The guys who dived

James B. Meaddow, Rocky Mountain News

Published August 2, 2007 at midnight

Text size

More Local News

Most of the guys are gone - Frenchy, Rosie, DeLucia, Pappy, even Swede, who was actually a Norwegian. Yeah, most of the guys are gone, which doesn't surprise any of them who are still left, any of the ones like Jim Kennedy.

He's 83 now, hair all gone, hip pretty dicey, toting a heart that has had a valve replaced and arteries bypassed. But his eyes are clear and his memories laser sharp, sharp enough to carry him from his Littleton home and plunge him back 60 years to a time when all the guys were on a first-name basis with their own mortality. That can happen to a fella when he's sinking into cold blackness, tethered to life with tubes and ropes that probably feel as strong as noodles.

But nobody ever said that being an Army Deep Sea Diver was supposed to be easy. That clearing harbors and rivers and canals the retreating German army had sabotaged and clotted with debris, or building bridges those same soldiers had destroyed - nobody ever said that was supposed to be a job for just anybody.

But that was Jim Kennedy's job, his life. And life, as he tells you, "is peculiar. It really is."

Hitting the water hard

Something about the water had always fascinated him. Maybe it was being born in landlocked Wyoming and reared in landlocked Colorado. Maybe it was something else, something in the water that called to him, that made him feel at home in its embrace. When he was a kid, maybe 6, he and his older brother were rafting on a pond. Wanna learn to swim? asked Fred. Sure, said Jim. OK, said Fred, hurling him overboard.

Couple of years later, Jim and a cousin built a diver's helmet out of a 30-gallon water heater. Looked swell. Then they tried it out and "we almost drowned."

Fast forward to Bremerton, Wash. Kennedy works at a Navy shipyard. An older guy, a diver, asks him to be his "tender." Huh? Y'know, a diver's helper. OK.

Fast forward a little more. Kennedy enlists in the Navy. Wants to be in the Navy so bad, he memorizes the eye chart to disguise his bad vision. A few months later, the Navy finds out. "Is not recommended for re-enlistment" is stamped on his discharge papers.

So, of course, he enlisted in the Army. By then the vision standards had dropped. By then, a need had arisen. The Army Corps of Engineers was looking for divers to help in the looming monumental task of getting Europe ready for the American Army. Someone noticed on Kennedy's record that he'd worked with a diver. That was good enough.

Summer 1943. Fort Screven, Savannah, Ga. He weighed 125 pounds, not half as much as the diving gear. But water, as always, was the equalizer. It lightened the load. It made him feel at home.

First there was a 25-foot-deep tank. Then the ocean. But it wasn't just diving. It was learning to rebuild docks and bridges. It was underwater welding, underwater cutting torches, underwater demolition.

It was the guys, learning together, coming together. The men of the Army Corps of Engineers, 1053 Engineer Port Construction and Repair Group. Men in their prime. Young men. Smiling. Ready to serve their country. Invincible. Preserved forever in the black-and-white photograph that Kennedy would keep protected in a scrapbook as all those decades marched forward.

Diving into the war effort

The USS Argentina brought them to Scotland on Jan. 8, 1944. From there, they migrated southward to work on English docks or ships; anyplace where divers were needed.

August. Two months after D-Day. The landing craft opened up and the guys slogged through the ocean onto Utah Beach. Bodies the fierce tides had not yet relinquished floated in the water. Kennedy saw a lot of death that day and didn't like it. He would be glad, years later, to recall he never had to kill another human being.

Cherbourg. Freeing the harbor of German obstacles. Twelve-hour shifts, four- hour stretches in the cold harbor. Sometimes in day. Sometimes with floodlights shining down into the ink-dark water.

Then to Belgium. Then to Germany. Aachen. Duisburg. Clearing canals and harbors. Building the "Victory Bridge," 2,813 feet in six days and 15 hours. Divers. Builders. Soldiers. Invincible. Keeping the Army moving.

By May the guys figured they were eligible to go home. The Army disagreed. July 25, 1945, after 39 days at sea, hello Philippines. Diving. Repairing ships. Keeping docks in good repair.

Dec. 24, 1945. A Christmas Eve Kennedy would always remember. Discharged at Fort Logan. But . . . what do I do now?

He was "nervous." He was "apprehensive." A diver out of water. He re-enlisted. This time in the Army Air Forces. Became an aerial photographer. High over Europe, helping map the continent.

Then, in the summer of 1946 he wasn't in Europe.

He was helping setting up the phalanx of cameras to record Operation Crossroads, the detonation of two atomic bombs on Bikini Atoll in the South Pacific. For his trouble, a buddy sent him a couple of photographs of the blast. Top Secret. He wouldn't show anyone the photos for 20 years. Just hid them in his scrapbook, not far from the pictures of the guys.

He liked being a photographer. He liked the military. Then his plane made a rough landing. A very rough landing. His injured left knee was so "grotesquely swollen," he couldn't put pants on. After a week in the hospital, the Army said you need an operation. OK, said Kennedy.

Wait a minute, said the Army, forget the surgery. How about a medical discharge? Kennedy didn't want that. He wanted the Army to be his career. See ya later, said the Army. He moved on. Reluctantly. Life is peculiar.

Breathing different air

So there he was working as a dispatcher for the Colorado State Patrol, when there was a drowning in Monument Lake near Trinidad. An elderly fisherman had gone in the water, but the lake wasn't giving up the body.

There was a state trooper in Trinidad who knew about Kennedy's diving. He'll find the guy, said Trooper Fred Kennedy. So, just like 20 years earlier, Fred threw Jim into the water again.

He located the fisherman's body. Then he found another one in another lake. Guess you could say he was the first diver for the Colorado State Patrol. But not for too long. After a while, he left diving and dispatching and became a plumber. Just like his dad.

By then he was married to Helen. Five kids followed. Michael, Danny, Susan, April, Becky. Maybe Becky was their secret favorite. She was the one with Down syndrome. Life is peculiar.

His children gave him six grandchildren. On top of that, "Helen and I have two great-grandchildren," he says. Then a smile. Then, "And counting."

There are other things he counts these days. Like the number of the guys who are gone. Like the number of the guys who will be there today for the reunion of all Army Deep Sea Divers being held down in Savannah. It's easier to count the latter than the former. There are only five divers left from WWII, One of them has Alzheimer's. Another can't make it. Two others will. That's it.

"I guess it'll be a last hurrah or something," says Kennedy, hands holding onto a page from the scrapbook with all the memories.

He's happy to talk about anything you want. How he and Michael used to go scuba diving until he just got a little too old. How Fred is still alive and they're close. How he's still active in veterans groups. How proud he is to have been awarded a Jubilee of Liberty Medal for being one of those who landed at Normandy.

But maybe he's happiest to talk about going back to the reunion. About meeting other, younger divers, but mostly getting to see Gene and Don, two WWII pals.

About maybe raising a beer to toast the guys who won't be there. Yeah, why not hoist that brewski?

Nothing peculiar about that.

meadowj@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-2606

Subscribe to the Rocky Mountain News