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Former shipmates find each other after 55 years

by Canda HarbaughWestern News
| September 24, 2010 12:42 PM

The sailors were permitted to rest in four-hour intervals as they fought along the coast of Korea but the pounding of the ship’s gunners made it nearly impossible to sleep. Two guns mounted at the front of the USS Herbert J. Thomas and one over the destroyer’s berthing compartment caused deafening blasts every two minutes.    

“It was like sleeping in a barrel and somebody hitting it with a sledgehammer every time those guns would go off,” recalled Ed Atchley, 76, of Libby. “You’d lay there and you’d hear all that big empty brass rolling back and forth on the deck where it got threw out. This went on day and night.”

It was a lifetime ago when Atchley, an Idaho native, convinced his parents to sign him over to the U.S. Navy. He was one of many youthful sailors eager to go to sea.

“I was 17 when I went in the Navy – just a young kid,” he said. “We were all young kids then.”

He’s a retired millworker, and these days spends little time thinking of the Navy. Last week, however, all of the memories – good and bad – came flooding back with visitors from his past.

“It’s been 55 years,” Atchley said as he looked up at his old shipmate, Virgil Monson, who he hadn’t seen since being honorably discharged in 1955.

Monson and his wife, Lois, from Kansas and a third shipmate, Dale Edging, and wife Donna “Shirlie,” from Indiana, trekked to Libby last week for a reunion of sorts. They figured it was time for the trio to get back together since a fourth sailor and friend, Larry Holsen, of Wisconsin died two years ago.

Though Atchley and Edging kept in loose contact and saw each other about six years ago, Monson was an absolute stranger to them.

“From the time I got out in 1955 until last year,” Monson said, “I didn’t know nothing about where they were. I didn’t know if they were alive or dead.”

Internet research on the part of Monson’s granddaughter helped him find his old buddies.

Monson’s baby-face of their memories was caught in a Navy photo tucked in Lois Monson’s wallet, which she pulled out for the occasion.

“Don’t you be showing that!” her 79-year-old husband cried.

“By God, that’s Monson,” Atchley responded, grinning.

“The only difference between him now and him back as a kid is he’s aged,” Edging said. “He never changed.”

The three men – Edging at age 18, Monson at age 20 and the young Atchley – hadn’t yet met when they went through basic training in San Diego. In December 1951 they took a transport vessel from San Francisco to Pearl Harbor to eventually board the USS Herbert J. Thomas.

Edging and Atchley recalled enduring seasickness the entire way to Hawaii, and their despair when they glimpsed the smaller ship that would be their home for the next three years.

“I looked at that destroyer and it looked like a little bitty ship. I’ll tell you, my heart fell right down to my stomach,” Atchley said. “I thought, ‘Oh, I’ll never survive this. I’m going to be seasick the rest of my life.’ He (Edging) told me he felt the same way, but neither one of us ever got seasick again.”

Edging and Atchley served in the engine room and Monson in the repair shop. The men had critical jobs on a ship that provided fire support in combat during the Korean War and performed patrol duty in the Philippines and China after the cease-fire in 1953.

Difficult times – and close quarters – helped forge tight bonds.

“We were cooped up together on that ship for three years,” Atchley said. “We either had to be friends or kill each other.”

The work could be grim, but as young men, they learned to lighten the mood.

“We did just what a bunch of young teenage kids do,” Edging said. “Everything in the book and some that wasn’t.”

They recalled eating forbidden dessert that was stolen from the officers’ quarters. Their superiors searched the entire ship for the pies.

“The officers weren’t very happy. They didn’t get their dessert. No sailor was supposed to eat their dessert,” Edging laughed. “I don’t remember who was all in on that, but it wasn’t a solo trip.”

Edging jokes that out of all of the honors the men earned – the China Service ribbon, United Nations ribbon, Korean Service ribbon, Korean Presidential Citation and combat badges – he cherishes the good conduct medal the most.

“I don’t know how you got it, either,” Atchley replied. “If they would have caught you with the pies, you would’ve never got it.”

Atchley and Edging, whose identities were constantly confused by sailors and officers, recall making engine room soup at 2 a.m. with the use of stolen butter, potatoes, a shell casing and a steam pipe.

“We also used to – just for fun – stand up, lay our heads on each other’s shoulders and beat on each other,” Edging said.

The men and their wives spent the week touring the Libby area, seeing the attractions and visiting about old times and the lives they’ve since led. Monson left the Navy and spent 37 years at a steel foundry. Edging cut hair for a decade and then worked in an enameled wire factory for 30 years.

They carried on all week, each proudly displaying a custom-made cap with the name of their ship embroidered on the front. Thinking of their fourth friend who has died, they were reminded of how special the visit was.

“This means a lot to me because, including Larry, we were all so close,” Atchley said. “We’re getting up close to 80 years old… That we can get together and visit in fellowship after all these years is a blessing from God.”