If pennies could talk…
So there I was yesterday, noticing that my Penny envelope was getting really full and so I decided to take them into King Soopers and use the coin machine there to cash in all the pennies to get a few extra bucks to spend on dinner for the next few nights. So I went to the break room, grabbed a couple of paper coffee cups and a lid and proceeded to pour all the pennies into the cup and lid them. I let the cup full of pennies stay on top of my desk for a couple of hours, and the workday started to wind down. As things were quiet at times, and I got bored, I started to play with the cup full of pennies, noticing how heavy it was and just moving the cup around to do something. At one point, I don’t know why, I took the top off and stared down into the cup brimming with pennies, incase your wondering, it was almost $7 worth in there, and for some reason, one of the pennies caught my eye. So I picked it out of the pile and looked at the date. Right above President Lincoln’s heart and to the right was the date stamp of 1940. My first reaction to seeing the date was “Wow! This is probably one of the oldest pennies that I have ever had.” Then after spending a few minutes looking at the penny, turning it over and over, and running my fingers over the worn edges, and thinking about the date, it sunk in. I realized that this penny was struck, created, between 1 to 2 years, as they don’t place a month on coins it is hard to tell when in 1940 it was made, before the America entered World War II. And to top it off, there is no “Mint” mark on the penny, which tells me that it was created at the nations first mint in Philadelphia. I don’t know what events or powers made me want to take that cup lid off and almost immediately pick this penny out of the near 700 that were in the cup, but since I have “rescued” this penny, my thoughts have been on the date and life of this penny. I have to admit, I don’t know why, since I have seen lots of coins that date back to around 1972 and a few even earlier, but this one has made me stop and think, and really feel that I have a piece of important history in my hand. One of the things that have been going though my mind today is, “If pennies could talk, what stories would this penny tell?” This has inspired me to write the following short story. I hope that if you take the time to read though my explanation above and take the time to read what follows, that you enjoy what I have written and maybe even bring home a little bit of history with you.
The noise was deafening. It was so loud in the US Mint located in the little town of Philadelphia, that the overall covered workers wore large earmuffs to help keep the noise down. Large machines though out the plant were punching out little copper and silver disks. These disks would then be fed into another machine that would then be squeezed between two dies, leaving an impression upon the disk. This was how I was born. I am a United States of America Lincoln penny.
After I was born I was placed in a little paper tube along with forty-nine of my siblings and then placed in a box. The box was then packed with other boxes of pennies, nickels, quarters and other forms of U.S. currency. We were then placed in a storehouse for about 3 months. We were delivered to a bank located at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii during the summer months of 1940. On October 15, 1940, I was placed in the hands of a seaman by the name of Greg Smith. It was at this point that the adventure began.
Seaman Smith was stationed aboard the battleship U.S.S. Arizona. During the late part of 1940 and the early part of 1941, we traveled though the Pacific Ocean. Tensions were high, as the war was raging in Europe, Adolf Hittler was striking fear and terror into many of the lands in Europe, including our allies in England.
After we returned to port, in October of 1941, Greg was placed on shore duty for the next 6 months. He worked on the broilers of the large battleships and they felt that they needed his skills to help repair the broilers on the ships coming into port. Plus, every sailor only spends part of their enlistment on ships and out to sea. It was Greg’s turn to spend some time in the homeland.
How I was never spent and always slipped though his fingers when he would go to buy something, I will never know. But in some ways, I am glad it worked out that way, or I would not have been around to tell the stories I now tell.
Life changed for Greg and I, on that morning. I will never forget it. It was a nice morning, December 7, 1941. Greg had woken up at 5am, as he does every morning. After taking a shower and getting dressed, he placed me in his pocket, like he always did and then we were off to go get some breakfast at the mess hall. We got in line and waited our turn when a fight broke out between a Marine and a Navy sailor up ahead of us. Looking back, I am glad it did. Food, dishes and trays sprawled across the floor before a officer made his way though the crowd and broke up the fight. Once the fight was cleared up, Greg got his meal and ate while talking with some friends at a table. Just before Greg got up to leave, the officer that broke up the fight came over and asked Greg to follow him to his office to fill out a report of what happened in the mess hall.
The report was a pain to fill out and it wasn’t until 7:45am that Greg was released to go to duty and complete the job he was working on so the Arizona could sail later that day. As Greg moved across the compound, and to the warehouse where he would pick up his gear, we heard it. At first it was faint, but it steadily got louder. The noise was coming from the southeast. Greg looked up into the sky and saw a sight he thought he would never see. Hundreds of planes filled the sky, heading for battleship row. As the planes flew overhead, he looked up and saw the bright red circles located under each wing. We were under attack.
Greg dropped what was in his hands and ran off toward the first gun battery he could find. The pitch in the engine noise of the planes changed as their noses pointed down and the planes started to dive toward the ships in the harbor.
Japanese torpedoes splashed into the water, bombs fell from wings, guns sent up reports as they were fired, and all hell broke lose. Greg had reached a gun battery and found it manned. He started helping the gunners, handing them ammunition as the anti-aircraft gun let loose, doing its best to tear into the fighters and bombers that dared attack American soil. Then he saw it. A single Japanese dive-bomber called a Val. It pushed it’s nose down and started toward his ship, the Arizona.
Greg dropped the ammunition that he was holding and took off running across the island, toward his home away from home. The Val’s engine and propeller gave off a mighty roar, and the wind streaming over its broad wings and though the dive breaks gave off a hair curling scream though the air, the there was the click. Greg watched as the armor-piercing bomb released from the belly of the Val and fell toward the Arizona.
It all seemed to happen in slow motion. The bomb fell though the sky, hit the ship and then disappeared. The next thing Greg knew he was flying backwards and landed on the ground hard. The bomb had hit the powder magazine in the Arizona, causing a giant fireball and sending debris everywhere. The concussion from the blast was what sent Greg and me flying back.
Then there was silence. Greg got up, and looked around. All the plans were gone. There was a surreal silence to the aftermath of the attack that shocked Greg, then it all came back in a rush. The sights and sounds of fires burning out of control, debris lay on the ground everywhere he looked, and the bodies of his fallen comrades. Then there was the Arizona. She sat at the bottom of the bay, listing to one side, burning as if the fires from hell herself. Greg took off for the ship, joining a crew with water hoses and spent the rest of his day trying to put out the fire.
An hour later, we were attacked again that day, and more ships were destroyed, but Greg and I made it though the battle, this time. That day Five Battleships, two Light Cruisers, three, Destroyers, and one hundred and eighty aircraft were destroyed, and we only brought down twenty-nine Japanese planes. But the most dishearten information that day was two thousand, seven hundred and twenty nine service men lost their lives that day. Over one thousand, one hundred were lost on Greg’s home ship, the Arizona.
Greg spent the next week helping to clean up the results of the attack. One day, Greg was tired and wanted to have a cigarette, but did not have any. He found a young Air Corp Captain by the name of John Miller, who offered to sell Greg one for four cents. It was at this time that left Greg and found my way into John Millers pocket….
To be continued….
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