By Elliott Brack
Editor and Publisher, GwinnettForum
FEB. 18, 2020 | Talking to veterans of World War II is so enjoyable. Most are laid-back. Few brag. Recently we spent time with Herman Wiley, age 97, who lives on James Burgess Road, just across the Chattahoochee River in Forsyth County.
Mr. Wiley went into the U.S. Navy at age 19, and was serving relatively easy duty at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba for 18 months. But then he and a buddy didn’t think they were doing enough for the war, and volunteered to go to sea. He spent nearly two years on the aircraft carrier USS Ticonderoga, which was in heavy battles. He served in campaigns under Fleet Commander Admiral Bull Halsey in the Philippines, in the South China Sea, and in the force attacking Okinawa. “We were chasing the Japanese,” he says.
Mr. Wiley was a Bosun’s Mate gunnery captain, overseeing several guns on the deck. “I took orders and told the guys where to fire” against incoming kamikazes. His guns fired 40 mm and five inch shells.
Wiley in a recent photo.
Mr. Wiley, originally from Rutledge in Morgan County, went into service in 1942. He trained at Norfolk, spent time on a merchant ship in the Atlantic, had shore duty at Grand Exuma in the Bahamas, then was working on diving rigs at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. “We repaired the mesh nets to keep the German submarines out of the harbor. We did it with an underwater torch. I did some diving in that big bell suit. I volunteered to see more action.” After a short training stint in Rhode Island, it was off to the Pacific area, joining the aircraft carrier, USS Ticonderoga and traveling through the Panama Canal. “We barely had enough room to go through the locks.”
While in action in the Pacific, everyone had four hours on duty, four hours off. “We didn’t get much rest. You were always tired.”
In one lull between battles, the Ticonderoga shifted back to Eniwetok in the Marshall Islands for boiler repair, and “to get some rest.” One day he was called to the quarter deck. “There was my brother, Clyde, who I thought was in Europe in the Army. But I didn’t know that he had been shifted to the Pacific, and we saw each other for a few hours. I was quite surprised.”
Seaman Wiley
While at Eniwetok, a Japanese sub somehow snuck through the small inlet to the harbor. “All of a sudden, two or three ships blew up all around us. Remember, our ship had no steam because of the repairs, and ships were exploding close to us. Somehow we got up the steam and got out of there. They finally sunk that tiny Japanese sub.”
After the war, Mr. Wiley got married to the former Sarah Fambrough of Hoschton. The couple had three girls and one son, eight grandchildren and now two great-grandchildren. Mrs. Wiley died in 2001, after having been married for 51 years. Mr. Wiley worked for 30 years at General Motors, painting cars, and later repaired television sets for Western Auto in Duluth.
Dr. Slade Lail of Duluth, who suggested we meet Mr. Wiley, says: “What struck me the most about Mr. Wiley is that he had a back injury during the war and he now walks hunched over. When I asked him if he was injured during the war he said, ‘I strained my back a little but I never reported it…there were too many others hurt more than I was.’”
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