Admiral Halsey's Story [Illustrated Edition]

Fleet Admiral William F. Halsey, Lieutenant Commander J. Bryan III USNR

• Publisher: Verdun Press
• Year: 2014
• eBook ISBN: 9781782892953
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: European History
• Index: History

Contains more than 30 illustrations of the Author, his ships and the engagements.
The term Legend is bandied about far too much these days to describe anyone who has achieved even limited prominence in their chosen field; however Legend is quite the accurate one for Fleet Admiral William "Bull" Halsey. Although a modest man who once said that "There are no great men, just great challenges which ordinary men, out of necessity, are forced by circumstances to meet."; it is clear that the challenges that he met were extraordinary in the Pacific theatre during the Second World War.
Bold, brash and determined Halsey led the first offensive against the Japanese Navy in command of the carrier group that launched the Doolittle raid; his aggressive thrusting style led to him spearheading nearly every major US Navy attack on the Japanese. In this age of soundbites Halsey is still continually quoted for the pithy wit that he often coined such as his slogan for the Navy -"Hit hard, hit fast, hit often".
Halsey left his imprint across the entire Pacific War and his autobiography is sure to interest any Naval or History buff.

CHAPTER I

My life reached its climax on August 29, 1945. I can fix even the minute, 9:25 a.m., because my log for the forenoon watch that day contains this entry: “Steaming into Tokyo Bay, COMTHIRDFLEET in Missouri. Anchored at 0925 in berth F71.” For forty-five years my career in the United States Navy had been building toward that moment. Now those years were fulfilled and justified.

Still, I don’t want to be remembered as “Bull” Halsey, who was going to ride the White Horse. “Bull” is a tag the newspapers tied to me. I was named for my father, so I started out as “Young Bill”; then I became plain “Bill”; and more recently I suppose it is inevitable for my juniors to think of me, a fleet admiral and five times a grandfather, as “Old Bill.” Now that I am sitting down to my autobiography, it is Bill Halsey whom I want to get on paper, not the fake, flamboyant “Bull.”

Correction: This will not be an autobiography, but a report. Reports are the only things I know how to write, since half my time in the Navy has gone to preparing them. Although I intend for this once to throw in as many stories as I like, rattle some skeletons, and offer some apologies and second guesses—amusements which official reports discourage—I don’t intend to discard the official form completely. This report will be as clear and true as I can make it; it will contain all the pertinent facts I can remember, whether they’re to my credit or not; it will avoid fields like philosophy and politics, where I am easily lost; and it will be consecutive, beginning with my ancestors and ending with my retirement from active duty.

When I filter the old Halseys whose records or traditions survive, I find that most of them were seafarers and adventurers, big, violent men, impatient of the law, and prone to strong drink and strong language. The most famous sailorman among us was Capt. John Halsey, whom the Governor of Massachusetts commissioned as a privateer in 1704. Captain John’s interpretation of his commission is implicit in the title of a book which describes his exploits, “A History of the Robberies and Murders of the Most Notorious Pirates.” I enjoy reading how his little brigantine once took on four ships together and captured two of them, with $250,000 in booty; but the most moving passage tells how he died of a fever on Madagascar in 1716 and how he was buried there. Part of it is worth quoting:

The prayers of the Church of England were read over him, colours were flying, and his sword and pistol laid on his coffin, which was covered with a ship’s jack; as many minute guns fired as he was years old, viz: 46, and three English volley and one French volley of small arms. He was brave in his person, courteous to all his prisoners, lived beloved and died regretted by his own people. His grave was made in a garden of water melons, and fenced in with pallisades to prevent his being rooted up by wild hogs, of which there are plenty in those parts.

The seafaring strain in the Halseys now ran underground for a century, then emerged for good. In 1815, Capt. Eliphalet Halsey, sailing out of Sag Harbor, took the first Long Island whaler around the Horn. In the next forty or fifty years, a dozen other Halsey whaling masters sailed in his course. Following them, my father went into the Navy; I followed him, and my son followed me.

My father entered the Naval Academy in 1869, with the class of 1873. He pitched on the baseball team—underhand, in those days—and had the reputation of being nimble with his fists. One of his classmates told me that just before they graduated, he and my father “Frenched out” (went into town without permission) and were spotted by a master-at-arms as they were returning. Both were up to the limit in demerits and knew they would be dismissed if they were reported. So my father took a big chance; he rushed the “jimmylegs” and knocked him out before he could recognize them.

Father and Mother were married in 1880. She was Anne Masters Brewster, one of fourteen children of James Drew Brewster, of New York City, and Deborah Grant Smith, of Philadelphia. I was born in my grandfather Brewster’s house in Elizabeth, New Jersey, at 134 West Jersey Street, on October 30, 1882, and there I spent my early childhood. (The house is now a tearoom, “Polly’s Elizabeth Inn.”)

Dad had been ordered to sea shortly after his marriage, and when he finally returned ashore, to duty at the Hydrographic Office in New York, I was two and a half years old. His first sight of me must have given him a shock. To my joy, and to Mother’s anguish, he hustled me down to a barber and had my long yellow curls chopped off. He was shrewd enough to preserve them, though, and whenever I misbehaved, he could always bring me to heel with a threat to paste them on again.

My young sister Deborah and I had the usual childhoods of “Navy juniors.” We lived in six cities before I reached my teens. In the fall of 1895 I went to Swarthmore Grammar School, near Philadelphia. At the end of my second year there—the first time I had spent two consecutive years at the same school—Dad returned to the Naval Academy, as an instructor in physics and chemistry. I had always intended going into the Navy and I was now approaching fifteen, the lowest age for a naval cadet, so we began looking about for an appointment. We wrote to every politician we knew and to many we didn’t know. I had already written even to President McKinley.

EDITOR’S NOTE:

Admiral Halsey’s letter was recently discovered in the National Archives at Washington:

SWARTHMORE GRAMMAR SCHOOL

SWARTHMORE, PA.

Jan. 26, ’97

Major William McKinley.

Dear Sir:—

I do not suppose you remember the note some of the boys of school sent you. If you do I wish to say that my note is not of the same character. It may not be as nice to you as theirs was; although I hope sincerely it will be. I want to ask you, if you have not already promised all your appointments to the Naval Academy that you will give me one. My father is a Naval officer, and is at present navigator on the U.S.S. Montgomery. As you know as a general rule Naval officers have not much influence, and the presidents arc generally willing to give their appointments to a naval officer’s son if he has not promised all of his appointments. I know people do not like to give important positions such as this is away without knowing the person they are giving them to. But then you know that a naval officer would not keep his position long if he were not the right kind of a man. I know plenty of respectable people who would testify to my good character. My father was appointed by Secretary Robinson [Robeson] of the Navy, who had been law partner of my grandfather. I have been with my father on shore and on ship board a great deal, and have always wanted to enter the Navy. My parents encouraged me in this desire and gave me their consent to enter if I could get the appointment. I do not know any congressman, and the appointment from the district where I live which is Elizabeth, N.J. is at present filled. I have lived three years at the Naval Academy where my father was instructor in English. I am at present a border of this school and am in the class that graduates in 1898. I was fourteen last October, the thirtieth. My father is now senior lieutenant about 95 on the list for promotion. It is almost needless to congratulate you on your grand victory which every good American sees is for the best. It has been told you so many times by men it is hardly worth while for us boys to say it.

Yours respectively,

W. F. Halsey, Jr.

I received no answer, but we were so confident of an eventual appointment that Dad entered me at Professor Wilmer’s prep school for the Academy. A year passed, and still the appointment didn’t come through. When the second year failed us, I decided that if I couldn’t get into the Navy as a cadet, I could as a doctor, and Dad agreed to let me study medicine at the University of Virginia.

I picked Virginia because my closest friend, Karl Osterhaus, was going there. I didn’t learn much, but I joined Delta Psi—I still wear its emblem on my watch chain—and I had a wonderful time. My natural disinclination to study was abetted by my growing passion for football. I wasn’t good enough to make the varsity, but I was occasionally allowed to play on the scrubs, at left end. In our last practice before the important Georgetown game, a play came toward me, and when it was untangled, the star quarterback had a broken leg. I was in the same fix as many a military man in many a campaign—they didn’t know whether to give me a Medal of Honor or a court-martial. The student body would have been happy to hang me, but the coach took me to Washington with the team. Most stories like this end with the despised scrub redeeming himself by the winning touchdown. My story is an exception. I didn’t even get into the game.

The following spring, Congress authorized five additional presidential appointments to the Academy, and Mother camped in McKinley’s office until he promised her one for me. I had to cram like the devil to pass the entrance examinations, but I managed it and was sworn in on July 7, 1900.

The class of 1904 has several distinctions: we were the last to enter the Academy with less than 100 men, the last to be designated “naval cadets” instead of “midshipmen,” and the last that never lived in Bancroft Hall, the present dormitory. On the other hand, we were the first whose senior cadet officer was a five-striper. My first year at the Academy—my plebe, or fourth-class year—the cadet body totaled only 238, or enough for a battalion, which was commanded by a four-striper; but by my first-class year we totaled more than 600, enough for a regiment, and the cadet commander sprouted another stripe. I was not he. I never had more than the two stripes that went with my duties as adjutant of the second battalion.

The Annapolis-West Point system of marks is unique, as far as I know: 4.0 is perfect, and 2.5 is barely passing. If you average 3.4 or better, you are entitled to wear a star behind the anchor on your collar. Although I broke into the top half of the class my final year, my average was usually closer to “bilging” than to a star. In fact, at the end of my first month of theoretical mechanics, I had a 2.28, and Dad strongly advised my dropping football. When I told him I had rather bilge, he was furious. Fortunately for me, a good many other men were rated unsatisfactory in the same subject, so we arranged for the bright members of the class to tutor us for the next examination and to dope out the questions for us.

When the exam was over, I went to Dad’s quarters for lunch. He met me at the door and asked if the marks had been posted.

“Yes, sir.”

“What did you make?”

“I got 3.98, sir.”

Dad stared at me for a full minute. “Sir,” he finally asked, “have you been drinking?”

My football was confined to the scrubs, the “Hustlers,” for the first two years, but just before the opening game of the 1902 season, the regular fullback was badly injured and I was put in. I kept the job that season and the next, my last. Here is as good a place as any to state that those two teams were probably the poorest that the Academy ever produced, but poor as they were, they were no poorer than their fullback.

More than forty years later, General of the Army Eisenhower, whom I had never met before, came up to me in Fleet Admiral King’s office in Washington. His first remark was not, “I’m glad to meet you,” or, “How are you?” but, “Admiral, they tell me you claim to be the worst fullback that ever went to the Naval Academy.”

I wasn’t sure what this was leading to, so my answer was a bit truculent. “Yes. That’s true. What about it?”

Eisenhower laughed and stuck out his hand. “I want you to meet the worst halfback that ever went to the Military Academy!”

Army beat us 22 to 8 in 1902 and 40 to 5 in 1903, the stiffest beating in our rivalry. As one of the two men who played the entire game, I was thoroughly beaten myself. Each of those aches and bruises came back to me one day in 1943, when I was Commander of the South Pacific, and Maj. Gen. Charles F. Thompson flew over from Fiji for a conference. I told him, “General, the last time I saw you, you were rubbing my nose all over Franklin Field.”

“Big Charlie” grinned. “How did I know you were going to become COMSOPAC?”

So much for the bitterness supposed to grow from inter-Academy sports!

EDITOR’S NOTE:

Following is an extract from The Philadelphia Public Ledger for November 29, 1903:

“Early in the second half little Halsey electrified the Navy contingent by making the longest run of the game. Catching the ball from a kick off on his 4 yard mark he sprinted straight up the field, dodging and eluding half a dozen West Point tackles until he reached the 43 yard line, where he was brought to earth.”

Next to studies and football, my strongest recollections from my Academy days are of parades and summer cruises. Parades were our bane, but hardly a moment of our three cruises was less than a delight. This opinion was not held, of course, by the poor wretches who had a tendency toward seasickness. I am lucky. I have never been seasick in my life. (Many of my shipmates o...

Table of contents

• Title page
• TABLE OF CONTENTS
• DEDICATION
• FOREWORD
• INTRODUCTION
• CHAPTER I
• CHAPTER II
• CHAPTER III
• CHAPTER IV
• CHAPTER V
• CHAPTER VI
• CHAPTER VII
• CHAPTER VIII
• CHAPTER IX
• CHAPTER X
• CHAPTER XI
• CHAPTER XII
• CHAPTER XIII
• CHAPTER XIV
• CHAPTER XV
• CHAPTER XVI
• REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER