United States Navy

As Boothbay Harbor prepares to celebrate the 64th Annual Windjammer Days, this year’s theme proudly honors the past, present, and retired members of the United States Navy who have served our nation with dedication and distinction. Throughout the coming weeks, we will feature a series of profiles highlighting local Navy service members—sharing their stories, experiences, and the lasting impact of their service. These articles are a tribute to the men and women whose commitment to duty reflects the maritime heritage at the heart of Windjammer Days and the deep appreciation of our community.

I’ve had the incredible fortune of being at the right place at the right time throughout my 100 years on this earth and some of my greatest memories come from my military experience. I served in the Merchant Marine just after the end of the Second World War aboard an American Export Lines ship from June 1946 thru May 1947, transporting supplies from the United States and to and from various ports in the Mediterranean, Russia, India, Pakistan, and Burma. I sailed aboard the S.S. Coeur d’Alene Victory, one of the many Victory Ships which were built toward the end of World War II to replace the much slower and aging Liberty ships. Each Victory ship was named after a college or university. These were 10,000-ton cargo ships with a horsepower of between 65 and 80 thousand and a speed of between 16 and 18 knots.

I was 3rd Mate aboard ship, and stood the 8-12 watch, morning and night. We crossed the Atlantic many times and on my first voyage I sailed out of New York Harbor. My ship picked up cork, brier (used to make pipes), and pumice from Lipari, which is located north of Sicily in the Aeolian Islands and is where the Stromboli volcano is located. I remember that the water was a beautiful aquamarine color and was very warm so I asked the captain to lower the gangplank so I could go swimming. The water was crystal clear, and I could see the ship’s anchor. Despite the war being over, they were still sweeping mines in the Mediterranean and crews were receiving a moderate hazardous duty pay. At one point, as we approached Trieste, Italy, I saw a mine sweeper explode one of the mines. They had to tow a long line which was carefully set to detonate any mines they encountered.

My second trip was to Odessa, Russia, delivering United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) goods, which were part of a United Nations relief plan like the United States Marshall Plan for Europe. To reach Odessa, which is located on the north shore of the Black Sea, the ship had to pass through the waterways leading to the Black Sea. The last of these is the Bosphous, which divides the city of Istanbul, Turkey, with Europe to the west and Asia to the east.

It was still early winter, but was unusually cold, and Russian ice breakers had to open a channel so that ships could get to the pier to discharge their cargos. The S.S. Coeur d’Alene Victory tied up next to another cargo ship, the S.S. Mt. Tamalpais. I later found out that the skipper of that ship was the father of a close friend, Dick Banforth, whom I met at Bowdoin College the following year. The cargo we delivered consisted of farm equipment, tractors, and long lengths of large, thin-walled pipe that was designated for a gas line that was to be run from Siberia to Moscow. Curiously, the farm equipment, tractors, and huge coils of heavy manila rope were set aside and soon covered in snow. The only thing the Russians seemed interested in was the pipe.

At the time we were carrying manila rope, which was practically unattainable in the U.S. as almost all supplies of it had gone to the U.S. Navy during the war. After the Russian cargo was unloaded, my ship set out for the trip back to the States. Since the ship was empty with no ballast, the captain took the ship into Oran, North Africa, and 1000 tons of sand ballast was loaded aboard. Shortly thereafter, we hit a hurricane in the mid-Atlantic and it took us six additional days to make port. For me to stay in my bunk, while off watch, I had to tuck one side of my blankets under my mattress!

Finally, we reached Savannah, Georgia, where we unloaded the sand. The ship was brought into a dry dock for inspection. I went underneath the ship and most of the bottom plates had buckled, as the hull was heavily pounded during the storm. Many of these steel plates had to be replaced because they were so badly damaged. There were two holes in two adjacent plates with wires hanging down where the depth finder had once been. I was so impressed by the damage; I took home a small sample piece of the bottom of the ship as a souvenir.

My third voyage was through the Suez Canal, to India, Pakistan, and Burma. While docked in Calcutta, India, I wanted to go into town. This was the period just after the partitioning of India. There were strong tensions between the Muslims and Hindus at that point, as the country was being divided into East and West Pakistan. There was a tremendous shift in the population and many of the Muslims were migrating to Bangladesh or West Pakistan. I clearly remember seeing a huge refugee camp in the City of Madras. The people there were living in sod huts, which had been built one after the other, as far as the eye could see. The refugees with their children were living in squalor, and it was a sad sight that I will never forget.

After leaving the Merchant Mariner service I attended and graduated from Bowdoin College, then followed in my family’s footsteps and pursued a medical degree at Tufts Medical School in Massachusetts. I completed my medical studies, passed my board exams, and became certified as a General Surgeon and later as a Thoracic Surgeon. Duty soon called and in 1967, the Vietnam War was in full swing. I volunteered to serve and was assigned to the U.S.S. Repose AH-16, which was one of two Navy hospital ships serving off the coast of Vietnam. The other was the U.S.S. Sanctuary AH-17. Both ships were based in Da Nang, taking turns steaming up and down the coast of Vietnam during the war.

In October 1967, I flew out to Norton Air Force Base in San Bernardino, California, which is a few miles east of Los Angeles. I then took a charter flight to Da Nang. Navy uniforms are determined by the season, and since my starting point was the northeast coast of the United States in late fall, I wore my dress blues on the plane from Boston. When I finally landed in Vietnam and the airplane door swung open, the oppressive tropical heat hit me all at once, and I realized as I stood on the tarmac that I was probably the only guy in all of Vietnam wearing dress blues!

I remember how confusing Da Nang seemed, and I had to ask a series of people how to get to the hospital ship. No one seemed to know where the Repose was, until finally I asked the right person, and he informed me that a ferry would take me out to the ship and arranged for transportation to the pier. The ferry boat to the hospital ship was actually a World War II landing craft. The Repose was built during the Second World War, and it was originally used as a transport ship, carrying wounded servicemen from the European Theater back home to the United States. It underwent a major reconstruction, and the 10,000-ton, C-2 cargo hull was modified, and turned into a floating hospital with an 850-bed capacity. Many of the bunks were stacked three high throughout the ship.

There were three operating rooms aboard the ship, and almost all specialty areas of medicine were covered. There were two general surgeons, two oral surgeons, two neurosurgeons, three orthopedic surgeons, one pediatrician, two internists, one anesthesiologist, a radiologist, a psychiatrist, four general medical officers who had just completed a one-year internship, ten to twelve nurses, a nurse anesthetist, and about 35 corpsmen, some of whom were trained as x-ray and laboratory technicians, and a blood bank. There was also a crew of about 35 officers and enlisted personnel to run the ship. When the Captain, John Drew, found out that I had graduated from Maine Maritime Academy and held a 2nd Mate’s License, he informed me that in addition to my medical duties, I was also qualified to stand watch. I enjoyed the in

Serving aboard the Repose was one of two situations, either quite quiet or extremely chaotic and hectic. There was a helicopter landing pad located on the stern. That is where casualties were brought in from the field. For the first eight or nine months, the casualties were mostly Marine Corps troops, who were serving in the northern part of Vietnam, referred to as I-Corps. As the war progressed, I remember taking care of soldiers who served in the Army, and even a few foreign soldiers from Australia and New Zealand.

The Repose steamed from Da Nang north to the DMZ (demilitarized zone separating North and South Vietnam), often passing the U.S.S. Sanctuary, as the two ships alternated their patrols up and down the coast depending on where they were needed the most. It usually took an average of about 30 minutes or less to bring wounded Marines and Army soldiers from the battlefield to the ship by helicopter. The Army and Navy had Mobile Advanced Medical Aid facilities scattered around Vietnam, but when they were overrun with casualties, they would send the wounded directly from the battlefield to the ship.

It was common for men, who were literally picked up in the field where they lay wounded, to arrive on the ship covered in mud. The Marine Corps helicopters served two missions: To fight in the field and deliver the wounded to the ship. The Army had their own dedicated medivac helicopters called “Dust Offs.” These had a large red cross painted on their nose with the hope that they would not be shot down by the Viet Cong. Sometimes, the wounded arrived at the ship by barge from Da Nang. They were primarily casualties being transferred from the Navy Hospital there. These were the most seriously wounded who required a longer period of care.

The doctors, nurses, and corpsmen aboard the ship were on call 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Imagine trying to operate on a patient when there was a heavy sea running and as the ship rolled from side to side. It wasn’t always easy. Sometimes essential pieces of equipment in the operating rooms had to be lashed down to keep them from rolling around. I remember several times when there was heavy fighting that there was more than one operation going on in the same operating room. I was one of two board certified chest surgeons in the I Corps area of Vietnam at that time. The other served aboard the Sanctuary.

Early in February of 1968 there was a three-day period of the heaviest combat which was called the Tet Offensive. I remember 160 patients being medevacked to the ship in a 24-hour period. We were completely overwhelmed, and I recall that it was crisis after crisis as the crew attempted to tend to the wounded as more and more casualties kept coming. The ship’s triage area was designed to accommodate only ten to 15 patients at a time. This was one of the times when I clearly remember having more than one patient in an operating room at a time. So many men needed major surgical attention. The usual protocol had to be set side, and the surgeons did what they had to do to save the lives of the wounded. The corpsmen were also of great help monitoring the patients who were waiting for surgery. At one point, during the Tet Offensive, the other surgeons and I were up for 36 hours straight, with only short catnaps between cases.

Mail call was a particularly important part of the day aboard ship. I always enjoyed the news from home. I had purchased two, small cassette players and sent one home to my wife in Long Island, New York. In this way, I could send audio messages to her and to my three sons - Douglas, Richard, and David, and they could send messages back to me. One day, my brother, Bob, sailed from our family home in Boothbay Harbor, Maine, down the Sheepscot River, past Southport Island and Pratt’s Island, recording a description of the trip with its beautiful scenery as they went along. He also recorded the melodious sounds of the Cat Ledges gong buoy. Aside from missing my family, I don’t think anything made me feel more homesick than hearing that navigational buoy ringing its three gong bells.

In late October 1968, I completed my one-year tour of service in Vietnam and received orders to return to the states. I remember having mixed feelings about leaving the Repose. On one hand I really missed my wife, sons, and family, but on the other hand I felt very gratified by the work I had been able to perform aboard ship – saving a lot of young men’s lives. I had made a lot of close friends in the year I spent aboard the Repose.

I returned to the states to practice medicine and then I was transferred to the Navy Surgeon General’s Office and spent the next four years heading up the Navy’s Medical Facilities Planning Division in the Bureau of Medicine and Surgery in Washington, D.C. Because of this posting, I had a very interesting assignment the 1970’s. The National War College, which is now called the National Defense University, served to educate both mid-level and military officers and state department officials in geo-political issues. Each year, the entire class was divided into five groups, and they conducted an in-depth study of specific parts of the world. I was assigned to serve as the doctor for a group of about 40 students and was attached to the Far and Middle East group since I had lived there and had a lot of knowledge about that part of the world.

From Turkey we flew to Pakistan where we met President Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. Our next flight was to Tehran the Capital of Iran, and there we met Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, the Shah of Iran, who was very fluent in English. Then it was on to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia where we were ushered into a large square ceremonial hall. There were chairs lined up against the wall to match the exact number of people in our party. We were served tea and coffee. When everyone was served, King Abdulaziz bin Abdul Rahman Al Saud entered the room, and we were asked to stand and form a single file line. Everyone shook hands with the king and then he addressed us in Arabic, which was translated to English. During this trip, I also meet Golda Meir, Israel’s first and only female Prime Minister.

I retired from the Navy in 1978, and joined the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, where I was assigned to the Surgery Department at the VA Central Office in downtown Washington, DC. This was an administrative job that consisted of a three man department. At that time there was a growing issue brewing in the media and among Vietnam Veterans organizations about the possible adverse health effects of exposure to the defoliant Agent Orange.

At one point, I was called to testify before the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee and one of the members on it was a Democratic U.S. Senator from Maine, George Mitchell. At that time, Vietnam Veterans from all over the country had formed their own associations locally, because they were being treated badly when they returned home from war, and wanted to do something to promote change. On this particular day, while testifying, I was asked by Senator Mitchell if I knew of the Vietnam Veterans Association of Maine? To which I replied, “Yes, sir. I’m a native of Maine.” The Senator asked me where I was from and I replied, “Boothbay Harbor.” Without missing a beat and knowing that at the time that the Boothbay Region was a Republican stronghold, the Senator replied into his microphone, “You probably never voted for me.”

During the next five years I was assigned to the department of the VA that was working to create a Computerized Medical Records system for healthcare providers working with veterans. There were five VA medical centers nationwide, that were responsible for working on various aspects of this effort and I was assigned to the one in Washington, D.C.

By 1995, it was time to get busy again, and I accepted the position of Medical Director at the American Hospital in Gaziantep, Turkey. This was the same hospital where my father’s parents, both doctors, had served as medical missionaries from 1882 to 1915, my father, Dr. Lorrin Shepard, was born there and later served as the medical director from 1918 to 1925.

In 2001, I returned to my native town of Boothbay Harbor, where I converted the old summer cottage (Topside) into a year-round house, and I enjoy volunteering for the Community Resource Council and the Woodchucks. In 2025, I fulfilled a life-long dream and self-published my first book in December, A Surgeon’s Slice of Live. A Memoir by Dr. Barclay Shepard, which shows you can do anything if you put your mind to it and is available at Sherman’s Bookstore. My life has gone full circle, and I contribute many of my successes to my time spent in both the Merchant Marine and the U.S. Navy.