Melvin E. Breweer, U.S. Navy Reserve

Military service of Melvin Elliott Brewer, U. S. Navy Reserve, November 17, 1942 to November 12, 1945. I served in the Naval Construction Battalions (Seabees) on Guadalcanal in the South Pacific, and at Port Hueneme, California after returning from Guadalcanal. I attained the rank of Carpenter's Mate, Second Class.

The following events are excerpts from a draft I have begun for an autobiography. The first is related to my military service; in that it is the reason I joined the U. S. Navy during World War ll. I was a student at Moody Bible Institute at that time.

In October, 1942, my roommate, Tom Harfst, and another friend, Nevin Beehler, and I felt constrained to pray diligently about whether or not we should enlist. We had an all night prayer meeting in our room. I have never been in such a meeting since. We prayed, read scripture, prayed, read scripture, and prayed some more. As the kids would say today, it was awesome. It seemed that the Lord was standing right there in the room with us. As a result, two of us, Nevin and I, felt we should enlist. Tom was later drafted, so we all served during the war.

The morning after the prayer meeting, I was discussing it with another friend, Rader Hawkins, son of W. E. Hawkins, who had a gospel radio program in Dallas for many years. I still was unsure about what I should do, and Rader told me, "Elliott (I was not called Mel until I was in the Navy), if the Lord wants you to go, He will show you from His word." The main things I was concerned about were two: (1) the fear of coming home maimed and having to be waited on the rest of my life. I was not afraid of dying; I knew I would be with the Lord and (2) what might become of my parents if I were not around after the war to help take care of them as they grew older.

I went to my room and read a devotional book, which I normally used, and the scripture for that day was taken from Psalm 91. I read the entire Psalm, and two verses stood out as the answer to my prayer: Verses 7 and 8: "A thousand shall fall at thy side, and ten thousand at thy right hand; but it shall not come nigh thee. Only with thine eyes shalt thou behold and see the reward of the wicked." Verses 7 and 8 told me that I would be protected, and verse I 0 told me that my home would be protected. Both of these verses were literally fulfilled in my military experience.

I enlisted in the U. S. Navy Seabees on November 17, 1942, and was called for duty on December 18, 1942. I went through boot camp in Virginia and was then sent all the way across the country to Port Hueneme (pronounced Y-nee-mee) near Oxnard, California. We shipped out for the South Pacific on March 9, 1943, less than three months from the time I went into the Navy.

On board ship going overseas, I had the following experience: In the army, one was assigned K.P. (kitchen police) duty as a form of punishment. In the Navy, K.P. was just another assignment. Because of my vast experience washing dishes (at Moody, I guess), I seemed to draw more than my share of K.P. duty. That was my last assignment just before we left Port Hueneme, and I drew it again on board ship just a few days out of San Diego. There we worked for thirteen hours a day. But God's word says in Romans 8:28 that God can take any event and make good come from it for those who are called according to His purpose. That was certainly true in this case, for after being assigned to the scullery (that's where the pots and pans were scrubbed), I met Glen Dayton, a Christian buddy. We were scrubbing away when one of us, I forget which, began to sing a hymn. The other immediately recognized it, and we learned that we were both Christians. Glen later introduced me to C. O. (Chuck) Wilson who had already met W. E. (Wib) Felton and we four became best friends for the remainder of our lives.

On May 11, 1943, we arrived at Guadalcanal. The battle for the island had ended in February, but there were still machine gun emplacements on the beach, and there were lots of Japanese snipers left on the island. That first day, all we did was unload our gear. The captain of our transport ship had been subject to enemy action there on a previous trip, and he told our officers that he was leaving at 6:00 p.m. to circle around in the open ocean. Anyone on board the ship at that time would have to spend the night on the ship. Some of our men were caught in that situation, but they had a better place to sleep than the rest of us. We slept under the stars on the beach. We had an air raid alert that first night, but no damage was done.

The next day we moved up the island about a mile from where we landed, and started to build our camp. I do not remember how it happened, but due to my drafting experience, I was chosen to work with the camp construction officer and I drew the plans for our buildings. This job did not last very long, of course, and the last building I designed was a darkroom for the battalion photographer. Then he and I built it. Because of my work on building the camp, I was promoted to Carpenter's Mate Third Class. They did not have a designation for a draftsman, but since my work was related to carpentry, I was given that rating. All the other men working in construction had been reassigned to other tasks. By this time, also, the four operating companies had been formed into groups called stevedore gangs. These were the men whose job it was to load and unload ships. This was a blessing for me, as I did not have to do the manual labor of loading and unloading cargo.

I was then assigned to operate a pontoon barge, and later a 50 foot tugboat. On an occasion I was in a position where I needed desperately for a towline to break. I had been ordered to move a 1,OOO ton barge loaded with ammunition from behind the crossbar of one of the T-shaped piers out into the bay where a sea-going tug could take it to another island. I met with the captain of the tug first, and we decided where he would position his vessel. I was to move the barge to a position alongside his tug, as he preferred to move it in that position rather than on a towline. I hooked my towline to the barge and started to tow it. I had never handled anything that heavy before, and my little 250 horsepower engine churned and churned the water before the barge began to move. Once it did move, however, inertia kept it going. I had managed to turn it so that it was headed toward the large tug, but as we moved, I was unable to stop its movement. Normally, we simply backed our tug toward what we were pulling, taking in the tow line as we moved, and with padding on the rear of the tug gently moved against the barge and accelerated the engine to stop the barge.

That did not work in this case, as the tugboat's engine was too small to stop the forward motion of such a heavy barge. I realized that I would not be able to stop it, so I changed gears to forward, turned my wheel to the right and did a 180 degree turn, which placed me alongside the barge and right up against it. I now accelerated the engine in forward gear, using the better forward motion power to try to stop the barge. Now, it was moving the stern of my boat directly toward the rudder of the large tug. I could see that if I hit the larger ship, I would not only damage its rudder, but would also split my little wooden boat in two, sinking it.

I hollered to Henry Link, my assistant, to run below and get an ax to chop the towline in two. In spite of all the things I had to do at that time, I was also praying. Just about the time Link came back up on deck with the ax, the towline parted. By this time, I had changed the direction of the barge enough, and slowed its motion enough, that it moved smoothly alongside the large tug, and its men jumped onto it and secured it to the larger ship. I circled around and came back alongside the barge, and I heard a lot of cheering. I looked up, and the men on the deck of the sea-going tug, who had been watching the whole thing, were cheering me. I had placed the barge exactly where the captain of the other tug wanted. But it was not done the way I had planned!

In thinking back on this experience after my nerves had calmed somewhat, I realized that God h ad answered my prayer. On another occasion when I tried to break a well-worn towline, it took several jerks on the line before it broke. This time I was using a new line, and there were no jerks; it was a steady pull, and lines do not normally break when there is a steady pull on them. Nevertheless, this was one of those occasions when God literally kept me in safety as He had promised me He would back in Chicago.

Jim Smith, a man I had known at Moody Bible Institute, was a First Class Quartermaster (navigator) on a small ship that carried mail and supplies among the various islands in the South Pacific. His ship only had about fifty men on it, and because he had some Bible training, he also served somewhat as a volunteer Chaplain. When I learned his overseas address, and I realized that his ship came in to Guadalcanal frequently, I left word with some of our men to notify me the next time it came in. On a day, I learned that it was there and went down to see if Jim was aboard, and he was. We had a great reunion, and every time he came to Guadalcanal after that, we got together. One time he came on the day we were having a Bible study, and 1 was able to get him to speak to our group that night. We developed a close friendship, and since he was also engaged to a girl from Moody, we made a pact that the first one to get back to the states would go see the other's fiancée. 1 happened to get back first, and Winkie and 1 went to Ponca City, Oklahoma, as our honeymoon, to see Nona Lee Lockwood. (Not too many newlyweds go to Ponca City for their honeymoon!) They too were married when he came home for overseas. Incidentally, Jim became a Baptist pastor, and was at one time President of the Brotherhood of the Southern Baptist Convention.

Christian fellowship was greatly lacking on Guadalcanal. When possible, Glen, Chuck, Wib and I would get together, but most of the time we worked different shifts. I remember Easter, 1944, when I attended four church services and worked a full shift as well. For one service we even borrowed our Chaplain's jeep to go to another Chaplain's service several miles away.

After Winkie and 1 were married and returned to California, I was transferred to duty at Port Hueneme for the remainder of my Navy time. We attended the First Baptist Church in Oxnard, where I often led the music on Sunday nights. Because I had left the Methodist Church after 1 was saved, joining Scofield Memorial Church in 1941, and because 1 had concluded while on Guadalcanal that 1 should be baptized by immersion, we asked Dr. Main, the pastor, to baptize us together. Winkie had been baptized in a Baptist church as a child before she fully understood salvation, and she felt she should be baptized again as well. Therefore, on a Sunday night, Dr. Main allowed us to give our personal testimonies and then baptized us together. We did not join his church, as I expected to go back overseas at any moment. This was a very significant moment in both our lives.

An experience I had during the physical exam of my discharge process was in connection with a psychological test we had to take. We were assured that there were no right or wrong answers to the test, but when it was finished, I had to go see a psychiatrist. Now picture this: I was sitting in front of this doctor with nothing on except a number painted on my back with Mercurochrome. One of the questions on the form was, “Do you think you can take care of yourself after you get out of the Navy without the Navy's help?" I answered, "Yes," and put a scripture reference, Phil. 1:13, in the margin. Phil. 1:13 says, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me." The doctor obviously did not know what that meant, for he tried every way he could to get me to explain it without just asking me to. I was just as determined to keep him mystified. He asked me what I planned to do after being discharged. I said I was going to college. He asked, ''Where are you going?" 1 said, "I plan to go to Wheaton College in Wheaton, Illinois." He asked, ''What do you want to go there for?" in a snide manner. "Because they happen to offer the kinds of courses I want to take," I said. After about thirty minutes of verbal sparring with me, he gave up and sent me on to complete my physical examination.