Robert Vollmer at the age of 99 doing survey work. (AP Photo/John Maxwell)
By Matt Hunter
Special to the Sentinel
Robert C. Vollmer died last week in Indiana at the age of 103. During his remarkable life, Bob spent most of a year in Sitka from late 1942 to mid-1943.
In 2010 he returned to town with his three daughters and a granddaughter to show them where he served during WWII. While I have not been in touch with Bob for some time, I wish to share a tiny part of his story to commemorate his service with the 22nd Naval Construction Battalion (NCB), “Seabees,” in Sitka.
Bob grew up during the Great Depression and learned to work hard, “Because you had to.” He earned his Eagle Scout in 1935 and graduated from high school shortly thereafter. He was working in Saginaw, Michigan when the war began in Europe. He tried enlisting, but the military bureaucracy took so long that by the fall of 1941 he had signed up to fight for the British.
“I was sitting on the floor on December 7th, reading a technical manual on batteries. Here comes the radio announcement about Pearl Harbor. A telegram came that afternoon from the British: ‘due to entry of US into war, you’re released.’ I went to the Annapolis Federal Building and took oaths for Navy and Marines. The Navy chief won out, the Navy put me in the Seabees, 22nd.”
After ten months of military drills and special construction training in Virginia, the roughly 1100 Seabees of the 22nd NCB took a train to the West Coast and boarded liberty ships for the trip to Sitka. Bob’s ship arrived in Sitka in the fall of 1942.
Bob recalled the rapid pace of construction. First they built their quarters, roughly 40 single story structures located in “North Sitka.” (This is the area presently occupied by Moller Park to the stream between Cascade Street and Peterson Ave, including the Sitka High School campus.) Bob described the first structure he helped complete as a four-hole outhouse with no roof. He visibly shuddered remembering, “Boy, there was no loitering! It was snowing!”
In March, Bob was one of 57 men who had to give up the pleasures of indoor plumbing and weekly trips to Ernie’s Bar for the rough life at Shoals Point. Work had to be done as rapidly as possible to complete the Army defenses. First the sailors built their own quarters, a wood-frame building that “made the neighbors in their Quonset huts jealous.” Then it was time to finish the gun battery and other Army facilities. “We were pretty careless. Wouldn’t have got anything done if we had followed the rules.”
Some of the work was a real challenge. One goal was to build a pier that reached deep water. Plans called for a 600-foot Pier, 20-feet wide. Shortly after it was completed a winter storm came and destroyed it. The men built the second one better, burying it in three feet of gravel ballast.
The Seabees led busy lives during their months at Shoals Point. With 12 hour work days and one day off in seven, there was not much time for exploring. Bob’s job was primarily as a laborer and assistant surveyor. When not on duty, Bob would walk to Fred’s Creek to fish for salmon (with hand grenades) or beachcomb for glass balls to use for target practice.
Except for the hard work and seriousness of war, many of Bob’s stories show that he and his fellow sailors had fun.
“We had a second class baker who wanted to be a baker first class. He wanted to make the best food: pineapple pie. If it was a good dessert, you’d spit on it to keep it from being stolen. No one spit, the pineapple was barely cooked, terrible. Next was pumpkin cake, terrible too, like your shoe. One guy carried that cake in his pocket for two weeks. Started waving it at the cook anytime he saw him.”
In summer 1943 the 22nd NCB left their now-comfortable quarters to rough it again, this time on Attu Island. After living in tents again and having now served over a year in Alaska, Bob and his buddies decided to “borrow” a truck to see Bob Hope perform during his visit to Attu.
“We were on the Navy side of the island and he was coming to the Army side. I had machine gun duty on a mountain. We went down and got a truck… borrowed… and drove to Army side. A big MP said, ‘Halt!’ go in a certain direction. A second MP said go another way. We were in a line of trucks heading to the dock, a stevedore line! A big net comes down, plop! We got out of there and headed back home. We had a crate of beer! Good beer! Our tent was in a dug out square of snow. We put the beer in the snow around our tent, so you could grab one any time. We were popular then.”
The 22nd NCB returned to the States in early 1944 and the men were reorganized into new battalions, combining the seasoned sailors with new recruits. Bob and most of the others from the 22nd ended up serving throughout the Pacific Theater. Bob went to Rai, Kwajalein, and he ended the war completing an airbase at Tacloban in the Philippines.
After the war, Bob earned his B.S. in Agricultural Engineering from Purdue University, earned his private pilot certificate, and finally started career at age 45 as a land surveyor for the State of Indiana. He retired from that job last year at age 102, after working nearly 57 years.
