Great men can often be found where the morning coffee pours

Wednesday, June 1, 2011
Courtesy photo, 1942, Billy Loop, a farm boy from Stratton, left his wife and young daughter to join the U.S. Navy.

McCOOK, Nebraska -- It was Oct. 1, 1943, and the World War II naval battle for Vella Lavella, an island in the western province of the Solomon Islands, was in full swing.

It had been nearly two hours since LST-448 (Landing Ship, Tank) had dropped its ramp doors and members of the New Zealand Army began unloading from the U.S. Navy ship.

In the generator room a young Nebraska farmer knew something was wrong. Just as Bill Loop of Stratton had decided he had waited long enough and would pick up the phone and attempt to find out what was going on, a bomb, dropped by a Japanese Zero fighter plane, hit the ship roughly 10 feet from where he was standing.

At the time he thought flames and smoke had instantly engulfed the room around him. He realized later that the impact of the bomb had knocked him unconscience for an unknown amount of time. Presumably shielded by a steel girder near the phone, he miraculously survived the explosion but was far from safe. Loop looked up at the ladder that led out and saw the hatchway was blocked. He thought to himself that there was no way he could make it through. As he turned to look for another exit, fire hit him in the face, followed by a rush of water that put the fire out.

"Everything went blank after that, the next thing I remember is sitting under a coconut tree with my face burning," said Loop during an interview with theMcCook Daily Gazette.

As he struggled to ease the pain by smearing mud from the shore on his face and ears, members of the New Zealand Army came to his aid. They cleaned off the mud and sprayed him with the an old-fashioned fly sprayer filled with wax, "that saved me a lot" said Loop.

Loop is still uncertain how he was able to escape the burning ship. If he had somehow managed to make his way through the blocked hatchway he would have had to made it across the deck and down another ladder, then out through the bow. Anything else would have required swimming roughly 200 feet to shore. Either scenario would have been extremely difficult, given the ships condition and his burnt and bruised state.

The New Zealand Army had established a base about a 1/4 of a mile away where they were constructing an airfield. Loop was placed on a jeep headed there, in a convoy with a large group of soldiers on foot. Not long into the trip, word spread that an enemy plane was incoming and the convoy spread off the trail it was following and headed into the surrounding brush.

"I remember the dust being kicked up, three to four feet in the air, by the bullets from the Zero, like it was yesterday. We were heading down the trail and suddenly we drove up on a bank." Loop watched from barely 20 feet away as the fighter strafed the trail he had just been traveling on. "I found out later that the Jap zero's guns were not on a turret, to aim the pilot would have had to turn the plane to get to us. He didn't actually kill anybody but I still remember the dirt flying up."

Shortly after arriving at the New Zealand camp Loop was directed to a foxhole to sleep for the night. "These days I drink coffee in the mornings with a lot of old navy guys, one was telling me he joined the Navy so he wouldn't have to sleep in a foxhole. I told him I joined too, but I still had to sleep in a foxhole!" Although Loop laughed when recounting the experience over coffee, at the time it was probably his darkest hour.

As night fell over the island so did the enemy mortars. The 23-year-old Loop found himself in a foxhole with a much younger New Zealand soldier who Loop believed to be 18 at most. With the mortars exploding repeatedly around them, the images of the generator room, which had recently been his home, bursting into flames and smoke, combined with the strafing attempt of the enemy plane, left Loop convinced the war was lost. "With that much done to you, you just don't have any hopes."

Sensing his dismay, his young foxhole companion only smiled and told Loop not to worry, "they never hit anything important," but Loop was unconvinced and thought to himself "I can't believe that," confident at any moment that the enemy would overtake the camp.

Surviving the evening, the exhausted Loop made his way to breakfast as the sun rose and the mortar firing ceased.

"I never thought I would see the United States again," said Loop from his home in McCook. "I went to breakfast that morning and I had decided I would steal some knives and forks so that I would have survival tools," planning to escape into the jungle rather than being captured during what he thought was an imminent enemy takeover of the camp. As Loop eye-balled the utensils, he was told that there was a plane that was going to try and fly the wounded off of the island via the new airfield, which was not complete and had not been used yet.

"They took us down to the plane, a B-26 I think, we boarded and it was a real bouncy take off, I didn't think we were gonna make it up, but we did." Loop and three others were the only passengers not on stretchers on the plane, they were situated just behind the pilot and unfortunately for them, could hear the radio chatter clearly.

Shortly into the flight Loop heard the escorting U.S. fighter planes tell his pilot that they had to turn back. They instructed the pilot to fly as close to the water as possible and that if enemy fighters attacked, to ditch the plane into the water.

A short while later, with that conversation still fresh on his mind, hailstones hit the windshield of their plane sounding like enemy machine gun fire making impact with the plane. "I was scrambling for the door, I was gonna be the first one out," Loop said, recalling the terrifying moment.

The dust trail that the strafing Japanese Zero's fire stirred up, the uncomfortable night in the foxhole and the intense plane ride Loop can remember vividly, but next to nothing regarding the subsequent hospital stay in Mobile Hospital No. 8 located on Guadalcanal. "Strange thing, I remember everything up to the time I went into the hospital and I don't remember one thing in the hospital, I just can't remember," said Loop, "I don't know how long I was there, treatment, nothing. I remember being on the plane going there, but that's it."

"Toward the end of the hospital stay another soldier and I were looking for a way to help so we got assigned to a barrage balloon unit, Flotilla No. 5, for 5 months before we were shipped home."

"The LSTs were getting dive-bombed so much that we started installing dozens of balloons on a steel cable attached to an electrical winch." The ships would raise the balloons while unloading, in defense against the harassing Japanese dive bombers.

The soldiers would also make what electrical repairs they could on visiting LSTs and assist in stocking the ships with food, even going to the extent of hunting wild boars and hanging them for departing ships to take.

Loop was treated as an inpatient but when he stood in the pay line with other soldiers he was asked by the pay master to step out of line. When the pay master was finished with the others he explained to Loop that his records had all been sent back to Washington DC and that Navy personnel had reviewed the damaged remains of LST-448 and determined that no one could have survived from the generator room, since that was where one of the bombs exploded. Loop had no identification, no dog tags or billfold and was thus classified as John Doe.

The pay master also informed Loop that the pain of loss was not contained to the Vella Lavella area. Back home in Stratton, Loop's 19- year-old wife, Dorothy and 1-year-old daughter had been sent a telegram saying that he was wounded and missing in action, "extent of wound not now available."

Later in life Loop was speaking with a VA representative who was interviewing him for pension benefits. At one point the rep referenced Loop's records, "I asked him since he had my records to tell me when I left the hospital," hoping to gain some insight into the length of his stay, "but he said 'to tell you the truth, we don't have any records on you.'"

Everything prior to the hospital stay was destroyed in the sinking of LST 448 and no records could be found regarding his hospital stay. Loop did receive Veteran's benefits but this wasn't the first time his identity had been questioned.

For several days after surviving the bombing, soot was embedded so deep in his skin that no one could guess his nationality correctly, but that was just the beginning. Upon arrival back in the States, "sitting there on the docks, they said we all needed to get our dress blues on, I had to explain to them I didn't have any dress blues, nothing more than the clothes I was wearing." By the time Loop got a uniform he had missed the train and had to be placed on a later one.

After a short leave at home in Nebraska, Loop was headed to Norfolk, Virginia, to be shipped out on another ship, LST-710 (stories from that ship to be shared in a later issue). Stopping briefly in Chicago, Illinois, he still had no identification, "just a mountain of orders that I put in a locker. Then I went to eat."

Not long into his lunch the shore patrol interrupted and asked to see Loop's identification. Unable to provide any, Loop was escorted to a detention facility while the shore patrol fetched his orders from the locker he had stored them in. "The reason they picked me up was I was wearing my only hat, a white one, as was regulation in San Francisco at the time, but apparently in Chicago a blue hat was regulation." The shore patrol picked up the orders, unsealed and resealed them, and then sent Mr. "John Doe" on his way to Norfolk where he received his identification.

More amazing than Loop's experience and service to his country is his humbleness. Many of the details of his experience will be news even to his family members, primarily due to Loop's reluctancy to discuss the ordeal and his conviction that "the real heroes never came back." His dress blue uniform currently displays only his rank, none of the various medals he was awarded; the Purple Heart Medal, the American Area Campaign Medal, the Phillippine Liberation Medal (1 star), the Good Conduct Medal as well as the Asiatic Pacific Area Campaign Medal (3 stars).

"When I got my uniform I had a gold star on the sleeve, they told me at the time it was a sign that I was a survivor of a naval disaster. Some officers on the train asked me what it was for and I told 'em I wasn't really sure, so I took it off."

Loop's comments, regarding the loss of a friend recently, may reveal his newfound willingness to discuss the tramatic events of 1943, "He worked for me for 30 some years and when I went to his funeral, I found out he was in the Marines. I didn't know that prior and I don't think he knew I was in the Navy either."

The discussion however, didn't come easy, as several times during the interview Loop was overcome, sadness for his lost shipmates dominating his emotions, "....just talking about it...I never found any trace of any of the others, not a trace. I just can't believe they all perished, I just don't believe that."

Loop's family has tried the Internet as well as other methods to track down possible shipmates, but as of yet have not confirmed any of the other 49 crew members survived the bombing.

Bill Loop is the founder of Trenton Electric and L&L Plumbing & Heating in McCook and can often be found in the afternoon hours sipping coffee with a group of other vets at the local McDonald's.

Editors note: This story was originally published in the 2010 Military Salute section of the McCook Daily Gazette.

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