By: John – May 2002

Andy Pachipka was born and grew up Clarence, Pennsylvania.  For school he attended Burnside Township for first through eighth grade.  He enjoyed school and he was particularly good in spelling class.  After he graduated grade school he went to work in the coal mines.  In his youth he enjoyed hunting.

He enlisted in the Navy when he was about 20 because he saw what a miserable time his cousin was having in the Army.  He enlisted in the Navy before he was drafted into the Army.  WWII was going on for about a year before he enlisted in the Navy. 

For basic training he went to Camp Dewey by the Great Lakes.   He also went to Florida for training where a German submarine sank the ship ahead of them.  He was trained to make special kinds of knots to hold equipment together.  Since he grew up on a farm he had already known how to tie knots that where strong, but came apart easily if you wanted it to.  Also, he was used to lifting heavy things, so he was good at moving equipment.  Along with moving equipment and learning how to tie specific knots, he cooked in the mess hall and he requested to work with machinery.  In battle, however, he helped fire the guns because he did so much hunting when he was young.  He made the gun go vertical while another person would make it go horizontal if need be.  He helped fire the gun because he was on of the few guys who could shoot well.  He could shoot well because of all the hunting he did in his youth.  In target practice he put five shots into the same bullet hole.

Andy claims that the food was great, but the sleeping conditions where miserable, however not for him.  Most people had to sleep below the ship where it was hot and unbearable, but he was allowed to sleep on the deck in a makeshift hammock because he was a pointer on the gun.

Along with the sleeping conditions being bad and hard withstand the weather was also harsh.  In the Pacific Ocean (where he fought battles in Subic Bay, Manila, and Iwo Jima) it was usually very hot, but in the Atlantic it was almost always below freezing and at times there would be three feet of ice on the deck, and according to Andy, that was not even the worst of it.  The worst weather was when they where traveling in a convoy up the coast of North Carolina one thousand feet apart.  It was there that the waves were over 100 feet tall.

The first place that he landed in was Dakota, South Africa where he had to help deliver equipment sixteen miles into the desert.  He said that the first impression of Africa was he was not going to like.  Along with that, they could not understand a word that the natives were saying.  It was not just in Africa that they could not understand the natives, but pretty much every foreign country they traveled to.

The most frightening experience that Andy experienced in World War II was dropping off the soldiers in a boat to go to a battle.  Andy says, “When you could hear the bullets you where alright.  It was when you couldn’t hear them that you where in trouble.”  The worst part of Andy’s job was burying the people who died in battle.  What they would do with their bodies is sink them to the sea. 

In Andy’s opinion, the most impressive enemy weapons where the Japanese kamikaze planes.  The most impressive allied weapons were the 21-inch guns in the Subic Bay.  He said that you could see the shells turn red hot in the sky after being fired.

The highest rank he ever received was Boatswain 2^nd Class.  He also received many medals.  In fact, he received one for every battle he was in.

When his tour finally ended they asked him to stay, but he said that he just wanted to go home.  The first thing he did when he got home was he went to a party where he got drunk and threw up (he did not do much drinking after that). The first job he had after the war was working at Firestone where he worked on the machines just like in the Navy.

          He got married on August 24^th, 1946.  When he was younger he would see Katy walking home from school at Garfield and hurry outside and water the flowers.  They had three children together:  one boy and two girls.  Now they also have five grandchildren.  After the war, he still enjoyed hunting just like in his youth.