Valor Friday

As we passed once again the “date that will live in infamy”, I’d like to highlight one of the people that was there. Reverend Howell Forgy of Philadelphia.

Howell “How” Forgy was a physically imposing man. At 6’2” and 200 pounds, in high school he’d been a standout football player. He was even on the West Philadelphia High School team when they won a championship and continued playing football at Muskingum College (now Muskingum University) in Ohio. His family and friends knew of his intention to join the clergy and they jokingly called him “Father Forgy.”

Forgy attended Princeton Theological Seminary, graduating in 1937 and was ordained in the Presbyterian Church. His first church assignment was to Ft. Collins, Colorado. He soon was sent to Murray, Kentucky, a small rural city in the far southwestern part of the state.

Arriving in Murray, How found “nine Presbyterians, very little money and a great desire to build a church.” While there, he built up that church. By 1940 they had a church building, an active congregation of 150 souls, and Forgy had met his future wife Louise Morgan when she sang in the choir.

He was remembered by one of his original congregants, Mrs. Jessie Rogers, as a “dynamic minister, elegant in his speaking.” She said he “became well known and well liked in his associations not only with his congregations but with the other churches and ministers in the city.” Before leaving Murray, How had earned another degree, this time from the Murray State Teacher’s College, Kentucky.

Soon though, the world was once again at war. As Forgy watched, Germany marched across Europe and Japan across the Pacific Rim. At age 32, in 1940, Forgy volunteered his services as a chaplain to the Navy. His place was with America’s young men should they too join the war. At that time, even the staunchest of isolationists realized it was only a matter of time before the US entered the war.

Forgy’s first and most fateful fleet assignment was to the cruiser USS New Orleans (CA-32), stationed out of Pearl Harbor, Hawaii Territory.

New Orleans was the lead ship of her class. The class were the last cruisers the US built according to the Washington Treaty of 1922, which limited ship tonnage and other characteristics. Despite this, the 588 foot long ship with a crew of nearly 1,000 men and officers was formidable. Carrying nine 8” guns, eight 5” anti-aircraft guns, eight .50-caliber machine guns, and a complement of four floatplanes, she was no slouch.

Early in the morning on 7 December, 1941, the chaplain was lying in his bunk. Looking out the small window in his room he saw a beautiful, clear morning. It was Sunday morning. Being peacetime and at port, most of the officers and men of New Orleans were ashore, recovering from a night of drinking, dancing, and merriment.

As Forgy lied there thinking about his morning’s sermon the ship suddenly shuddered. The ship’s turbines were offline. The boilers and their turbines were down for most ships at dock except for USS Nevada (BB-36), which the OOD Ensign Taussig had earlier lit a second boiler. This allowed Nevada, which wasn’t docked adjacent to any other ships, to be the only battleship to get underway during the battle. Taussig would receive the Navy Cross for his actions that day, but Nevada was soon scuttled as it succumbed to battle damage.

As the New Orleans shuddered, Forgy probably initially thought it was something to do with ship’s maintenance. Many heavy repair tasks or preventive measures are conducted at port. Instead he was putting together his sermon, the topic being “We Reach Forward.”

The sermon was to be based on Paul’s advice to forget “those things which are behind” while “reaching forth unto those things which are before.” Forgy was going to use Paul’s words to remind the sailors that their “fate lay in the days ahead and not in those that had passed.”

The shuddering wasn’t routine maintenance. The battle stations claxon sounded and, immediately the ship’s 1MC (intercom or public address system to those with dry feet) blared, calling men to battle stations. The claxon wailed as the ship’s speakers announced, “All hands to battle stations! All hands to battle stations! This is no drill! This is no drill!” Similar messages were going out across the docked Pacific Fleet as the first wave of Japanese aircraft commenced their attack. It was just before 0800 hours.

Forgy ran to his battlestation, in sickbay, and asked the doctor, “Is this for real?” The sounds of battle outside announced that it was indeed real. The chaplain asked and received permission to go topside.

As the young minister walked out the hatch and onto the deck, one of the Japanese aircraft buzzed right overhead. Enemy bullets were ricocheting off the hull nearby. Forgy said, “I did a jig down the deck” to avoid the enemy rounds pinging all around.

Looking over all the mighty American warships so heavily under siege, Forgy just then saw “what was to remain the most shocking sight in my whole life.” Nearby, lined up with the other battleships, the pride of the Pacific Fleet, USS Arizona (BB-39) suddenly exploded.

To say Arizona exploded is a bit of an understatement in point of fact. An enemy bomb had gotten very lucky. It pierced the top deck’s armor plating near turret two, striking down several decks, and into the ship’s magazine, where the powder for its massive main guns was stored. The resultant explosion immediately cleaved the ship open like a clam, nearly cutting the whole bow of the ship off.

I’m sure in that moment, Chaplain Forgy’s mind went from “Oh, shit” to “Oh, fuck” right quick. This wasn’t just a battle. This was a battle they were losing.

The loudspeaker announced that “the man with the keys to the ammunition locker to lay (go) below!” It would seem the man with the keys to the ship’s ammunition had gone ashore, the critical keys still in his pocket.

Then-Lieutenant Edwin Woodhead (later a captain) was nearby Forgy. Just then a Japanese plane went down aflame, into the water. Forgy exclaimed, “We got one of those sons of bitches!” Woodhead ordered the men to break into the ammunition lockers.

Forgy helped as the men and officers used fire axes to bust into the stores. The ship’s electrical system was down (it took some time for these systems to be spun up) and they’d lost their connection to shore power. This meant the ammunition hoists weren’t functional, as they were electrical. In order to get the munitions up to the guns, Forgy and Woodhead organized the men into a bucket brigade of sorts, handing ammunition up from man to man.

Forgy, a large man whose football training and experience led him to instinctually want to hoist the large 5” shells (weighing more than 50 pounds each) himself, was suddenly reminded of his training. “A chaplain cannot fire a gun or take material part in a battle,” He recalled.

The chaplain did what he could as he moved down the line, encouraging the men. Forgy later said, “I guess I used unchaplainlike language because afterward on the well deck of our cruiser I overheard a couple of boys say, ‘Chaplains can cuss like a bo’sun mate when they have to’.”

“Minutes turned to hours,” Forgy wrote. “Physical exhaustion was coming to every man in the human endless-chain of that ammunition line. They struggled on. They could keep going only by keeping faith in their hearts. I slapped their wet, sticky backs and shouted, ‘Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition.'”

Word spread quickly of the chaplain’s quick turn of phrase. Perhaps the shortest sermon of all time, it became one of the more famous lines in American naval history. It’s easily as recognizable as “I have not yet begun to fight” and “Damn the torpedoes…Full speed ahead!” Within months, a song would be written by Frank Loesser (who donated proceeds from the song to the Navy Relief Society). It was one of the biggest musical hits of the war;

Down went the gunner, and the gunner’s mate

Up jumped the sky pilot, gave the boys a look

And manned the gun himself as he laid aside the Book, shouting

“Praise the Lord, and pass the ammunition! Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition!

“Praise the Lord, and pass the ammunition and we’ll all stay free!”

At the end of the Japanese Navy’s second attack an hour later, USS New Orleans had, despite several crew being wounded, survived with no major damage. The ship and crew, Chaplain Forgy included, continued their service in the Pacific Fleet during those threadbare early days of the war in the Eastern Hemisphere.

Months after Pearl Harbor, Forgy and the crew learned about Loesser’s song. At that time the identity of the man who coined the phrase was unknown. The crew of New Orleans would chide their padre that he should come forward. Reluctant to do so, he said, “the episode should remain a legend rather than be associated with a particular person.”

Soon though the press talked to the crewmen involved in the “pass the ammunition” incident. This led them to Chaplain How Forgy. Soon the Navy allowed him to be interviewed directly, putting the rest in the history books.

Forgy was returned to the states for several months to do interviews, including a 1943 piece in Time Magazine. He’d seen seven battles in total before he was pulled from the front lines for his public relations duties. He wrote And Pass the Ammunition, his memoirs about the war, in 1944. It became a bestseller.

By war’s end, USS New Orleans would earn 17 battle stars (tied with her sister USS Minneapolis (CA-36) for fourth most ever of a US warship). Five members of her crew would receive the Navy Cross, ten the Silver Star, and 206 the Purple Heart.

USS New Orleans had participated in the sea Battles of the Coral Sea, Midway, Eastern Solomons, and Tassafaronga (where her bow was completely blown off, but the crew limped her safely to port sailing backwards!).

After her refit, she was sent back out to bombard Wake Island, the Gilberts, Kwajalein, Hollandia, Truk, Satawan, Saipan, Iwo Jima, Palaus, Okinawa, Formosa, and Northern Luzon. After the sea Battle of Leyte Gulf, she was sent for another refit, and sailed in time to join her final battle, shelling the Japanese positions during the Invasion of Okinawa.

How Forgy would leave the Navy in 1946 at the rank of Commander. He went back to the Presbyterian Church, becoming pastor at a church in Hollister, California. By 1959 he’d been afflicted with arthritis and then had a stroke which confined him to a wheelchair for the rest of his life. He was only 51.

After that, Forgy and his wife retired to Glendora, Arizona. He served as chairman of the Pearl Harbor Survivor’s Association in the early 1960’s. He passed away in 1972, two days after his 64th birthday. He was survived by his wife Louise (1917-1996), daughter Joan, and sons Michael, Howell and David. It appears as if Michael is the only one who had joined his father, having died in 2002.

Category: Historical, Navy, Valor, We Remember