The Gorgon Nostalgia

Taken from The Gorgon, Spring, 1999

And Our Ship Was Still There

Last summer we told you about James E. Troupe of Woodburn, Oregon, who reported aboard Euryale at Sasebo in October 1945. When we welcomed him aboard as a new member of our reunion association, he told us that he stayed with the ship until it underwent decommissioning and preservation at the Mare Island Naval Shipyard. Jim says he was the last officer, along with Capt. Gurley, to leave the ship.

Then last October we told you about Ivan Ritchie of San Diego, who made the Navy a career and in 1965, on his way to a new assignment, was told to head for Bremerton, WA, locate the big battleship Missouri, go across the pier and check in aboard the Reserve Fleet Flagship which turned out to be the big Blue Beetle herself. Ivan lays claim to being "the last man of the Euryale crew to set foot on the old girl."

The saga continues. Jack Filion of Mesa, Arizona, writes that in the early 1970s, he was visiting friends in Bremerton and saw that the Euryale and the Missouri were anchored out in the bay, the Blue Beetle just aft of the Big Mo. "I never could talk anyone into a ride out to snoop around our old ship," Jack writes.

So Jack apparently is the last crew member to have seen our old ship afloat.

While Euryale lives on now only in our memories, USS Missouri, the battleship aboard which the peace treaty ending the war with the Japanese was signed, was moved recently to Pearl Harbor, where it will be on permanent display.

TM 2/C Jack Filion played lead saxophone in the ship's band that was sometimes scheduled to entertain before the evening movie. "I'll always remember," he told The Gorgon "that before we could honk out our first toot-toot, the voices could be heard from all over the ship: 'Start the movie. Start the movie.' But we played anyhow."