Part 2 of 5, family historyBy COLBY ROOT
Contributing writer
On July 17, 1944, Torpedoman Third Class Marvin “Hans” Root walked up the driveway to the Root farm off of Hound Street north of New Richland. Dressed in his Navy whites, he surprised his mom and dad, Esther and Burchard Root, along with his eight brothers and sisters still on the home farm. No one there had heard from him for almost two years; all had begun to wonder what had happened. Had his ship been destroyed by a Japanese torpedo? Had it run into a sea mine and gone down in some far-flung reaches of the Pacific? His rare letters home had stopped coming since before he had even been assigned a ship. Was he dead? The family had even placed inquiries about him with the Red Cross.
Father Burchard may have wondered whether the sage advice he had given his two oldest had been a mistake. He had told them to join the Navy, where they would always have a bed and a square meal. To a man who had struggled to feed twelve children during the Great Depression, the advice made sense, but the motive for his advice came from even deeper down. He had heard the stories of what WWI trench warfare had been like, and probably couldn’t help reasoning that his boys would have stronger chances at survival in the Navy. Perhaps Marvin’s reemergence at the farm in 1944 was taken as a sign that Burchard’s fatherly advice had been sound after all.
While he had been away, Marvin had been a torpedo man on the USS Sperry, a submarine tender that spent the better part of 1942 and 1943 stealthily navigating the South Pacific evading the Japanese. A Fulton-class submarine tender, the USS Sperry serviced submarines in exotic but dangerous places, everywhere from Midway and Brisbane Australia to Pearl Harbor and New Caledonia. In a five-month period at Midway, the USS Sperry serviced and refurbished 140 submarines. As a torpedo man, Marvin was responsible for munitions, including transferring torpedoes to submarines. To his impressed sister Barbara, he described the boat as being half a mile long and twenty stories deep. She said about him coming home on leave: “He was way down in [the ship], so when he came home he wasn’t tanned, even though he’d been near the equator.”
Marvin “Hans” Root was the second-oldest boy of the Root siblings, but he had been the first to enlist because his older brother, Vern, had a hernia. Since Vern required surgery before he could join, Marvin was on his own, which was fine. He was scrappy and could handle himself. He enjoyed a good dust-up. While stationed on the USS Sperry, he earned the nickname “Tiger” because of his boxing prowess and aggressive fighting in ship-board conflicts, known as smokers. The name would follow him through life beyond a military career that would last 24 years and six months, spanning WWII, Korea, and Vietnam. Marvin would later serve on the USS Sullivan and the USS English.
After his 30-day furlough, Marvin “Hans” “Tiger” Root would return to the South Pacific for the final push of the war, leaving his whereabouts again unknown to everyone back home. Family legend has it he ran into his older brother, Vern, who was by then serving on the destroyer USS Thomas E Fraser (probably while in Oahu). He would not, however, run into younger brother, Bill Root, who came of age and joined up in early 1945: Bill’s task was laying down metal netting to prevent submarine attacks against the California coast.
Bill’s decision to sign up meant that, by the time the war drew to its 1945 close, three Root brothers were serving in the Pacific.
Like most of what happened to the Root boys during their time in the military, Marvin’s history is shrouded in the fog of time, buried in the aging recollections of relatives, hard-to-find military records, and repressed and forgotten accounts of what would and maybe never could be spoken of. In late 1945 and early 1946, the Navy would honorably discharge all three of the Root boys.
After the war, Marvin bought a dump truck and started a gravel hauling business. He did this for six months before his wanderlust overpowered him. He sold the truck and reenlisted. His history in the Korean war becomes vague in the memory of his surviving relatives, and without DD 214 forms (reports of separation from active duty) for that period, we do not know exactly which boat he was stationed on during the Korean conflict. Nona Smith, one of his surviving sisters, believes he was on the USS Sullivans while his surviving brother, David Root, believes it was the USS English. All agree he served on both boats during his more than 20 years of service after WWII. It is also known he participated in heavy action in Korea.
Based on the simple fact that Marvin’s younger brother, Gene “Buzz” Root, had joined the Marines and started fighting in Korea in 1952, it is likely Marvin was stationed aboard the USS English during the Korean War. This reasoning is based on what happened to the five Sullivan Brothers who died aboard the USS Juneau when it went down at Guadalcanal in 1942. Since that family tragedy, all branches of the military have worked to keep siblings from serving in the same theater of battle at the same time. That said, Marvin had been aboard the USS Sullivans in Korea, he might have been firing against the North Korean and Chinese forces directly opposing his brother’s First Marine Division along the Imjin River. Probably too close for comfort for any of the branches of the US military.
Ironically, because Marvin may have yet been aboard the USS Sullivans at this time, a complete history of the ship is worth summarizing here. The USS Sullivans saw action so far north into North Korea, it was within seventy-five miles of Vladivostok, where it was protecting aircraft carriers. Soviet MiG-15 jets raced out to meet the carriers and forced the first jet dogfight over the ocean. While off the northeast coast of Korea, the USS Sullivans bombarded enemy supply lines, railroad lines, trains and railroad tunnels. On Christmas day 1952, the ship’s crew fired on and destroyed a crucial railroad bridge.
It is more likely Marvin was aboard the USS English during the Korean war: This ship, too, has quite a story. In late 1950 and into 1951, the USS English supported the evacuation of the Marines at Hungnam, the extraction point sought by about 14,000 U.S. Marines after fighting their way out of the frozen Chosin Reservoir. During fighting in December 1952, U.S. forces had been surrounded by the Chinese, but broke free by mounting fierce legendary scrimmages. The support by gunboats and jets from aircraft carriers protected by Destroyers like the USS English was invaluable.
In all likelihood, Marvin was part of one of the most famous military retreats in world history. After Hungnam, the USS English accompanied two Thai Royal Navy Corsairs— the smallest ocean-going fighting vessel. The three boats moved shoreward to shell Communist positions at Chodri, Chongin. Kanson, Kosong, and Kangnung. As a torpedo man, Marvin was in charge of the ship’s small arms, supporting ship battery, and being at the ready to torpedo Chinese, North Korean, and possibly Russian submarines.
A final note on the family's participation in the war in Korea: Dean Gehring, Marvin’s cousin, was captured by the Chinese, but eventually released when his captors retreated. It is not inconceivable that Marvin and the USS English may have unwittingly helped Dean make his way out of the frozen mountains with their bombardment of Chinese positions.
With only incomplete records, Marvin’s military career in the next war–Vietnam–is also somewhat obscured. It is very likely he served on the USS English or the USS Sullivans during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Where he was during Lebanon and Vietnam has yet to be divulged. What is known is he somehow achieved, lost, then re-achieved the rank of E-7. His younger brother, David, guffawed when he spoke about this seesaw ride. “He probably punched a commanding officer in the nose.” That was Marvin “Tiger” Root’s style. He relished life and a good fight.
Marvin Curtis “Hans” “Tiger” Root was born Dec 11, 1923. He died May 25, 1989 and is buried in Saint Peter Cemetery near New Richland. May he rest in peace.
Part 3 next week.
Editorial Note: Orville “Ibb” Yess was maried to Thelma. He also served in Korea
Editorial Note 2: The girls of the Root clan were no less patriotic than their brothers and bear mentioning here as their names may be scattered throughout the coming articles: Anita (Root) Jewison born 1922 who quit her job as a beautician to work at a factory making radio equipment for the military during WWII; Barbara (Root) Tolzmann, 1925 who was training to be a teacher at the time of WWII; Nona (Root) Smith, January 1929, who married David Smith a sailor in WWII, and whose son George was wounded in Vietnam; Iola "Odie" (Root) Schroeder Borchert December 1929; Thelma (Root) Yess 1934; Opal (Root) Hofius 1935, who married Charles Hofius, US Army Korea. Opal Hofius, her two sons also servved in the military, Donnie Hofius and Chad Hofius.