Narrative for Mason Ellison

Mason Ellison was born in Hartford, Connecticut on September 22, 1923. Both of his parents worked during the Depression to support the family. His father was a carpenter by trade, but work was hard to come by, especially in winter, so he did many other jobs including selling directional signals for the fenders of trucks. He also kept bees and Mason sold the honey around their Elmwood neighborhood. In his father's diary there is an entry from 1933 explaining how Mason brought home $1.25 that day, enough money to buy the family supper.

After Pearl Harbor, Mason attended college while trying to enter the Navy Reserve. However, his required blood samples were lost twice and then on February 15, 1943 he was drafted. He entered the Navy as planned and was sent to sound school, although he does not know why he was chosen to be a sonar operator. He is not sure if he took an aptitude test or whether they knew about his many years of violin playing and choir activities. After training he was assigned to DE62, the destroyer escort George W. Ingram, which was named after a sailor killed at Pearl Harbor. He was assigned to the ship before its commissioning to decommisioning and proudly explains this means he is "a plank owner ... I didn't get transferred, I stayed on the ship the whole time in World War II." In that time the ship traveled a total of 135,000 miles.

Life on the ship consisted of four hours on followed by eight hours off. The four-hour shifts broken into 30-minute blocks of listening on the stack, being on standby, and a half hour at the helm. Steering the ship is what he "loved doing" most. And while not on duty, there were still many chores to do - "cleaning bilges or painting bilges ... And there were inspections [every time] when we went into port again ... It was a white glove inspection." In his real off-time he kept busy with an informal Bible study group, mending his clothes, talking with his buddies and, most importantly, writing to Roberta Mason. In August, 1944 they became engaged.

Mason was on board for sixteen of the ship's eighteen Atlantic crossings, mostly escorting convoys from the east coast of the United States to Londonderry, Ireland. The DE62 is credited with sinking one U-boat and may have also killed a whale outside of Casco Bay in Maine when Mason was "at the wheel."

In March, 1945, the ship was converted into attack personnel destroyer APD43 in anticipiaton of the invasion of Japan. In this new role they would bring in frogmen to clear the beach of mines and other obstacles. After some training off Maui and San Diego Mason left for Okinawa, but before he arrived, Japan had surrendered. The Ingram then participated in the initial landing of American occupation troops at the port of Jinsen in Korea, as well as three ports in China. After China, they returned to San Francisco and Mason was discharged.

Mason married and returned to school under the GI Bill. He graduated with a degree in group work and worked in Christian Education. Six years later he attended seminary at Biblical in New York (now New York Theological) to continue his training. While they were formative years, he does not think the war was the most important event in his life. In fact, he enjoys reading about the Civil War more. To his war experience he adds finishing college, getting married and entering church work and "sees that things were being formulated for me in my life" at that time. Just as significant too are the friendships he developed in the Navy. He attends their annual reunions, which also include the relatives of George Ingram. "We were friends 24 hours a day for all those years ... From August of '43 to November of '45, you know. So, those are deep friendships and I cherish those."

Yet, there is some ambivalence about his role in the war. "My only feeling is after you think about D-Day and so forth, how many troops we took over there, we were the ones that got them into losing their lives. We transported them. We got them there. Oh, my. So, that sort of eats away at you."

Excerpts from the Mason Ellison Interview

And my mother worked at New Departure Company during the depression years.

I'm a plank owner ... I didn't get transferred, I stayed on the ship the whole time in World War II.

We were coming out of Plymouth with a whole bunch of racked up LSTs, LCIs [landing craft infantry], cranes ... that we were taking back to Charleston, [South Carolina] ... we hit a storm there for seven days straight ... this convoy could only go five knots an hour so it was very slow to begin with, and then with the storm we figured out in those seven days if it continued on the rest of our trip it would take us half a year to get to Charleston.

A foxer was two bars a couple of feet long ... this was an interesting gimmick they figured out [that] as you stream it aft of your ship the water rushing through makes more noise than the propellers of your ship. So that when an acoustical torpedo comes it doesn't hit the ship but it just goes by your foxer.

... then when the Fogg went around to find out what happened to the LST it turned around and there was the sub right there. They couldn't lower their guns low enough to fire at the thing and they got a torpedo in the fantail and they had to go to the Azores. So, that night, boy, I was on the 8 to 12, I tell you I sure listened because there were only two DEs with the whole convoy and we didn't know what was going to come.

My only feeling is after you think about D-Day and so forth, how many troops we took over there, we were the ones that got them into losing their lives. We transported them. We got them there. Oh, my. So, that sort of eats away at you.

Well, you could sense, March of '45 was our time of [the ship's] conversion, and we knew things were pretty much over in Europe, so [we figured] we'd be assigned to the Pacific.

If you were on the 12 to 4 [watch] you worked in the morning cleaning bilges or painting bilges ... there was always some other assignment work during the day ... And there were inspections [every time] we went into port again ... It was a white glove inspection, I tell ya. [laughs] You had to have things clean, clean, clean. And with the salt water, you know, that raises havoc. Boy, you'd always be chipping paint. One trip and you've got to do lots of it over again.

When we went to Oran in Africa things were really tough going there. They didn't let us have liberty at night because there were 200 knifings a night there. They would take metal from the battlefield and make these nice balanced knives. So we [only] got off during the day for liberty.

I got [sea]sick twice ... But I got over it quickly. Some, well they'd be sick the whole seven days of the trip, you know, so the next time we got back to New York they'd be sent somewhere else and transferred.