We’ve been learning about Ornie Alness and his journey from his birth and childhood on the family farm in rural Clarkfield during the 1920s and ’30s to the US Navy’s Pacific Fleet aboard the transport ship, USS Wharton during WWII.

After the Wharton’s last mission shuttling Navy Construction Battalions (Seabees) to Dutch Harbor, Alaska, she steamed to San Francisco and received orders for the South Pacific.

The Wharton picked up military passengers and cargo in San Diego. She left on 12 March 1943 and steamed 14 days to American Samoa. She made these Pacific crossings without any escort.

“When we were running from here down to the islands . . . we were on our own,” Ornie said. “There was nothing to see during those crossings.”

He recalled a goofy ceremony the crew shared late in that crossing, “I crossed the equator and International Date Line at the same time. Before that you were a “pollywog” and after you crossed that you got a card showing you were a “shellback.”

The Wharton made stops in Samoa; Numea, New Caledonia; and Wellington, New Zealand before returning to San Diego with wounded Marines and pilots from New Zealand.

The Wharton made four more crossings to the islands of the South Pacific during 1943, carrying troops and cargo for the war effort to exotic places like the New Hebrides; Aukland, New Zealand; and Suva, Fiji. Ornie recalled that the Wharton could get pretty crowded when she was ferrying large units.

“We had, at one time, over 2,000 troops,” he said. “We had a (detachment) of Marines on to keep order when there were all those troops aboard. [The troops] were squeezed in there and it was so crowded, it was awful . . . They were 3-4 high down in those compartments.”

The Wharton frequently returned with war casualties. Sometimes the injuries were not physical. Ornie shared one tragic story from their fourth return trip from the South Pacific.

“We took aboard a group and they told us . . . three of them were in danger,” he said. “They had it so bad that they would do anything, so they had to lock them up on the ship . . . The way it turned out, we lost them. They jumped overboard . . . Their minds were blown entirely. They were so run down and skinny and terrible that there wasn’t much left and that’s how they could get through those little openings (in the lockup).”

Ornie recalled that the Captain stopped the ship and dropped a whaleboat into the sea. The whaleboat crew cruised around the Wharton for a time trying to find the missing men, but they were gone. They were war casualties we seldom hear about.

The Wharton steamed to Pearl Harbor, Hawaii in early January 1944 where she received assignment orders as part of the 3rd Amphibious Force. She was now on invasion duty.

The Navy fitted the Wharton with seven LCVPs (Landing Craft Vehicle and Personnel) on her deck and assigned crews to operate them. She embarked the Army’s 5th Medical Battalion in Hawaii and joined the convoy of ships steaming across the Pacific for the invasion of Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands.

Ornie described their invasion convoy, “We were attack transports at that time, attached to the attack transport force . . . (The ships) were spaced apart. Your fighting ships took the lead, your cruisers and your battleships. The destroyers came next and they stayed to the outside. Your troopships were more behind or in the center.”

The invasion force arrived off Kwajalein Atoll at the end of January and successfully defeated the Japanese defenders in a fierce, four day battle. The troops aboard the Wharton remained embarked aboard ship. The invasion force next moved northwest to attack the Japanese-held Eniwetok Atoll.

Ornie remembered how the two invasions were similar. He explained, “(An atoll) is a great big row of islands in a kind of egg shape. They got one deep channel going in and then you got (inside) the atoll. We were laying inside there and battleships were laying out here and they were bombarding the shoreline . . . We could hear the 16” shells coming overhead. Of course, no matter how bad it is, you’ve got to make a joke about it and try to get a laugh. So we’d say, ‘Well, I sure hope they shoot high enough,’ as they were going right overhead . . . We had a ring-side seat, I suppose you could call it.”

The invasion of Eniwetok brought the Wharton a new mission as a temporary hospital ship. After the Wharton disembarked the Army’s 5th Medical Battalion to the invasion beach, she remained near shore and her medical staff treated 25 casualties evacuated from the beaches.

The Wharton withdrew from the combat area for two months during which the crew had R&R (Rest and Recuperation) and ferried troops from island to island. She also ran aground on a sand bar in the Admiralty Islands. They had to offload the embarked troops and equipment while one of the Wharton’s divers inspected the ship’s hull for damage.

Ornie laughed when recalling the diver’s assessment, “They asked him whether he saw any damage and he replied, ‘No, I couldn’t see anything wrong, but we sure cleaned up the barnacles.”

The laughter ended, though, when Ornie described the Wharton’s participation in the subsequent invasion of Guam.

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