By Dale Welch
He was just a boy when World War II came to his eastern Putnam County home. Robert Jernigan, of Monterey answered his country’s call, just like the many young men and women did in the fight for freedom.
Jernigan grew up as the middle child of James Cater and Janie (Goodwin) Jernigan a few miles east of Monterey, on the Clarkrange Highway (Highway 62). Siblings older than Robert were Carrie May, James P, John L., Thomas H., and Hollis. Those coming after him were Dora Jane, Meadie Belle, Franklin Delanore, and Jay C. Jernigan.
As a child, Jernigan went to a one-room, one-teacher school at Meadow Creek. He remembers his teacher, Professor James Polk Romines as not only teaching the “three R’s” but for riding a horse to school. It became his job to care for the horse.
Every morning, Jernigan would ride the horse from the schoolhouse one-fifth of a mile to a barn, where it was kept. Every evening, he would walk back to the barn to retrieve the horse. His pay for each day’s work was a big red apple. Another teacher he remembered fondly was Mabel Spencer.
Jernigan graduated from the eighth grade at Meadow Creek, in the spring of 1939. In the fall, he and friend Grover Ledbetter enrolled at Monterey High School, which was on W. Crawford Ave., where the Standing Stone Nursing Home is presently located. Transportation was a challenge since the boys lived several miles away, but it was one to which they could adapt.
Each morning, the boys would catch a ride with Glen Callahan, a carpenter who worked in Monterey. While Callahan would be eating breakfast, the boys would clean the frost off the windshield and pump up one or two tires or more, because they would always seem to be flat every day.
Getting back home was a little more challenging. Since Callahan had to work until dark most days, the boys would either walk or hitchhike back home. Hitchhiking was a little easier back in those days because everybody knew everybody’s people.
By his second year, Jernigan’s father, who was in the timber business, moved the family closer to town. To Jernigan’s delight, he was only a mile and a half away from the high school.
Besides his schoolwork, Jernigan became increasingly involved in his father’s timber business, because his older brothers were going off to war. He picked up extra work on the weekends, using his father’s truck to move people.
In the spring of 1942, Jernigan graduated from Monterey High School. He continued working with his father, clearing a tract of timber that had caught on fire, in the Mineral Springs area of Overton County, just north of town. They would come home covered in the black soot and ashes as if they had been working in the coal mines all day. They cleaned up each afternoon in a galvanized wash tub.
One hot August afternoon, the family was finishing supper, when Jernigan thought timing was right, he nervously asked his father if he would sign for him to join the U.S. Navy. After a long silence, his father agreed.
Jernigan had partly based his decision on joining the Navy upon the recommendation of his older brother, Hollis. The older sibling, now in the Army, had been involved in the Middle Tennessee area training.
“Hollis told me,” Jernigan said, “that he didn’t know about the Navy, but it had to be better than the outfit he was in.”
Jernigan went to Cookeville, where he signed up for the U.S. Navy. Everything began moving at a much faster pace. He was sent to boot camp in San Deigo, CA; to Electrician’s School; and then, to Gyro Compass School, in San Francisco, CA. Upon completion, he shipped out four decks down on a transport ship to Pearl Harbor, HI.
“I was scared to death,” he recalled.
About dark one late afternoon, he was ordered to grab his gear and report to the docks. He was assigned to the destroyer the U.S.S. Claxton. The ship was part of Destroyer Squadron No. 23, under the command of Capt. Arleigh “31 Knot” the name of the “Little Beaver Squadron. Jernigan was immediately assigned to operate the searchlight.
“It was a safe place for a green horn. You hardly ever saw them in battle” he recalled.
Soon however, he was assigned to the engine room. When they found out he had attended the Gyro Compass School, it became Jernigan’s job to maintain the compass.
A long-bearded Boston Irishman, 2nd Class Electrician Arthur Kelly, took young Jernigan under his wing, and taught him how to repair the phone and public address systems aboard the destroyer.
Jernigan had been corresponding with his parents and brothers during the war. His father would walk to the post office each day, in Monterey to check on his boys. One day Jernigan received a letter from his father telling him that he would not hear from brother Hollis anymore. He had been killed on July 13, 1944, in France.
In Oct. 1944, the U.S.S. Claxton joined the assault forces in the landing on Leyte, bombarding the area north of Tolosa, in the Philippines. Early one morning, the U.S.S. Claxton was hit by a Japanese suicide plane coming in low off the islands.
Jernigan was in the front of the ship, checking the P.A. system when the plane hit.
“All I could see were dead, dying, and wounded men, laying in blood” Jernigan recalled.
A sister ship, the U.S.S. Banner Read had also been hit by another suicide plane. Despite their own damage, Jernigan and survivors of his ship quickly rescued seven officers and 180 men before the Banner Read sunk in a matter of around 15 minutes.
The Claxton and its crew spent Christmas that year on Manus Island, while the ship was being repaired.
“The Japs knew we were there,” Jernigan said. “Tokyo Rose sang ‘I Wonder Who’s Kissing Her Now’ over the radio, and told us we were lucky this time, but not so lucky the next time.”
The U.S.S. Claxton returned to duty in the Philippine Campaign, providing fire support and escort in the landing at Linguine, Nasugbu, Marseilles, Corregidor, Panay, Negros, and Mindanao.
Then, the ship went to Okinawa, where it was used in a decoy plan to draw out Japanese fighter planes that would in turn, attached by Allied planes. That duty continued from May 1945 until the end of the war. The Claxton was attacked many times, sometimes by 12 suicide plans at a time.
One day, a General Quarters had sounded and each sailor put on his “Mae West,” as they headed toward their battle stations. One of Jernigan’s shipmates was the gunner at the 40-m.m. on the forward port side. He had his sights on an incoming suicide plane and as the plane dove toward the ship, the gunner lost his senses. Thinking the plane was diving straight toward him, he jumped overboard into the ocean. The plane never struck the ship, but the sailor was lost qt sea. The captain and rest of the crew did not know what happened to him.
One of the sister ships was using its sonar near the USS Claxton when it picked up a faint “bleep.” On the screen. They went to investigate and found the missing sailor 2 hours after he had jumped overboard. The metal in a keyring that was in his pocket had saved his life.
During those months, plans were being made for the invasion of the Japanese homeland, which would have cost numerous more lives on both sides. However, in August 1945, Atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, with the Japanese finally surrendering.
Jernigan finally found himself being a 20-yer-old war veteran. Returning home, he married Charlie Mae Vaugh, the daughter of Troy and Audrey Vaughn. They had four children: Robert, Jr., Joseph, Patricia, and Richard.
In the years following the war, Jernigan worked on the surveying crew that opened up the Fentress Coal & Coke Co.’s Putnam County location, off the Clarkrange Highway. He said he thought he would never have to stick his head in a coal mine. He was wanting to go to school under the GI Bill. However, he had a growing family.
In 1962, Jernigan got a job with the Tennessee Valley Authority. The job required him to move the family several times from Johnson City, Jackson, and Cookeville before he finally retired to his home on the Woodcliff Road.
Ove the years, he served his community and church. He had served as the Commander of the local V.F.W. and as a deacon at the Monterey First Baptist Church for over 40 years before he died in 2009. At the age of 83.
