My dad, Michael A. Chartuk, followed in his older brother’s footsteps and joined the Coast Guard in 1939. His first duty was patrolling New York Harbor and he said he was popular with the crew because he was the only one onboard who knew how to cook. He was sent to radio school and when World War ll broke out, he was dispatched to Hispaniola, an island in the Caribbean, to set up a radio station to intercept enemy messages.
“German Morse Code was very precise and when I heard it, I knew it was them,” he once told me. “The hair would stand up on the back of my neck.” The transmissions consisted of only dots and dashes, but during the war, they were of significant importance to the allies.
One day, a special attaché landed at the island and presented my dad with a Navy Commendation medal. Because he was considered a spy, they wouldn’t tell him what he did to deserve it. After the war, he found out. A message he picked up instructed a German submarine wolf pack to intercept the Queen Mary, which was being used to transport U.S. soldiers across the Atlantic for the battle in Europe. The message was decoded and the ship was diverted. My dad saved thousands of lives.
Years later, he ran into a fellow veteran at a Memorial Day service in Bellport and told him the story. The fellow’s eyes welled up and he clutched my dad’s hands, thanking him. “I was on that ship,” he said.