LARRY BOOTH
Age: 88
Born: Nov. 23, 1922
Hometown: San Francisco
Residence: La Quinta
Military branch: U.S. Navy; SS King S. Woolsey; SS John B. Kendrick; Mandarin, C2 (all-purpose cargo ship)
Years served: 1942-1945
Rank: Signalman second class
Family: Wife Lynn; four children, Brad Booth of Redwood City, Barbara Matrules of La Honda, Doug Booth of San Diego and Carolyn Santo of Palo Alto; six 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 Wednesday
Desert Sun reporter Denise Goolsby is on vacation for Thanksgiving. Her veteran profiles will continue Wednesday with U.S. Marine Corps veteran Dorothee Irwin of Palm Springs.
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U.S. Navy veteran Larry Booth served as an armed guard aboard merchant marine ships in the Atlantic, Mediterranean and Pacific oceans during World War II.
The merchant marine transported massive amounts of supplies, troops, equipment and other materials to support the Allied war effort.
The Navy armed guards were responsible for defending these civilian-operated ships from enemy attack, serving as gunners, signalmen and radiomen, among other duties. Booth's military career began when he and a couple of buddies decided to join the Navy.
“Three of us went down to sign up,” he said.
But their paths quickly veered in different directions. Joe Bertrand was redirected to the Army and Al Bolander was tapped to be a Navy corpsman with the U.S. Marine Corps.
Booth was often aboard ships that could best be described as floating time bombs.
“We mostly carried ammunition,” he said. “I was watching one time. They were putting steel drums of aviation test gasoline” below deck.
After filling the hold with gas, planks were placed over the steel drums and another layer of supplies added on top.
“They started loading ammunition and bombs. After they closed up the decks, they would put trucks and Caterpillars and tractors. And all that stuff would be loaded on top of the gas drums.”
Booth served as a signalman and gunner aboard the merchant vessels.
“My job was communications,” he said.
With rows of ships traveling in a convoy, the signalmen — flashing out Morse code with their spotlights — kept in constant communication to ensure the ships moved or changed course in unison.
“During the African campaign, we were in the Mediterranean. We went behind the torpedo nets into the bay there at Gibraltar. We picked up some of (German Field Marshal Erwin) Rommel's men — POWs — in Gibraltar.”
“We were tied up to the dock,” he explained. “The other ship was tied up to us.”
While waiting there on the coast, “We looked east and we could see dust rising,” he said. “It was our Army guarding hundreds of prisoners.”
There were German and Italian prisoners. The Italians marched across Booth's vessel and boarded the other ship.
During this operation, Booth's eyes were drawn to an Italian officer.
“A top-ranking officer, tall nice-looking. He had a hat that was a beauty.”
One of the officers aboard Booth's ship was a memorabilia collector and wanted desperately to work out a trade for the elegant military headgear. A cook aboard ship who spoke Italian began sending messages from the U.S. officer to the Italian officer.
“The negotiations began,” Booth said. “But no matter how high the stakes were, he wasn't interested.”
Finally, the cook came up with a plan. He whipped up a big platter of spaghetti and sauce and passed it over to the Italian officer.
As the platter was passed overhead from man to man across the ship, each man stuck his nose above the plate and smelled the aroma, Booth said.
When the big mound of pasta reached its destination, the officer couldn't resist the close-to-home-cooked meal. As soon as the plate was delivered, Booth watched as the coveted cappello retraced the path of the pasta.
“And back comes the hat,” Booth said, laughing.
Once the Italians were situated, about 50 prisoners from Rommel's Afrika Corps came aboard Booth's ship. “We didn't have bunks for them or anything,” he said.
But there was room in the hold, which had been filled with gas, bombs and other materials that had been unloaded.
“We'd be going back empty. Instead, we had this load of prisoners,” he said.
Booth was later assigned to a merchant marine ship in the Pacific, delivering ammunition and supplies to locations including Papua, New Guinea; Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands; and Manila in the Philippines.
Booth and his two buddies were reunited on Guadalcanal.
When Booth arrived, he heard his friend, the Navy corpsman, might be stationed on the island. After bumming a ride ashore, he did some inquiring, and found out the Marines were just down the coast.
He walked down to the shore and met up with his old friend Al Bolander, who was watching some ships from the Japanese Navy sail through the straits near Guadalcanal.
“He said, ‘Hey! You're just in time for lunch.'” Booth grabbed a plate of food and sat cross-legged in his buddy's pup tent, located just feet from the straits.
All of a sudden, a blast — the Marines were shelling the Japanese ships — caught Booth off guard — just as he was shovelling a forkful of food into his mouth.
“I stabbed myself inside of my cheek,” he said, laughing.
As it turned out, an Army outfit was stationed down on the other end of the coast.
While walking in that direction, they came across a shed with the APO (Army Post Office) number of Joe Bertrand's group. They soon came upon their old friend.
“He's standing out there on the edge of the water taking pictures,” Booth said. “The reunion — it was an unbelievable experience. We were standing down by the shore talking all at once. There's times you forget there was a war going on,” he added.
Standing in the open, they suddenly realized they were an easy target for the Japanese ships lurking in the straits.
“We said, ‘Let's move over near the trees,'” Booth said, laughing at the memory.
Booth graduated from the University of California, Davis in 1948. The landscape architect worked on projects that included designing landscape for Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas.
