PICTURE OF AKA 53 USS ACHERNAR

Comments: I MADE THE 1952 MED. CRUISE ON THE BALTIMORE AND TOOK MANY PICTURES. I HAVE JUST SUBMITTED ONE COLOR PHOTO OF YOUR SHIP TO YOUR WEBMASTER. IT'S A GREAT PHOTO AND I THINK EVERYONE WILL ENJOY IT WHEN IT GETS ON YOUR SITE. YOU WILL FIND MANY PHOTOS THAT I HAVE TAKEN FROM THE BALTIMORE.

THANK YOU FROM A 79 Y.O. SALT WHO HAS MANY GOOD MEMORIES OF HIS YEARS IN THE U.S. NAVY

MY BEST TO ALL AND MAY YOU HAVE RED SUNSETS AND CALM SEAS.

GEORGE PANOS EX QM2C

Keywords: USS TENNESSEE BB 43 SEPT. 1943-SEPT 1945 SM3/C HONORABLY DISCHARGED FEB. 1946 USS E.B.HALL APD 107 MAY 1951-APRIL 1952 SM3/C USS BALTIMORE CA 68 MAY 1952-HONORABLY DISCHARGED MAY 1954 QM2C

Thanks Joe!

Comments: Thanks to G.I. Joe, we survived hell D-Day holds special significance for the saved By Walter Plywaski June 5, 2005 Boulder Daily Camera I don't know how else to honor or thank all the living and the dead vets and active-duty servicemen, regardless of how I feel about those who created for them and for us the Iraqi Mission Impossible for all the wrong reasons supportive of a manufactured Casus Belli! Let me now praise non-famous men in grimy helmets and uniforms. They, in that unforgettable spring of 1945, brought life's early light into the barbed-wire hells of Germany. These men, landing on Normandy's bloody beaches, poured freedom from the muzzles of their guns for my brother, all our concentration-camp comrades and me. The Americans and other Allies transformed us from those about to die like vermin to men preparing to live again. This is a belated thank-you note to these "GI Joes" who, like us, had also danced with death (though to a different tune). Thanks, Joe! On this anniversary of D-Day in Europe, I humbly acknowledge those who pried open the black gate of SS hell with their bullet-shattered bones and lubricated its hinges with their blood. While there are still a few of you to read this belated thank-you for my life and that of my children who might never have been without you, I salute you with "L'Chaim" ... To Life! In mid-April 1945, my brother and I, aged 15 and 16, escaped from the Dachau Karlsfeld sub-camp (about 10 miles from Munich) during an American shelling. The explosions brought out the true Aryan "heroism" of our SS-guard executioners, who ran from their towers and hid. This was the first time for us outside of barbed wire since May 1940 when we, as Polish Jews, were penned in for swift or slow slaughter. We ran through a hole blasted in the barbed wire and crawled to reach an abandoned German anti-aircraft battery visible from the camp. There we feasted on still-hot corned-beef stew on a stove. Cans of DDT for our lice-ridden bodies, Wehrmacht boots and wool clothing, helmets and some weapons completed our booty. Since, by then, we could be mistaken for German soldiers, we kept our striped jackets and left to find the Allied lines. We were "taken prisoner" by Americans who took us back to their battalion and were identified by a sergeant who spoke Polish. After a shower, he got us the smallest possible American fatigue uniforms rolled up on arms and legs. A fantastic field kitchen breakfast of hot cereal with real milk and sugar completed our transformation into mini-GIs. Who were these men just out of heavy combat, who found it seemingly necessary to share their language, thoughts, anger and their grief? I never knew most of their last names, but knew I was safe and free at last, free at last. My brother and I came to them with our Polish names of Wlodzimierz and Wladyslaw and no English language. We parted from them some three weeks later as Bill and Walter, marching to Bremen so as to go to the United States. We were "drafted" on the way by a bunch of GIs fishing with hand grenades in a pond. A Polish American GI among them convinced us we needed some "R&R" with his outfit. Thus we became the mascots of the 278th Field Artillery Battalion, Battery C, commanded by Capt. John C. Van Arsdale of Minneapolis. The day after we "joined" the 278th, that tall young captain gave a short speech at morning's formation. He said something like "These two boys lost their entire family. You can't give them back what they lost, but you can teach them all you know about and how to do things. Company dismissed!" Capt. Van Arsdale, a chemical engineer, led our education. One of his men taught us algebra, another how to cut hair, another American history, another yet to press a uniform and so on. By the end of May, we were in cut-down American uniforms, stripes and unit shoulder patches inclusive, a strange sight at maybe five feet and 90 pounds. Battery C's men bivouacked on the Danube near the town of Donauworth. That miraculous summer we wandered along the river, swam, ate and grew. The men of Charlie Battery were our buddies, our fathers, our teachers and often our playmates. By the fall of 1945, the 278th was to return "stateside" and we had to part with those magnificent non-famous men. My brother Bill and I now use the gift of life bought so dearly by so many to save so pitiably few out of the murdered millions. Yet the price paid by the GI dead saved other millions of Europe and America from the planned thousand years of slavery and death factories of the Third Reich. Bill and I now live our concentration-camp fantasies of a good life in a humane new land. We hope against all hope that the price for lives such as ours shall "Never Again!" be required to be paid and that there shall "Never Again!" be such children as we were... yet there are and probably and sadly there will be again. Then once again lives will have to be bought by fear, wounds and deaths! Walter Plywaski of Boulder was previously Wladyslaw Plywacki of the Lodz "ghetto," Auschwitz and Dachau death camps

Keywords: Thanks to G.I. Joe, we survived hell D-Day holds special significance for the saved By Walter Plywaski June 5, 2005 Boulder Daily Camera I don't know how else to honor or thank all the living and the dead vets and active-duty servicemen, regardless of how I feel about those who created for them and for us the Iraqi Mission Impossible for all the wrong reasons supportive of a manufactured Casus Belli! Let me now praise non-famous men in grimy helmets and uniforms. They, in that unforgettable spring of 1945, brought life's early light into the barbed-wire hells of Germany. These men, landing on Normandy's bloody beaches, poured freedom from the muzzles of their guns for my brother, all our concentration-camp comrades and me. The Americans and other Allies transformed us from those about to die like vermin to men preparing to live again. This is a belated thank-you note to these "GI Joes" who, like us, had also danced with death (though to a different tune). Thanks, Joe! On this anniversary of D-Day in Europe, I humbly acknowledge those who pried open the black gate of SS hell with their bullet-shattered bones and lubricated its hinges with their blood. While there are still a few of you to read this belated thank-you for my life and that of my children who might never have been without you, I salute you with "L'Chaim" ... To Life! In mid-April 1945, my brother and I, aged 15 and 16, escaped from the Dachau Karlsfeld sub-camp (about 10 miles from Munich) during an American shelling. The explosions brought out the true Aryan "heroism" of our SS-guard executioners, who ran from their towers and hid. This was the first time for us outside of barbed wire since May 1940 when we, as Polish Jews, were penned in for swift or slow slaughter. We ran through a hole blasted in the barbed wire and crawled to reach an abandoned German anti-aircraft battery visible from the camp. There we feasted on still-hot corned-beef stew on a stove. Cans of DDT for our lice-ridden bodies, Wehrmacht boots and wool clothing, helmets and some weapons completed our booty. Since, by then, we could be mistaken for German soldiers, we kept our striped jackets and left to find the Allied lines. We were "taken prisoner" by Americans who took us back to their battalion and were identified by a sergeant who spoke Polish. After a shower, he got us the smallest possible American fatigue uniforms rolled up on arms and legs. A fantastic field kitchen breakfast of hot cereal with real milk and sugar completed our transformation into mini-GIs. Who were these men just out of heavy combat, who found it seemingly necessary to share their language, thoughts, anger and their grief? I never knew most of their last names, but knew I was safe and free at last, free at last. My brother and I came to them with our Polish names of Wlodzimierz and Wladyslaw and no English language. We parted from them some three weeks later as Bill and Walter, marching to Bremen so as to go to the United States. We were "drafted" on the way by a bunch of GIs fishing with hand grenades in a pond. A Polish American GI among them convinced us we needed some "R&R" with his outfit. Thus we became the mascots of the 278th Field Artillery Battalion, Battery C, commanded by Capt. John C. Van Arsdale of Minneapolis. The day after we "joined" the 278th, that tall young captain gave a short speech at morning's formation. He said something like "These two boys lost their entire family. You can't give them back what they lost, but you can teach them all you know about and how to do things. Company dismissed!" Capt. Van Arsdale, a chemical engineer, led our education. One of his men taught us algebra, another how to cut hair, another American history, another yet to press a uniform and so on. By the end of May, we were in cut-down American uniforms, stripes and unit shoulder patches inclusive, a strange sight at maybe five feet and 90 pounds. Battery C's men bivouacked on the Danube near the town of Donauworth. That miraculous summer we wandered along the river, swam, ate and grew. The men of Charlie Battery were our buddies, our fathers, our teachers and often our playmates. By the fall of 1945, the 278th was to return "stateside" and we had to part with those magnificent non-famous men. My brother Bill and I now use the gift of life bought so dearly by so many to save so pitiably few out of the murdered millions. Yet the price paid by the GI dead saved other millions of Europe and America from the planned thousand years of slavery and death factories of the Third Reich. Bill and I now live our concentration-camp fantasies of a good life in a humane new land. We hope against all hope that the price for lives such as ours shall "Never Again!" be required to be paid and that there shall "Never Again!" be such children as we were... yet there are and probably and sadly there will be again. Then once again lives will have to be bought by fear, wounds and deaths! Walter Plywaski of Boulder was previously Wladyslaw Plywacki of the Lodz "ghetto," Auschwitz and Dachau death camps

Looking For Shipmates

Comments: Looking for shipmates Walter H (W.H.) Burnham and Richard Been 1950-1954. Originally from Riverside, CA.

Keywords: Friends

Comments: My wife's father, Ray E. Malpass, was Captain of the USS Achernar in 1953. We would welcome any stories about him and about the Achernar's tour of duty at that time.

Thank you. Bob Gilson

Keywords:

My late mother-in-law

Comments:

Keywords: My beautiful mother-in-law, Mildred Maurice Hill on deck. Can't get any prettier than this! Well, I can't figure out how to attach the photo!!!!

My late mother-in-law

Comments:

Keywords: My beautiful mother-in-law, Mildred Maurice Hill on deck. Can't get any prettier than this!

achernar----'45 to '47

Comments: Transferred onto ship as part of Seabees from Port Hueneme, Ca in 1946 and made ship's company and rose to Y/3c and was discharged in l947 in Bremerton, Washington The ship made a trip to Phillippines via Pearl Harbor to off load the Seabees, then to Shanghai, Tsingtao, and had to cancel the Tiensen port because of the war , thence to Japan-Yokosuka, and near Tokyo; two trips to Pribilofs for seal skin and products; et cetera

Keywords:

just wondering

Comments: I am trying to locate a Wayne Inman who was in the San Francisco Bay Area in the summer of 1950. I believe he was in the navy.

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Looking for LCDR David P. Klain

Comments: David P. Klain, XO in 1952-3 on the Achernar, became a history teacher and guidance counselor at Wilson High School in Los Angeles in the 1960's and 70's. I, for one, benefitted from this great teacher. I know someone else who would also like to make contact. I'm at chrismiasnik@juno.com if you know his whereabouts. His last known residence was in Agoura, CA.

Keywords: USS Achernar LDCR, XO

Shipmate

Comments: This site seems to be mostluy for Korea. How about WWII. Anything coming up with survivors?

Keywords: Searching for old friends if still alive: Bob Helmke, and Pentacost (can't remember first name), Bob Sirowitz, Lt. Lewis

Looking for information

Comments: I am seeking information for my wife and son about Gerard L. Beaudette (Died, 1981). Any information is more than we have now. Thank You All. Rudy, e-mail n2jzk@aol.com

Keywords: Beaudette, Gerard, L. MM2

looking for shipmates!

Comments: I found that there have been reunions and I would like to beincluded in a mailing about any future events.

Keywords: looking for personal friend Ken Wilson (Kenny). Served on the USS Achernar. Was from Marysville KS. We served together from 1953 out of Norfolk VA.to 1955.

2001 USS ACHERNAR reunion

Comments: The 2001 reunion will be in Biloxi, MS from Wednesday, April 25 to Sunday, April 29.

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