Don’t forget the ‘mariners’

By Barbara Shelly

The Kansas City Star

National Maritime Day was May 22, and so I received a few phone calls and emails from an aging contingent with a plaintive message.

“Don’t let them forget the Merchant Marines,” they said.

Even this year, when the nation marks the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II, it is too easy to forget the Merchant Marines and the role they played in that global war.

The job of the Merchant Marines was to transport supplies to U.S. troops in war zones, on privately owned vessels that were nationalized for military service.

It was hazardous duty; more than 1,600 ships were sunk or disabled and one of every 26 crew members perished, the highest fatality rate of all the armed services.

As the daughter of a Merchant Marines captain, I grew up hearing about the sea battles. They were not romantic adventures, but horrendous conflagrations.

For all the risks they took, the mariners, as they prefer to be called (never say Marines), were never considered on a par with members of the U.S. Armed Services.

President Franklin Roosevelt wanted Congress to include the Merchant Marines in the groundbreaking legislation known as the GI Bill of Rights but was overruled by lawmakers. The seamen never received benefits such as college tuition or low-interest home loans.

The mariners weren’t recognized as veterans until 1988, when the government was forced to do so by a class-action lawsuit. Today they are entitled to care at VA hospitals and to burial flags.

A push to gain compensation for the benefits denied over the years has largely fizzled out, as the number of World War II Merchant Marine veterans grows ever smaller.

A Kansas City-area veterans chapter, the Mid America Ancient Mariners, has met for years on the first Wednesday of each month at a Denny’s restaurant. Attendance is down to about 15 members, I am told.

Service to the nation

But they are the ones who understand what it meant to be a Merchant Marine, and what that service meant to the nation. And they worry: Who will remember when they are gone?

And so they call me, or have family members call, because they know I am a Merchant Marine’s daughter.

“Don’t let them forget the Merchant Marines,” they say.

I wish I could assure them that won’t happen. But the mariners have always struggled for the respect they deserve, and the quest grows no easier with time.

Barbara Shelly is a columnist for the Kansas City Star. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.