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A Purple Heart And A Purpose Fulfilled

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By TONY MARRERO

Hernando Today

Published: January 31, 2009

BROOKSVILLE - The last memory Bill Prior has of the USS Casco is of his doomed young shipmate.

Prior was playing poker in the engine room when the alarm sounded. A lookout had spotted a torpedo headed for the Casco, a seaplane tender loaded with gasoline and ammunition anchored off Adka, an island in the Aleutians.

Prior was first up the ladder to the hatch and looked back to see the man, hardly out of boyhood.

"He looked lost," recalled Prior, just 17 himself. "He didn't know what to do. I yelled at him to get out of there. That's when the torpedo hit, and I was blown to the next level."

Prior lived to tell the tale of that evening Aug. 30, 1942. Seven men - all of them in the engine room - died in the attack, the young shipmate among them.

Decades later, a Purple Heart with that date and Prior's name inscribed on the back came in the mail. Prior had forgotten it was owed to him.

He will be among more than a dozen area veterans to receive medals for their service at a 1 p.m. ceremony today at Nature Coast Technical High School organized by U.S. Rep. Ginny Brown-Waite. Prior, now 85 and living with his wife Mary in High Point, will accept several commendations, including the World War II Victory Medal and the Asiatic-Pacific Campaign Service Medal.

But he also will get a new Purple Heart, this time in a formal setting without the help of the U.S. Postal Service. Prior had sought help from Brown-Waite after the Department of Motor Vehicles told him he needed to show a certificate for his Purple Heart in order to get a "Combat Wounded Veteran" license plate for his van.

Prior, never a religious man in his younger years, is now a preacher. Reflecting on his story now, he says, he could have only made it this far with God's help.

Born in Tampa, Prior was one of 12 siblings. His father had a dry cleaning business but went broke when the Depression hit and was forced to become a commercial fisherman. Prior joined the service in 1940 at the urging of his uncle, a fighter pilot in World War I.

"There is no future in that fishing boat," Prior recalls his uncle saying. "If you want a future, get into the service and learn a trade."

He tried the Army first, but at 110 pounds and 5 foot 11 inches he was told he was too skinny. The Navy recruiter told him to gain five pounds and come back. He did.

After boot camp in Norfolk, Va., Prior trained in Alameda, Calif. to become a radio man and graduated near the top of his class. He got the choice out of three assignments, including Banana River, Fla. Ready for new horizons, he chose Seattle, instead.

"I wanted to get away from home," he said, laughing.

It was a fortuitous decision. Prior says every man who chose Florida was assigned to Torpedo Squadron 8, and "Every one of those men died in the Battle of Midway," he said.

Prior was then sent to Dutch Harbor, Alaska.

"Then Dec. 7 came along and all hell broke loose," Prior said.

'They were waiting for us'

After the strike on Pearl Harbor, the Japanese invaded the Aleutian Islands as part of their Pacific campaign.

Prior was assigned to the Casco. The ship, more than 300 feet long and with a crew of some 360, was laden with fuel, bombs and depth chargers.

The Casco anchored in a cove off the island of Adka each night. Prior remembers a chief boatswain had warned the captain it was a mistake to return to the same cove each night, that the Japanese submarines would be on to them.

On the night the torpedo struck, the ship's anchor had only just dropped, Prior said.

"They were waiting for us," he said.

The ship, anchored in shallow water, sunk to its top deck.

According to a story related to him later, the dead men were laid out on the beach under sheets. Prior, knocked unconscious and clinging to life, was among them.

The captain was taking a survey of the men when he saw the sheet over Prior move.

"That man is alive. That's Deacon Prior," the captain said, using a nickname Prior had earned during basic training because he never went drinking with the other men on the weekends.

By the time he arrived back in Dutch Harbor, he had pneumonia and was told by doctors that his left leg, shattered in the explosion, would have to be amputated. Prior begged them not to.

A young doctor, Lt. Sawyer, agreed to try to save the leg.

"But first we're going to have to stretch it," Sawyer told Prior, who'd just turned 18.

Prior spent the next three weeks attached to a pulley and a 45-pound sandbag. Sawyer rebuilt the leg with steel plates and bolts, but doctors told Prior he would probably never walk without crutches again.

He was recuperating in an Oakland Naval Hospital and feeling sorry for himself when he spied a young Marine wounded at Guadalcanal. He had lost both arms and both legs.

"They brought him in a basket," Prior recalled, his voice breaking as tears welled behind his eyeglasses. "He made me feel so ashamed of myself because he was just happy to be alive. It was there I decided I would never feel sorry for myself again."

Prior did walk without crutches but was disabled enough to be discharged despite his efforts to be given at least partial duty.

Prior had four other brothers who served in the war. All came back unhurt, including one whose tank was hit during the Battle of the Philippines and another who landed at Normandy and fought all the way to the Rhine River.

Prior moved back to Tampa and worked for a while as a police reporter for The Tampa Tribune. He met his wife Mary in Tampa while the two were working as radio mechanics in the Civil Service.

Prior got a GI loan to buy a house, the first such loan in Hillsborough County, he was told at the time. The couple paid $4,500 in 1945 for a two-story home in West Tampa.

They spent time in San Diego and Illinois, Prior working as a typewriter repairman and salesman, and later running his own insurance agency. They had five children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, several of whom serve in the armed forces. The Priors have lived in Brooksville 28 years.

Prior was haunted for a while by his young shipmate. "He used to have terrible nightmares," Mary says.

In 2000, the couple's pastor at the time predicted Prior would become a pastor. Prior laughed at the time.

He is now assistant pastor at Weeki Wachee Chapel on Spring Hill Drive. He has ministered in nursing homes and prisons, and the couple has helped found two churches.

He says he can't help but think a higher power had this late-in-life calling in mind when the torpedo struck that ship so many years ago.

"God had a purpose," he said. "There's a purpose for everything."

Reporter Tony Marrero can be reached at 352-544-5286 or lmarrero@hernandotodayl.com.

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