Robert Fitz was born in March 1925 in South Bridge, Massachusetts, the youngest of four children. He was very young when the family moved to Bristol, Connecticut during the Great Depression; his father was an engineer, and was out of work. Things were very tight, and Fitz remembers that the Social Security system "gave people things." They lived in the country, raised vegetables, and Fitz's mother was an excellent cook "who could make a lot out of nothing." As a child, Fitz was athletic; he played in the woods, and attended a two-room, rural grammar school. He remembered being on the living room floor, reading the funny papers, when he heard the announcement about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor [Annotator's Note: the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on 7 December 1941]. He said everybody was shocked, and realized it meant "something different. War. He was 16 years old, and walking down Main Street when he saw two signs in front of the post office. One sign said "Join the Navy and See the World," and the other read, "Uncle Sam Needs You." To his mother's disappointment, he quit high school in his junior year to join the Navy. He went to Sampson, New York for boot training, graduating on 2 January 1943. He then boarded a train to New York [Annotator's Note: New York, New York] for on-the-job training as a gunner in the Armed Guard that traveled on merchant ships.

When he was told that he would be trained aboard ship as a gunner, Robert Fitz was "mystified." He arrived at the main Armed Guard center in New York [Annotator's Note: New York, New York], and after a day or two, moved to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania where he boarded the Liberty ship [Annotator's Note: a class of quickly produced cargo ship] SS George Weems. Fitz embarked on three trips to the United Kingdom and one really bad trip to Murmansk, Russia. It was December in the North Atlantic, and the waves and the storms were horrific. The SS George Weems was to be the bait for a confrontation with the heavily armed German battleship Scharnhorst that was hiding in the Arctic Circle near Bear Island, Norway. On the second day out from Scotland, the ship fired at a German reconnaissance plane to scare it away. Fitz described how, after stopping in Murmansk Harbor, his ship collided with another supply vessel, then followed icebreakers to Archangel, Russia where Fitz had an opportunity to go ashore. On the way back, the ship was under constant pressure from a German wolf pack [Annotator's Note: a group of submarines working together as a team], and dropped depth charges in defense. The ship was reinforced in Ireland for the Atlantic [Annotator's Note: Atlantic Ocean] crossing, and when it got back to the United States, went into dry dock. Next, he sailed out of Charleston, South Carolina and arrived in Naples, Italy. Fitz went to Rome, Italy, in his lieutenant's color guard, and when they returned to Naples [Annotator's Note: Naples, Italy], the war in Europe had come to an end. On V-E Day [Annotator's Note: Victory in Europe Day, 8 May 1945], all the ships' whistles were at full blast, and the sailors celebrated. Fitz says the Italian people were pleased the war was over. Afterwards, Fitz departed for his third trip through the Suez Canal on a ship carrying 10,000 pounds of explosives up to Saipan [Annotator's Note: Saipan, Northern Mariana Islands] in anticipation of the invasion of Japan. Fitz was taken off his ship to teach refresher courses in gunnery, and while he was ashore, the USS Indianapolis (CA-35) came into port to deliver the atomic bombs. He was in Saipan among the Japanese sugarcane farmers for V-J Day [Annotator's Note: Victory Over Japan Day, 15 August 1945]. Fitz went back to San Francisco, California for discharge, and was "happy to get out."

Robert Fitz crossed the Atlantic [Annotator's Note: Atlantic Ocean] 11 times during his service with the Navy Armed Guard. On one trip, he sailed through the English Channel, then up the Thames River to south London [Annotator's Note: London, England] and the Royal Albert locks. London was badly bombed, but Fitz and a friend visited Parliament, where they were welcomed by Lord Alfred Bossom [Annotator's Note: Alfred Charles Bossom, Baron Bossom], and observed Winston Churchill [Annotator's Note: Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill; Prime Minister, United Kingdom, 1940 to 1945] in Parliamentary session. While in London he also saw Glenn Miller [Annotator's Note: USAAF Major Alton Glenn Miller; American big band leader] perform. His first Liberty ship [Annotator's Note: a class of quickly produced cargo ship], the SS George Weems, had a 10,000 ton capacity, and carried tanks welded to the deck, and crates of airplane segments lashed on top of other cargo. Fitz said the merchant seamen were a "wonderful bunch of guys," for whom he had the utmost respect. The merchant seamen and armed guards got along well, although they slept in separate quarters, and had a small, separate mess hall that served excellent food. Before leaving the United States for Russia, Fitz was issued cold weather gear for travel in the Arctic region. There, daylight lasted only 25 to 30 minutes a day, and it snowed every day. The ship's guns and ammunition had to be constantly cleared of the ice that formed from the freezing mist and spray. In Russia prisoners, some women, worked around the clock to unload the ship, and Fitz commented that the Russian people were not friendly. Murmansk, Russia was their stop on the northern supply route for Russia; Fitz also sailed the southern route to supply Russia by way of Iran. In June, the temperature on the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers reached 116 degrees. At the port, American Army soldiers unloaded the ship amidst the locals who were washing clothes and drawing drinking water from the muddy river. During the 12 days they stayed in port, he had to take daily anti-infection shots. On the return, the ship was delayed in Port Said, Egypt, and Fitz was able to visit Cairo [Annotator's Note: Cairo, Egypt]. He has fond memories from his days in the Navy, and occasionally revisits them with friends he made during that time.

During his initial trip to London [Annotator's Note: London, England], Robert Fitz had his first experience with "buzz bombs" [Annotator's Note: V-1 pulse jet flying bomb, German name: Vengeance Weapon 1; Allied names: buzz bomb, doodlebug]. He was in the center of the city, heard the strange noise, and was warned by an English "Bobby" [Annotator's Note: nickname for a member of London's Metropolitan Police] to take shelter. Fitz said the locals were practically living in the subway shelters, and it was not a good time for the English. He comments on the barrage balloons and spotlights that were operated by women during air raids. Traveling between Europe and the United States was like moving between wartime and peacetime and back again, Fitz says, and he found it difficult to reconcile. In late 1944, between trips to Europe, he was put on a World War 1 ship and sent from New York [Annotator's Note: New York, New York] to Venezuela to deliver farm equipment. While in port, some of the gun crew were invited by the American attaché to Caracas [Annotator's Note: Caracas, Venezuela] for an overnight stay. Traveling on, they went through the Panama Canal and south to Chile where they loaded bauxite for delivery to San Francisco, California. To return to the east coast, he crossed the country by troop train, which was not very comfortable for such a long journey. On another 1944 trip, he visited New Orleans, Louisiana for additional training. On the SS George Weems, Fitz's quarters were in front on the port side, a spot favored by the Germans when they torpedoed American ships. Torpedoes sank one in nine American Liberty ships [Annotator's Note: a class of quickly produced cargo ship], Fitz notes; sometimes a sailor could mistake a fish or a dolphin for a torpedo. Additionally, the Germans had everything mined, in hopes that a ship would hit one. Once, when he was in the English Channel, the bow wash pushed a "horned" mine, capable of sinking a ship, away from his vessel. Some years ago, Fitz procured blueprints for a Liberty ship and took two years to build a model of the SS George Weems, which he plans to bequeath to the Bristol Military Museum.

The duration of a typical watch for Robert Fitz was two hours, except in the places like the Arctic, where it was so cold that the watch time had to be shorter. There were 28 Armed Guard on the Liberty ship [Annotator's Note: a class of quickly produced cargo ship], including a signalman, a radioman, and a lieutenant; all the rest were gunners. The submarines were always prowling, and Fitz said they dropped an "awful lot of depth-charges." Still, they lost ships in their convoys. On one trip out of South Africa, two German planes strafed their ship, killing a man on the fore deck. The gunners hit one of the planes, and it went off trailing smoke. The sailor who was killed, a friend of Fitz's, was buried at sea. Fitz doesn't like recalling the tragedies, which haunted his dreams for many years after the war. As a reserve serviceman, he was obligated for the length of the war and six months, and he had no other trouble returning to civilian life. When his time was over, he sailed into New York Harbor [Annotator's Note: New York, New York] and went to Lido Beach on Long Island, New York. There, without fanfare, he received a manila envelope containing his discharge papers, his pay, and a "ruptured duck" badge for his uniform. He tried going to school using the G.I. Bill, chased the girls, and tried to forget the war. Fitz went to work, and eventually retired from Superior Electric.

For Robert Fitz, it was an honor to serve three years in combat areas, and is grateful that he lived through it. He admires the merchant seamen for getting the tonnage to where it was needed. He says that the Navy men got along well with the merchant mariners, which was good because they were all in the "same boat." Fitz praises the food on board, and remembers inviting a sailor from a cruiser to dine with him on his "tub." The two chose from selections on a blackboard and had table service. Fitz felt he had very good living quarters, too. He recalled that when they were in a war zone, the gunners slept in their clothes with an arm through their life jackets. There were no doctors or barbers on board, and Fitz remembers cutting a fellow seaman's hair. Only once did Fitz experience an attack from the air, and he praises the efforts of the Canadian Corvettes [Annotator's Note: small, lightly-armed warships used for anti-submarine warfare] in protecting their voyages in the Atlantic [Annotator's Note: Atlantic Ocean]; in the Mediterranean and in the English Channel, they were "on their own." In the White Sea, the men were standing gun watches all the time because of their close proximity to German air bases. He remembers seeing the seals, and the sound of the ice scratching the hull. They followed two big icebreakers, the Lenin and the Stalin, from Murmansk [Annotator's Note: Murmansk, Russia] south. The Liberty ship [Annotator's Note: a class of quickly produced cargo ship] on which Fitz sailed carried food, supplies and ammunition to the Russians, who were in "bad shape" at the time. He felt the Germans and Japs [Annotator's Note: a period derogatory term for Japanese] were "bad people," even before he learned about the Holocaust. He was young, and didn't know much about what was going on in the war, but after seeing the destruction in London [Annotator's Note: London, England], his feelings against the Germans intensified. Fitz remembers when the USS Indianapolis (CA-35) came through Saipan [Annotator's Note: Saipan, Northern Mariana Islands], carrying the atomic bombs, that he felt, "Good, they deserve it." Once the bombs were dropped, he thought, "It's done. Amen."

Forgetting the war, Robert Fitz likes to remember all the wonderful things he saw in the United Kingdom, Italy, Egypt, Australia, New Guinea, South America, and the Panama Canal. He considered it a real education. He served in the war because he wanted to defeat the "bad guys." He states his views on how casualties of war differed: if a man volunteered and lost his life, he "gave" his life; if a man was drafted and died, his life was "taken." His service experience changed his life immensely. During his time on the SS George Weems, the SS George M. Pullman and the SS A. Mitchell, the crews were constantly changing. A sailor had to "keep your nose clean, do your job, be friendly, and know how to get along." When he looks back on his service, he feels highly honored and proud, and appreciates the learning experience. He emphasizes that the war kept the world from being overrun by the Nazis, and recalls that President Eisenhower [Annotator's Note: General of the Army Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower, Supreme Commander, Allied Expeditionary Force; 34th President of the United States] praised the Merchant Marine for their valuable support. He believes that institutions like The National WWII Museum [Annotator's Note: in New Orleans, Louisiana] are doing a wonderful job in preserving the history of the war era and remembering the veterans.