Mericle, Don
Posted on 15 September, 2021 by in Veterans By Name, M
This bio of Don Mericle born 1926 USN is being written by Larry Martin July 11 2020 from notes taken in June 2015 when I interviewed Don on DVD.
Don enlisted in January 1944. Don became a gunner on a twin 40 mm anti aircraft gun aboard the USS Cofer APD 62. The Cofer was involved in a lot of landing of troops in the Philippines several of which was landing UDT teams (Underwater Demolition Teams) which later became the Navy Seals. His worse fighting was at Ormoc Bay in the Philippines on Dec. 7th 1944. There were 80 Japanese planes shot down that day. Don became a “Shellback” which was a ceremony for men who had not crossed the equator. They were harassed, hit and made to do some pretty disgusting things like crawl through garbage. Today they could not do things like that because we have became a nation of pussies that can not have any type of clubs because someone may not like the process. Every man that went through this Shellback ceremony enjoyed them and was proud to be a Shellback instead of a Pollywog which is what they were before crossing the Equator. The Cofer also went to Japan very early after the Atomic bombs were dropped. He went to the Nagasaki area where the second bomb was dropped. He said there were skeletons all over the place. I do not remember if Don meant that there were American POWs who were as skinny as skeletons or he meant the dead from Nagasaki were there. Don also said the stench was horrible. The Cofer took POWs from the Nagasaki area back to the Philippines. My friend Dr. Eugene Bleil POW of the Bataan Death March in April of 1942 was in the Nagasaki area at the end of the war. Maybe Dr. Bleil came back on the USS Cofer. Dr. Bleil’s biography is in my list of Bio’s on this same list of WW II interviews. Dr. Bleil was not a Dr. when he was a POW. He went to the University of Michigan medical school in the early 1950 go become a MD anesthesiologist. He wanted to be a surgeon but because of the starvation diet he was made to endure during the war when his weight dropped to 85 lbs. He had very little feeling in his fingers so he could not become a surgeon. He became a anesthesiologist just to be in the surgical unit.