but maybe a dozen hodges and and you
00:32:23.320
know the hodges daughters would marry mariners so maybe 15 members of the hodges family were at
00:32:30.460
at least were on merchant ships during world war ii and uh did any of them die um
00:32:37.940
at the hands of a u-boat yes uh two of them uh two of them were torpedoed within the space of
00:32:44.180
11 days wow and a couple of the others had very close uh very close calls you know and they were
00:32:50.760
out there the whole time and they were on special missions and they went to uh yeah one of them went
00:32:56.480
to mermansk which was the worst you know the most notorious run of the trip to northern russia
00:33:01.580
and uh others were you know they were in the med they were uh one of them went to the uh
00:33:07.820
it was a very dangerous mission to supply to send supplies to the uh the island of malta
00:33:14.420
and so they were the hodges were all over the place during during the war um many of them in the
00:33:22.320
caribbean and are there uh any descendants of the hodges family that are still mariners or did that sort
00:33:29.040
of dry up that family tradition uh there there are descendants now who are in the it's interesting
00:33:36.440
because the merchant marine um as far as cargo ships is greatly reduced but there is still a
00:33:42.480
a number of merchant mariners who are uh in tugboats and um there are several members of the hodges
00:33:51.480
family who are tugboat captains or tugboat officers and they're well known in the in the tugboat
00:33:58.100
community now so they've sort of moved on from cargo ships to uh to tugs and i guess if situations
00:34:05.880
change they'll uh so yeah the condition the uh the tradition is still alive and i interviewed some of
00:34:12.400
the a couple of the tugboat guys so uh how many um merchant mariners died during world war ii i think
00:34:21.480
you mentioned it was one of the had one of the highest casualty rates correct yes there were uh roughly
00:34:26.920
9 300 of them and that was a casualty rate that the only uh branch of the military that was even
00:34:35.120
comparable was the uh was the u.s marines and most of those deaths occurred in in 1942 before the
00:34:43.620
before the convoys uh were instituted here on the coast so they were very much concentrated but it was
00:34:50.580
it was still dangerous uh to to sail a cargo ship even after the convoys were uh were in place because
00:34:56.960
u-boats didn't quit attacking and once they got into the you know into the med the german bombers would
00:35:03.800
attack them or the med these men were killed by bombers and what happened to the the merchant mariners
00:35:10.360
after the war uh i mean because this was this it's there's sort of an interesting position they were
00:35:14.400
they weren't officially sailors or soldiers in the navy or whatever um but yet they were still
00:35:22.160
taking part in the war in a very uh and on the front lines did they enjoy any of the veterans benefits or
00:35:29.540
that happened after world war ii or were they sort of left to their their own devices they were they
00:35:35.260
were kind of left uh left out they uh you know the mariners did not they didn't enjoy it they weren't
00:35:41.480
welcomed home as uh as heroes they weren't really welcomed home at all they didn't come home they
00:35:47.080
when the war ended they uh you know they they were still on their ships they were bringing
00:35:52.080
troops home and they were after that they were hauling materials over to europe to uh and people over
00:35:58.280
europe to rebuild the cities that had been shattered by the war and ultimately they even brought home the
00:36:04.660
american dead the uh whose families wanted them reinterred in the u.s soil so they were
00:36:11.360
they were basically still out there they weren't there for the ticker tape parades down the main
00:36:16.200
boulevards of the united states and they were uh they didn't have a lot of uh powerful friends in
00:36:24.660
congress uh franklin roosevelt had been a big proponent of theirs but he died before the war ended
00:36:30.420
and he had uh asked congress you know to you know to provide for these guys do something for them
00:36:37.420
but congress did not and they were left out of the uh left out of the gi bill left out of really all
00:36:44.020
the most of the benefits for that veterans had and they got some you know decades later but by then a
00:36:51.580
lot of them were you know had died or were pretty far along in age and uh there's uh there's efforts
00:36:58.880
have been efforts from time to time and there's some now in congress to uh you know to recognize what
00:37:05.800
they did neither give them some honorary uh you know recognition or give them some money
00:37:10.820
but those that legislation never really seems to go anywhere which i think is a shame yeah it is
00:37:18.080
yeah i think you mentioned that they finally were able to go to the veterans uh hospitals but this was
00:37:23.800
like by the time they were like these guys were in their 80s or 90s yeah i mean they that was a little
00:37:29.840
earlier they they got to do that but but uh and that was that was helped to some of them but it was
00:37:35.440
you know it was a big difference to that versus when you're a young man to come home and have
00:37:39.980
opportunities and and so it was uh it was pretty you know it's pretty late in the game and uh and now
00:37:47.940
now they are now most of these guys are in their uh their you know their late 80s and early 90s and uh
00:37:55.840
you know it's if somebody did give them some money you know it's not like they're gonna buy
00:38:02.020
sports cars or get scammed on the internet you know they might fix the roof or or you know start
00:38:08.320
a college fund for their grandchildren or something but most of these guys at least the matthews men
00:38:15.260
gave up long ago expecting the government to come back and say hey you know we're assuming we should
00:38:21.000
have done better by you we're sorry here's here's something you know they they they don't even
00:38:25.600
i don't even know if they even think that a lot of the guys some of the guys i've talked to said
00:38:30.600
that they they would one thing they would like is for for just people in general to know
00:38:35.480
what they did one of the guys told me uh he said maybe after your book comes out maybe my grandkids
00:38:43.160
believe that i did you know my stories will believe that i did something useful during the war
00:38:48.620
but that you know that the time for even that is is growing very short uh when i started
00:38:54.240
working on this book in earnest in in 2011 there were maybe 12 or 15 uh old matthews men who sailed
00:39:03.180
against the yugos living in and around matthews and today there's maybe five five or six and uh one
00:39:11.560
of my favorite matthews men bill callis who's in the book and he he was just a real character
00:39:16.220
and his uh the last time i interviewed him he told me um he said you want me to read this book you're
00:39:21.640
right you better hurry up and get it written and i uh a couple weeks later i went to his funeral
00:39:26.500
yeah yeah it's really it's one of the sad things is that we're losing these world war ii veterans
00:39:32.540
um and individuals who took part in the war like every day i mean it's just it's they're shrinking
00:39:38.180
we are really pretty much approaching the time where any uh stories about world war ii will have to be
00:39:45.800
pulled through uh through documents rather than um talking to people yeah and that's why i think
00:39:52.020
it's so important like what you're doing and what other world war ii historians are doing is getting
00:39:56.180
these stories and talking to these men directly so we can get them before before they're gone
00:40:00.700
so i commend you for that um what's the status of the merchant marine today does it still exist
00:40:08.540
it does it's uh uh and it's it's sort of a complicated issue the merchant marine the u.s merchant
00:40:15.800
marine is uh and i i know this because i worked at uh mares one of the u.s subsidiary of mares which
00:40:23.300
is one of the biggest shipping companies in the world but the um today the u.s merchant marine
00:40:29.760
it it's much more expensive to operate a ship flying the u.s flag and employing american mariners
00:40:37.340
than it is a it means ships from many foreign countries that the pay is higher the you know some of
00:40:44.120
these uh mariners from third world countries will work for just a fraction of what it what it you
00:40:50.500
know what americans will and the the foreign flag ships they don't have the regulatory and the legal
00:40:56.240
requirements that american ships do so the in international trade today the the um you know like
00:41:03.300
the big traders the um in order to compete for business because that's you know it's a business
00:41:10.780
it's the shipping business in order to compete they have to be subsidized by the government they
00:41:16.220
have to get um you know they have to be subsidized to keep these ships operating or they have to be
00:41:22.160
guaranteed cargo uh by the government and there's always a lot of debate in congress about whether this
00:41:29.920
is a good idea how much do we know we really need to do this but the the the best argument is that
00:41:37.280
during war the military relies on these guys you know they if it's an american ship these american
00:41:43.760
ships they will uh and the country needs they'll drop whatever they're doing drop off whatever
00:41:49.400
commercial cargo they've got at the nearest port and report wherever they're told and start hauling
00:41:55.960
war supplies if you know if we need to take whatever we need to take it they've been doing
00:42:00.600
this you know really in all the conflicts we've had even the most recent ones so the the nation has
00:42:06.980
an interest in maintaining a merchant marine that it can count on to uh to do this and uh there's a
00:42:13.780
debate going on right now in congress as to how much of this we should do so yeah it's an in a national
00:42:20.180
security interest we should keep this going probably yeah and if we didn't have one then we wouldn't be
00:42:25.880
right now the question is do we have do we even now do we have enough american u.s flag ships and
00:42:33.140
american uh merchant mariners to um to do what we need to do to to haul war cargo or military cargo for
00:42:42.900
longer than a few months if we get into a conflict somewhere where we have to put large numbers of
00:42:49.400
troops overseas yeah i think you mentioned there are there's what there's like 11 000 registered
00:42:56.860
mariners in the country but there's only 5 000 jobs available or something like that it's it's a
00:43:02.900
competitive job job field it is it is and uh and they're good jobs but they're you know they're getting
00:43:09.580
more and more scarce and um it's uh again the government uh most of the cargo ships engaged in
00:43:17.500
international trade now that are u.s flag or they're because they're subsidized by the u.s
00:43:23.000
government for the reason that uh you know as you say for national security well willing this has been
00:43:30.080
a fascinating conversation we really just scratched the surface of the book and we there's so much more
00:43:35.760
our listeners could um if they want to dive deeper into this topic uh where can people learn more
00:43:41.060
about your book um on my website which is uh williamgerow.com that's w-i-l-l-i-a-m-g-e-r-o-u-x
00:43:51.920
dot com is a good place to start excellent well williamgerow thank you so thank you so much for
00:43:57.460
your time it's been a pleasure i've enjoyed it thanks a lot my guest today is williamgerow he's
00:44:02.400
the author of the book the matthews men seven brothers in the war against hitler's u-boats and
00:44:06.400
you can find that on amazon.com and bookstores everywhere and be sure to check out the show
00:44:10.260
notes at aom.is slash matthews and that's matthews with one t
00:44:14.560
well that wraps up another edition of the art of manliness podcast for more manly tips and advice
00:44:29.860
make sure to check out the art of manliness website at artofmanliness.com and if you enjoy
00:44:33.740
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00:44:37.880
your continued support and until next time this is brett mckay telling you to stay manly