Walter Broll was born in 1925 in Baltimore, Maryland. He grew up and was educated in Baltimore. During the Great Depression, his grandmother had a grocery store in east Baltimore. His dad was a sailor who went to sea at age 13. He sailed to France and other locations during World War 1. His father went to work for the Baltimore Fire Department before marrying his mother. Because his father always liked the water, he applied to work on fire boats for the city. Broll's father would ultimately become the Fire Chief for the Marine Division of the Baltimore Fire Department. In his youth, Broll worked in his grandmother's store stocking shelves. He attended Catholic grade school within walking distance of his home. He played with the local children. Broll and a friend made scooters from wooden crates that were originally used to deliver fruit to his grandmother's store. Roller skates would be attached under the crates to make the scooters. Home was over the store. Broll's grandmother had several strokes while he was young. It was a burden on the Broll family. This was during the Depression while many people were out of work. Broll can remember an incident at the local bank with angry people aggravated by the bank closure. It was a big calamity for the adults. It caused stress in his family with some money being lost in a bank closure. His father was never laid off at the Fire Department. He was one of the lucky ones. They bought another house in Baltimore. The seller of the house built his father a free garage because he wanted to sell the house so much. The house cost was under 4,000 dollars without the property. At that time, one could buy a house without owning the lot. The Broll family had to pay a six percent ground rent to live on the property. The family had a car during this time. At one point when traveling with his father, the newsboys were shouting the news that war was declared in Europe. It was 1939 when Broll was 14 years old. At that age, Broll did not know what war was. His father promised to explain it to him. Broll would learn what war meant. When Broll attended high school in Baltimore, he did not know what he wanted to be when he grew up. He might become a truck driver because, as a child, he liked to play with trucks. He had a proclivity for technical things so it was suggested to him that he attend a technically oriented high school. As it turned out, he was a goof off in school. He came to understand what war was by reading about it in the paper. He and his friends thought it was heroic to go and shoot the enemy, but the enemy is also trying to shoot you. [Annotator's Note: Broll chuckles at the thought.]

Walter Broll always had a haircut on Saturday. He would then go to confession since he was raised a Catholic. On one Sunday, he heard a newsboy yelling the news of the attack on Pearl Harbor. The Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor. He met up with his friends outside of a closed grocery store on that Sunday, as they always did. As the boys talked, it was obvious that none of them knew where Pearl Harbor was located. It frightened the boys so much that they all attended church. This was unusual since most of them played hooky on Sundays. The young men of sufficient age in the neighborhood were joining the armed forces. Broll and his friends were too young to join. Broll wanted to become a fighter pilot though. At 17 years of age, he had his mother agree to sign the paperwork for him to join the Army Air Forces. His vision was not good enough to pass the physical. Broll could not become a pilot. He asked his dad what he should do. Since his father and other relatives had a maritime background and Broll was water oriented, his father suggested that he should go to sea. Broll signed up with the Merchant Marine in April 1943. He went to a training station next to Sheepshead Bay near Coney Island [Annotator's Note: adjacent to Brooklyn, New York].

Walter Broll passed through the station [Annotator's Note: the Merchant Marine training station at Sheepshead Bay in New York] and was assigned to a ship in Bayonne, New Jersey. He sailed aboard the Southern Sun tanker operated by the Sun Oil Company which had a refinery near Philadelphia. He joined a convoy with the ship. During the convoy to Europe, a couple of ships were lost but that did not mean anything to Broll. The training at Sheepshead Bay was more physical exercise since he was out of shape. He had difficulty with the obstacle course. He had to climb cargo nets over walls and various other obstacles. The trainees were timed over the course. Some of the instructors who were rated officers were not as familiar with boats as Broll was. He would advise some of them on the right way to handle boats. The men trained on old World War 1 four inch guns. The men got the feel for handling ammunition and loading even though no explosives were involved in the training. When the ships passed Wales on the way to Britain, there were targets set up. Every ship had to take a shot at the target. The gun on Broll's ship was rumored to have been unbolted from in front of a post office after the war started. The gun was mounted on the stern of the ship above the engine room. The gun was fired and the securing bolts were sheered. It was likely that the gun was just a deterrent for German submarines since it was very inaccurate. Broll's training lasted three months, and he received a certificate of completion. The crew on the merchant ship was all civilian. On the first ship assignment, the crew rooster was short by about one third. No one wanted to ship out on a tanker. Broll understood why.

Walter Broll sailed north of Iceland on his first convoy. The ship zig-zagged over the course of the voyage. He did manage to do a round trip. The name of the second ship is not memorable, but the third ship was the Grace Abbott out of Baltimore and a munitions pier in October [Annotator's Note: October 1943]. The ship joined a convoy at Hampton Roads and sailed to the Mediterranean. The Grace Abbott and one other ship left the convoy and went to Bari, Italy, while the rest of the convoy went to Cairo, Egypt. Broll's ship and the other vessel were unloading cargo before the Bari raid [Annotator's Note: the German air raid on Bari on 2 December 1943]. The naval armed guards aboard the ship were all right. They did not bother Broll and he did not bother them. While onboard the Grace Abbott, Broll's general quarter's station was as magazine loader for the 20 mm automatic guns. The military and merchant seamen felt that they were all part of the crew. They played games together and told war stories. Broll carried a low rank on the first ships he served on but eventually was trained on gyroscope compass and became a quartermaster. He would steer the ship in that position. When Broll was a boatswain [Annotator's Note: the boatswain, or Bosun, is in charge of a ship's equipment and crew], he felt like a duck out of water because he had to learn all trades. He could splice rope and handle small boats because of his training by his father. He could secure a ship.

Walter Broll and his ship the Grace Abbott were in the harbor of Bari, Italy for two weeks before the attack took place. Bari, Italy was being made into a port even though it was not originally intended to be one. Mussolini [Annotator's Note: Italian dictator Benito Mussolini] used the city as a showcase city for his speeches for his personal recognition. There were only two piers in Bari, and it would have been difficult to load three ships at one time. The Americans were issued script when they arrived at Bari. The script was used as money in the local shops. The local store fronts were nice but just behind them the city did not have proper sanitary conditions. The sewer system consisted of a channel built into the street. The channel likely took the refuse directly into the harbor. Broll was not impressed with the city even though it was presented as a showplace. When the convoy came in, Broll felt it put the 20 or 25 ships in peril in the harbor. They were racked side by side and invited disaster. A German observation plane flew over at mid-day every day. Broll could not understand why the American Air Forces did not shoot down the enemy observer aircraft since the Allies knew when the German would fly over every day.

Walter Broll and his ship the Grace Abbott were in the harbor of Bari, Italy for two weeks before the attack took place. The day was like any other day. The raid was 2 December [Annotator's Note: 2 December 1943]. [Annotator's Note: Broll becomes emotional at the recollection of the attack day.] The crew was working at various jobs including painting the ship on the day of the raid. The ship paint seemed like gray mud because three weeks after application on the ship, it was rusting. Broll just followed orders and kept painting. Broll's ship never left the pier from its point of arrival. The temperature at Bari was similar to Baltimore but perhaps a little warmer. The crew was given shore leave but was not allowed to fraternize with the Italians. They were told to stay in groups of three or four. The men did not follow the non-fraternization rule. Broll did walk the waterfront and bought post cards. The Germans pulled out of Bari because they did not think that much of the city. The Germans removed the mooring posts on the piers so the ship ropes had to loop around the stone piers to secure the ships. There was a ten foot high wall at the piers. Next to Broll's ship was a 40 mm antiaircraft battery manned by Canadians. The ship's crew communicated with the Canadians. The war sounded occasionally in the distance but never close. The city of Bari was under the British Eighth Army jurisdiction but the city had its own police. Broll never felt under duress by being in near proximity to combat. The only thing that he was fearful of was the lack of transport to move the unloaded cargo out of the harbor. There were about two acres of Jerry cans stored and stacked eight to ten feet high loaded with gasoline. A munitions expert was on Broll's ship. This gave Broll concern because of the unusual passenger. The expert told Broll that the ship was carrying a new explosive called Pentolite as part of the ship's cargo. The night after the raid, Broll was charged with spraying water over the new explosive in the hold. It was soft and in bags but stored in wooden crates. Some of the crates burned and broke open. The material was said by the expert to be HE [Annotator's Note: high explosive]. When it ignited, it burned blue and red and sparkled like a Roman candle. Broll was told that the only difference between that explosive and dynamite was the difference in pressure required to ignite it. All the cargo was assigned to the British Eight Army but Broll did not know how the British intended to use the explosive. Prior to the raid, the harbor lights were all on. It was like peacetime. Broll was concerned with the lack of air raid preparation.

Walter Broll saw the raid on Bari, Italy start at about 7:30 at night while the Grace Abbott's cargo was being offloaded. The raid lasted about half an hour. Broll had gone down the gangway and was standing on the stone pier waiting for some fellow crewmen to join him. Broll heard a whistling sound going through the air. Next, a big blast went off about half a mile away. There was an engine roar, and he recalls the aircraft roaring off, but he is not sure. Before he could go back up the gangway, another explosion went off. There was an air raid going but no sirens were sounding. As an ordinary seaman, all he could do was look up to see ships being bombed. The Grace Abbott had a barrage balloon. The balloon had been deployed in the Mediterranean even though it contained hydrogen gas, and the ship was an ammunition ship. The combination of hydrogen and ammunition was a dangerous condition if a spark would ignite the gas or the cargo. Broll does not remember any other ships deploying their barrage balloons even though they should have. The enemy pilot came in with his eye on a target. Broll saw the underside of an aircraft about 1,000 to 1,500 feet above him. The Canadian gunners adjacent to the Grace Abbott had smoke pots that they were to light to obstruct the vision of any raiding aircraft. In the end, the smoke pots resulted in obstruction of the gunner's vision of the raiding aircraft. [Annotator's Note: Broll laughs at the memory but questioned its veracity.] The city was not bombed nor was the Grace Abbott. The only thing bombed were the loaded ships further away on the opposite side of the harbor. The only remaining cargo aboard the Abbott was the 500 pound bombs and a portion of the Pentolite. At least half the cargo was offloaded at the point of the raid. At the opposite end of the harbor, the ships were stacked together with only about ten feet between them. As a result, there was a chain reaction of explosions from one ship to the next. All through the night there were detonations. At that point, Broll felt he was going to die. He also felt the Germans would return. [Annotator's Note: Broll becomes emotional at the memory of that night]. Broll pulled two men out of the water, but because of an injury to his leg, most of the time he worked to contain the fires closing in on the Grace Abbott's cargo. One of the men he pulled out of the water had a horrible abdominal injury. The injured man had swum from his ship to the pier close to Grace Abbott. The survivor was hysterical as he spoke in a foreign language. The injured man was treated to the best the crew's ability. The suffering man had his intestines stuffed back in him even though he was full of fuel. The man's toes were lying back on his foot. Broll massaged his leg, calf and thigh to try to relieve the muscles that were constricting the toes backward. The second man pulled from the water was dead by the time he reached the pier.

Walter Broll was told by one of the officers on the Grace Abbott that he should go to the English aid station at the entrance to the harbor. Broll declined to leave the ship. Broll was injured on the leg, but he did not know if he was injured by a shock wave or by being struck by a piece of shrapnel that ricocheted off a wall and hit him. There was no early alarm at all for the enemy attack. It was a total surprise. Probably, no Krauts [Annotator's Note: a derogatory term for Germans] were downed by defensive fire. It seemed like a dozen enemy planes attacked the harbors though reports have told of many more aircraft. Broll discounts that there were more numerous enemy aircraft. The attack was logged in for about 30 minutes. When the secondary explosions started, there was howling shrapnel flying by. Huge parts of ships flew by his head. Some things that flew by were never seen, only heard. In the midst of the turmoil, the word came through to bring up steam to run the Liberty ship's engines. The pistons for the engines were huge in diameter and had a great stroke range. It took awhile to bring up the steam and then to bring pressure up on the fire system. The fire system had to be used for suppression of the fires in the hold of the ship. As dangerous as it was, the fire was pretty to watch as it burned. The pressure on a fire hose is so great that it takes two men to hold tight to control the flow and direction. Broll fought the fire on the Pentolite in the hold. Three or four ships blew up with great force. Some mangled ships were lifted from their berth and placed on the adjacent pier. The detonations had tremendous force. At one point, Broll was knocked off his position by the concussion of a shock wave from an explosion. It dazed him and he temporarily lost some of his hearing. With the hearing loss, Broll was given the job of watching a red lantern so that if it went off, he had to hit the general quarter's claxon. At one time, he lost visibility of the light and was about to hit the alarm, but it turned out to be a false alarm. He felt as if he would die if the Germans made a follow-up attack on the harbor. [Annotator's Note: Broll becomes emotional when he remembers the worry about dying if the Germans returned to Bari.] When the raid first started, a hospital ship was amongst the warships and was set afire. Broll saw her leave the harbor. Word later came that the ship was grounded after going 20 miles because she was so badly afire. There was no confirmation on that report.

Walter Broll and the Grace Abbott left Bari the day after the attack. It appeared that the Abbott may have been the only seagoing vessel able to depart the harbor. The John Harvey was loaded with mustard gas. No one was told about that. Broll has never been told by the VA [Annotator's Note: Veterans Administration] to visit a doctor for that. He did hear more details about the Bari attack and aftermath about 40 years later. Broll had blisters on his feet that doctors attributed to athlete's foot. Broll treated the blisters as such but never got relief. They were about the size of a dime up to a quarter. If he scratched the surface they would ooze and make more blisters. He used Clorox bleach, and the itch subsided. Broll continues to get blisters. There is no predictability about his blisters. He postulates that the blisters may be due to the results of the Bari attack. He assumes issues with ringworms that he has had through the years may also be due to after effects of the Bari attack. Clorox bleach also helped the ringworm problems, too. The blistering agent of the mustard gas was in the harbor and spread after the explosions. The water was filled with the agent, but Broll did not feel that he got into the mustard gas. Broll did not remember the mustard gas being on fire. There were about 20 ships that sank in the harbor and the fuel from the ships' bunkers escaped into the harbor. The black smoke from the burning ships floated toward the Mediterranean because of the prevailing winds from the northeast.

Walter Broll saw chaos the next morning after the German attack on the port of Bari, Italy. Live and dead personnel were placed on the piers side by side while British medical teams tended to them. If the Grace Abbott in fact left the harbor the day after the attack, everything was leaking and the ship was crippled by the concussion of the exploding ships in Bari harbor. The side of the ship had holes in it. An unexploded shell had penetrated one of the holds of the Abbott. It grazed and dented the hatch coaming and then penetrated a lower deck and lodged in the bottom of the hold. Broll went to see the phenomenon. The ordnance was pitch black and Broll thought it looked like a 500 pound bomb. Broll took a ladder to assist the British ordnance expert in examining the unexploded shell. The shell had a flat back end. The expert determined that it was a shell for a capital ship instead of an aerial bomb. Broll doubted that assessment, but it allowed the ship to exit the harbor since the shell was stuck in the double bottom and posed no danger. The shell posed no danger since the igniter was not installed in it. The Grace Abbott left Bari on a bright sunny day even though the harbor continued to blow up at the opposite end. Broll really thought he was going to die, but he was too busy during the raid to be frightened. He was not scared until he stood watch on the bridge and saw the red light go out and heard the roar of what he thought was an incoming airplane engine approaching him. Then, he broke down and cried for fear of the Germans coming back to finish the job of destroying the ships. He was glad he did not hit the emergency general quarter's alert. He would have been called on the carpet for that mistake.

Walter Broll became more cautious as a result of his experience at Bari, Italy with the German bomber attack on Allied ships. When he would ask at the union hall about a certain individual, sometimes the response would be that the individual had been lost in a submarine sinking of a merchant ship. He decided that he would not make friends early on in the war. Unlike some of his mates, he decided not to marry because he did not know the condition he would be in when he returned home. He dated girls but never got serious. If he did get serious, he stopped seeing the girl to prevent getting close. Similarly, Broll did not want to get attached to a shipmate who might get killed later. He tried to be a loner as much as possible. He could see the flags with stars in the windows in his neighborhood for men off in service and for those who had been lost in service. It made him sad but confirmed his goal of not getting close to shipmates. When he moved from ship to ship, he would forget the close attachments that might have been established. One of his friends went into submarine duty. He was missing in action. Broll had taken a trial ride in a submarine. When the submarine went down and ran through its different maneuvers, Broll had a new appreciation for the bravery of the submarine service.

Walter Broll and the Grace Abbott left Bari, Italy and headed for the ocean. Broll and the deck crew secured the hatches with beams and hatch covers. It took all afternoon to accomplish that. First destination after Bari was Bizerte, Tunisia. There, the remaining cargo was offloaded. The ship was repaired sufficiently to return to the United States. His next voyage was to the Pacific. As a Quartermaster or Able Seaman, he had to take whatever assignment was given to him. In the Pacific, Broll voyaged to the Marshall, Mariana, and Gilbert Islands, as well as Pearl Harbor, Eniwetok Atoll and Guam. Except for the last voyage on a cargo ship, the Pacific trips were all aboard tankers. It was a 58 day round trip from Aruba to Guam without the benefit of a convoy. The Japanese subsurface fleet was not a worry for the merchant ships. When the war ended, Broll was on the return voyage from Guam to the United States. There was an announcement over the radio, and the crew thought the war had finally ended. The ship landed in Seattle. Broll took a bus home. All the way home, people wanted to buy him a drink. Broll felt guilty about taking the drinks because of the people who had lost their lives so that he could get a free drink. He has questioned why his life was spared as opposed to friends he lost. [Annotator's Note: Broll is emotional in remembering this experience.] One of his good friends and Broll drank prior to the friend departing in a new submarine. The friend was happy to be on a new submarine. The friend was assigned to the Pacific. At Guam, Broll saw a submarine maintenance vessel and asked about his friend's submarine. He was told he missed him by two weeks. The submarine had gone on patrol along the Japanese coast and was missing in action. His friend never returned. The war ended shortly afterward. A few months made all the difference in his friend returning home safely. Broll's ship had bad bearings, and a decision was made to send the vessel back to the United States. The Japanese surrendered unconditionally on that voyage home. The Japanese kept its Emperor. Broll's mother did not want him to stay in the merchant fleet. With the fleet downsizing, the competition with former officers would have been too difficult. It played a role in Broll's decision to find employment in another capacity.

Walter Broll benefited by the war because it made him an alert man instead of the 18 year old minor he was when he entered the Merchant Marine. He had trouble integrating with people who were of the age to serve but did not go to war. When Broll leaves his home, he goes on alert as a result of the training he received onboard ships. He had to be alert for the simple sounds in life because it could mean trouble. He tells his children to drive like they are in combat. If you take your eyes off the road, you could hit something unexpectedly. One can have an accident as a result of the mind not focusing on driving. He taught his step-son an object lesson on this dictum after an accident happened to the young man.

In addition to making him more alert, the war also improved Walter Broll's outlook on life. In meeting a former Me-109 [Annotator's Note: Messerschmitt Me-109 fighter aircraft] pilot, Broll let the German know that the war was over and even though they would have killed each other for their country, that time had passed. At work, the German was killed in an accident. Broll went to court and was deposed on the accident. It was ironic that the German had fought the whole war and survived it only to die in an accident in the United States. Life is full of ironies such as that. His friend in the submarine was another example of irony. It gave Broll a cautious outlook on life. He has to be alert when he drives. Broll has been very hurt since the passing of his wife, but he is not ready to go into an assisted living facility. He is giving himself time to clear his head following his wife's passing. The war resulted in him thinking with a clear head. Broll did not shirk the job assignments given to him even though they were perilous. Some seamen were frightened to be on a tanker. Broll knew the job had to be done. He did what needed to be done and followed the critical prodigals. He did not worry about submarine attacks because he knew if God called him he would go. He maintained that philosophy throughout his life.