PAUL PAVLICH
Age: 92
Born: Aug. 3, 1918
Hometown: Eureka
Residence: Palm Springs
Military branch: U.S. Coast Guard; USS Lupine; USS Ricketts (DE-254); LST 766
Years served: Jan. 2, 1942- January 1946
Rank: Lieutenant J.G.
Family: Wife Josephine (deceased); two daughters, Patricia Hinkle of Encinitas and Susanne Campton of Eureka; three grandchildren.
About this series
Staff writer Denise Goolsby will profile desert veterans from World War II through the end of 2010 — the 65th anniversary of the end of the war. Contact her at (760) 778-4587 or via e-mail at denise.goolsby@thedesertsun.com
Coming tomorrow
U.S. Army veteran Leon Swenson of Palm Desert
LEARN MORE: Read about other Coachella Valley residents who served in World War II at mydesert.com/wwii
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Paul Pavlich joined the U.S. Coast Guard shortly after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor Dec. 7, 1941, but he was no stranger to military operations.
“I spent some time in the National Guard,” Pavlich said. “We wore World War I uniforms — they were like woolen blankets. We ran around the hills of San Luis Obispo in the summer.”
Pavlich joined the U.S. National Guard in October 1934, serving with 184th Infantry Regiment until March 1935. Pavlich had just completed his sophomore year at San Jose State College — now known as San Jose State University — when the Japanese attacked.
“A bunch of guys were in a car on that Sunday,” he said. The guys got to talking about the situation and Pavlich decided then and there that he was going to join the war effort.
“On the way home that Christmas, I stopped at the customs house in San Francisco,” where he informed the military authorities of his intention to return on Jan. 2, 1942, to enlist in the U.S. Coast Guard. He joined the Coast Guard because of his familiarity with the service branch — and his love of the ocean.
“They were active up in the Eureka area,” he said, adding, “I'd been around the water all my life.”
He served as an apprentice seaman on the buoy tender the USS Lupine, based on Yerba Buena Island. The ship was one of three assigned to “lighthouse service.”
This small, natural landform — connected to the manmade Treasure Island — is between San Francisco and Oakland in the San Francisco Bay.
The ships maintained the lighthouses, buoys and navigational aids from San Diego to the Oregon coast. The crew's tasks included hauling buoys on deck and scraping and repainting them. Buoys are used to mark an entrance to a harbor, a marine hazard or shallow water and to help identify a ship's location.
“We made half-a-dozen trips up and down the coast,” maintaining the buoys and other navigational aids that help guide boats and ships traveling the coastline.
About a year later, the captain got a request to send some guys to the Coast Guard Academy.
Pavlich was among the handful of men recommended and spent four months at the academy in New London, Conn., graduating with the rank of ensign.
After attending torpedo school in Newport, R.I., Pavlich was assigned to the destroyer escort USS Ricketts (DE-254). The brand-new ship was built and designed for convoy duty, he said.
The crew picked up the ship in New Orleans and, after some practice runs, the USS Ricketts was bound for England.
Based in Londonderry, Northern Ireland, the ship escorted 100-ship convoys across the enemy submarine-infested waters of the Atlantic Ocean. The USS Ricketts sailed back and forth from Ireland to ports on the U.S. coast, including Portland, Maine, Boston, New York and Charleston, S.C.
“We made nine round-trip crossings,” he said. “We formed a screen. We changed course every two, three or four minutes — all the way across the ocean. It took nine or 10 days to get across.”
As a deck officer, Pavlich stood watch — four hours on, eight hours off — as the convoy of mostly merchant ships zigzagged carefully across the ocean.
“We went up on the bridge,” he said. “We were in the open a good part of the time.”
Pavlich said only one incident occurred during escort duty.
“It was the last convoy — 500 miles south and east of Bermuda,” he said. “At night. There was an explosion in the convoy. We were ordered back to investigate. A freight carrier's steering gear jammed. It swung around the convoy and plowed into a tanker carrying aviation gas. Both ships were on fire.”
The USS Ricketts crew was able to rescue 49 of the 75 total men aboard the two ships.
“We were there until after daylight,” he said. “Everything was swept away All the rafts disappeared.”
Pavlich served on the USS Ricketts until Sept. 15, 1944. He was then assigned to LST 766 (Landing Tank Ship), and was soon on his way to the Pacific.
“We went down through Panama and up through San Diego,” he said. “It took us 10 days to go to Hawaii.”
In Pearl Harbor, the ship took on some gear and a group of army engineers to be delivered to Iwo Jima for the invasion.
“We finished loading at 7 o'clock and by 9 o'clock, the anchor chain broke and the ship was stuck on a reef.”
The hull was punctured and the water rushed in, flooding the motor generator room. “We were completely without any electrical power,” he said.
The men were eventually off-loaded and the ship spent 10 days in Pearl Harbor getting repaired. Before departing on its next adventure, a 105-foot LCT (Landing Craft Tank) was loaded on to the ship's deck.
“There was a row of gasoline drums clear around the perimeter of the ship,” he said. “We took off for Guam. We picked up the first part of the 1st Marine Division of the Marine Corps we took the LCT and the Marines to Tsing Tao China. (But) the Japanese had left before the occupation forces arrived.”
