Researching Robert

A Letter Home from New London

by Jim Potter

Thanks to a McPherson, Kansas, newspaper article published in June 1918, researchers can read a personal letter from Robert Parks. The correspondence gives the viewer an exceptional glimpse at a moment in Robert’s life while he was training in the United States Navy, at New London, Connecticut.

Prior to Parks’ arrival at the United States Receiving Barracks, State Pier, New London, he had already attained a rating of Electrician Third Class (Radio). In this position, Parks was qualified to operate wireless telegraphy equipment, send and receive Morse code, log signal traffic, and perform basic electrical maintenance on shipboard or shore station radio transmitters and receivers.

With his qualifications, Parks could have been assigned to a shore station or to a ship at sea. On land, he might have been sent to a high-power naval communication center, coastal defense radio post, naval air station, or regional command office—either domestic or abroad in Europe. At sea, Parks might have sailed on a battleship, cruiser, destroyer, minesweeper, cargo transport, or civilian merchant ship (as part of an armed guard unit).

As Parks approached the day he would begin his active participation in the war as a radio electrician, he was assigned to shipboard duty on a boat, specifically, a submarine chaser. After a year of training, I can only guess his reaction. He must have been relieved to receive his next orders, although he may not have known if his subchaser would be operating on American coastal waters or across the Atlantic. Chasers had many responsibilities, including anti-submarine patrols, mine-clearing support, convoy escorts, and harbor defense duties. Wherever he would serve, Parks would be on active duty serving his country, working on a 110-foot, wooden hulled patrol vessel, crewed by about two dozen personnel.

Once Radio Electrician (Radio) Parks was assigned to a subchaser, he may have been qualified in Morse code and maintenance of the radio, but he still needed an additional month of specialized training to learn about anti-submarine warfare. There was no better place for the crews to receive their training than New London, Connecticut, because a few miles away at Groton, there was a submarine base. With the cooperation of Navy submarines, subchaser recruits were taught hands-on radio-listening and sound-detection techniques used to intercept signals and track German U-boats. Subchaser crews, especially radio operators, learned to use passive sonar devices called hydrophones and trained as a unit of three chasers to hunt simulated German submarines by triangulating their position. Operators were drilled on early radiotelephones to rapidly pass directional bearings and tactical distance coordinates between the three chasers so they could respond more quickly to vital bearings of enemy subs.

By June 1918, the “Splinter Fleet” was heavily deployed to the Otranto Barrage in the Adriatic Sea, off the coasts of France and Britain, and at the Azores in the mid-Atlantic where they escorted convoys to the European theater. The anti-submarine patrols were also maintained along the Eastern Seaboard to protect merchant shipping from U-Boats that started sinking schooners off the coast of Maryland and Virginia on May 25.

In Robert’s letter home, he informed his (adoptive) parents, Henry and Lydia Parks, that his training had been easy so far.

Robert didn’t specify if his training was for the wireless radio (Morse code), the wireless telephone (human voice), or both, but he was drilling to properly use the radiotelephone (wireless telephony). Specific voice procedures were required. Since the audio quality was low, they practiced using clear, standardized phrases so that the commands could be understood over the engine noise. Maintenance of the fragile vacuum tubes was necessary to keep each radio phone working; plus, constant monitoring of the radio was crucial to keep the signal from drifting.

In his letter, Robert told his parents that he was getting along well and said hello to family members, including his grandparents. He was referring to his adoptive mother’s parents, William “Henry” and Emma Jane Nichols Hampton. They lived in Emporia, Kansas.

When Robert mentioned Joe and Gladys, he was alluding to Gladys, who became his adoptive sister when Henry and Lydia Parks adopted him in 1910. While Robert was at the Great Lakes Training Station, Gladys married Joseph V. Kubin on October 14, 1917, in McPherson County, Kansas.

Robert expected he’d complete training about July 14th. It turned out he was remarkably accurate, because after a month at New London, Parks was transferred on July 16th to a subchaser tactical unit at Rockland, Maine. The next day, on July 17th, he was welcomed to Subchaser 265. ^9?

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“Letters from ‘Over There’”

(The following letter from Robert Parks has not been corrected for any errors in punctuation or grammar.)

New London, Conn., June 30, ’18.

Dear Folks,

I received your letter yesterday and was sure glad to hear from you. I am feeling fine and getting along fine. I wish I was there and could spend the day with you and talk war stories with grandpa. I haven’t heard from Henry since I have been here but expect to soon. Is grandpa worrying very much about him. I hope not for it won’t help matters any. I will get through school about the 14^th. I am going to try for a furlough then. It is my only chance but it is mighty slim for a furlough is hard to get in war time. I will probably be here or over at the pier for about two months after I finish but that makes no difference about a furlough whether I am busy or not.

I am sure glad to hear that you got along so nicely with your wheat. I guess I beat you getting to eat roasten ears. I had one for dinner yesterday. I couldn’t tell whether it was last year’s or years before but it past the censor anyway. I was getting ready to go to church this morning at 8:00 a.m. but missed the liberty party so will have to wait till 10 a.m. so thought I would drop a few lines while I was altogether. How is Joe and Gladys getting along now, tell them hello for me. I suppose they will be old retired farmers in a few years. I have seen every trade a fellow can imagine, but when I come back to civilian life a nice little farm for me. Up at Boston there is a lot of fine smart men who have pretty good jobs, afraid to let go of them for fear they couldn’t get another one, so they just work week in and week out, each week maybe get enough to go to a good show, then they are satisfied. The people around here are harder on the sailors than the Huns are. I am getting so every time I see one sneer at a sailor I could eat ‘em up as the sailors say. Everything is double in price, some time more yet, then they fly their flag and say they are patriotic, but most of the people think all gobs [slang for sailors in the US Navy] are alike, you take one in the bunch always thinks he is an admiral or the president, especially when he gets hold of a bottle, but there is two hundred of us in this building, the diving and telephone school together, and I haven’t seen a one offer to even try to look for anything, most of them just stays here to study.

How is the old car running now. Do you think they run off of the battery better than off of the magnetos? They haven’t near as many autos in the east as they have in the west and not as near up-to-date in farming. How did Anna hurt her arm? Tell her hello for me and give her my sympathy. Is Grandpa and Grandma going to stay very long? Tell Grandpa to not worry and I will bring him the Kaiser’s left toe nail, providing there is enough left of him when I get there, for I expect to start in about two months and my purpose don’t mean to go over and come back, it is to go over there and stay until it is over, then maybe they will let me come back or that is what they are doing now.

Well folks, I had better close. Tell everybody hello for me and don’t think I am having it hard for I haven’t done a lick of work since I left Great Lakes and will not have to if I get a good captain for this work is just like running a graphophone for the family to enjoy, but the object is to keep it in working order.

Well, I will close hoping to hear from you soon. Good bye from, Robert.

R. W. Parks.

Wireless Telephone School, State Armory, New London, Conn.