These friendships run deep

Tom DePew’s first submarine spent a lot of time in target practice.

It was the target.

Based out of New London, Conn., the submarine was used to train officers heading into the seas of World War II.

Planes would drop small explosives in the water or try to hit the submarine with sacks of flour. DePew’s crew would try to evade the attacks. Later he was sent to the Philippines, where he was the radio man who carried the word about Japan’s surrender to his fellow seamen.

DePew is the only World War II member of the Farragut Base of the United States Submarine Veterans Inc. Others served during the Vietnam War or took part in Cold War patrols meant to keep an eye on the Soviet Union.

It’s the time they spent in a submarine under the sea, out of touch with family and friends and in ultra-close contact with all their crewmates that now binds the men and keeps the conversation flowing at their monthly meetings at the Post Falls Veterans of Foreign Wars.

“It’s kind of a close-knit fraternity,” said member Ed Hempel.

“We all went through the same thing, the same training, the same psychological training,” said the group’s vice commander, Ron Star. “You could either handle it or you couldn’t.”

The local chapter (called a base) has about 50 members from Eastern Washington and North Idaho. Hempel estimated that there are probably no more than 100 people in the region who would qualify to be members.

The men wear vests displaying patches from the different submarines on which they served. The colorful patches feature submarines, sea creatures eating missiles and other dramatic images.

United States Submarine Veterans was formed in 1963 in Connecticut and currently has almost 13,000 members across the country. Unlike other veterans groups, United States Submarine Veterans is open to not only combat veterans, but to anyone who qualified and served on a submarine.

Local members say that serving on a sub takes a special kind of person. He’d better be able to get along with his crew, be able to take the isolation from the rest of the world, and absolutely not be claustrophobic.

The subs were tightly packed, Star said. For the first month, crew walked on top of cases of food stacked in the corridors. Some had to “hot bunk” with other crew, sleeping in shifts in the same bunk.

Hot bunk refers to the fact that the men switched places without even time for the sheets to cool.

The bunks themselves were tiny, said Debro Blankenship, who served on subs from 1968 through 1980.

“If I wanted to turn over from my back I had to get out of the bunk and climb back in on my stomach,” Blankenship said.

Subs are bigger and quieter today, but still feature small quarters.

DePew said that quieter became more important during the Cold War, making the subs he spent time on during World War II obsolete.

“They’d know we turned the engine on before we even left the dock,” he said of his era’s subs.

Hempel spent his time as a Cold War era propulsion mechanic, “chasing Russians.”

Still, he pointed to the submarine pin on his chest and said his experience wasn’t so different from submarine vets from other years. “We all wear the dolphins and that’s what counts.”