Man Overboard: The Sequel

Lou Putnoky

   Lou Putnoky called me on Saturday afternoon. Lou is 92 years old, maybe 91. A Coast Guard veteran of World War II, he was a radio operator on the USS Bayfield, the flagship of the Utah Beach invasion fleet. He is not in the best of health, having had at least two serious heart attacks, and is living with his daughter since his wife passed away a few years ago.
   Lou gets sentimental, or nostalgic, and calls me from time to time. We have this routine, somewhere between Abbott and Costello and Hillary and Donald. He thanks me profusely for all I've done to preserve veterans' stories, and I remind him that all I've done is flip the switch on a tape recorder, and there would be nothing to preserve if it weren't for veterans like himself. Nothing will ever convince him that I'm not one of the greatest contributors to preserving the history of World War II, and nothing will ever convince me that he isn't one of the greatest storytellers to come out of the war, although his voice these days is not as strong and compelling as it used to be.
   In 1994 I wrote to Stephen Ambrose and asked if he could provide me with the names of any D-Day veterans living in New Jersey that I could interview for a special section the newspaper I worked for was planning to do in conjunction with the 50th anniversary. He sent me a list, but Lou's name wasn't on it.  One of the men on the list, Dr. Vincent del Guidice, who had been a  pharmacist's mate on the USS Bayfield, suggested that if I wanted stories I should call his old shipmate Lou.
   Which I did. Lou's wife, Olga, answered the phone and I told her I'd like to interview her husband about his experiences on D-Day. Before she called Lou to the phone, she said I should make sure to ask him about one particular story, because it was one he almost never talked about.
   That story is included in my book "A Mile in Their Shoes" and in my audiobook "The D-Day Tapes,"  but here it is in Lou's own words, if you don't mind listening to an audio file of it. This is an audiobook blog, after all.

Man Overboard

   That was recorded in 1994. Lou went on to tell many other stories in that three-hour interview and we've kept in touch over the years. I was able to bring him to an event at the Yogi Berra Museum one day so he could get his picture taken with Yogi, with whom he served on the Bayfield. In that very first interview he made excuses for Berra never attending a Bayfield reunion, Yogi was busy with other obligations and all that. At the time I had no idea how much it would have meant to the veterans if Yogi had made an appearance at a reunion.
   Usually Lou calls on days of significance to veterans, like Memorial Day or Veterans Day, or the anniversary of D-Day, when he gets especially sentimental. So I wasn't expecting him to call this weekend, but I was glad I was at home. Sometimes he leaves rambling, sentimental messages on my answering machine.
   His voice was weak, and he said there was a second part to the story about the "man overboard," which was the title I gave to his interview in "A Mile in Their Shoes." Then he told me the story. When he finished, I put my phone on speaker, flicked the "on" switch of my digital voice recorder, and made him tell me the story again.
   Following is a transcript. There were a couple of places where I couldn't make out a word, so bear with me if something doesn't quite make sense.

"

   Aaron, I called you just to thank you for your articles about all the fine servicemen that you've written about, and the one that you wrote me about was the Duffy situation where he fell off the battleship Nevada and we helped search for him but we couldn't find him. So then I reported back to our flagship, and they're all waiting for us, they thought that we'd got in serious trouble.
   "No," I says, "we were delayed because the Nevada had a man overboard and they wanted us to make two turns around the ship and said sorry, we couldn't find him, and we dashed back here because we were late." And what happened, as I was talking to the officers, I see a radio man, a friend of mine, about 15 or 20 feet away. I say "Sparks, the next time you talk to the Nevada, ask them who it is and where he's from." And everybody looked at me real crazy, and then I even felt embarrassed. And what happened was, I was just so embarrassed about it, with all the shooting going on I says how in the hell can I ask, it seemed like a stupid question.
   What happened was, after I don't know how many weeks later, when we were out in the Pacific, Sparks -- wait, [I'm getting ahead of myself]. That evening, Sparks was eating, and he says, "Hey, Lou, the Nevada called and I was talking to them and I asked them where the guy was from that went overboard and they couldn't find him. And they told me he's from New Jersey. A town by the name of Carteret. And his name was John Duffy." And I said, "Oh, my god, I went to grade school with him," and I said "I know his parents." And we made the sign of the cross, and we said a little prayer, a silent prayer between us. And we continued to eat, but both of our eyes welled up a little bit." But it's, that happens.
   And then so many weeks later, I find out that, as we were coming back from chow we were going out to the Pacific to invade Iwo Jima, and I was coming back from chow and I looked ahead of me and it was about 5 o'clock in the evening, and I see Sparks going, and I just wanted to talk to him again, so I had a little bit of a problem trying to catch up to him, and finally I got to the end of the corridor and I opened the hatch, and there's a good 50-foot opening over the Number 3 hold before you come to the aft five-inch gun, and all of a sudden, nobody's out there. Sparks disappeared. And I looked. I looked. And I don't know what, something made me, believe me, it had to be the man upstairs, He says take a fast look, and I looked, the deck was wet, and there's a section where there's no lip, the side of the ship where we lower the ship's crew and the cargo nets, and I saw a little bit of a skid mark. I said that skid mark, it had to be Sparks' shoes as he slid right through there when the ship rolled to the opposite side, and I yelled "Man overboard! Man overboard!" Because I was convinced, I didn't see him fall overboard but I was convinced he went overboard, because he couldn't have disappeared any other way because believe me, I knew every inch of that ship. And then I ran back to the after lookout and I told him, "Report to the bridge man overboard." We were doing 23 knots, we were trying to outrun, we could outrun a sub at 23 knots so that's what we were doing. It took a few minutes and I ran back to the after room where we have all the garbage for the day and four guys were standing there shooting the bull, and I says, "Give me a hand, we have a man overboard, I've got word from the OD [officer of the day], I lied, I could have got in serious trouble, but the good Lord told me I should do this. I said, "Throw all the garbage overboard," because I wanted, if they did send a boat out, they could follow the garbage trail and verify the position, that they're close by. And sure enough, we did find him, and Sparks told me afterwards when I spoke to him, and I never told him, I never used the term "I saved your life," I was just glad to see him. And he was glad to see me. I could have gotten in serious trouble but I didn't care. I said, "Somebody up there wanted you to live. So I don't know how good a family you have but let me tell you the good Lord was on your side." Make sure that you find a wife and have children because He went way out of his way to get you," and I remember him telling me that was the first time he really was convinced that the Earth is round because when he fell, he saw our ship just disappear, and that ship is 40 feet above his head. "And as I was in the water I saw the ship just going down, I saw the name of the ship, USS Bayfield, PA33, and just going down as if it was sinking, going right over the horizon. I just can't get over that."
   And now all of a sudden, we never directly approached each other to say, our paths didn't, we just didn't run into each other aboard ship we were so busy fighting the damn war, we forgot to thank each other. I wanted to thank him just for being there and making me feel good whenever I felt, God came down and said I helped save this man's life. And it's a grand feeling. All I know is by his nickname Sparks. I don't know his real name. Maybe somebody will read it in a book and they'll be able to get in touch with me."

Lou Putnoky in 1992

A Mile in Their Shoes at Amazon.com

 

The D-Day Tapes on eBay 

Lou and Yogi Berra

Shipmates Lou Putnoky and Yogi Berra

Lou Putnoky and Yogi Berra at the Berra museum

   Every now and then I get a call from Lou Putnoky of Carteret, N.J. He gets nostalgic, usually on a Sunday, especially since his wife, Olga, passed away two years ago. We chat for a while and he tells me what a wonderful thing it is that I'm preserving all these veterans' memories, and I try to tell him without the veterans themselves and their courage and experiences, there would be nothing to preserve, all I do is poke a little tape recorder microphone in their face and ask a couple of questions. I try to tell him that, but he wants no part of it.
   Lou is a World War II Coast Guard veteran, and was a radio operator on the USS Bayfield, the flagship of the Utah Beach invasion fleet. The Bayfield also took part in the invasion of Southern France, as well as the battles in the Pacific for Iwo Jima and Okinawa, and he is one of the many veterans who witnessed, albeit from a distance, the raising of the American flag on Mount Suribachi.
  One of the highlights of Lou's time in the service was having served on the same ship as Yogi Berra, which leads me to a story that is kind of sad in a way. Lou lives in New Jersey and expressed a desire to meet Berra again, so about a decade ago, when I was still working for a newspaper in New Jersey and there was some kind of publicity event at the Yogi Berra Museum in Montclair, I invited Lou to come with me, and he got to chat with and have his picture taken with Berra. That isn't the kind of sad story, and I can't find the story in the transcript of my conversation with Lou that I used in my book "A Mile in Their Shoes: Conversations With Veterans of World War II," which means I must have edited it out because it was kind of sad, although in retrospect I should have left it in, which is why I'm relating it now, secondhand.
   After the war was over, Lou was a big fan of Yogi Berra, and regaled his son with tales of their shenanigans on the stern of the Bayfield, the stern being, in Lou's words, "where all the action was." One day, when his son was perhaps seven, Lou decided to take him to Yankee Stadium to see if he could introduce him to Berra. They arrived early and were watching batting practice. Lou took his son down to the railing and told an usher he'd been a shipmate of Yogi Berra's, and asked if he could give Yogi a note. Lou said the usher must have been a veteran, because he nodded understandingly.
   He saw the usher walk over to Berra and hand him the note, and he thought he saw Yogi nod. Then Yogi began walking in his direction, and Lou was going to get the chance to introduce him to his son.
   Just then Lou saw Casey Stengel come out of the dugout and walk over to Berra, and the two of them turned and went into the dugout.
   End of story. Now tell me that isn't a little bit sad. But Lou's face lit up when I brought him to see Berra at the museum.
   Here's an excerpt from my interview with Lou, in which he talks about Berra on the ship, and rationalizes the fact that Berra never attended a reunion of the Bayfield crew:

Aaron Elson: What can you recall about Yogi Berra?

Lou Putnoky: Yogi Berra is a very, very bighearted, very nice, quiet individual. I reluctantly use the term simple, good. If he wasn't that way, he would be the first one to be at the reunion, I'm a hundred percent certain he would go. Because he would feel uncomfortable being there, especially being a celebrity.  He was a coxswain on one of the rocket boats. He was attached to the admiral's staff, so we had, maybe the staff brought, let's figure they brought maybe a hundred men to supplement the crew of our 500 crew with them, and Yogi Berra was attached to Admiral Moon's staff. And Yogi latched onto our particular group because that's where the action was, on the stern of our ship. There was always something going on, and he said to us that the admiral was such a nice man. He said that when he was in England, he would be able to recognize, with thousands of sailors, he was able to recognize men and he would stop his car, his jeep with the two stars, because he knew that they were going back to the ship, and he would pick up seamen that were part of his ship. He didn't know them by name but he knew them by looks, and he would pick them up in the staff car, which was very unusual. But this was the kind of man he was, very well-liked. It upset everyone of course when they found out he committed suicide, it really shook us to the core, at the time.

But Yogi was very personable. And of course it always comes up in conversation when you had new people, "What did you do? What are you gonna do after the war? What did you do before the war, whatnot," and he said "Oh, I played ball, at Norfolk, in the minors." And we looked at him, with his bandy legs, and of course that shit-eating grin that he had, what the hell kind of ballplayer, are you pulling our leg? Were you a batboy or something, just like we're talking now. And of course we never paid much attention. He skipped over it, he didn't elaborate on it too much. It would come up every now and then, and we would kid him about it. Nothing serious. And then after the war I'm looking through Life magazine and I see his picture. I recognize his picture. I knew him as Larry Berra, not as Yogi Berra, and I said, "Larry, good God, he did play ball," and he was a fantastic, phenomenal ballplayer. He could hit any kind of wild, crazy wild pitch, you never knew what the hell he was gonna hit.

Other than that, during Normandy I remember him pulling alongside our ship with his rocket boat, and I know, like everyone else, he was deathly scared. Once they let go all their rockets, and they come back and any other assignment that they might have for his craft.

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   Got Kindle? Or the free downloadable Kindle reading app for PC, Tablet or Smartphone from Amazon? "A Mile in Their Shoes" is available today and tomorrow, Oct. 15 and 16, for a free download of its Kindle edition, and it's only $2.99 after that. Or read my full interview with Lou Putnoky here.

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From Oral History Audiobooks:

The Tanker Tapes

From D-Day to the Bulge

The D-Day Tapes

From Chi Chi Press:

Tanks for the Memories

A Mile in Their Shoes

Got Kindle?

Conversations With Veterans of D-Day

Nine Lives: An Oral History

They Were All Young Kids