Vet recalls worst loss of U.S. troops at sea - Army News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Army Times

Vet recalls worst loss of U.S. troops at sea

ALAMOGORDO, N.M. — James Wheeler kept a secret for nearly 60 years.

It wasn’t the type of secret people keep to protect themselves from ridicule. Far from it, in fact.

He was instructed by his superior officers in the Army to keep it. His parents never knew and he never told his wife of 35 years, Ruth Ann Wheeler, who died in 1992.

Wheeler, of High Rolls, is a 90-year-old World War II veteran who was part of what many historians have called “the largest loss of United States troops at sea.”

More than 1,000 U.S. troops died, yet not many Americans know about it. You won’t find one word about it in history books. Alamogordo High School’s two junior U.S. history classes were fortunate to hear him finally talk about it.

Wheeler was a member of the Nebraska National Guard and an infantryman aboard the British transport ship HMT Rohna when it was attacked Nov. 26, 1943, by German bombers as it traveled through the Mediterranean Sea. The ship was part of a convoy en route to China, Burma and the India Theatre of war.

“It was the day after Thanksgiving,” Wheeler said. “I remember that.”

HMT Rohna was one of 24 ships traveling north of Algeria when German bombers attacked. Most of the ships escaped relatively unscathed, until a lone German bomber made one last run and targeted HMT Rohna.

That’s when Wheeler, who was loading artillery shells into one of the ship’s gun torrents, saw something drop from the bomber.

“It looked like a small airplane,” he said of the object. “I saw it fly right into our ship, right about where are quarters were located.”

What Wheeler saw was something that had rarely been seen — at least by anyone alive. It was a Henschel Hs-293, a remote-controlled, rocket-powered glide bomb with wings.

“I saw a cogwheel shoot up from the engine room,” Wheeler said. “The glide bomb knocked out everything on the ship. I was very fortunate to be on the gun when it hit. That bomb had 1,100 pounds of explosives in it.”

Many men were killed by the initial blast, while others were blown overboard or jumped into the cold Mediterranean. Many of the ships life rafts were rendered useless by the blast.

Wheeler said he was instructed to stay at his post until the last minute.

“Our lead gunner — I can’t remember his name because of my age — had been in situations like that before and told us to stay where we were,” Wheeler said.

When Wheeler finally was allowed to leave his post, he made the long plunge into the Mediterranean, which was about 50 degrees.

“All I had was a gas-powered life vest around my waist,” Wheeler said. “We were in that water for about eight hours. Believe me, that is too long.”

During the school presentation, teacher Darrel Renfro asked Wheeler why other ships in the convoy didn’t stop to help rescue him and others in the water.

“They had their orders to go,” he said. “They couldn’t stop. They had to go.”

Wheeler said it was the longest eight hours of his life.

“A bunch of us guys locked arms around a tank we found floating in the water,” he said. “We didn’t know where it came from and we didn’t care. That tank kept us afloat.”

During those eight hours, Wheeler said one of the men with whom he had locked arms was suddenly gone.

“I don’t know what happened to him,” Wheeler said, trying to hold back tears. “One minute he was there, and the next he was gone.”

Wheeler said he believes the man succumbed to hypothermia.

Help finally arrived at about 1 a.m. Nov. 27, 1943, when a British warship picked up the men bobbing in the waves.

“I found out later that the search for us had been called off at 1 a.m.,” Wheeler said. “The ship made one last pass through and found us. The Lord was with me that day, believe me. I still thank Him for it to this day.”

For the next 50 years, he was prohibited from talking about the incident.

“Because of that bomb,” he said. “No one had ever seen anything like that. The Army didn’t want us to talk about it with anyone.”

Wheeler said he kept it bottled up until 1993 when classified documents about the incident were made public — one year after his wife died. But he still didn’t talk about it, even after a WWII reunion on the East Coast that same year. A documentary about the incident was shown to veterans at that reunion.

“I couldn’t watch it,” he said. “It bothered me too much. Still does.”

He held onto his secret for a little while longer — eight more years, to be exact — until another incident shook him.

“When those planes hit the buildings in New York,” he said, referring to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center. “That did it. It brought back some bad memories. It was like watching that little glide bomb hit the Rohna.”

Wheeler, who was born in Indiana and raised in Nebraska City, Neb., had been seeking therapy to help him deal with his war memories. When 9/11 struck, his therapist told him he needed to start talking about it.

And he spent two hours one Friday talking with Renfro’s history students about his ordeal in the Mediterranean.

As students left class, they shook Wheeler’s hand and thanked him for his time. One student even told Wheeler that his grandfather served in WWII.

Tears began to well up in his eyes as he tried to gather his thoughts.

“I still get tears talking about it,” he said as he wiped away a small trickle streaming from his left eye. “But it helps.”