It's twelve midnight - December 7 - 8 - Pearl Harbor Day and my dad's birthday.
I decided to start another blog devoted just to this topic because I now have quite a list of combat heroes I've written about over the years, beginning with Ed Hill.
ED HILL - CAPE MAY'S FORGOTTEN HERO
Ed Hill didn't start it all, but he's a good place to start because it was my quest to find out who Ed Hill was that led to this.
Shortly after I first moved to Cape May city the first time, I left the Ugly Mug, walked across the Washington Sreet Mall and ducked down an alley way that led to the parking lot.
And there between the buildings, the Mall and the parking lot, is a monument to Ed Hill, who died on December 7, 1941, at Pearl Harbor, and was from Cape May, New Jersey.
So I went over to the VFW and had a few beers with my veteran friends, but nobody ever heard of Ed Hill, even the WWII vets, mostly retired and on vacation.
Then I started asking around town, locals in the winter even, had never heard of Ed Hill, even though there was a monument to him on the Mall, which said he had died at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, and a brief citation of his participation in the battle.
I made a mental note of it and thought that it would make a good story for the 50th anniversary of Pearl Harbor in December 1991, so a few months earlier I started research again, reading books, calling every Hill in the phone book, poking around the neighborhood, checking out old newsclips, and tracking down a few people who knew Ed Hill and served with him aboard the USS Nevada, the only battleship to get underway during the attack.
I wrote a story "Ed Hill - Cape May's Forgotton Hero," that James Fitzpatrick ran in the Cape May Star & Wave newspaper, which stimulated some response, including a letter from Hill's widow in California, and other members of Hill's family who used to live in Cape May.
It turns out the Hill family owned the Windsor Hotel on Congress Street, next to Congress Hall. The Hills owned the Windsor for quite awhile, and also lived in Philadelphia, where young Ed Hill went to school. But he learned how to sail in Cape May, kept a sailboat at the landing, and became a career Navy man.
At some point the Windsor was purchased by Rev. Carl MacIntyire, who also purchased a number of other hotels and buildings in town. The Windsor however, burned to the ground, a fire said to have been arson, but a case that was never solved, though all the locals who lived there at the time know what happened.
Ed Hill was a Boatswain, Chief Boatswain, the officer in charge of all deck activities. They say he was the best Chief Boatswain in the Navy - ever.
At the time of the attack on Pearl Harbor Ed Hill was overseeing the raising of the colors on the fantail of his ship the USS Nevada.
The band had begun to play the "Star Spangled Banner" and the flag was slowly raised when a Japanese Zero flew over low, it's 50 caliber machine guns ripping up the teak wood deck, but strangely, nobody moved. The band kept playing and the flag kept rising and the sailors stood at attention, but nobody moved until the band picked up the tempo for the last refrain and people started diving for cover.
Except Ed Hill.
He unlocked the ammo storage shed and ordered the anti-aircraft gun ammo be distributed, then grabbed a machette sword and walked down the length of the deck cutting the lines that held an awning that obstructed the machine guns and anti-aircraft guns so they could begin returning fire immediately.
Then he surveyed the situation, and saw that the airplane that peppered the Nevada's deck had dropped a torpedo that hit the USS Arizona, docked adjacent to the Nevada.
Getting on the deck intercom phone Hill talked with the senior officer at the helm, a Lieutenant Commander, the lowest ranking officer was the skipper because the Captain was ashore.
This Lt. Commander, fresh out of Annapolis, was on his first assignment, and given command while the half dozen more senior officers went ashore.
When I learned this Lt. Commander of the USS Nevada, who had earned the Congressional Medal of Honor for what he did that day, was still alive, I got his phone number in Maryland and called him.
Did he remember Ed Hill?
Did he remember Ed Hill. When two guys on the same ship earn the Medal of Honor in the same battle, do you think they knew each other.
Of course he knew Ed Hill, one of the finest Chief Boatswaine in the US Navy, possibly ever.
Ed Hill was responsible for the deck action, while the Lt. Commander was in charge of the ship.
When he first took over the helm of the Nevada a few hours earlier, he explained, he ordered a second engine fired up.
A battleship takes a few hours to get its engines hot enough to move the ship, and while it usually keeps one engine running to power electricity, firing up the second engine was unusual for a ship docked in port, especially on a sleepy Sunday morning.
As the Lt. Commander explained to me, besides being a boy scout and "always prepared," the officer in charge of the boiler room had been one of his mechanical enginnering teachers at Annapolis, and the former student wanted to let his ex-teacher know who was now at the helm and calling the shots. So he ordered the second engine in the boiler room fired up and two hours later, when the attack came, the engine room was already up and running, the only battleship in the harbor in that condition.
So in the first few minutes of the attack, the officers aboard quickly got together and the Lt. Commander's question was, "Can we get underway?"
And Hill, after checking with the engine room, and with less than half a crew, responded in the affirmative.
As noted in his Medal of Honor citation, Hill went ashore with a party that cut away the quays that held the Nevada to the dock, the last ship on Battleship Row, and the Nevada slowly drifted away from the shore.
And Ed Hill dove in and swam after it. He wasn't going to miss out on this sorte.
That's what it was technically, a sorte.
The Navy still calls it the Sorte of the Nevada, listed as the first offensive action taken by a US Navy ship in World War II.
The Nevada pulled around and sailed alongside Battleship Row, the Nevada gunners witnessing the sinking of the Arizona and Oklahoma and Utah, as huge explosions ripped through the flaming battleship, sitting ducks in the harbor.
But the Nevada was underway, its machine guns and anti-aircraft guns popping away, the Stars & Stripes flying clearly from the fantail, the sight of which was said to have inspired everyone in the harbor.
The Nevada also got the attention of the Japanese fighters, most of which now carried bombs rather than torpedoes, and ignoring their primary targets - the oil tanks and the dry docks, and went after the Nevada, a higher value target instead.
Only a carrier was ranked higher, but most of the Japanese bombs fell harmlessly alongside the moving battleship, which appeared as a vulnuerable target but was elusive. And in retrospect, the primary targets they failed to destroy - the oil yards and the dry docks, proved invaluable in the restoration of the fleet in the wake of the attack.
The Captain of the Nevada, who was on shore, saw his ship steaming down the harbor without him, and had flag signals order the ship not to leave the harbor. As the Nevada was now the central target of every zero in the harbor area, it was taking quite a beating, and the admiral brass correctly assessed how bad it would be if the Nevada was sunk at the harbor entrance, creating a bottleneck they had to avoid.
So they steered the Nevada over towards Hospital Point, where it ran aground in the soft sandy shouls. Chief Boatswain Hill himself ran forward to the bow and began to lower the anchor as a lone Japanese Zero dove in, ripping the deck with machine gun bullets and droping a bomb that exploded next to Hill, knocking him into the water.
His body washed ashore the next day, and Ed Hill is burried in a plot overlooking Pearl Harbor near Hospital Point, now called Nevada Point.
Ed Hill - Cape May's forgotten Hero.
Kelly's First Combat Hero.
More to come.
