VHP -- Russell Fairchild

1 VETERAN: Russell Fairchild INTERVIEW DATE: November 19, 2014 TRANSCRIBER: Shannon Niekamp TRANSCRIPTION DATE: November 20, 2014 2 KATIE AMBLER: Today is November 19th, 2014, and we are interviewing Russell Fairchild at the courthouse in Adams County. Mr. Fairchild is how old today? RUSSELL FAIRCHILD: 83. AMBLER: Having been born on July -- I'm sorry. FAIRCHILD: December. AMBLER: Thank you. And what's your birth date? FAIRCHILD: December 19, 1930. AMBLER: All right. My name is Katie Ambler and I'll be the interviewer, and Shannon Niekamp will be the court reporter for this interview. Mr. Fairchild, when and where were you born? FAIRCHILD: I was born in St. Louis, Missouri, on December 19, 1930. AMBLER: And who were your parents and what were their occupations? FAIRCHILD: My mother was a housewife and mother. My dad worked for Ford Motor Company initially. And then the Depression came along and he worked a lot of odd jobs. It was a struggle for him during -- until World War II came along and sort of opened a lot up, jobs up. AMBLER: What was your mother's name? FAIRCHILD: My mother's maiden name was Gladys Marie Weineken. AMBLER: Okay. And what was your father's full name? FAIRCHILD: My father's full name was Russell Samuel Fairchild. AMBLER: Okay. Did you have siblings? FAIRCHILD: Yes. I had three brothers. A brother a year younger than I and then twin brothers. Not my twin but twins to each 3 other six years younger than I. My brother a year younger than I passed away three years ago. AMBLER: Now, so you were the oldest of the four? FAIRCHILD: Yes. AMBLER: Okay. Of the four brothers, did others serve in the military? FAIRCHILD: Yes. My two younger brothers served in the Army primarily in Cuba. This is before we had all the trouble with Cuba. AMBLER: What were you doing before you entered service? FAIRCHILD: I was a student at St. Louis College of Pharmacy. I graduated from there in February 22nd, 1952. March 23rd, I was on my way to Newport, Rhode Island, to Naval OCS. Prior to that, I had applied for admission to Naval OCS in December because I had already had eight postponements for the draft to get through school. And by the way, we had to maintain a C advantage. If we didn't, we were in the Army. AMBLER: Interesting. FAIRCHILD: Yeah. Well that was no problem, but I mean, I don't think they would get away with that today. AMBLER: I doubt it. How old were you then when you entered service in March of '52? FAIRCHILD: I was 21. AMBLER: Okay. Which branch of the military did you serve? You said Naval OCS so you were Navy, correct? FAIRCHILD: Navy, right. AMBLER: And what war did you serve in? FAIRCHILD: The Korean. 4 AMBLER: What's the highest rank you achieved during your time in service? FAIRCHILD: Lieutenant Junior Grade. I did -- after I was discharged, I did receive my commission to full lieutenant. I refused it but they gave it to me anyway. AMBLER: On what basis did you refuse it? FAIRCHILD: I had served three years and four months. I was away from my family. I had four children born. Missed their first year. My wife and I missed our first year together after we were married. I went overseas right away. I thought I'd given enough. I didn't, didn't want to serve anymore. AMBLER: Understood. I think you sort of answered this question but to be clear, did you enlist or were your drafted? FAIRCHILD: I enlisted. AMBLER: Okay. And why did you choose specifically the Navy? FAIRCHILD: Well, there was an ONOC office in St. Louis, Office of Naval Officer Cacuman, which I was aware of. I wasn't aware of any other service with such a facility, and so I simply went down and talked to them and they were tickled to death. AMBLER: What do you recall about your first few days or first few weeks in service? FAIRCHILD: Oh boy. Yeah. First time away from home, strange part of the country. It was March. It was cold in Rhode Island. Very structured living conditions. You know, it was just, it was new to me but it happens to every fellow that goes into service. 5 AMBLER: How did you feel? FAIRCHILD: Feel? AMBLER: Yeah. What do you remember about thinking about at all at the time? FAIRCHILD: Well, it was kind of hard to be too introspective. We were, I mean, we were just pushed to the limit. We were lights out at 10:00 p.m. We weren't supposed to be up doing anything but we found out very quickly that the duty officer went off duty at midnight. We would get up and study by flashlight just to get through. I was, to a certain extent, I felt a degree of patriotism. I felt like communism was an evil thing and I wanted to fight it. I -- and above that, beyond that, I wanted to get through and get my commission because I wanted to get married and I needed the money. AMBLER: So you talked about being in Rhode Island. Where were you specifically for that first training? FAIRCHILD: Newport, Rhode Island. AMBLER: And when you left Newport training, where did you go on your first assignment? FAIRCHILD: I went to my first assignment was to the USS Virgo which I quickly found had duty was in ammunition. First thing I did was take out more insurance. Second thing I did was tell my wife very little. I told her it was a cargo ship which was true. Just didn't tell her what the cargo was. AMBLER: Right. Tell me a little bit about the Virgo. About how many people were stationed on the Virgo? FAIRCHILD: We had a crew of 300. There were 18 officers. Of 6 those 18, four or five were junior officers. We had some -- thank goodness, we had several warrant officers which are men who have come up through the ranks and gotten their commission the hard way and they knew what they were doing so we learned from them. AMBLER: And what did you learn in that first assignment? FAIRCHILD: I was fortunate to have a really good skipper, Captain Outersan. He was schrier captain, World War II. Very intelligent man. He made the junior officers keep a journal and he provided them with a list of questions periodically, like every couple weeks and you had to answer those questions in the journal. Then you had to submit that to him for grading so it was, he was serious. It was good training. Thank God I had him. I learned quickly. AMBLER: Do you recall others besides the skipper that you felt like you learned from and what were they like? FAIRCHILD: I learned from every one of them. They were all proficient at what they were doing. The junior officers were -- in four months, you can't learn everything. But the engineering officer, Mr. Divans, was excellent. Mr. Barton was the first lieutenant which is essentially cargo officer. He had a couple of warrant officers under him. And, of course, all your enlisted men, your petty officers are like sergeants in the Army. They knew what they were doing, too. So there were enough experienced people that they could accommodate us dummies and we learned. AMBLER: New officers. New officers. FAIRCHILD: Yeah. Yeah. 7 AMBLER: Did you receive any kind of specialized training either on the Virgo or later in your time in service? FAIRCHILD: Most of my training on the Virgo was on the job training. I went aboard in September, and by January, I was standing underway watches. I was officer of the deck in charge, which speaks well for the training we got. I was sent to crypto school in San Diego. That was two weeks and that gave me a lot of sleepless nights because on the Virgo, the Virgo was not designed to work right out of the holds so all the requirements had to be received the day before and then they worked all night breaking everything out on deck, closing up the holds and that required a lot of messaging back and forth. And that was all encrypted and decrypted and it was the junior officers, myself primarily that had to do that. So I would go for days without getting out of my clothes. Just flap down on a bunk, go to sleep. Lot of hard work. Not much danger but a lot of hard work. AMBLER: Okay. Let's back up for just a second. Crypto is cryptography school so code breaking? FAIRCHILD: Yeah. AMBLER: And explain a little bit more about why the Virgo couldn't accommodate -- had to have that overnight of decrypting, recrypting and decrypting. Explain that just a little better. FAIRCHILD: It was just, well, it was just the way it was rigged. Ammo ships are designed, open up the hold, and then go down and fish stuff out of the hold and I don't know if you know 8 what underway replenishment is but the ships sail along side by side at about eight knots. They have to steer into each other a little bit because the bow waves are forcing the ships apart. And the line is put across and the receiving ship either hooks it to a ring over there or, in the case of carriers, they had their own winches and the ships sail along side by side.

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