Veteran quit high school to join service with fellow volunteer—his father
Just before starting his senior year at Texas High School, in late summer 1942, Bill Ware, 17, received some inspiration to volunteer service in the U.S. Navy from another volunteer—his dad.
“It was actually my dad’s idea to join the Navy himself and I liked the idea, so I decided to join the Navy as well,” said Ware, now a 91-year-old Texarkana, Ark., resident. “I joined the Navy before I started my senior year.”
Bill Ware served as a coxswain aboard the U.S. Navy cargo and supply vessel, the U.S.S Draco, in the Pacific during World War II. Bill Ware said even though his dad, Joe M. Ware, wasn’t able to stay in the Navy after enlisting, he still appreciated his dad’s influence.
Born March 26, 1925, in Altamont, Kan., Bill Ware and his family moved to Texarkana, Texas, in 1934 and lived on Texas Avenue, now known as Texas Boulevard.
The relocation and opening of the Kansas-based North American Tank Car Company, where Bill Ware’s dad worked as a chief electrician, prompted the family’s move to Texarkana.
Both Bill Ware and his dad, who by then was 36 years old, journeyed to Little Rock and enlisted in the U.S. Navy on Aug. 29, 1942.
“At the time, dad thought that even though he had a good job with a company that was contributing to the war effort and engaged in national defense, he nevertheless wanted to take a more active role in defending our country,” Bill Ware said.
Prior to the war, the U.S. military’s draft age for men was between age 21 and 36. Once the war started, the draft age was extended from 18 to 45, with those men above age of 36 being assigned primarily in clerical positions rather than combat.
“At that time, dad was hoping to serve in the U.S. Navy Reserves, possibly with the job of serving as an electrician’s mate,” Bill Ware said.
However, not long after Joe Ware enlisted and took his physical exam, the Navy soon issued him a medical discharge, owing to potential heart trouble.
Nevertheless, Joe Ware’s willingness to serve still inspired his son to continue his military career—a commitment which soon had him on a troop train westbound for basic training in San Diego, Calif.
Following Navy boot camp, it wasn’t long before Bill Ware received deployment overseas aboard the U.S.S. Draco, starting about February 1943.
“A few days after basic training, I got rustled out my bunk bed at about midnight by someone who told me I was being assigned to a cargo ship,” Ware said. “Once aboard that ship, I
“We had a torpedo go right by our bow just as our ship was lurching high in the ocean waves. It hit, but did not explode. It just got stuck in our hull so we kept on sailing. Once we got into port, some repairmen managed to dislodge it and fix the damaged area with some sheet metal.” —Bill Ware
was told to just go below decks and grab a bunk.”
After boarding the Draco, Ware who served as a coxswain (sailor who handles smaller boats aboard the cargo ship) and set sail with the rest of the crew, first for a short stay at Pearl Harbor, before going on to Espiritu Santo in the South Pacific.
“From where I had grown up and lived before, there was no ocean, so I was surprised to see so much water for miles and miles around.” Bill Ware said. “Our ship hauled military ammunition, food, medical supplies and other supplies. Anything that could be transported, we hauled it to where it needed to be.”
After arriving about May 5, 1943, the Draco delivered supplies to bases at Auckland in New Zealand and Noumea on New Caledonia Island. It also delivered supplies to the Fiji Islands as well as the recently secured island of Guadalcanal. Later that year, the cargo carrier supported American efforts to invade, secure and consolidate the rest of the Solomon Islands, including the invasions of Torokina, Bougainville and Emirau.
From the South Pacific, the Draco then went on to support U.S. Central Pacific offensive efforts to recapture Guam between July 27 and Aug. 10, 1944 before eventually arriving at the U.S. Pacific fleet’s naval base at Ulithi Atoll on May 27, 1945 to pick up cargo to support the final mop-up and securing of Okinawa Island between June 26 and July 12 1945.
During these final U.S. operations in the war, Ware witnessed the desperate suicide tactics of Japanese airmen attempting to commit crash dives with their warplanes right into the American warships. Near the end of the battle for Okinawa, he found himself having to man a mounted machine gun on the vessel’s flying bridge.
“We would see these planes every so often,” Ware said. “I had to shoot at one of these just as it was flying toward us. A number of us had to shoot it as long as we could. A lot of those Japanese planes would come in low toward our ships then leap up just high enough in time to miss hitting them.”
Beyond these suicide flights, the only other time Ware recalled his vessel being in danger occurred when a torpedo, launched possibly by either an enemy warplane or submarine, struck his cargo ship’s port side (left side) and in the front bow area.
“We had a torpedo go right by our bow just as our ship was lurching high in the ocean waves,” Ware said. “It hit, but did not explode. It just got stuck in our hull so we kept on sailing. Once we got into port, some repairmen managed to dislodge it and fix the damaged area with some sheet metal.”
The war finally ended Aug. 15, 1945. Ware said he remembers the day.
“Everyone aboard ship looked like they got drunk,” he said. “Men cheered as they broke out more liquor. The bartenders just couldn’t hold anybody back.”
As for the voyage back home, Ware said his mother drove all the way to the West Coast to see him.
“Mom came to the front gate, right where the Draco had docked and asked for me,” Ware said.” I had’t seen her in three years. When we came back home to Texarkana, she took me to get my discharge (Oct. 10, 1945). I was just thankful that I got back home alive.”