Oliver James "Jim" Spriggs: Machinist's Mate 3/c

At 8 a.m., I was waiting in chow line. The line was long, so to pass the time we were watching some very large fish that were swimming along side of the ship. I think they were sharks. I thought to myself, I wouldn't want to be in the water with that bunch, not realizing that in a very short time, it was probably the safest place to be.

When G.Q. went off, I went to my battle station in the after fire room. Suddenly, all hell broke loose and we could hear the five-inch guns firing, then the 40s and very shortly, the 20mm fire. By that time, the kamikazes were almost ready to hit the ship. It wasn't a very quieting feeling.

When a plane would hit the ship, I wasn't so concerned with my own safety as I was with the shipmates who were on deck. In fact, I was too busy to think about it other than to wonder who got hurt.

My friend, Jack Ballenger (Fireman 1/c) was wounded bad. I have been told that when he was taken to sickbay, the men helping him laid him on a footlocker in the passageway. Another fellow, striker Henry Benson (Engineering Mate 3/c) was laying along side of him. Benson, who had been hit throught he neck by a 50 caliper slug, was strangling. Jack, who was almost dying himself, massaged Benson's neck, trying to keep him alive.

Ballenger was recommended for the Silver Star, but since he was transferred from hsopital to hospital, the paperwork never caught up with him. He died January 26, 1995. I think he should get the Silver Star posthumously.

During all that was happening, I went across the shaft alley to put a bilge pump on the line to pump water. As I was going past the No. 3 boiler, the 1st Class water tender said, "Kick that so-and-so." It so happened that the fellow who was operating the burners had frozen with fear, and the water tender couldn't get him to move. I gave him a good kick in the posterior. That did
the job, because he was so mad, all he could think of was returning the favor.

The first hit, our rudder jammed hard left. The only way we could maneuver to try to get the planes that were diving on us to miss, was to change speeds or reverse direction to throw the pilots' aim off. We also tried to make smoke from the boilers so the ship could get under it and the pilots couldn't see us well enough to fire on the ship. With all the changes going on, it kept all the people in the No. 2 fire room very busy making sure we kept up the steam pressure for whatever was needed to save our ship.

While we were under attack, I had a set of powered phones on for part of the time. I could listen in on what was happening topside. I would then relay information to other people, and sometimes we could get a little jump on what we needed to do.

After the attack, a ship came along side to help us. I think they took our wounded off. I didn't know h9ow badf Jack Ballenger was wounded, so I sent him a pair of dungarees with a dollar in the pocket. That's supposed to be a good omen for a stricken shipmate. Jack was wounded in the right leg and buttocks and his right hand was crippled.

As we had no steering, the other ship would try to keep the Laffey from turning while we went forward on the port screw and backed down on the other one to try to make forward progress.

When the other ship bumped us, it felt as if the Laffey was going to capsize. We were waterlogged as the after compartments were flooded. It didn't feel as if we were going to right ourselves. I think that was when I was the most scared.

This operation failed and we had to wait on a tug to tow us.

It took 24 hours to get to Buckner Bay on Okinawa. Sometime the next day, I was in the passageway by the ship's office. Our yeoman saw me and asked where I had been. There had been a muster of all hands to see who was missing so they could account for everyone. Since I had missed the muster, he reported me as missing in action. He had already sent the report to command. He said he would try to get me taken off the list, but wasn't able to.

I almost beat home the telegram telling my parents that I was missing in action. They received it the day before I got home on leave. My mother said she knew I would be home soon.

When we arrived in Seattle, I was on the first leave party so I didn't have time to send a telegram to my folks. When we got to Boise, Idaho, we got a newspaper and the front page headline was the story about the Laffey, with pictures of all the damage. Jack Williams and I felt that we should let our folks know we were okay. We gave a porter who was getting off at the stop five dollars each to send a telegram for us. I guess he kept the money and didn't send the telegrams. Our folks didn't hear from us until we walked through the door.

Back in Okinawa, it had taken a better part of a week to patch the ship together so that we could get under way for home. I can't remember the exact day we got under way. It was a somewhat sad occasion when we did set sail because we were leaving so many shipmates and good buddies behind. I don't think there were many of us who didn't breath a sigh of relief that we were leaving Okinawa.

On the way back to the States, somewhere between Ulithi and Pearl Harbor, one of the patches on the port side came loose. We started taking on water. Since we were by ourselves, we asked for assistance from a group of fleet tankers that were about 12 or 14 miles away. They ignored us and kept on going West to where we had just come from. We managed to control the leak and made it to Pearl, where we went into dry dock for repairs. That was a good thing because we hit a pretty bad storm before getting into Seattle.