JOHN KALCIC
Age: 82
Born: April 24, 1928
Hometown: Kansas City
Residence: Cathedral City
Military branch: U.S. Merchant Marines; SS Hiram Bingham
Years served: April 1945- November 1946
Rank: Steward's mate second class
Family: Wife Shirley; three children, Mark Kalcic of Louisburg, Kan., Tereasa Grenawalt of Overland Park, Kan. and Johnny Kalcic (deceased); three grandchildren; one great-grandchild.
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. Marine Corps veteran Anthony Amoroso of Cathedral City.
LEARN MORE: Read about other Coachella Valley residents who served in World War II at mydesert.com/wwii.
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John Kalcic had limited vision in one eye, but that didn't stop the street-smart 17-year-old from joining the fight during World War II.
Ineligible for enlistment in other service branches, Kalcic tried for the Merchant Marines and was accepted “by cheating, quite frankly,” Kalcic admitted.
During his vision test, Kalcic peeked through his fingers covering his left eye, helping his weaker right eye correctly read the chart.
He also had another theory for why he was so easily accepted into service.
“They were desperate for Merchant Marines,” and weren't as selective about a man's physical status, he said.
By the time Kalcic enlisted in April 1945, more than 1,400 merchant shipping vessels — carrying cargo including food, clothing, men, gasoline, tanks and armament in support of the war effort — had been sunk, damaged or captured.
From the time he was 5, Kalcic spent most of his childhood living at St. John's Orphanage in Kansas City.
His mother, who worked 12 hours a day, seven days a week at the Armour Packing Co., toiled to keep a roof over her head and food in her children's bellies.
But this was during the Depression, and his mother, raising Kalcic and his sister without the assistance of their father, was constantly working and couldn't spend time with her young children.
“She wasn't there to take care of us,” he said. “We went there primarily because she wasn't home. We'd run the streets. She put us in the orphanage supposedly as daycare.”
But after working 12-hour days, “she was too tired to get us,” he said. “We stayed there around 99 percent of the time.”
Kalcic lived at the orphanage from 1933 until 1941, when he completed eighth grade.
Kids had to leave the orphanage by the time they turned 14.
“I was on the street for a long time,” he said.
But a whole new world opened to the teen when he joined the Merchant Marines and began training on Catalina Island — an experience he described as “wondrous.”
There were a few not-so-wonderful experiences, however.
“We had to jump off a pier into burning water,” he said. “They would set oil on fire,” in the water.
The men learned how to extricate themselves from the blaze by pushing the water aside as they swam to the surface — creating a “hole” to swim through as they emerged.
“And pray in the process,” Kalcic said. “It was scary. The whole service — from start to finish — was scary.”
Kalcic, who also qualified as a lifeboat captain while training on Catalina Island, was assigned to the Liberty ship SS Hiram Bingham, a heavily armed cargo vessel that carried food, clothing, deck cargo including trucks and tanks — and servicemen.
Four U.S. Coast Guardsmen manned the guns, but merchant marines also were trained to fire if “God forbid something should happen to the coast guards,” he said.
The men shipped out from Wilmington, bound for the South Pacific, picking up and dropping off cargo in locations including Samar and Leyte in the Philippines.
“It was awesome,” Kalcic said of his first trip across the ocean in the 400-foot-long Liberty ship. “I'd never (even) been in a rowboat.”
The merchant seaman crew took turns on watch — four hours on and eight hours off.
Kalcic said they'd been warned that two-men submarines could be lurking in the area where they were operating in the Philippines.
“I was at my gun emplacement many times waiting for attacks,” he said. “That was the fear — especially at night.”
When Kalcic and the crew of the SS Hiram Bingham stopped at the island of Samar to pick up a shipload of U.S. Navy Seabees for a return trip to the States, New York Yankees shortstop Phil Rizzuto, a Navy officer, was among those to come aboard.
Rizzuto didn't let his rank set him apart from the other men.
“He did not flaunt it at all,” Kalcic said. “He refused to stay with the officers. He stayed with the enlisted men. He was a common human being that enjoyed anybody and everybody.”
Rizzuto organized deck games for his men, using tightly rolled socks for a ball.
“They played baseball on board,” Kalcic said.
The teen steered clear of trouble during his overseas tour of duty.
“I made all the bars, but I did escape the tattoo parlors — and the ‘other' places,” he said. “I was a good boy — until I got to Mobile, Alabama.”
