Luck has seemed to follow Jack Hamlin like a shadow. He was born on Oct. 15, 1921, in Springfield, Missouri. Over the past 100 years, his life has been full of providential moments, even when it seemed otherwise at the time.
Hamlin is a product of interesting and tumultuous times for the nation and the world, having grown up as a child in the Roaring ‘20s and becoming a teenager during the Depression years. Just as he exited his teenage years, he enlisted in the military, shortly after the attack on Pearl Harbor.
But before the war, Hamlin’s focus was on two things: girls and baseball. In his Model A, he was busy going to the movies at the Princess Theater and enjoying double-dates with friends, like the eventual longtime host of “The Price Is Right,” Bob Barker. His baseball days had begun when he was very young and continued throughout high school.
After graduating in 1939, Hamlin attended Drury College (now University). But his baseball days were still ahead of him. His athletic ability caught the eye of Missouri Sports Hall of Fame baseball scout Tom Greenwade, who signed him to a minor league contract with an affiliate of the New York Yankees. Hamlin continued his schooling and would later play in the semi-professional Ban Johnson League, the same league Mickey Mantle would play in nine years later. (Greenwade would sign Mantle to a Yankees contract in 1949, and four years prior, recommend Jackie Robinson to a major league contract; he had scouted Robinson for the Brooklyn Dodgers before joining the Yankees.)
[embed]https://www.youtube.com/embed/fjO_vAt5PL0[/embed]A Dire Miracle
While playing baseball in 1939, Hamlin developed rheumatic fever, which commonly results from untreated scarlet fever or strep throat. The inflammatory disease kept him away from baseball and most everything else for nearly a year. In his wing of the hospital, he was one of four who was suffering from rheumatic fever; the other three would die. His physician, Dr. Max Fitch, saved his life when he discovered the recent development of a pill for rheumatic fever.
At the time, suffering from rheumatic fever seemed anything but providential. His doctor’s timely discovery not only saved his life then and there, but quite possibly in the long term as well. About a year later, on the first Sunday of December in 1941, 353 Japanese aircraft took off from four carriers and attacked the U.S. Naval Base at Pearl Harbor. The attack resulted in the deaths of 2,403 people, including 68 civilians, and wounded more than 1,000 others. Nineteen naval vessels were destroyed or damaged, including eight battleships. When news hit that America was “suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan,” it took only 24 hours for Congress to declare war. Hamlin was one of the many who would enlist to fight.
He and four friends, who had been fellow Boy Scouts, decided to enlist in the Marines. Hamlin was turned down. He tried enlisting in the Navy with Barker. Again, he was turned down. The issue was a result of his rheumatic fever; it had enlarged his heart, making him physically ineligible to join any of those branches. Then two of his fellow baseball players told him about the U.S. Coast Guard. He soon became a boatswain’s mate.
“At the time when we were working in the United States, we were chasing submarines out of Newport, Rhode Island,” he said. “We had eight depth charges on the stern. We had two 50-[caliber] guns, and a 20-millimeter gun.”
Those four friends who joined the Marines ended up fighting on Iwo Jima, with one being killed in action. Not being able to join the Navy kept Hamlin from fighting in the naval battles of the Pacific. His call to arms wouldn’t be about taking lives, but rather saving them.
In April 1944, he was stationed in the small port town of Poole, England. When he joined the Coast Guard, he never figured he would leave the coast of America, much less be part of the greatest amphibious invasion in military history.
Joining the D-Day Invasion
Well before this invasion took place, President Franklin Roosevelt suggested a rescue flotilla be part of Operation Neptune, the naval component of Operation Overlord. Its purpose was to rescue as many soldiers as possible left floating in the turbulent English Channel.
This rescue flotilla was composed of 60 83-foot U.S. Coast Guard cutters, referred to as the “matchbox fleet.” The boats were dispersed among the five beaches and would roam relatively close to the shore during the invasion. On each boat were 13 men. Hamlin was on Rescue Flotilla #1.
“They didn’t tell us until we were on our way that we would be rescuing people,” Hamlin said.
On June 6, 1944, that great invasion took place as about 160,000 Allied troops stormed the five beaches of Normandy: Sword, Gold, Juno, Utah, and Omaha. No beach is more famous, or infamous, than Omaha.
The Invasion Begins
As scores of thousands of soldiers stormed the beaches, Hamlin stood at the ready. He was one of two soldiers on his boat with a line about 30 yards long tied around the waist to dive in and rescue soldiers. According to Hamlin, he never saw the beaches, and the closest they ever got to Omaha Beach was about 500 yards. Despite the distance, Hamlin was busy rescuing wounded and drowning soldiers over the next two and a half days.
“It’s hard to describe,” he said. “There were so many bodies you could see out there that we’d get alongside and sometimes we didn’t even have to get in the water. We had hooks and we’d catch onto them. Most of the time, I would have to dive in. I wouldn’t go out any more than 30 or 40 feet. The larger boys stayed aboard our cutter so they could be there when we pulled the bodies of the wounded or drowning soldiers to the hull, so they could pick them up.”
Often, the soldiers weren’t from the beaches, but rather from sinking ships and LSTs (Landing Ship, Tanks) that had either hit a mine or were hit by German guns.
“I had never seen a wounded person. I had never seen a dead person,” he said. “This was a shock to me. All I know was that I was scared to death the whole time. It was on my mind, ‘Will I survive?’ But you had to bring these wounded soldiers and the drowning soldiers out of the water as quick as can be, and that meant I had to get out of the water also. That water was cold. I’ve heard that it was probably around 42 degrees. Now, that’s awful cold for water to be in. All I had on was a pair of dungarees, tennis shoes, and a Navy shirt.”
Hamlin said the cutters gathered around 25 to 50 soldiers each trip and took them to a hospital ship 10 miles away. In all, the soldiers of the “matchbox fleet” rescued 1,486 soldiers and one British female nurse.
Hamlin had always been an exceptional swimmer, and his athletic ability was being utilized when it was most needed. But there came a moment on the second day of the invasion that took his attention away from the water and toward the air.
On that day, two German planes began strafing the beaches. Though Hamlin had received little training with the cutter’s 20-millimeter gun, he grabbed it and began firing. The shooting proved accurate as the bullets slashed through the plane.
“The gunner’s mate was in the water,” he recalled. “One of the other crew members said, ‘Jack, you’ve shot the 20 millimeters before. Get on there. Everybody else is shooting at that plane.’ We just so happened to have a Commander Stewart we had picked up off the Augusta battleship and he wanted to go into shore. That was the only reason we had Coast Guard Commander Stewart aboard. He happened to witness some of my shells going into this German plane, probably along with other shells, but he wrote up and gave me a citation that I did shoot down the last of the German planes over the beach.”
Love in the Midst of Tragedy
The “matchbox fleet” finally made its way back to England. Hamlin remained in Poole until October, when he headed back across the English Channel to the port town of Cherbourg in northwest France.
It was there he met and fell madly in love with a French nurse named Jacqueline, who would later become a model. They first met on Christmas Eve 1944 aboard his cutter.
“I had met a sergeant who was in charge of the food for the American hospital, and he said, ‘Jack, I’m going to come down to your cutter on Christmas Eve. I’ll bring some wine. I’ll bring some turkey. And I’ll bring two nurses.’ I said, ‘That’ll be wonderful, and what I’ll do is I’ll take four of my crew, which are the best-looking ones and I’ll let them go into Cherbourg and let them go to a bar, and we’ll get rid of the good-looking boys.”
His first date with the French nurse was cut short when a call came in that the S.S. Leopoldville, carrying U.S. soldiers of the 66th Infantry Division, had been torpedoed about 5.5 miles from Cherbourg. Hamlin’s cutter was one of the 35 boats to assist in the rescue of what is now known as the Leopoldville Troopship Disaster.
“We saved probably 15 or 20,” Hamlin recalled. “I had a line tied around me again, I was in the water, and one soldier was drifting away from me. My line wouldn’t go any further and I couldn’t reach for him. I can remember him crying. That’s the only thing I regret from the whole war.”
The sinking of the S.S. Leopoldville was kept secret by the U.S. military to keep morale up in America and keep morale low among the Axis powers. Of the more than 2,000 soldiers who were headed to fight in the Battle of Bulge, 763 were killed, either from the initial blast, drowning, or hypothermia. The bodies of 493 were never recovered.
Hamlin returned to Cherbourg with his new love, Jacqueline. Their “love affair” lasted until he left for home in November 1945.
The End of the War
Hamlin’s ability to be in the right place at the right time struck again when the Germans surrendered in May 1945. He drove the cutter that delivered several high-ranking officers to Guernsey Island as part of Liberation Force 135. The Channel Islands had been occupied by the Nazis since June 30, 1940, shortly after the British government decided the territories weren’t of strategic value and would not be defended.
Once Hamlin returned home seven months later, he wasted little time pursuing a career and a family. Most of the men in his family, dating back to his grandfather, had been lawyers. He graduated from law school but failed the bar exam twice.
“It was a good thing I didn’t [pass],” he said, “because I never have had the patience to study the books.”
So he decided to pursue a career in a different industry: insurance. He started a business that would thrive in Springfield, and he eventually sold it to family members. He married Virginia Schreiber in 1953 and had a son, Jeff, and two daughters, Julie and Jacqueline. He and Virginia were married for more than 50 years.
He continued to play baseball and retained his relationship with Greenwade, a relationship that resulted in him receiving a Babe Ruth jersey that he eventually sold for $75,000. Among his other relationships, he became close to the late golf legend Payne Stewart. He played golf with Buddy Hackett and Mickey Rooney, and softball against fastpitch softball icon Eddie Feigner. He is friends with the granddaughters of generals George C. Patton and Dwight D. Eisenhower. He has also developed a friendship with Frenchwoman Marie-Pascale Legrand. This French connection resulted in his meeting the daughter and granddaughters of his former French wartime love. They met for the first time last year.
Hamlin has returned numerous times to France, particularly for D-Day commemorations in Normandy, a trip he will be making a seventh time this year. He said he loves returning to Normandy because the people are so good to him and the other World War II veterans. The French government displayed their gratitude in no uncertain terms by awarding him the French Legion of Honor, the “highest French decoration.”
When it comes to being honored for his duty and sacrifice during D-Day, one return is especially memorable, although it wasn’t to France.
“I got a call at home and they said, ‘Jack, we’re calling about an invitation to come to England to have dinner with the Queen of England,’” Hamlin said. “I forget the words I used, but they weren’t very good. I thought I recognized the voice of a man I knew and he was pulling a joke on me. He finally said, ‘Jack, don’t be so rude. This is Mr. Brewster in Washington D.C. of the War Department, and you will get a call in the morning at 7 o’clock from the British Embassy, and you are being invited to come over to have dinner with the Queen of England on the 50th anniversary of D-Day.’ I traveled over there and got to have dinner with the Queen of England. What an honor and what a pleasure.”
And what a lucky call to receive.
100 Years of Good Luck
It’s been 100 years of providential moments. Moments that weren’t simply providential for himself, like surviving the rheumatic fever, but also providential for others, like those he saved during the D-Day invasion and the Leopoldville tragedy.
“Everything has fallen right at my feet, and all I had to do was pick it up and use it and do the best I could with it,” he said. “I’ve tried to do that. I’ve been very lucky.”
