BATH

One of Bath’s oldest war veterans is still telling stories about his adventures during World War II and the Cold War. Harold Grundy is 94 but can recall in vivid detail what the paint smelled like in a top secret Cold War base. He has lived in more than 50 countries and has circumnavigated the globe on Naval ships a number of times. Grundy, who signed on with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in 1941 to dredge trenches in the Kennebec River and helped guide the Mayflower II into Bath in 1956, stopped by The Times Record office recently to reminisce about his life.

Times Record: Tell us about your history in Bath:

Harold Grundy: I came to Bath in 1941 to work for the Army Corps of Engineers. They came here to dredge the Kennebec River and make a channel from the Bath Bridge out to Seguin

Island. We spent two years dredging and blasting the channel away from the bridge to Seguin. When the second World War started, they wanted to make sure the destroyers from Bath Iron Works could get out. The ships could leave port at high tide sometimes, but they wanted them to be able to leave any time. The channel is still there. It’s about 46 feet deep now at high tide. It used to be 26- 27 feet deep.

BIW came to me about a month ago when they were preparing to launch the Zumwalt, and they wanted to know if there was enough water for that ship to go out. So I gave them all the information I knew.

I also escorted the Mayflower II into Bath in ’56, and they let us go aboard it. They gave my son a tour — he was six years old — and my wife was there. She died two years ago. We were married for 70 years.

TR: How did you become involved in World War II?

HG: After we finished dredging the river I wanted to join the Merchant Marines because they had supply ships going all over the world. So I went to New York City and I joined the Merchant Marines, the Army Transport Service and the United States Coast Guard. Three services on the same day! They gave me a Chief Petty Officer rating that day, and that’s what I was for the rest of the war.

TR: Where did you ship out to?

HG: I was on a supply ship for every major invasion in the war, three different ships mainly. We supplied 30,000 tons of bombs to the Air Force for invasions like Normandy, Iwo Jima and Okinawa.

TR: Was there a big difference between being in the Atlantic and the Pacific oceans?

HG: The Atlantic wasn’t too bad. We had one convoy with 100 ships, 30 destroyers and three aircraft carriers, and were always close to port. In the Pacific I was on a ship for a year and two days. We went through three different typhoons, one tidal wave and one hurricane with fifty foot waves. You’ve never seen anything like it.

We did go through one hurricane in the Atlantic, up in the Azores, and 50 of our bombs came loose and were rolling around the hold. It was wild, but we secured them.

TR: What jobs did you work on after the war?

HG: During the Cold War I was on three of the largest top secret military bases of that time. One was a ballistic missile early warning radar system in Greenland. We had 3,000 men up there for three years building a 100 foot high tower that would detect any missile that came from Russian territory. It was the largest of its kind in the world, and is still used today to track space debris.

About a year ago, Bowdoin College put on a Cold War exhibit, and they brought up the base in Greenland. I was the only one who had pictures, and let Bowdoin use them. My wife had saved them.

TR: What were the other two big jobs like?

HG: We had about 100 top secret nuclear submarines planted across the world during the 50s and early 60s, and the U.S. government had them in front of every major country. They were armed with the latest nuclear missiles. The government decided to build a powerful radio station to communicate with those submarines, and so that was my second job. That station is right here in Maine, in Cutler up next to Machias. So I stayed there for two and a half years. That radio station was built for one message only: In case Russia crossed the line, the president would order all of the submarines around the world to, “open up your safe and carry out your orders.” It’s a good thing they never got that order. They’d have wiped out the world.

My third job was down in Cuba, right before the Cuban Missile Crisis. Castro shut the water off on the U.S. soldiers stationed down there, so the Navy hired me to help build a clean water plant to make fresh water out of salt water. We built this big new base in Guantanamo Bay. We were right there on our base during the Bay of Pigs Invasion in ‘61. Castro’s men had us surrounded, but we had a fence around the base. They fired on us, but couldn’t get to us. I saw so many things like that over the years.

A couple days ago I got word from the Pentagon. They said, “you are a man of interest to the whole Pentagon right now, and you have help from the Pentagon for the rest of your life.” It’s because I worked on those bases for so long. I know a lot of secrets.