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The following story was published in the New York Times and was written by Clyde Haberman

On Veterans Day, America pays tribute to those who served, including some whose achievements went unrecognized for far too long. Someone, for example, like Seymour Wittek. 

During World War II, the Brooklyn-born Mr. Wittek, now 87, was Seaman Second Class Wittek of the United States Coast Guard, assigned to a munitions detail in Jersey City. He and his mates loaded bombs and ammunition destined for American troops fighting in Europe. One ship that they filled with explosives was El Estero, a freighter of Panamanian registry docked at a New Jersey pier.

On April 24, 1943, the Estero caught fire below deck. It is impossible to overstate how serious this was.

Roughly 5,000 tons of bombs, depth charges and small-arms ammunition were stored on the Estero and nearby ships and railroad cars. If the Estero exploded — and the possibility was fierce — a chain reaction could have engulfed all that ammunition and spread to fuel storage tanks in Bayonne, N.J., and on Staten Island. The blast would have been enormous. Later estimates of the potential death toll on both sides of the Hudson reached into the thousands, even the tens of thousands.

Beyond the carnage, “the course of history could have been changed,” said James J. McGranachan, a civilian spokesman for the Coast Guard. “It would have shut down the port. When you think of all the supplies that were coming out of New York, it could have affected the landing at Normandy” — D-Day, June 6, 1944.

Without blinking, Seaman Wittek and dozens of his fellow seamen volunteered to board the burning ship and try to put out the fire, which was later found to have been accidentally caused. On the deck, he recalled, the heat from below was so intense that he could feel it through the soles of his shoes.

The fire was out of control. Soon, an order came to scuttle the ship. In a race against time, it was towed to deep waters in Upper New York Bay, where fireboats pumped water into the cargo holds. “Some flares and shells exploded,” The New York World-Telegram reported in an article that did not appear until two years later, a delay that reflected wartime secrecy. “It became a question of which got to the ship first — the fire to set off the rest of her explosives or water to sink her.”

The water won. Nearly four hours after it caught fire, the freighter sank into the bay. Not a single death resulted from the operation.

Time passed, and memories of the Estero faded. But it always stuck in Mr. Wittek’s craw that New York City never formally recognized the heroics of those seamen. Some had received medals in the 1940s from the City of Bayonne, but not from New York or, for that matter, from the Coast Guard.

“It was World War II,” Mr. McGranachan said, explaining the lapse in official acknowledgment. “A lot of these things could slide by just because of the enormousness of the situation.”

On this Veterans Day, the oversight will finally be corrected. America, as we said, may not make presidents of those who serve it in uniform, but it does try not to forget them.

Mr. Wittek, long retired from the fur industry and living now in Ossining, N.Y., will receive the Coast Guard Commendation Medal for “outstanding achievement” that day 65 years ago. On Tuesday, Vice Adm. Robert J. Papp Jr., commander of the Coast Guard Atlantic Area, is scheduled to present the hexagonal medal at a ceremony on Pier 86 in Manhattan, where the freshly repaired aircraft carrier Intrepid is berthed.

The Coast Guard looked for others to honor, but “they couldn’t find anybody else but me,” Mr. Wittek said by phone. “That’s the tragedy.”

His buddies will be there in spirit, though. “This isn’t really for me,” he said with a catch in his voice. “I’m going to say that I’m accepting this in the name of all my friends. It’s for the rest of the guys.”

Resources: 

full New York Times story

United States Coast Guard

USCG Atlantic Area Command

Intrepid Sea-Air-Space Museum