Burbine= Fine Wine
There’s a reason why the name stuck.
In 1998, newsman Tom Brokaw published a book called “The Greatest Generation” to describe Americans who came of age during the Great Depression and World War II.
The inevitable march of time has thinned the ranks of that generation, and it seems as if the noise of modern life tends to erase history – or at the very least obscure it.
But on Sunday afternoon in Bridgeport, a member of the Greatest Generation made a curtain call.
The place: The Burbine (pronounced Burr-byne) residence in Bridgeport.
The occasion: A commemoration of the 75th anniversary of the sinking of the S.S. Henry Bacon, the last ship sunk by the German Luftwaffe in World War II.
Dick Burbine, 94, is one of two remaining survivors from that day – a day where 22 Americans lost their lives.
When you meet Dick Burbine, the first thing that crosses your mind is, “This isn’t Dick Burbine.”
Because there’s nothing about him that seems 94. He doesn’t look 94. He doesn’t move like 94. He’s in incredible shape. As his doc, James Witmer, at the V.A. hospital in Gardnerville joked after putting him through his last physical, “Get out of my office. You embarrass me.”
When you walk in the house and he offers you a drink, the drinks he prefers tend to come in 1.5 oz. servings. And then he leaves the bottle on the table. And you’re always welcome to stay the night if you pour yourself one too many.
He hands me a bottle. Pusser’s Royal Navy Rum. “This is the reason I’m alive,” he says.
And as I was soon to discover, he wasn’t kidding.
The S.S. Henry Bacon was a Merchant Marine ship. Burbine, who was born in 1926 in Melrose, Massachusetts, had applied to join the U.S. Marines at the age of 16 (he made his mother sign a letter to allow him to join the service. She had no choice. He was going to figure out a way) but the Marines wouldn’t take him at that time because he was color blind.
The Merchant Marine, an auxiliary to the Navy tasked with delivering material and personnel, did.
The Henry Bacon left the Russian port of Murmansk on February 17, 1945 as part of a convoy headed for England.
“In Murmansk … everyday just like clockwork, the Germans would come and strafe the harbor,” recalls Burbine. “As soon as we left the harbor, the Germans started sinking the ships. They sank three of them before we even got out.”
The weather soon became another obstacle.
“We ran into one of the most severe storms ever recorded in the area. It was so strong it went right off the barometer – completely off the scale. Winds of over 130 miles per hour, 45 to 60 degrees below zero. We lost the convoy. The rough seas sheared the steel pins holding the main springs on the steering mechanism. We had no steering capacity.”
And it was in this compromised condition that the S.S. Henry Bacon was discovered by 23 JU-88 German planes.
Burbine said that the Bacon put up a fight. It shot down a confirmed six planes, and damaged another four before the boat was hit by a torpedo which blew a hole in its rear explosive hatch.
The boat sank in less than an hour.
Immediately after the boat was struck, Burbine says “My
mother sign a letter to allow him to join the service. She had no choice. He was going to figure out a way) but the Marines wouldn’t take him at that time because he was color blind.
The Merchant Marine, an auxiliary to the Navy tasked with delivering material and personnel, did.
The Henry Bacon left the Russian port of Murmansk on February 17, 1945 as part of a convoy headed for England.
“In Murmansk … everyday just like clockwork, the Germans would come and strafe the harbor,” recalls Burbine. “As soon as we left the harbor, the Germans started sinking the ships. They sank three of them before we even got out.”
The weather soon became another obstacle.
“We ran into one of the most severe storms ever recorded in the area. It was so strong it went right off the barometer – completely off the scale. Winds of over 130 miles per hour, 45 to 60 degrees below zero. We lost the convoy. The rough seas sheared the steel pins holding the main springs on the steering mechanism. We had no steering capacity.”
And it was in this compromised condition that the S.S. Henry Bacon was discovered by 23 JU-88 German planes.
Burbine said that the Bacon put up a fight. It shot down a confirmed six planes, and damaged another four before the ship was hit by a torpedo which blew a hole in its magazine near Hold #5.
She sank in less than an hour.
Immediately after the ship was struck, Burbine says “My Chief Engineer ordered me to cut loose one of then lifeboats with a fire axe because the cables were frozen. But the sea hit me and took me and the life boat right over the side. I came up under the life boat. It had hit me on the back of the neck and knocked me out. I had to kick off my sea boots in the tangle of lines in the water, and somehow I rolled the life boat upright. How I did it, I don’t know. Witnesses who saw me do it couldn’t say how I did it by myself … it saved some crew by doing that.”
Only two lifeboats were serviceable following the torpedo strike. In one boat were placed 20 Norwegian women and children, war refugees who had boarded the Henry Bacon in Murmansk.
The second lifeboat took as many crew members as it dared.
In an act of heroism that Dick Burbine alluded to again and again during our time together, the ship’s 50-year old Chief Engineer, Donald Haviland, gave up his seat on the lifeboat to one of his 18-year old sailors.
Haviland subsequently went down with the ship.
Ringleader
But what of Dick Burbine? He’s in the water, It’s cold and dark. You can’t see a thing. The waves are swelling 100 feet.
A life ring floats by. Seriously. A little ring maybe a few feet in diameter. He’s able to grab it.
He hears a few friends close by. There’s Woodrow Wilson Pozon. They connect. Pozon hangs onto a piece of the ring. Then they hear William “Blackie” Willridge and swim toward him, connect. He grabs a piece of the ring. And finally, they also save Warren Bachelor, who is in and out of delirium. They put Warren’s head through the ring, and then wrap their legs around Bachelor’s to secure him.
And they wait, they hope, for a rescue.
It’s somewhat ironic that being in the water may have improved their chances. The relatively warm sea current beat exposure to the arctic air. Tragically, some men who were able to access the dunnage, the floating detritus from the ship, died because the sea spray literally froze them to the timbers.
Those in rafts were okay – so long as they stayed dry.
According to Burbine, he was conscious during the whole ordeal. In fact, at one point, amid the swells, he saw the “Christmas Tree.”
Huh?
“The Christmas Tree is the top of then mast where the running lights are … at one point, I saw it moving on the horizon and five minutes later I could make out the shape of the hull.”
Meaning that they were floating in the first place a rescuer would look.
During the nearly three hour ordeal, there wasn’t a lot of talking. Nor a great deal of time devoted to existential thought.
“We were cold and hurting,” says Burbine. “You didn’t want to waste energy talking and letting heat out of your body. It was just all about survival. How to save our asses.”
When help finally arrived in the form of the H.M.S. Zambesi, a British Destroyer, the assumption was that it was a recovery mission as opposed to a rescue mission.
The typical survival rate for a person submerged in such frigid water temperatures is 10 to 15 minutes.
A sub-lieutenant on the Zambesi, Ian Rodney Bowen (later knighted), “tied a heaving line around his waist and jumped in to hook us up and take us aboard,” said Burbine. “At the time, they thought we were dead because we were covered with ice when they brought us on the dock – but when they dropped us on the deck my eyes opened and rolled back and they said, ‘My God, they’re still alive.’”
“What they did once they brought us aboard … our clothes were frozen to our bodies. So they laid us on the mess hall tables, covered us with sheets and packed us in sea ice. They covered us with sea ice, let the sea ice melt room temperature as our bodies thawed out with it.”
But there was no medication. They’d picked up so many survivors there was none left. All they had left: Pusser’s Royal Navy Rum. They had barrels of it. So the doctor (who was actually not a medical doctor but a veterinary doctor) provided a steady supply over the next four days. “He kept us on a mellow glow,” recalls Burbine.
And at the end of four days, the verdict: “I had frostbite but didn’t lose any extremities. the doctors checked us out and said we were fine.”
—–
The immediate aftermath was pretty interesting. They took Burbine and some of his shipmates to a castle in Northern Ireland where they were interrogated by the FBI, Naval Intelligence, British Naval Intelligence. “They thought we were German plants …. because nobody had ever survived over two hours in the water.”
And even Burbine admits today – if it had been even one or two minutes more, he wouldn’t have made it. “My blood [at rescue] was actually crystallizing in my veins and breaking through the skin.”
Of note: Five years after the sinking of the Henry Bacon, the body of Gunner Mason Burr washed up on a beach in Norway, perfectly preserved. Burr was subsequently buried at Arlington National Cemetery.
And Burbine, 47 years later, in 1992, was awarded the Mariner’s Medal for his heroism, the equivalent of a Purple Heart.
—–
Burbine was ultimately shipped back to the States and given a 30-day leave. After which – yes, he got back on another boat. Several boats in fact. He didn’t leave the service until 1966.
He moved to California just before he got married, in 1961, to Rosemary Ruth Burbine, the younger sister of close friends from his hometown of Melrose.
Rosemary had been a nun. She left the convent to marry Dick.
They had one son, Joe, in 1962. Joe was a longtime member of the Mono County Sheriff’s Department and ran the Bridgeport Jail before retiring a few years back.
He and Dad live together.
Rosemary died in 1997 following an eight-year struggle with Alzheimer’s. Dick fulfilled his promise to his wife during that time by taking care of her throughout the entire ordeal.
From 1966-1988, Dick worked at Livermore National Laboratory. He was a Sergeant and Watch Commander, working officially for the UC-California system police.
From 1988-2002, Burbine lived in Tracy and worked the summers from 1988-1998 as a camp host for the United States Forest Service.
He retired to Bridgeport permanently in 2004.
He and his son remain very active. Their activity of choice: cutting wood. They like to cut down trees that the Forest Service deems hazardous, chop them up, and donate the firewood to locals who need it.
Dick is the son of a veteran, but never really knew his father, who died in 1928 when Dick was just two years old. His father died of complications related to exposure to mustard gas in World War I.
His keys to longevity:
1. Pusser’s Rum
2. Own and use a chainsaw frequently. “Work gives us a reason for being,” is his takeaway message.
3. No rabbit food – Dick’s no fan of vegetables
4. Don’t use sugar and salt. Eat it how it comes. He prefers meat and potatoes.
