A reminder of the cost of tyranny. The forgotten memory of a sailor's sacrifice on the light cruiser USS Birmingham

The light cruiser USS Birmingham.

My mother is 85 years old this year, but she manages to stay busy with all sorts of things, including raising money for the local hospice care program through garage sales. While I was in Ohio, she showed me some items that had been recently donated that tell a poignant story -- a reminder, if any were needed, of the awful cost of war.

The USS Birmingham was a Cleveland-class light cruiser, launched on 20 May 1942.

Known as the "Steel City" and the "Mighty B," she saw heavy action in both principal theaters of war.

According to the "Muster Roll of the USS Birmingham, CL-62," Seaman 1st Class Robert Elmer Goodrich, Service Number 279 99 65, joined her crew on 29 January 1943, in time for her shakedown cruise.

Goodrich, a Marion boy who lived at 860 Bennett Street at the time of his enlistment, was apparently fresh from his graduation at Great Lakes Naval Station.

The Birmingham left Norfolk, Virginia on 2 June 1943 and steamed to the Mediterranean where she gave gunfire support to the invasion of Sicily (10–26 July 1943). She returned to the US on 8 August, and was reassigned to the Pacific Fleet and arrived at Pearl Harbor on 6 September. As a part of a fast carrier task force screen, she took part in the raids on Tarawa (18 September 1943) and Wake Island (5–6 October). The next month she fought in the the Solomons at the Battle of Empress Augusta Bay (8–9 November), where Japanese planes hit Birmingham with two bombs and a torpedo. Birmingham retired to Mare Island Navy Yard for repairs which lasted until 18 February 1944, and then she rejoined the Pacific Fleet.

While engaged in the raid on Tarawa, Goodrich and his fellow "pollywogs" were initiated into the "solemn mysteries of the ancient order of the deep" officiated over by "Davy Jones" and Neptune" on the occasion of their first crossing of the equator.

After her refit, Birmingham was assigned to Task Force 57 and took part in the battle of Saipan (14 June – 4 August); the Battle of the Philippine Sea (19–20 June); battle of Tinian (20 July – 1 August); battle of Guam (21 July); and Philippine Islands raids (9–24 September). She then served with TF 38 during the Okinawa raid (10 October), northern Luzon and Formosa raids (15 October and 18–19 October), and the Battle of Leyte Gulf (24 October) where she suffered great topside damage from explosions on board the carrier Princeton while courageously attempting to aid that stricken vessel.

During that last battle, the Birmingham and three destroyers left the fleet to assist the crippled carrier USS Princeton. The Birmingham pulled along side the carrier to aim hoses at deck fires. Before it could be extinguished, the last fire reached the carrier’s magazine. The explosion tore through the larger ship and shrapnel ripped across the side of the Birmingham, instantly killing 229 crewmen and injuring 420 more. The ceremonies for the dead who were buried at sea lasted for hours on end. Captain Inglis praised his men for not falling prey to “confusion or hysteria” and for their “selfless devotion to duty, ship and shipmates.” He concluded his report with the reassuring words that “Our steel ships too, are served by iron men.”

Birmingham attempts to fight fires aboard Princeton.

She again returned for repairs to Mare Island, which lasted from November 1944 to January 1945. During this time it is probable that Seaman 1st Class Goodrich returned home to Marion on shore leave. For a kid from Marion, Ohio, who grew up far from the sea, young Bobby Goodrich had seen a lifetime of violent duty at sea. It would get worse.

Rejoining the Pacific Fleet, the cruiser supported the battle of Iwo Jima (4–5 March 1945) and battle of Okinawa (25 March – 5 May). On 4 May, after fighting off three attacks, she was damaged for a third time when a Japanese kamikaze plane hit her forward. The kamikaze, bearing a 500 pound bomb, crashed into her deck just aft of the number two turret.

The ensuing explosion and fire wiped out sick bay and ruptured the main, second, and third decks. Bulkheads were blown in and a five foot hole was blown in the starboard side below the waterline. Four living compartments, the armory, and three ammunition magazines were flooded before the water was contained. The final tally was 52 killed and 82 wounded.

One of the dead was Seaman 1st Class Bobby Goodrich, who had come a long way from Marion OH to die in a war he had nothing to do with starting. The war in Europe was over. The Pacific War would soon end, too late for Bobby Goodrich and his grieving family in Marion, Ohio. He was buried at sea.

A typical burial at sea, this one on the cruiser USS Houston, 1944.

According to the postmark, sometime in late September or early October, Bobby Goodrich's father Vernon received a small box, an official "United States Registered Package."

Nestled inside was another box.

And within it, an official memento of Bobby Goodrich's sacrifice for his country.

Someone, his father no doubt, placed the campaign ribbons that his son had earned in the box with the dearly-won Purple Heart. The government also sent Vernon Goodrich this certificate:

It was still in the mailing tube it had been sent in. Vernon Goodrich never framed it. Nor, apparently, did he display the Purple Heart on his mantle, as many Gold Star parents did, for it too remained in the shipping container it came in. It was, no doubt, placed with the other items of Bobby Goodrich's service record in a box or drawer, awaiting -- decades later -- donation to a hospice care garage sale, whence they chanced into my possession.

And, ironically, I turned out to be from Birmingham. Not so ironically, I understood immediately what I was looking at and the immense pain and sacrifice they represented.

You see, this is the ultimate outrage that fills me every time I think of the unthinking tyrants who start all the horrors of war because of their own appetites for power -- whether it is Hitler and Hirohito or Obama, Malloy and Lawlor. There is, there must be, a special place in Hell for such monsters who start such mass butcheries. Not that such a thought brings any comfort to the loved ones of all the Bobby Goodrichs of the world throughout history -- past, present and future.