Vincent H. Arimond
Era: World War II
Military Branch: Navy
Rev. Vincent H. Arimond (Padre)
Entered the Naval Reserve. Attended the Navy quartermaster school at Melville, Rhode Island and PT school for six weeks.
Served as a Second Class Quartermaster aboard PT boats in Squadron II and aboard the USS Hanover in the Pacific. Shipped to New Caledonia in the Hebrides, then boarded Zane Gray's yacht for transfer to Tulagi, Solomon Islands, arriving Easter Sunday 1943. Assigned to PT 46. Later served aboard PT 40 during 15 months in the Solomons at Tulagi, Russell Islands, New Georgia, Bouganville. Returned to the continental U.S., New York harbor, in November 1944. Served a brief term aboard a mine sweeper tender at Charlestown, South Carolina, before being assigned to the USS Hanover at Galveston, Texas, for eight months in the Pacific. Honorably discharged December 29, 1945, Minneapolis, Minnesota.
In his own words: "December 7th, 1941, was a routine day for me as a night clerk in the Holland Hotel in downtown Duluth. I was puzzled at the crowd up so early and huddled around the radio in the hotel lobby. `What is all the excitment?` I asked. Someone replied, `the Japs have bombed Pearl Harbor`. I didn't want to display my ignorance...I hadn't the foggiest notion as to where or what was Pearl Harbor. When I got home that morning I was surprised that my mother was in tears. She had three sons and our nation was in the process of declaring war upon Japan, and very shortly upon Nazi Germany as well."
"Six months after Pearl Harbor I enlisted in the Navy for six months or the duration. I was too naive to be alarmed. We would certainly settle this matter in less than six months. Boot Camp for me was at Great Lakes. I now belonged to Uncle Sam, and I was soon to discover that I was expendable, if need be. We started on a much needed hardening program. Daily we were up at the crack of dawn, tied up our sleeping hammocks, were fed a breakfast of scrambled eggs and whatever else pleased the cooks, and out we went. We did calisthenics and we ran hard across open fields beyond our barracks. At a signal from the chief P.O. we flopped on our bellies and then got up and ran again repeatedly. On one occasion we came to a drainage ditch along side a road. It was much to wide to jump, so we waded through muck and water up to our waists, and then up onto the road. We were wearing the typical Navy whites and the boot-leggings. At that point we all looked like something the cat dragged in."
"Back at the barracks I was feeling a touch of a cold coming on. We took turns with the scrub brushes at the laundry scrub tables. After supper I made the fatal mistake of turning in for sick-call, telling them I was coming down with a cold and needed a coule of aspirin. I should have known that you don't tell the medical profession what medication you need. I was told to go and sit down. I did so. Shortly I was told to get up onto an examination table, lie down and loosen my belt. The doctor, I think he was a doctor, came over and began to poke at my abdomen with his finger. `Do you hurt there, do you hurt there?`
"I said, `Doc, you are not going to find a spot on my body where I don't hurt`. `We have been jumping and running all over the place.` He said, `button up your trousers and sit up`. He went over to a desk and wrote something on a sheet of paper and told me to take this down the hall to the corpsman. As I moved down the hall I looked to see what he had written, `Acute Appendicitis`. It had my name on it. I let the corpsman at the end of the hall know there was some mistake. I am not sure what words he said, but the message I got was, shut up and sit down over there. I sat there for possibly for an hour or more with my accute appendicitis. Another lad joined me and he was obviously in considerable pain...Sick-call had been at 1900. I had no watch. We had shipped our watches home, but at approximately 2100, by the clock on the wall, a beautiful grey Packard ambulance stopped by to take the two of us to the hospital, something like two and a half miles away in the main camp. We stopped among the barracks and the driver went in. He came out again in about three hours. My buddy was no longer sitting on the long side bench. He was curled up on the deck obviously in agony."
"It was just after 2400 when we arrived in the doctor's office at the hospital. I made no progress in trying to persuade the doctor that there was no basis for submitting me to an operation for appendicitis. He argued that I was going out where there would possibly be no well-equiped hospital and staff to remove my appendix. I could not see how that was a reason to take out a healthy appendix. Finally he presented his clincher. `If you do not sign this paper allowing us to operate I will have you court-martialed. `I said, Doc, you have me over a barrel`, and I signed his paper. I woke up in a ward where those with hernias and appendicitis were sent to recover."
"I spent an amusing nine days recuperating. A nurse in charge of our ward was doing her best to please two doctors, one of the old school who on Monday had us flat on our backs in bed. On Tuesday, by doctor's orders, we were up on stepladders washing the walls and ceilings. Wednesday we were right back in bed and this routine continued for most of my nine days there. I felt sorry for the nurse being chewed out each morning because the doctors were from different schools."
"My explanation for that chapter in my Navy career: Scientist always desire a control. In desperation they were running a crash program to get doctors trained for the Navy. They were to operate on a lad with a severely infected appendix. They needed to provide a healthy lad with a healthy appendix to follow up and provide a control. I was not awake or I would have heard them explain, `Now this is what a healrhy appendix looks like`."
"I must add a footnote. As a result someone was instructed to enter a note on my dossier. 'Give this man whatever duty he asks for`. I asked for Quartermaster School. It was granted. I asked for Patrol Torpedo School. It was granted. I ended up in Squadron II of Navy P.T.s for eighteen months in the South Pacific. William Lindsay White in 1942 wrote a well-known book, They Were Expendable, regarding the crews of the P.T.s, which included Jack Kennedy. I had got that message somewhat earlier in boot-camp. By the grace of God I was not expendable."
Source: Hometown Heroes: The Saint Louis County World War II Project, page 25.
Vincent Arimond entered the Naval Reserve and attended Quartermaster School in Melville, R.I.
He was a Petty Officer Second Class and a wheelsman and quartermaster aboard PT boats, Squadron II, and USS Hanover in the Pacific. He shipped to New Caledonia in the Hebrides, then boarded Zane Gray's yacht for transfer to Tulagi, Solomon Islands, arriving Easter Sunday in 1943 and was assigned to PT 46. Later served aboard PT 40 during 15 months in the Solomons at Tulagi, Russell Islands, New Georgia and Bouganville.
He returned to the continental United States in November 1944 and served briefly aboard a minesweeper tender at Charleston, South Carolina before being assigned to USS Hanover at Galveston, Texas, for eight months service in the Pacific. He was discharged on December 29, 1945.
