May 17, 2007 — World War II veteran Bill Schutz is on St. Thomas this week with close to 40 friends and relatives for an underwater reunion with an old pal: the retired war ship LST-467, now resting comfortably under about 90 feet of water.
Schutz is the patriarch of the clan here to celebrate the reunion with the ship on which he served for two years, 1942 and 1943.
Actually, this is Schutz's sophomore trip. He and his extended family first visited his old war ship in 2004. The trip was the climax of four years of investigation, a sort of sea-floor historical odyssey for diver Aitch Liddle, owner of Blue Island Divers. He had been diving the wreck about four miles off St. Thomas for some time before he delved into the ship's history.
Intrigued, he determined to learn about the ship, known as the WIT Shoal II. Liddle's search led him to the archives of the Lloyd's of London ship registry in England. He persevered, and finally managed to contact Schutz through a veterans' association. He discovered not only Schutz but also a shipmate of his, Clarence Anderson, both living in Denver.
Anderson recently passed away, but he will be remembered on this trip.When the WIT Shoal II was rechristened the LST 467 in 2004, a bronze plaque was placed on the stern fantail near Schutz's old general quarters position for future divers to see. On this dive, the names of Anderson and Maurice Foley will be added to the plaque.
Earlier this week Schutz sat in the seaside restaurant Tickles recounting his adventures. He was surrounded by three generations of Schutzes, along with sundry other relatives, old friends and old seamen along for the ride.
As fate would have it, the Schutzes are a diving family: All five of Schutz's sons are PADI-certified divers. They awaited the day's dive, which would be accompanied by the Atlantis submarine, in which the elder Schutz would ride along with Stuart James Knickerbocker, another former shipmate. The dives would be filmed by a five-man camera crew for a documentary.
Schutz is a youthful- 84-year-old. He has the better part of a head of thick white hair, a ruddy complexion and the kind of bright blue eyes that may have gotten him in a peck of trouble in his days as a sailor. He has a kind of "aw, shucks" demeanor.
"This ship wasn't one of those you heard about during the war," he said. "You'd never see John Wayne starring as captain of one of these. The LST wasn't a glorious battleship. We were treated like second-class citizens, but we took great pride in our jobs and our country. That ship gave me some of my best years."
And she continues to give today as a welcoming, coral-encrusted home for sea turtles, eagle rays and all manner of fish, including the resident barracuda, and as a site for hundreds of wide-eyed divers.
Schutz is modest about his war efforts. Sort of.
"We were called the 'plank owners,' or the 'black gang,'" he said. "We worked in the engine room." Schutz' loyalty to the ship led to him being elected president of his local LST chapter in the 1990s.
He laughed recalling his first wartime experience with a torpedo. "There were these Japanese planes coming at us, and I saw one of them dropping what I thought was a bomb. 'Well, they're way off the mark,' I thought — until I saw the bomb moving right our way."
Schutz says he would have reenlisted after his tour was up in the Navy, but he had lost two older brothers in the war. The Navy forbade a surviving sibling to return to war duty. "That's what the movie '(Saving) Private Ryan' was about," Schutz said.
The now-celebrated LST arrived in territorial waters by a very circuitous route after a long career in which Schutz says she earned eight battle stars and received the Navy Unit Commendation for World War II service. She was credited with shooting down five enemy aircraft, "and never lost a single crewman to enemy action," Schutz noted.
After the war, the LST 467 crew members went their separate ways, and so did the ship. Decommissioned in 1946, the ship carried wood pulp in Canada before getting sold to the West Indian Transport Company in 1973 as a cargo vessel. After her illustrious international career, she was finally felled by a natural disaster: In 1984, Hurricane Klaus sent her to the bottom of Krum Bay. She was refloated in 1985 and moved to her permanent home in 90 feet of water off the southwest side of St. Thomas.
Efforts are underway to have LST-467 declared a historical site, Schutz said.
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