Friday, October 15, 2010 Chattanooga Times Free Press
BY Jessie GABLE
Staff writer
Tom Fike still chuckles a little when he talks about his days aboard the USS Silverbell during World War II.
Fike was a net tender sailor who installed metal nets around the U.S. coastlines to keep out submarines and torpedoes.
"We didn't have time to think about [fear]," said Fike, 91. "We
had lots of responsibility, but good training and a good ship."
Fike was one of about 30 veterans and widows who I came to Chattanooga from
all over the country Thursday for the All Navy Net , Tender/Net Layer Reunion.
They gathered to remember their time aboard the ships and the buddies they've
lost since then.
Taken from the Homeward Bound Pennant, a modified Commissioning Pennant, authorized to be flown by any US Navy Ship returning from a deployment of nine months or more. The blue field with stars indicates the number of months deployed (one star for each month) and the red and white portion indicates the number of crew deployed aboard her for nine months or more (one foot for each member... not to exceed the length of the ship).
On reaching any United States port the Homeward Bound Pennant is taken down and replaced with a normal Commissioning Pennant. The Homeward Bound Pennant is then cut up with sections of the blue field with stars given to the Officers and sections of the red and white portion given to the Enlisted Men.
The Homeward Bound Project recognizes those of our group who have completed their "deployment on Earth and are now Homeward Bound"
Homeward Bound Memorial Service
Our members lost since our last Reunion
They boarded the Delta Queen river boat, a Chattanooga landmark that served as a net tender in San Francisco Bay from 1941 to 1945 [temporary barracks during the building of the Tiburon Net and Boom School and Net Depot following Pearl Harbor and various other duties for the Navy in San Francisco Bay during the war], and stood silently as a bugle played taps and the "Navy Hymn." special to the net tenders, spokesman Leroy Jones said.
Net-tender boats were 150 feet from bow to stern and had a large apparatus on the front end used to drop the nets, Fike said. We got razzed a good deal about their appearance," Fike said. "We bonded. We became very well acquainted. There was some discipline, but our men worked well together, and there was real camaraderie."
Still, the group is dwindling as more members die each year.
Joan Patrick, 81, cried silently as she tossed a wreath into the Tennessee River to memorialize her late husband, Reginald, who served as a net tender at the Pacific island of Saipan during World War II and died Oct. 13, 2009.
When the wreath hit the water, her husband and 10 other sailors who died in recent years were "committed to the sea" in a longtime Navy tradition that symbolized a burial at sea, Jones said.
Patrick said she felt she had to come to the reunion to honor her husband.
"He didn't say too much when he came home from war," Patrick said. "He was just happy to be home."
