Vinnie Mendes, one of those terrific Highlands folks who grew up there and now lives elsewhere, recalls many of his stories about growing up in Highlands and all the things the Mendes boys did, good and bad, in their youth. Vinnie often shares these stories in his column in his hometown paper the Lakeside News in Georgia, and this is one of those stories. He dedicated it in memory of his brother, Paul, who died Aug. 22, 2019, three years ago this month..
Growing up on the Shore was a fund experience. My three brothers and I had a river to swim in and sail on and endless acres of coastal woods to play in. The hills were honeycombed with old bunkers and tunnels, some of them dating back to the Spanish American War and we spent endless hours playing imaginary games in them.
They were basically concrete gun emplacements connected by tunnels, some of them hundreds of yards long. They once held the “Guns as big as stars with shells as big as trees” that they sing about. These were the same guns that are mounted on our Navy’s battleships, each one capable of hurling a projectile the weight of a Volkswagen up to 24 miles.
Our battleships each had nine of them. (After World War II the big coastal guns were all sold for scrap to the Gillette Razor Company because of their superb steel. The battleships all went into moth balls to be called back when they were needed for Korean, Vietnam and the Gulf War.
This country had the strongest coastal defense in the world, which is one of the reasons we were never attacked from the sea.
Nowadays you don’t have to invade a country’s shores or bomb their cities to defeat them. All you have to do is cut off supply of a raw material they need to keep their economy running, such as tungsten, beryllium, rubber or oil. If you want to find out why we are involved in any part of the world, check out their natural resources.
It was a different world in the middle of the Cold War. When I joined the Navy right out of high school, I got to see parts of the world I never even dreamed of. The downside was I had to take orders from someone who was dumber than I was but had been in the Navy six months longer. I got out after four years and went to college, thinking I’d come back as an officer and make a career. By the time I graduated, Vietnam had heated up and I opted to try my luck as a civilian.
Meanwhile, my next younger brother, Paul, went to college first and later enlisted in Army ROTC. When he graduated he became a second lieutenant and was shipped off to the fighting. He later retired as a full colonel after 28 years, making more money in his retirement that I ever made working! He also had a bunch of really good stories to tell.
One of these involved him off in the jungle with a company of soldiers being pinned down, with the enemy fire drawing ever closer. Not only was his life at stake but he had the responsibility for the safety of all the men under him.
Quickly calculating the odds for survival, he called into headquarters for artillery support. Unfortunately, all the Army artillery units were engaged, but the fellow said the Navy might have a unit in the area. Paul wasn’t very optimistic because he knew they were at least 15 miles in from the coast but a minute later the voice came back over the radio telling him he was being patched through to “Sledgehammer.”
Now all the Army artillery units had names like “Tackhammer,” “Clawhammer, “ Ball Peen, et,v but this made wonder. “What is sledgehammer”? Anyway he radioed in the coordinates for the location and was told to take cover. Next thing he knew KABOOM! The entire side of the hill disappeared. It was like a B-52 strike. He radioed in “Mission accomplished,” then asked, “What the ^%$&^$% was that?” The voice came back over the radio, “Son, that was the Battleship New Jersey.”
He thought, “Ah, greetings from home, and not a moment too soon.”
