John B. Musum

John B. Musum was born in 1924, the eldest of three brothers, to a successful businessman in Newark, New Jersey. He enjoyed a carefree childhood, playing with his brothers, Vincent and Philip, in a nearby cattle pasture and park. While walking to the store, Musum became aware of the attack on Pearl Harbor. Despite being too young to immediately join the growing war effort, he was infuriated by the news, wanting to take revenge on the Japanese for the men lost in the attack.

Soon after his graduation from Columbia High School in 1943, Musum received a draft notice from the US Army. Upon reporting for his physical; however, he was denied due to his habit of chewing his fingernails! This rejection from the Army compelled the young Musum to become part of the war effort by enlisting in the US Merchant Marine.

Musum’s decision to join the Merchant Marine was partially driven by the encouragement of his friends already serving in the branch. The stories which these friends told of seeing the world in the course of their voyages captured Musum’s imagination and fueled his youthful desire to have a grand adventure. In contrast to the worries expressed by his mother, he was certain that he would return home safely at the war’s conclusion. His departure from home was characterized by excitement and anticipation of the adventures he was about to have.

Before his adventures could begin in earnest, Musum was initially sent to Sheepshead Bay in Brooklyn for training. He quickly took to shipboard military discipline, learning how to carry out his duties and take orders from his superiors. During this time, Musum also proved to be a natural sailor, developing a love for the sea and seafaring.

Upon completion of his training, Musum signed on to the SS William Thornton, a newly constructed Liberty ship, for his first voyage with the Merchant Marine. He was brought aboard the ship as an Ordinary Seaman, serving variously as a deckhand, engine mechanic, and kitchen staff. Musum stated that the most sought-after role among the sailors was dishwasher, due to comparatively light duties with no proportional difference in pay.

As a deckhand, Musum was entrusted with performing an hour and 20-minute watch shift at the ship’s wheel. He recalled these shifts as seeming to stretch on for an eternity. On one occasion, while standing wheel watch during a night shift, Musum was led off course by the mast light of the ship in front of him, almost resulting in a collision with another ship in the convoy. According to him, this type of incident was fairly common. Along with these duties, Musum and the Merchant Mariners were expected to aid the US Navy Armed Guard crew, who were assigned to the ship to operate the ship’s 20mm anti-aircraft guns and its three and five-inch deck guns, collecting ejected casings and supplying fresh ammunition.

Musum’s position as Ordinary Seaman placed him at the bottom of the command structure under Able-bodied Seamen; the respected carpenters and boatswains, the Third, Second, and First Mates, and finally the captain. While the majority of the ship’s officers were “regular guys”, generally personable and amiable with the rest of the crew, captains were usually hard men seldom seen outside their cabins. Thanks to the intervention of the strong Seaman’s Union, both the conditions and pay offered to Merchant Mariners were very good when compared to their counterparts in the Navy. Musum recalled that this disparity in pay between the Merchant Marine and the Navy, despite their similar duties, created tension and even animosity between sailors of the different branches. This tension would cause men of differing branches to avoid associating with one another when serving on the same vessel.

During Musum’s time in the Merchant Marine, he never encountered, nor worried about encountering, German U-boats. He recalled that the threat posed by U-boats to merchant vessels sailing the North Atlantic was greatly reduced by 1943, when he began his service. Whereas earlier in the war, lone merchant ships had to fear the predations of German raiders, Musum always felt secure sailing as part of a convoy. The ships which Musum served on never sailed unaccompanied, often traveling in a grid pattern of up to 30 ships, forming five rows of six ships each, escorted by four Navy destroyers, which constantly patrolled along the perimeters of the formation.

The only circumstance which caused Musum apprehension about German raids was the presence of British coal-burning ships within his convoy, as the trail of black smoke which they left in their wake made the convoy easy to track, and was perceived as marking it as a tempting target for U-boats. The absence of an effective U-boat threat made his principle concern the extreme weather conditions of the North Atlantic, and the occasional collisions and near collisions between ships in the same convoy.

Musum’s first voyage on the William Thornton took him across the Atlantic to the English Channel, in the waters just off the coast of France. While en route, he had known that the Allied invasion of Western Europe was imminent, and that the supplies carried by the William Thornton were meant to support it, but he had no direct knowledge of the exact time or place it would take place. Musum first became aware of his role in the invasion when the William Thornton used turnbuckles for towing heavy barges welded to the ship’s hull.

Although Musum was not aware of it at the time, the first D-Day landings had occurred three days prior to the William Thornton’s arrival in the English Channel. Despite that, he recalled that the beaches and immediate inland were still wracked by intense fighting, and would only be brought completely under Allied control some days later. The scale of the vast flotilla of ships assembled to support the Normandy beachhead was overwhelming for Musum, being the largest gathering of ships, material, and men, he had ever seen. In order to prevent landing craft from being pushed way from the beach by undercurrents, ships were purposefully wrecked in order to form artificial harbors from which men and materiel might be safely offloaded.