Calhoun of Serfor

In Honolulu last Dec. 7 Vice Admiral William Lowndes Calhoun broke a standing routine. For once he missed Sunday morning church services. Instead he found himself among officers who were directing streams of yellow obscenities at the raiders overhead. "Gentlemen," he said, "you mustn't address those fellows that way. After all, they are just fighting for their country the way we must for ours." All jaws dropped. Turning his face upward, Calhoun added meditatively, "Yes, the dirty, yellow-bellied sons of bitches."

The Japs were just bombing Billy Calhoun into his biggest job. That job is one of the most manifold, complicated and far-extended jobs in the Navy. For Calhoun, as Commander of the Pacific Fleet Service Force, provides everything needed to keep the Navy running everywhere in the Pacific. As he puts it: "We handle everything under the shining sun for the Navy and Marines which is not actually connected with fighting the ships."

In 1939 when he visited his home town, Palatka, as Florida's only admiral son, they gave him a big picnic. The Mayor spoke, praising Calhoun as Palatka's first citizen, greatest man. (Lieut. General Joseph Stilwell. U.S. Commander in China, also a Palatka son, had not yet gained fame.) Bill Calhoun, listening to the Mayor, began rocking with laughter. "Why are you laughing. Willie?" the Mayor asked. "When I was last here," Calhoun chortled, "your old lady was my schoolteacher.' When I went away she said, 'Willie Calhoun, you'll never amount to anything!' "

But Willie Calhoun soon amounted to a midshipman at Annapolis. In World War I, he amounted to sub base commander at Coco Solo, Canal Zone. Despite the fact that the destroyer Young under his command followed six others on to the rocks of Point Honda in 1923, a court-martial commended Calhoun for his "coolness, intelligence and seamanlike ability after the vessel stranded, which . . . was responsible for the greatly reduced loss of life." Calhoun's career moved upward through battleship and base force cofnmands.

For the job he has now Calhoun is an able administrator. A mass of details and a staff quadrupled since Dec. 7 have never swamped him. Calhoun not only has everything under control but at his fingertips. He keeps his own index of Navy tankers, knows every moment where each one is. No man dares tell him a job has been done if it hasn't--Calhoun knows in an instant, and woe betide the offender (although the Admiral may ask him to lunch half an hour later).

Through the harrying complexity of his problems his nerves remain under control. He is never tempted to go out and get drunk (never took a drink in his life), doesn't smoke and lives on in athlete's diet of plain food (favorites: hamburger, chicken, green corn, fresh vegetables and no sauce of any kind). Moreover every day he is out for a long walk, every Sunday morning in church. All this is very nearly incredible, considering the incredible Serfor job, chief parts of which are:

> To provide for every ship and base fuel, food, shells, radios, detecting equipment, chewing gum, bosun's pipes--everything for existence, everything for fighting. (To insure deliveries Calhoun commands fighting ships assigned to escort convoys.)

> To maintain every ship and shore installation at advance bases: repairing and altering damaged ships, airfields, hangars, oil tanks, barracks, docks.

> To anticipate repairs and replacements and be ready to provide them every time a task force returns.

> To deliver all the equipment that invasion forces may require--entrenching tools, materials for emergency airfields, medicines for insect bites.

> To deliver the mail everywhere in the Pacific to the fleet and the Marine Corps.

> To refuel and resupply ships at sea.

> To have hospital ships ready during every action to snatch serious cases from the sick bays of the warships, and be ready to land complete mobile hospitals.

> To put ashore a police force to maintain order in any captured hostile area.

> After every action, as ships steam toward their base, they are boarded at sea by Serfor men. Swinging aboard like advance agents of ship chandlers, they find out what is needed, are ready to service the ship the minute she anchors or docks.

Battles will be won and battles will be lost and Serfor will be heard of no more in the future than it has in the past. But when the Japs are beaten across the great reaches of the Pacific, the victory will belong no less to the outfit which delivered the groceries, the ammunition and the fuel than to the fighting forces.

A blue-bordered white pennant was broken out over the tower of the administration building on Terminal Island, Los Angeles, last week, and the world's largest fleet operating base formally was in operation. Its name: Roosevelt Base.

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