Welcome to Veterans Chronicles. I'm Greg Corumbas. Our guest in this edition is military historian and author Carol Engel Averette. She's the author of numerous military history books, including Coffin Corner Boys, about her bomber crew shot down over Europe during World War II, and Marine Raiders. Today, she's here to discuss her new book, Midnight in Iron Bottom Sound, the harrowing World War II story of heroism in the
shark infested waters of Guadalcanal. It's the story of the heroism of Charles Jackson French, a mess attendant aboard the US S Gregory who saved the lives of more than a dozen men after the ship was sunk by the Japanese in September of nineteen forty two. It is our custom on Veterans Chronicles to feature the veteran telling their own story. But mister French is no longer with us to tell his story, and this is one that needs to be told, and there's no one more qualified to
tell it than Carol Engel Averette. Averette says the story of Charles Jackson French first came to her attention while she was researching the heroism of the Marine raiders in the South Pacific.
And as I studied and read, I kept running across a little sentence here and a little sentence there about these amazing destroyer transports conversions actually, that were even known by the sailors then as the brave little ships, and they carried the marine raiders and of course others in the war, but primarily marine raiders from one island to another. I just became fascinated with them, and of course, as I was doing Marine Raiders, I touched on that just
a little bit. But when that book was complete and published, I thought, you know what, I'm going to go back and do some in depth study of these destroy transports that called APDs. They were convergents lo and behold. I zeroed in on one particular ship, the USS Gregory, and began to do a deep dive because one or two places had mentioned something about some of the crew. Greg one of the most remarkable, important stories that I have ever had the honor and privilege to write about.
Charles Jackson French didn't have much growing up in southern Arkansas. He lost both of his parents while he was still a kid, and the Great Depression was very hard on everyone, but Averette says French had one thing nearby that would prepare him very well for his biggest moment, The Red River.
Charles Jackson French was a young black American born in Foreman, Arkansas. His father was a sharecropper, and he was raised in what's known as the bottom lands of the Red River, the iconic Red River, one of the longest rivers in our country. But as a young boy, he and his friends didn't have, you know, the option of football teams or basketball teams at that time, and so on and so forth. So their play consisted of being out in nature primarily. And the Red River had any incredible reputation
for being a very very dangerous river. Currents and there's a kind of a silt that forms the bottom of the Red River. It's not exactly quicksand, but it acts like it sucks you under and with the currents. In fact, I had the mayor of Foreman, Bill Hart, tell me that there's so many drownings in the Red River, and the bodies are usually never found, they're just simply swept away. And so Charles, I'm certain was as a young boy, admonished many times you know, don't you go into that,
You know, those dangerous waters. But like most children, and oftentimes you do what you're not told to do. And so he ventured into those waters and that was where he learned to swim and how he became such a great swimmer, and that's key to what happens to him later on when he is a crew member of the Gregory.
By the time French was eighteen years old in nineteen thirty seven, Averette says he was more than ready to join the Navy.
This is Depression era. He was born in nineteen nineteen, lived through the Depression, and of course not much available in the terms of work for young black men at that particular time, and so he, likes so many other young men during the late thirties, decided to go into the military and he joined the Navy.
French would actually serve and then leave the Navy, only to rejoin after the attack on Pearl Harbor. It was then that he was assigned to the USS Gregory. The captain of the Gregory was Lieutenant Commander Harry Bauer, who took a very different path into the Navy and was a highly regarded leader.
And he got an appointment to Annapolis, and so went to the Naval Academy scored high, and all of his classes began to teach there, and then of course the war broke out, and almost immediately, within just a few days, he was given his own ship, and his ship was the USS Gregory. He of course was absolutely thrilled to have his own ship and to be in charge of his own crew, and was just had the reputation for being just a really incredible person. He established a culture
on the ship that was everyone included. He loved to get to know his crew and tried to get to know as many of them as possible, as fate would have it. That was the same ship that Charles Jackson French was assigned to as a mess attendant, which at that time in our navy, as you know, it was
segregated and really about the only thing open. In fact, the only thing open for young black sailors was in the galley, either as a mess attendant, if you served the men, or if you had done very very well, later on, after you'd been in for a while, you might be promoted to a steward who would serve the officers. Then, so you had Lieutenant Commander Harry Bauer as the highest ranking person on the ship, and you had mess Attendant Charles Jackson French, who was actually the lowest ranking.
The USS Gregory served as a destroyer in World War One and was put back into service after Pearl Harbor. But as Averette explains, it was modified in ways that were both practical and more than a little concerning.
It had been in mothballs for twenty years. The navy head was called, you could say, flat footed when Pearl Harbor happened, and they needed very quickly to replenish and to substitute ships to come in and begin to help with amphibious landings and so on and so forth. So they looked to thirty two of these destroyers. They were actually called four stackers because they had four smoke stacks at the time in World War One, or flush deckers because they had a flush deck. They took thirty two
of these and converted them into transports. The actual crew of that particular ship was about one hundred and twenty give or take, but you're talking about adding an additional one hundred and twenty marines raiders with all their gear and all their equipment and all their weaponry so they
had to do something. They took out two of the smoke stacks, two of the boilers, which greatly reduced the speed of those destroyer transports, and almost all of their are They left them with some, but they were virtually without a lot of ways to defend themselves. But it was such a necessary use of those destroy transports. They were renamed APDs Auxiliary Personnel destroyers. They were really the heroes,
you know. They were not upfront on the front part of the stage, but they were what had to take place behind. As General Vandergriff said, they were pivotal without which those brave little ships and their brave crews we simply could not have gotten from island to island.
As Averette mentioned, the guns and smokestacks were taken out of the APDs to make room for more Marine raiders. It was still jam packed, and she says the raiders and the crew of the Gregory developed a very close bond on their way to the South Pacific and Guadalcanal. The Marine Raiders landed at Guadalcanal on August seventh, nineteen forty two. The Gregory dropped off eraidors on the island of Tulagi, which is across Sea Lark Channel from Guadalcanal.
The Gregory and a sister ship then tucked themselves away from the main part of the channel near Tulagi. Averyett says that kept them protected from a massive Japanese attack against other vessels in the channel.
This is known as the Battle of Tsavo Island. All of the ships, our ships, Japanese ships, Australian ships were filled these waters became very, very dangerous. In fact, it's really a unique chapter in naval history. I start off with a wonderful quote from an author who did a lot of research and actually was there. He was an embedded journalist for a while. But it's an interesting chapter
in naval history because we took a beating. Really basically what it boiled down to, lost many many ships, many many airplanes. All these engagements mostly were it not mostly surface engagements, almost head to head the way they used to fight in the seventeen hundreds, when they just line up beside one another. And that's basically what happened many times in the channel Sea Lark Channel and at Tsavo Island.
We lost so many ships. In fact, the carriers, these remaining carriers who were located in the secret location withdrew completely from the Solomon Islands, and as a result, it left the Marines on Guadalcanal, the Army on Guadalcanal that had been dropped off, and the marine raiders on Tulagi that had been dropped off, really without any any way to get additional food or supplies or ammunition or whatever.
And so at that point, these small destroyer transports, including the USS Gregory and her sister ship, the Little began doing blockade running at night to resupply and bring additional AMMO as they could as they could get through that Dane's dangerous waters with all the patrolling that the Japanese were doing, and to drop off additional supplies for the men who were basically at that point more or less
stranded on those islands. Very dangerous. They knew every time that they went from Numeya back into Sea Lark Channel that there was a very good chance that they would run into destroyers or even cruisers Japanese that were and submarines, and so just a very very dangerous missions that they did to help supply those that were on the islands fighting.
That's Carol Angel Averett, author of Midnight and Iron Bottom Sound. When we come back, we'll find out how the USS Gregory was lost. I'm Greg Corumbus and this is Veterans Chronicles.
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This Iss Veterans Chronicles. I'm Greg Corumbus. Our guest is Carol Angel Averette, author of Midnight in Iron Bottom Sound Just a Moment Ago told us about the devastating Japanese attack off Guadalcanal in August nineteen forty two. She now explains the toll suffered by the US Navy on that night and throughout the war, and how Sea Lark Channel earned a different name.
According to the records that I've looked at, we lost almost forty ships that night, and the Japanese also lost even more than that number. By the end of the war. The end of the time that we left Guadalcanal, over six hundred planes of ours had been downed and over six hundred Japanese planes had been downed. So that instead of calling it Sea Lark Channel, the sailors and the Marines began calling it Iron Bottom Sound because there is
so much iron in the bottom of that channel. So many ships went down from the battle that you're talking about Savo Island, so many planes went down, material jeeps, tanks, and so forth. It is really considered the number one what it is, the number one maritime grave site in the world. It is also the most sought after dive site in the world. Twenty of those positions have been identified.
They believe that they have found perhaps either the Gregory or the Little, but it has not been identified where. I'm hoping that within the next year or two they can actually identify completely which one of those APDs they that went down the night later that we'll talk about in September that was either the Gregory or the Little that has already been discovered. But it's so deep and the currents are so difficult that it really takes it really takes more than just amateur divers to try to
get down to it. So I'm hoping eventually it will be identified. But as I say, it is the largest maritime grave site in the world. A lot of people don't realize that, and we lost more men in the water than we did on land on Guadacanal.
After a month of harrowing blockade running to and from the Solomon Islands, the USS Gregory dropped off marine raiders on Guadalcanal on September fourth, nineteen forty two, but stuck around instead of leaving the area. Averette explains why they stayed and what happened the fateful night that Gregory.
Was lost earlier. They thought that a submarine had been spotted and the Gregory and the Little because they had become so close to these raiders after they transported them from Tulagi over to Guatecanal, they decided to instead of going back to the safe harbor and relatively safe harbor at Tulagi, they decided to stay through the night and patrol the shoreline to protect the raiders that were camping
there along the edge of the shore of Guadalcanal. During that time, there was a spotter who thought he spot the submarine, and so they sent up a pby. One of our planes set up a peby to go out and try to scout to see if he could spot that submarine during the night, and he shot off five flares to see if he could highlight the submarine, and unfortunately he didn't realize he had no way of knowing.
He didn't know the Gregory and the Little were down there, and he lit up instead of the enemy submarine, he lit up these two destroyer transports back lit them, and so immediately the Japanese patrolling that area looks often they see two of our APDs and they come storming down, and of course they've got full armor, they full weaponry, all of their cannon, and they they begin to shell viciously, both the Gregory and the Little, and really within I forget the exact time, but in an around an hour
or so, both ships were rolling over and were going down already the call for abandoned ship had come out. And it is during that night a terrible, terrible night began around probably around eleven o'clock to midnight and then went all through the night. The Japanese came down. As wounded soldiers began jumping off the Gregor and the Little and into the water, the Japanese came down, and of course the machine gunned a lot of the ones survivors trying to save themselves, and I mean it was a melee.
Badly wounded Lieutenant Commander Harry Bauer was the picture of self sacrifice in his final moments.
Well. Harry Bower, of course, during such a time as that a surface engagement would be on the bridge as the commanding officer of the ship. When he realized that the ship was rolling he immediately called abandoned ship. He himself had been struck and he was bad wounded, and two of his men came to him and wanted to
try to get him in the water. And about the time they were trying to help him into the water, they heard another sailor, one of his crew, yelling for help, and Bower ordered the two men to go and save that other sailor, and they did. They got him into the water and onto a raft, but when they tried to come back, the ship had already rolled over and Bower was never seen again.
And for all the sailors jumping into the water, there was another big problem. There were sharks. Lots of sharks.
It was full of sharks, and I used the term. In fact, a gentleman said to me. He said, well, it wasn't real. It couldn't have really been infested because sharks were where they were supposed to be. Well, well, actually, actually there were so many sharks. I read of an incident where the marine raiders were trying to land on another island, Georgia Island a little bit later, and they had to use hand grenades to get their rubber rafts
through the sharks. They literally were practically lying one on top of another. So I felt like in this particular instance, shark infested was as good a description as you're going to get. But it was full of sharks, is the point.
That's Carol Engel Averette, the author of Midnight in Iron Bottom Sound, in a moment the incredible heroism of Charles Jackson French. I'm Greg Corumbus, and this is Veterans Chronicles. This is Veterans Chronicles. I'm Greg Corumbus. Our guest in this edition is military historian and author Carol Engel Averette. Her latest book is Midnight in Iron Bottom Sound, the herrowing World War II story of heroism in the shark
infested waters of Guadalcanal. It tells the story of the heroism of Mess Attendant Charles Jackson French on September fifth, nineteen forty two, following the Japanese sinking of the USS Gregory and the USS Little in Sea Lark Channel, which is often referred to now as Iron Bottom Sound. Earlier we noted the selfless heroism of Lieutenant Commander Harry Bauer, who was mortally wounded from the Japanese shelling of the
bridge on the USS Gregory. A young ensign on the bridge that night was Bob Adrian he survived and literally lived to tell the story of Charles Jackson French, of which he was an eye witness. Averette takes us through French's courageous and selfless actions.
Bob Adrian had been able to get in. He actually had a lot of shell fragments in his face in one eye particularly, but he had been able to get into the water. In his sort of paddling around and trying to figure out where which direction to go in and all, he saw a rubber raft that looked like it had a couple of wounded soldiers in it, and he get gets up to it and he recognizes Charles Jackson French's southern accent. Evidently he had a very just
like mine from Alabama. He had probably a very noticeable Arkansas accent. And so he yells out to him, and Charles says, you know, yes, sir, you know, come on and let me help you in. And so he pulls Adrian into the raft and then they are together the rest of the night, and Adrian says to Charles, we're drifting towards shore. He said, I don't know what we're going to do. The currents are taking us. The Japanese are gonna are there. They're gonna take us prisoner. We
sure don't want that shoot us. And so Frint starts taking off his clothes and Adrian says, what what are you doing, man? And he said, I'm getting in the water and I'm pulling us, and so he does. Now, the reason he takes off his clothes is because one of the things that you're taught, they were talked in the navy, is that sharks will go to flapping clothes. And of course they're barel bottomed pants and all of
that would have flapped in the water. So he strips down and he takes the rope from the raft and ties it around his waist and he begins to swim. And Adrian has got one eye, and he says, because he wants clothed with all the shrapnel in it. And he said, okay, he says, Charles, I can help you best I can, but you've got a one eyed navigator here. And so Charles began to swim and pull the raft away from the shore, and in the meantime he's coming
across more wounded sailors. So when he comes across one, he takes him and he picks him. You know it helps push him up into the raft and Greg by the end of the night. Bob Adrian later in his journal said there were at least fifteen soldiers that Charles had managed to pull wounded out of the water and pull them up into that raft. So you've got enemy on shore. And Charles kept saying, man, these currents are incredible,
and Adrian would say, now you can't pull us. You can't allow us to be pulled out to see because if we get out in the South Pacific, they'll never find us. So he's he's fighting the currents. He's fighting the currents trying to push him to shore where the Japanese are. And then just for you know, the icing on the cake, he's got sharks that begin rubbing him all around his legs, on the bottom of his feet, and they would leave and come back. It was just the strangest thing.
Averett says it's hard to know exactly how far French swam for a number of reasons, reasons which make his actions even more impressive.
He's trying to stay away from the shoreline of Guadalcanal, which is a Guadalcanal is a fairly long island, so he's trying to stay away from the shore because they don't really know it's full of Japanese. This is, you know, before we even really had control of Henderson Field, so it's you know, anybody's guess where you would run into.
One Tokyo expressed during this month, we're bringing down five thousand to six thousand fresh troop and depositing them on the island every night, so you could not go ashore. That was the thing. And I suspect that it just simply was a back and forth, just trying to stay away, stay out of trouble, stay low, don't get pulled out too far to sea, and for Heaven's sakes, don't put your feet too low in the water because those sharks are down there.
Averette says, the most meaningful part of the story for Charles Jackson French happened the next morning after he and the rest of the men in their raft were brought safely on shore at Guadalcanal by marine raiders.
The raiders had pulled all of these men on shore as they you know, dawn came and they saw that the raft was full of wounded and so they got them on shore and began to apply first aid and help, getting their medics to help them. And about that time, it's probably a little bit later in the morning, this cheek comes wheezing down and it's full of MPs, and so they yell at, you know, Charles Jackson French, you know, and said, you know, you've got to come with us.
The black camp is on down the road. You don't belong here. And about that time, when the raiders began hearing these MPs about to drag Charles Jackson French off, a couple of the raiders stand up, come in and they say, you know, hey, hey, hey, man, you know what's going on here. And then a couple of other sailors from various places, and one or two of the wounded men that could walk come walking up, men that he had saved, and they're looking, hey, wait a minute, wait, wait,
get your hands off that man. And so the MP said, no, he's got to go down to the you know, this is segregated. He's got to go down to his camp. And then one of the raiders said this, you're not taking this man in. He's staying here with us because he's one of us. And Charles Jackson French said later in fact, he was known to when he repeated this story, he could never say it without just tearing up and just almost choking with emotion over it. It was the sentence He's one of us.
Averett says that moment of brotherhood and solidarity is a critically important moment in the story. She also says that when considering all of the details of this ordeal, the most important lessons can be learned by watching both Charles Jackson French and Harry Bauer.
And so Greg. You know, as I was pulling this book together and doing the additional research and some subsequent follow up stories, and all I thought to myself, what's at the heart of this story? You know, what can we this many years, eighty years, eighty three years later, what can we learn from this story? And really it bowls down to just courage has no color, It has no prerequisites, because valor comes from within. You had the
highest commanding officers show incredible valor. You had the lowest ranking mess attendant show a night of courage that is just unparalleled. Many many heroes out of World War Two, but this one really stands up there with all of them.
French's story became a sensation back home in the fall of nineteen forty two, while French was on a thirty day leave after the sinking of the Gregory. And Averette explains that his story, as it became more widely known, inspired Americans of all backgrounds.
I have two letters that we reprinted in the book from a twelve year old young black child who read about Charles Jackson French and it was so important to him. It made such an impact on him that he decided to write the President of the United States, of course President Roosevelt at the time, but it was from and I would just give anything. I'm even hoping that maybe some of that family member will show up. Kenneth Dominic was his name, And he said to the President, he said, please,
can you tell me anything more about this man? And this is what now this young boy said in his letters, So I'm repeating what he said. He said, I'm a colored boy too, and it's the bravest thing that I've ever read. So you had you had this young man so impressed by this, but you also had a very wealthy man in the Orleans read the same article, say Mayp in his newspaper down in New Orleans, and he was owned a very wealthy brokerage house, a financier, and
I suspect probably knew Roosevelt personally. So he writes Roosevelt and he says, I want you to know that this young man needs to be awarded. He needs to be recognized for this incredible and I just want to make sure that you've seen this article and know his story.
But if there was so much interest and attention paid to French and his story of heroism, why was it nearly lost to history? How was it suddenly forgotten in the annals of World War II? Averette says there are a lot of reasons for that, including the fact that French died young in nineteen fifty six, But she suspects there is a very simple explanation for the oversight.
You see, this was the very beginning. This was nineteen forty two. The Normandy invasion is two years off, that's not until forty four. By that time, nineteen forty four, all eyes were turned towards Europe, even though the fighting was still ferocious in the Pacific, And of course, if you had relatives in the Pacific, that's what you look for. But the eyes of this nation turned toward the invasion of Europe. And you also can see just you know,
between the two invasion forces. The number of convoy that invaded the Solomon Islands on August seventh, nineteen forty two was about eighty plus ships thereabout, all right. The invasion force convoy that was gathered together for Normandy was nearly
eight thousand, and that's including everything. So you can see how and I think just with all that was happening in Europe, as the atrocities began to surface, of what was going on really going on in Germany and so on and so forth, with the camps and different things, it was these early stories from early in the war simply just got they floated down to the bottom of Iron Bottom Sound. It was not that they were trying to ignore it. It just had been turned elsewhere during that terrible long war.
Now, thanks in part to Averette's book and the efforts of several other people Charles Jackson, French is finally getting some of the acclaim he so richly earned more than eighty years ago. Averette says the Navy already has plans to honor French, and there's a push for more posthumous honors.
It does say in his records that he was his original records, naval records. I've got a copy of them that he was recommended for a ribbon. But to my knowledge and to his family's knowledge, he never received that.
He did receive a letter of accommodation from Admiral Halsey. Now, however, the good news is that just two months ago the Secretary of the Navy, Carlos del Toro, the current Secretary of the Navy, Carlos del Toro, announced at an official White House ceremony, and the gentleman that wrote the ford for our book, Admiral Sedric Pringle, attended that ceremony. There is going to be a ship, one of our highest advanced destroyers in probably twenty six twenty seven, is going
to be named after Charles Jackson French. It's going to be the USS Charles J. French Destroyer. His family is so thrilled. I'm so thrilled for them, and there is some renewed interest in seeing that he gets posthumously a medal of honor.
Averette says, the main reason this story survives today is because Bob Adrian, that ensign who helped Charles Jackson French navigate the waters of Iron Bottom Sound that night, wrote it all down years later after he came home. She says she wrote the book because she believed this was a story that needed to be told, but she is also determined to help French get recognition for his actions
all those years ago. She says, his story ranks right up there with any other account she's seen from the incredible heroes of World War Two.
But all of this is recorded in Adrian's journals later on when he got out of the war. So what is so wonderful about this story? Greg? You know, a lot of times some of these stories are not really you don't have a lot to go on. But in this case, Adrian's family allowed me to look at all of his journals, his notes, and so these are not made up stories. This is eyewitness account of what actually happened.
For Charles Jackson. French just heroic beyond belief. I put it up there with you know, other stories that we have heard World War II, some of the Medal of Honors stories that I had read about marine raiders. Of course, there's the Dory Miller's story that is so incredible, You've got the red tails, But this one not much known about it. People need to read it so that they can know what happened. It is up there with all the other incredible stories of the unsung, unknown heroes of World War Two.
That's Carol Engel Averette. She's a military historian and author. Her previous books include Coffin, Corner Boys, and Marine Raiders. Her latest book is Midnight in Iron Bottom Sound, the harrowing World War II story of heroism in the shark infested waters of Guadalcanal. I'm Greg Corumbus and this is Veterans Chronicles. Hi, this is Greg Corumbus, and thanks for listening to Veterans Chronicles, a presentation of the American Veterans Center.
For more information, please visit American Veteranscenter dot org. You can also follow the American Veterans Center on Facebook and on Twitter. We're at AVC update. Subscribe to the American Veterans Center YouTube channel for full oral histories and special features, and of course, please subscribe to the Veterans Chronicles podcast wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks again for listening, and please join us next time for Veterans Chronicles