Since the end of world war II, there have been many misconceptions and fabrications put into circulation about various aspects of Argentia's history. That is especially true of American Argentia history, when the U.S. Navy occupied the area for more than fifty years.

In September, 2005, a former American serviceman named Chris Somerville, who is now living in England, visited the Placentia area. During that visit, he was interviewed by John Cheeseman, the editor of the local newspaper, The Charter. In that interview, Somerville made numerous false claims about various events — well-documented events — pertaining to military operations at U.S. Naval Operating Base, Argentia.

Here is John Cheeseman's interview with Chris Somerville, as it appeared in The Charter on Tuesday, September 6, 2005. It is followed by a presentation of the facts pertaining to Somerville's misconceptions and fabrications. The information was obtained through research at the National Archives and Research Administration (NARA) in Washington, the British Military Archives in London, and through interviews with the U.S. Navy officials who were in command at Argentia when the events, which Somerville grossly distorted during his interview with John Cheeseman, took place.

Chris Somerville chuckles at the thought that he and his mates were heroes. “We were just having fun,” says the 82-year-old U.S. Navy veteran of his time spent in Argentia during the Second World War.

Mr. Somerville made his return last week to the place where he spent two tours of duty, once aboard a minesweeper from 1941 to 1943 and another time performing administrative duties in 1957-58. He was able to make the trip thanks to an initiative of the British government, called Heroes Return. It is part of a lottery program called Veterans Reunited, set up to make grants commemorating the 60th anniversary of the events leading up to the end of the Second World War. It also ensures that new generations can learn from veterans' experiences.

When he heard of the program, Mr. Somerville jumped at the opportunity to visit the base he protected on board the U.S. minesweeper Goldfinch. As far he knows he's the only American serviceman to be accepted because he has lived for the past few decades in England.

Mr. Somerville was born June 9, 1923, in Yonkers, New York. From the age of 12 he was always fascinated by the sea and had read lots of books about life there. He was a member of the organization known as the American Bluejackets, similar to the Sea Scouts. In March, 1941, just months before he was due to [sic] graduate, 17 year-old Chris made up his mind that he was going to quit school and join the navy before he turned 18. He approached his school principal.

“He said ‘your makes are good enough, go,” recalls Mr. Somerville. However, he had a slight problem. He had to weigh 136 pounds to join the navy but was only 132. His father, a New York City police officer, had the solution. “For the next week, he fed me cakes and bananas to fatten me up.”

He was accepted a week later and began training and found himself assigned to the minesweeper U.S.S. Goldfinch (all this type of ship were named after birds), a converted trawler out of Boston. They did their training along the U.S. East Coast, including Casco Bay, Maine.

The feeling among a lot of people was that war was inevitable, judging by what they saw happening in Europe and Great Britain. It was an isolationist U.S. Congress that was keeping America out of the war at that point, despite President Roosevelt's growing desire to do so.

“Americans don't get mad until somebody does something to them,” Mr. Somerville notes, adding that Congress said it was okay to send supplies to Britain, but not troops.

During the summer the Goldfinch received its orders to proceed to Argentia. “No one had ever heard of it,” says Mr. Somerville. “'When we arrived, we had to stop at the commercial dock.”

There wasn't a lot happening but “The next thing we knew, the place was full of construction workers.” Over the following months, the base started taking form. The U.S.S. Prairie, a navy supply ship, arrived to provision the other ships, and the Goldfinch assumed its task of sweeping the bay for German mines. Indeed, they found some, so they knew the Germans had been there [sic].

Another somber task was recovering bodies of sunken ships. The Goldfinch was sent to collect the bodies of men who had died on board the Reuben James, the first American destroyer sunk by enemy action in late 1941 [sic]. The bodies were brought to Argentia and buried there. Mr. Somerville also remembers that the minesweepers had to recover German bodies when a U-boat was sunk. They too were buried at Argentia, with a fence separating their part of the cemetery from the American section [sic].

In early August, 1941, the Goldfinch was sweeping off Ship Harbour. “We were doing it for a week but we didn't know why,” Mr. Somerville recalls. “We weren't coming up with anything, though.”

Then one morning, they saw large ships sailing up the bay. The HMS Prince of Wales, carrying Winston Churchill, and the U.S.S. Augusta, with Franklin Roosevelt aboard, were arriving for the Atlantic Charter conference [sic]. “We didn't even know who they were. No one told us anything.”

The morning of the prayer service, Goldfinch, with the other minesweepers Grackle; Osprey and Gull, was permitted to anchor alongside [sic]. “We could see Roosevelt and Churchill up on deck,” says Mr. Somerville. “We were in awe of them.”

He remembers Churchill puffing on one of his trademark cigars, the only man allowed to smoke on board ship. After the famous meeting, the Goldfinch returned to its duties, sweeping for three types of mines: an acoustic mine could be triggered by sound waves; a second type anchored to the seafloor, floated just under the surface; a magnetic mine could be detonated by the polarity of a ship's iron hull.

To counteract, the minesweepers used devices like a staccato noise to explode the acoustic mine; a huge pair of clippers to cut the mooring cables on the anchored mine; and a cable pulled astern to explode magnetic mines.

Another memory stands out in Mr. Somerville's mind: he was the duty officer on bridge one Sunday in December. Suddenly word came that the Japanese had attacked Pearl Harbour. “We thought it was false, like the radio story about the invaders from Mars (H.G. Wells' famous radio play) but the next thing we knew, Roosevelt announced that we were at war with Germany; Italy and Japan.”

Mr. Somerville was also sent from Argentia to near St. Lawrence, where the Truxton [sic] and Pollux went aground Feb. 18, 1942. He and his mates travelled all night to the site of the wreck walked up to the mine and from there were directed down to the ships.

“There were men in the water and there were men on the ships. We used a winch to get them ashore. It was freezing and there was snow so we all took turns to keep the fires going,” he recalls. Many of his comrades took off their boots and shoes to give to the survivors.

A chain was formed to get the survivors to the mine where doctors and nurses had by now begun to arrive.

Mr. Somerville and the Goldfinch would make several, trips between St. Lawrence and Argentia, with recovered bodies.

Until 1943, life aboard the minesweeper was pretty routine, sailing out beyond the Mae Wests and the nets across the harbour entrance, searching for mines. By Mr. Somerville's required two years and third volunteer year had expired.

He was sent back to the U.S. but then found himself a ship's writer, or captain's yeoman, on a navy oil tanker, the Maumee, which he would serve aboard until 1945. (The Maumee had been the ship the famous U.S. admiral Chester Nimitz was an engineering officer [sic] during the First World War.)

Convoy duty was now his task, as the Maumee would pick up a cargo of oil and gasoline from Houston, Texas, travel to the refineries off Staten Island, New York, and join a convoy somewhere off Long Island for the trip to the UK. The Maumee was usually in the middle of the pack, carrying the convoy commander “so we were pretty safe,” he says. “But I saw ships blow up on the fringe of the convoy.” He spent time on the dangerous Murmansk run, past German-occupied Norway, in freezing seas and bitter weather, to the Soviet Union.

In 1945, he was assigned to the minecraft training centre in Norfolk, Virginia and was ready to commission a minesweeper but the war ended, his orders were cancelled and he found himself sent to the Office of Strategic Services in Washington, D.C. (the OSS was the forerunner of the CIA). However, the work was administrative, as he helped discharge people, including some prominent actors and cameramen from Hollywood, who had spent their war service performing undercover work.

By 1950, Mr. Somerville found himself in London, England, where he worked on the Marshall Plan and met his first wife. He was sent back to the U.S. and when that tour was finished in 1957, he was asked by a placement officer where he wanted to go (as a veteran he could choose his posting). “Well, what's available?” He asked.

The placement officer replied “There's a place available in Argentia, but no one would want to go there.” Mr. Somerville jumped at the thought of returning to a place he had enjoyed so much, leading the placement officer to question his sanity. Nevertheless, with his wife and two children, he came back and stayed for a while in Freshwater, renting a little house behind a store from the Healeys and getting to know other residents like the Kellys. He stayed until 1958.

All these memories helped Mr. Somerville's decision to return to Newfoundland easy. When heard of the Heroes Return program, he thought “That's it, I'm returning to Newfoundland. I wanted to show my son (also named Chris) where I spent five years of my life and where he was as a baby.”

He has enjoyed his stay here. “Everything has been perfect,” he says. He was planning to visit St. Lawrence before returning to the Mainland and then back to England this week.

Christopher (Chris) Somerville was an ordinary seaman in the U.S. Navy and he was assigned to Argentia on two different occasions. The first time was aboard the minesweeper USS Goldfinch from 1941 to 1943 and the second was as an administrative clerk in the Administration Building between the spring of 1957 and the fall of 1958. In between those two tours of duty, he was stationed at London, England, where he met and married a British woman. After his second tour of duty in Argentia, he returned to London and has lived there ever since.

 

Repudiation of Chris Somerville's Misconceptions and Fabrications

It was obvious that at some point Somerville had read Friendly Invasion, Friendly Invasion II: A Personal Touch, Uprooted: the Argentia Story, and Newfoundland Gallantry in Action — because, while in Placentia, he suddenly had many of the same erroneous details about Argentia's American history that also had been presented in those books. Amazingly, but predictably, Somerville had the answers to certain questions that had been bothering many Newfoundlanders and former American servicemen for more than half a century. Unfortunately, most of the information he gave John Cheeseman was self serving and had very little basis in truth.

There is a long-standing American cliché that says, “Everyone wants his fifteen minutes of fame.” Nothing stirs braggarts and attention seekers like a microphone in front of their faces or the sight of a reporter looking for a “good scoop.” It is as if the events of which they speak could not have taken place without them. It was very disappointing to read how Somerville, during his infamous “fifteen minutes” in the limelight at Placentia, had put such contorted and erroneous slants on well-known events like the Atlantic Meeting and the USS Truxtun and USS Pollux disaster.

When people such as Chris Somerville have a personal agenda, they add verisimilitudes to their fabrications so that the information appears more likely to be true and believable to the listener. Regrettably, John Cheeseman had absolutely no knowledge of the Argentia region's American history, so he believed everything Somerville told him.

Regarding the Atlantic Meeting, Somerville has publicly stated:

On morning in August 1941, we saw large ships sailing up the bay. The HMCS Prince of Wales, carrying Winston Churchill, and the U.S.S. Augusta, with Franklin Roosevelt aboard, were arriving for the Atlantic Charter conference.

On the morning of the prayer service, Goldfinch, with the other minesweepers Grackle, Osprey, and Gull, was permitted to anchor alongside. We could see Roosevelt and Churchill up on deck and we were in awe of them. I can remember Churchill puffing on one of his trademark cigars, the only man allowed to smoke aboard the ship.

Since the USS Augusta arrived at Argentia outer harbour at 0924 hours on Thursday, August 7 and HMCS Prince of Wales arrived at 0912 hours on Saturday, August 9, Somerville's claim of seeing the two vessels arriving together is an outright fabrication. In paragraph 13 of the story in The Charter, he had stated “We didn't even know who they were. No one told us anything,” which was the truth and thus made his claim of having seen Churchill up close a another fabrication. When people set out to mislead or deceive others by giving them misinformation, the very least they can do is be consistent and keep telling the same lie so they will not contradict themselves! Most people are not stupid and will pick up on such things quite readily.

While the Atlantic Meeting was in progress, only two special “Harbour Craft” — operated by U.S. Navy personnel with “Top Level” security clearance — were permitted to move from the inner harbour to the outer harbour and among the vessels anchored in the immediate area of the meeting. Air surveillance was continuous, as two Grumman PBY aircraft were in the air at all times from August 7 to August 12.

In the immediate area of the Atlantic Meeting, only one motorized barge — operated by HMS Prince of Wales personnel — was permitted to move among the vessels with the U.S. Navy Harbour Craft. For those who may not be aware of it, Prime Minister Churchill went ashore at Joe's Cove beach in Ship Harbour via the motorized barge from Prince of Wales on the afternoon of Sunday, August 10.

As for the Goldfinch, Grackle, Osprey, and Gull, being permitted to anchor next to the Prince of Wales, that claim is also an outright fabrication. Those four vessels were anchored in the inner harbour. As their positions were south of the two prominent mountains known as The Isaacs, nobody on those vessels could have seen the outer harbour, not to mention the vessels that were anchored there.

The most detailed map of the anchorage area — showing water depths and individual vessel anchorage points — in Argentia outer harbour, which was actually the mouth of Ship Harbour, was drawn up by the U.S. Navy for the British Royal Navy. Copies are in storage at the British Archives in London, among the assets of the Atlantic Charter Committee in Ship Harbour, and in the personal Argentia-related artifact collection of historian and researcher Edward Lake at St. John's. Three other maps — showing coordinates of the two “primary vessels” at the Atlantic Meeting — were produced for the U.S. Navy, U.S. Coast Guard, and U.S. Army. Copies of those maps are stored at the National Archives & Research Administration in Washington, D.C. and in the Edward Lake Argentia Artifact Collection.

As a matter of interest, the Goldfinch was not really a warship. Named for an American lemon-yellow finch with black cap, wings, and tail, the Goldfinch was built as a fishing trawler by Bath Iron Works of Bath, Maine in 1929 and christened Fordham. The U.S. Navy purchased it from F. J. O'Hara & Sons, Inc. at Boston, Massachusetts on Wednesday, September 18, 1940. It was then converted to a minesweeper at Bethlehem Atlantic Yard, Boston, re-named Goldfinch, and commissioned at Boston Navy Yard on Thursday, January 30, 1941. Lieutenant Commander W. R. McCaleb took command upon commissioning.

The Goldfinch was first assigned to Inshore Patrol Force, 1st Naval District. Then Lieutenant Commander McCaleb shifted its operations to Chesapeake Bay, where it conducted minesweeping operations off Norfolk and Yorktown, Virginia. Reporting at Newport, Rhode Island on July 1, the Goldfinch joined Squadron 9 for minesweeping operations ranging from Argentia, Newfoundland, to Norfolk. The Goldfinch became flagship of the Squadron on September 29, 1941 at Portland, Maine.

Transferred to full-time duty in Newfoundland, the Goldfinch was based at Fort McAndrew U.S. Army Base — not U.S. Naval Operating Base, Argentia — from Monday, December 1, 1941 until Wednesday, May 30, 1944. During that time, it regularly patrolled the east and south coasts of Newfoundland. Its mission was to protect merchant vessels and warships that sailed those waters by searching for enemy mines and destroying them.

The Goldfinch arrived at Boston in June 1944, where it was converted back to civilian use as a fishing trawler. It was officially decommissioned from the U.S. Navy on Friday, August 18, 1944. On January 9, 1946, the Goldfinch was sold to the Norwegian Shipping and Trade Commission of New York.

Even if the Goldfinch had been allowed to anchor near the Prince of Wales, Somerville would not have been able to see Churchill, Roosevelt, or any part of the British battleship's after deck for two reasons. Firstly, Prince of Wales would have been towering high above the former New England fishing trawler. Secondly, the entire superstructure of the Prince of Wales was crowded with more than 5,000 British, American, and Canadian seamen who had been invited aboard from the vessels participating in the Atlantic Meeting.

All of Somerville's claims are contradicted in official British and American military records, the Deck Log Books of U.S. Naval Operating Base, Argentia, the logbooks of the vessels involved, the written memoirs of the principle characters involved, the photographs taken by the official U.S. Navy photographer, and the reels of 16 mm stock film — a copy of which is in the Edward Lake Argentia Artifact Collection — that Prime Minister Churchill had engaged Paramount Pictures to produce.

As for his duty aboard the USS Goldfinch, Somerville stated:

The Goldfinch assumed its task of sweeping the bay for German mines. Indeed, they found some, so they knew the Germans had been there.

We had the somber task of recovering bodies from sunken ships. We were sent out to collect the bodies of men who had died on board the Reuben James, the first American destroyer sunk by enemy action in late 1941. The bodies were brought to Argentia and buried there.

We were also sent out to recover German bodies when a U-boat was sunk. They were buried in Argentia with a fence separating their part of the cemetery from the American section.

The statement about finding German mines in Placentia Bay was also false. According to all the records ever produced by the U.S. Navy, U.S. Air Force, and the German Navy, there were never any German mines placed or found in Placentia Bay. Mines were found and detonated off the east coast of Newfoundland. Even the logbook of the Goldfinch is in disagreement with Somerville 's claim.

Perhaps Somerville had heard about the U.S. Navy placing defence mines at strategic points throughout Placentia Bay but forgot the details in the mist of memories associated with sweeping areas for German mines. He must have known about the American mines while he was in Argentia because all vessels sailing through Placentia Bay had to adhere to a specific mine-free lane. Did Somerville think that U.S. Navy officials were so inept that they would not have protected their most strategic North American base with mines as well as anti-torpedo/submarine nets!

The only place close to a Newfoundland port where the German submarines laid a field of mines was outside the approach to St. John's harbour, and that was in the spring of 1943. That particular mine field was cleared by the two Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve (RNVR) vessels BYMS 2049 and BYMS 2050. Those two minesweepers had been commissioned in Charleston, North Carolina and turned over to the British Royal Navy for mine sweeping patrols in the United Kingdom. Before sailing to England, the BYMS 2049 and BYMS 2050 were assigned to clear the mine fields that were discovered outside the harbours in Halifax, Nova Scotia and St. John's, Newfoundland.

The German submarine U-552 sank the USS Reuben James — approximately 600 miles west of Ireland in an area defined by coordinates 51° 59' N by 27° 05' W — at 0532 hours on Friday, October 31, 1941. Of the 160 crewmen, only 45 survived. Those in need of medical attention were brought back to Argentia on U.S. destroyers for treatment. Not one body of the 115 men who were killed was ever brought to Argentia for burial. Actually, there was no cemetery in Argentia at the time. Hillview Cemetery, Fort McAndrew was not constructed until after the USS Truxtun and USS Pollux disaster in February 1942.

The small minesweepers at Argentia were never sent across the North Atlantic to pick up bodies of dead seamen. That claim by Somerville was his way of being connected with a historic event … the loss of the first U.S. Navy vessel in World War II. When Allied vessels were sunk in enemy action, U.S. Navy vessels at the scene picked up the bodies of any Americans that were found floating on the water and had them temporarily buried in the nearest territory. In the case of the Reuben James, the nearest territory was Iceland.

Although the USS Reuben James was the first American warship to be sunk in WWII, the loss could have easily been prevented. Firstly, the convoy vessels were not adhering to the standard defence procedure of zigzagging and, secondly, the Reuben James , which was stationed on the port side of the convoy, and the Niblack, which was stationed at the rear of the convoy, and the only one of the five escort destroyers equipped with radar, were not patrolling their assigned stations.

The statement about being sent out of Argentia specifically to pick up German bodies is an outright lie. After hearing or reading about folklore tales pertaining to German spies and German graves in Argentia, Somerville was quick to offer his rendition of the same stories to John Cheeseman. According to U.S. Navy records, ships' logs, command histories, and interviews with 15 former wartime officials at Argentia, the U.S. Navy never — absolutely never — sent vessels out of Argentia, or any other U.S. naval base, to pick up the bodies of dead German seamen. When German U-boats were sunk and there were survivors, those Germans were picked up and brought to Argentia to await transfer to the German prison of war camp at Fort Hunt in Washington, D.C.

Chris Somerville must have thought everyone was ignorant about the history of the American presence in Argentia because he put a completely new twist on the USS Truxtun and USS Pollux disaster of 1942. Prior to giving John Cheeseman erroneous information about his involvement USS Truxtun and USS Pollux disaster, Somerville had often told similar accounts to others who did not know the difference.

While in Placentia, Somerville also spoke with various other people. He repeated much the same story to them but did not keep track of what he was actually saying. Some of his information was different from that which he gave to John Cheeseman. As he recounted his experiences associated with the Truxtun and Pollux Disaster, he said, “I was assigned to the minesweeper Goldfinch; all the minesweepers were named after birds back then! We were sent from Argentia to St. Lawrence, where the Truxtun and Pollux went aground in 1942. We traveled all night to get there. We formed a chain to get the survivors to the mine where doctors and nurses had started arriving from the hospital in St. Lawrence.”

That story is a complete fabrication. Why would the Goldfinch have traveled “all night” to St. Lawrence when the disaster did not occur until after 0400 hours? The trip through Placentia Bay from Argentia takes approximately three hours … slightly more or less, depending on the size of the vessel and the horsepower that drives it.

The first vessel at the scene of the disaster was the SS Kyle, a “Coastal Boat” that carried passengers and freight among the coastal communities of Newfoundland. When Captain Thomas Connors could not get close enough to render assistance, he sailed to St. Lawrence harbour and led his crewmembers overland to the Iron Springs Mine area with ropes, axes, and blankets. They were “accompanied by district nurses O'Flaherty and Reddy,” whose first names were not available at time of research interviews.

When they were first alerted about the Truxtun and Pollux, U.S. Navy officials at Argentia did not appear to have grasped the seriousness of the situation. They were under the impression that the two ships had run aground, but for some unexplained reason were not aware that the vessels were being smashed to pieces. Even when they sent ships to the scene, those vessels were not carrying adequate emergency supplies; they knew that “the Pollux was a supply ship and that medical corpsman Haralson of the USS Brant would have plenty of everything that might be needed from that vessel."

Although the Truxtun crashed onto the rocks at 0410 hours and the Pollux at 0417 hours, a plane from Argentia did not arrive to survey the scene until 1100 hours. By then, the people of St. Lawrence and Lawn had rescue operations well under way. The American vessels USS Kite, USS George E. Badger, and USS Brant did not arrive until 1430 hours; more than 10 hours after the ships had crashed onto the cliffs of the Burin Peninsula. Neither one of them could get close to the wrecks because of the raging sea and thirty-foot waves.

The best the crews on the Kite and George E. Badger could do was to stand by and pick up the bodies that drifted close to their ships. Like the Kyle, the Brant sailed to St. Lawrence and its crewmembers went over land to help in the rescue operations.

As for the USS Goldfinch, it was not sent to St. Lawrence until the following day. Then, it was to participate in a search for bodies and/or body parts that might have come to the surface and take them back to Argentia for burial. Somerville 's claim that, “We took off our shoes and gave them to the survivors” was actually something the men of the USS Brant did.

The survivors who had been brought to various homes were taken to Argentia aboard the USS George E. Badger the day after the disaster. Groups of women had stayed up all night with those men to wash the oil off them, give them food, keep them warn, and treat their wounds. The most noteworthy survivor to be brought to Argentia was Lanier W. Phillips, Matt 3c, the only one of four African-Americans in the disaster to survive. All four were crewmembers of the USS Truxtun.

Somerville's claim about the arrival of doctors and nurses from the hospital in St. Lawrence was strictly a figment of his imagination. Had he taken the time to do some research and get his story straight, he would have realized that there were no doctors at St. Lawrence in the 1940s. In lieu of physicians, the area was served by “district nurses.”

There was no hospital at St. Lawrence in 1942 either. The United States government built the United States Memorial Hospital at St. Lawrence between August 1952 and June 1954. It was a belated gift to the people of the St. Lawrence and Lawn for what they had done to save the lives of a large number of American seamen a little more than a decade earlier.

The most thorough information about the USS Truxtun and USS Pollux disaster outside the National Archives & Research Administration in Washington, D.C. is contained in the book Standing Into Danger by Cassie Brown. Based on several years of impeccable research, that book contains everything anyone might want to know about the events prior to and after the U.S. Navy's greatest non-combat disaster. Had he read Standing Into Danger, Somerville would not have made the outlandish and false claims that he did.