US Navy Reserves Lt. Commander Ed Carr on his last day of service. Photo courtesy of Ed Carr
In 1955, Henry Fonda starred as the title character in the motion picture, “Mister Roberts.” The story’s namesake is a lieutenant in the US Navy during World War II who runs a supply ship in the Pacific theater.
Roberts is discouraged and unfulfilled because he longs to be where the action is but he’s stuck “on this bucket” which is his derogatory name for the ship.
He and another character, Doc, sarcastically say they’ll win “The Admiral John J. Finchley Award for delivering more
toothpaste and toilet paper than any other navy cargo ship in the safe area of the Pacific.”
However, Doc tells Roberts, “Look, whether you like it or not, this sorry old bucket does a necessary job, and you’re the guy who keeps it lumbering along.”
In an example of life imitating art, Ed Carr, who was born and raised in Huntington, was a lieutenant in the US Navy Reserve and and was a “logistics” officer (which is essentially the same as “supply”). For four and a half months, Carr was stationed at Patrick Air Force Base in Florida.
“It was a logistics center for receiving goods coming in, and then sending those goods out on ships bound to the Middle East,” he told Huntington Now.
But unlike Roberts, Ed was neither discouraged nor unfulfilled with the job. “I really liked it; it was great,” he said.
Carr’s supplies to the troops overseas were a far cry from the “toothpaste and toilet paper” Roberts provided.
“It would almost be like you went into a Home Depot and just wiped the place out,” said.
Items included “pumps, generators, lumber… anything that might be needed to help support overseas military,” he said. “Half of it was military hardware, and the other half was commercial purchases that would support an active military.”
And there was a lot of it.
“As a young guy I was just absolutely amazed at the quantity of material coming off of these supply ships, that were then going on to government-contracted cargo ships,” he said.
“I was just amazed at every day watching millions of dollars in cargo basically be shipped from the United States overseas to support the war effort in the Mideast,” he said.
While lumber can be used for a multitude of purposes, one item Carr shipped had a singular purpose.
“I remember there was probably a thousand body bags,” he said. “I remember thinking to myself, ‘These things are empty right now, and if the war doesn’t go well […] these might be filled and brought back.’”
Just as Roberts did “a necessary job,” Carr knew he was an integral link in the chain. “I felt I was really part of a
mission,” he said. “I felt very valuable.”
Several years later, as part of Operation Enduring Freedom, he was stationed in Naples, Italy, where he was on the receiving end of supplies shipped from the US. He had reached the rank of lieutenant commander.
Carr said this four-month tour of duty had “far more pressure” than the first go-around because things changed hourly and action needed to be taken immediately. Once again, he was dealing with massive quantities of large items.
“That was like chasing a moving target and there was no way to really improve the efficiency of it and it became extremely frustrating just because plans changed in the field,” he said.
And being closer to the fighting made the job “much more of a high-pressure scenario.”
“Problems that occur at the beginning of the supply chain will always magnify as [they go] and at the end, will cause massive problems,” he said.
Carr cited a hypothetical situation where someone expecting a generator receives an aircraft part and the person expecting the aircraft part receives the generator.
Such a mistake “can mushroom into something very large,” where equipment in a mobile hospital is inoperable and one plane of a three-plane sortie is grounded and each of those scenarios could result in death.
Part of the reason he enjoyed the job in logistics was he acquired skills while doing it. The organizational, leadership and management skills he learned there transferred to his civilian work when he became the director of maritime services for the Town of Huntington.
“The fact that I had Navy experience I think dovetailed well with what the Town was looking for,” he said.
The bay constables under his supervision were armed, so “with a military background, it was a nice fit.”
At 56 years old, and with command experience in the military, Ed has enough credibility to give advice to students who have just started their senior year in high school and may need some direction.
He “absolutely” recommends the military but feels they don’t have to wait for graduation.
“If you’re somebody who was in the Girl Scouts or Boy Scouts or you’re involved in some type of program where you had a leadership role in high school – it could even be a sports affiliation – employers tend to like that,” he said.
As for his own service, “I’d say it was very fulfilling. The old adage that, ‘You get to see the world,’ is true,” he said. “I’ve been to Germany, Italy, I’ve been all over the United States. It gave me a chance to do things that I otherwise wouldn’t have the chance to do,” he said.
“It was a lot. It was fun. I wouldn’t trade the experience for anything.”
This HuntingtonNow series about veterans in our community is made possible through the generous support of Suffolk County Legislator Stephanie Bontempi.
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