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Fourth o*USt ^'4, I was ordered to the Islan i !?Cg'mcnt Marines in North of r i’ ^an ^'e80> under the command whn°^el JosePh Pendleton, after that c* ^"amP Pendleton is named. At Sma||In,1C tlle Army Air Corps had a
callpH Dtachment there at what they Naw i )c*cvvetl Field. There were no deta h 3neS t*lerc yet’ hut my little if ,„C ment was kept pretty busy seeing a„ ,e t-ttuld be the first one to a dam-
numhpranf'’ We were having quite a Way r °* crashes there, so it was alArmS 2 raCC ^ctween my group and the North P°UP as t0 who’d get there first, just f || and was still an island then, •[her U sagebrush and jackrabbits.
* Was a httle causeway that went
V"r ‘0 Coronado.
medita? h thC time 1 was there’ the
f)„ d‘ department was in tents. On 11 ta|-C,n^Cr 1914, I accompanied a bat- nati n °/ marines to the Panama Inter- At th^ Exposition in San Francisco.
0fj e c°ncIusion of that fair, we were int eret^ hack to San Diego and went now CamP where the naval hospital is few at balboa, again in tents. After a to p WCe^S’ we were suddenly ordered ans n*ra'n and were taken to New Orle- tion°n °Ur Way to help quell a revolu- jn !n ^anto Domingo. 1 recall march- on °Wn Ganal Street in New Orleans Unif terr‘hly hot day. I was in a blue it « °rrn~7everyone else in khaki—and as quite an ordeal.
Carihh ^ar'ncs were being sent to the Ca hean at the request of the Domini-
rtle Government and our State Depart- bo n|i ^ New Orleans we went on and htHe transP°rt Hancock (AP-3),
Sr)l | e landed us a few days later at a IVj a Port in Santo Domingo called andnteCristi- There we went into camp We PrePurcd to march inland, which oia )IC* Whh Colonel Pendleton in com- smn [he way- we had several the3 ^'rmishes with rebels. One of Cai|Se Was a two-hour battle at a place for 63 Guayacanas. It was pretty hot 1 w3 While; sheHs were flying, and WithS rather busy doing what I could some of the wounded. As I was I h-Hf l° lh° Front, scared stiff because ad never been in a real battle, I hap- aed to turn to my right and saw Fo ?nc* Pendleton sitting in an old r car, reading The Saturday Evening Post. Well, 1 thought, if he isn’t worried, why should I be? I’ve never forgotten that—going into battle reading The Saturday Evening Post.
After spending a short time in the town of Santiago, I was ordered, with a battalion of marines, further into the interior to a town called La Vega, which was the headquarters of this battalion. Early one morning, I received word that there had been a battle in-
volving our forces in the town of San Pedro de Macoris, where we had a group of marines under the command of First Lieutenant Ernest C. “Bill” Williams, who was later awarded a Medal of Honor for his actions in Santo Domingo.
Williams was quite a character. He had been a member of a famous football team at Quantico and was the finest soldier man that I ever experienced in my 40 years in the Navy. Absolutely fearless, terrible alcoholic, but a splendid leader of men. He started his morning with a full glass of rum before breakfast. I used to plead with him that he was going to go to the dogs if he kept that up, but nothing would stop him. Anyway, he decided that he would capture the fort there manned by Dominicans. So at taps one evening, as the colors were being lowered, he led a group of 12 marines up to the entrance to the fort. They saw him coming and tried to slam the door, but with his big
football feet he blocked it. They shot the light out over the gate, and from then on it was shooting at flashes. He captured the fort, but eight of his men were quite badly wounded, and that was the reason I was sent for. I was able to take care of them and they sent a hospital ship some days later.
Having mentioned Williams, I might add this. Some years later, I happened to be a patient in the naval hospital in Washington, and in the next room from me was a prominent writer and newspaperman, Laurence Stallings. He wrote the play What Price Glory? about the Marines which became a tremendous success. On visiting back and forth in his room from time to time, he told me that the Sergeant Quirk in his play was built around my old friend Bill Williams.
In the meantime, World War I was coming on, and I was anxious to get back to the States. Because I’d had, with one exception, more duty with Marines than any other doctor in the Navy, I thought I would be transferred to Quantico and go with one of the regiments to France. Instead, however,
I was ordered to the naval hospital in Norfolk, Virginia. I’ve often thought that over and concluded that I didn’t get to France because Melhorn is a German name, and anything German was unpopular in this country at that time. Even though I missed out on combat service, I still wound up with some pretty strenuous duty.
I was placed in charge of the contagious disease camp, which was in tents, and it was a terrible winter. We had no heat except oil stoves. In making my rounds one day, I found one of my corpsmen had gotten ahold of some bricks. He’d take a brick and wrap it in a flannel cloth, put it on top of the stove until it got good and warm, and then he’d sell that to a patient for 25 cents. There was even some gouging going on in those days.
There was a great plea, of course, from the commanding officer to do something about this situation. We were having a terrible epidemic of cerebral spinal fever, called in those days meningitis, and also measles and pneumonia. So the government finally erected semipermanent buildings, wooden
hroccedings
gs / December 1983
137
I had
One day one of the four doctors
iod
buildings with wooden floors, and they put big steam lines in, so it really made it quite comfortable. Up to then, the hospital had consisted of hundreds of tents with as many as 12 men squeezed into a tent.
Later, we had to cope with an influenza epidemic so widespread that my commanding officer, Captain L. W. Spratling, received a telephone call one day from the commandant of the navy yard at Norfolk. He was very concerned, because everyone knew that the flu was coming. He said to Captain Spratling, “What is the most important thing we can do to be prepared for this epidemic?”
And Captain Spratling’s reply was, “Build coffins.” And that is exactly what happened. The commandant turned everybody over who could wield a hammer and drive a nail, and they built hundreds of coffins. We needed them badly where we were, because our morgue was chock full of bodies. They were dying like flies, and they couldn’t be buried, so we just stored those bodies in the morgue until they could build enough coffins. That’s how bad it was. We worked night and day.
Before I was detached from the camp and ordered to the big hospital, the exec called me one day and said, “I’ve got a problem.”
I said, “What’s the trouble?”
He said, “There’s a yeomanette coming in with the mumps, and we don’t have any place up here to take care of her. Can you help out?”
Well, I always made it a point to say, “Aye, aye, Sir.” How to do it, I didn’t know; but when she came into the hospital she was transported to my camp. In the meantime, I’d cleared out the brig and fixed it up. We had Navy nurses there to help us, so we made a
pretty nice room for her. A couple of weeks went by, and she got along fine' there came to me and said, “We re going to have to change the diagnosis.”
I said, “What’s the trouble? Any complications?”
And he said, “Yes, she’s pregnant
Well, in those days, whenever you made a diagnosis, you always had to put under origin whether the malady had been incurred in the line of duty That was a question for us. Being g01 old Marines and Navy men, we decided “line of duty,” and that’s how her records read. For the good of the
This memoir is a slightly edited vet sion of a Naval Institute oral history °J Admiral Melhorn conducted in February 1970 by Commander Etta-Belle Kitchen. Admiral Melhorn died in W at the age of 94. His recollections are contained in a bound volume which also has the oral history of his son, Commander Charles M. Melhorn. T lS volume is one of 136 summarized in a newly issued catalogue which covers the Naval Institute's entire oral histoO collection. Copies of the catalogue are available for $2.00 apiece.
WIN $100
22nd Annual Naval and Maritime Photo Contest Deadline 31 December 1983
Ten prize-winning photos will be chosen and awarded $10° each in the U. S. Naval Institute’s 22nd Annual Naval and Mantime Photo Contest. The winning photos will be published in a 1984 issue of Proceedings.
each print, or printed on the transparency mount. (No staples, please) 7. Entries must arrive at the U. S. Naval Institute no later than 31 Decamber 1983.
Photographs not awarded prizes may be purchased by the U. S. Nava Institute. Those photographs not purchased will be returned to the owner if accompanied by a stamped, self addressed envelope.
Mail entries to: Naval and Maritime Photo Contest U. S. NAVAL INSTITUTE Annapolis, Md. 21402
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Proceedings / December
1983