Naval hero from Bangor a study in leadership - Late admiral served in both world wars.
By Roxanne Moore Saucier, BDN staff
This story was published on May 25, 1991 in all editions of the Bangor Daily News
Arlington National Cemetery. May 21, 1953.
In their dress blues, Halsey, Struble, DeLany, Austin, Duncan, Curts, Killenkoetter and Jarrett lined up around the grave, heads bowed.
The honorary pallbearers - Navy heroes all of them - had gathered to honor a man from Bangor who was one of their own.
Vice Adm. Carl F. Holden had served in World Wars I and II, and was executive officer of the USS Pennsylvania at Pearl Harbor when the Japanese attacked on Dec. 7, 1941. He also was the first commander of the battleship USS New Jersey.
Forty years ago last March, Holden capped his Navy career with command of the U.S. naval forces in Germany - the fleet arm of the occupation forces - and the additional duty as naval member of the Inter-Allied Advisory Council.
Though no one could have guessed in 1913 that the Bangor High School senior would have such a distinguished Navy career, there were indications that young Carl Holden had leadership potential.
He was an honor student and business manager of the high school yearbook "Oracle," and was the unanimous choice of the baseball team to be its captain. He was selected to represent Bangor High at the annual Colby Interscholastic Speaking Contest, and also was named class historian, honors he had to forgo in order to fulfill his appointment by Rep. Frank Guernsey to the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis.
Holden would never again be a full-time resident of Bangor, where his father was postmaster and Penobscot County commissioner. But the hometown papers - the Bangor Daily News and the Bangor Evening Commercial - did their best to keep Maine readers posted on his distinguished career. During the 10 years spanning World War II and after, his picture was on the front page of the NEWS seven times, including the announcement of his death in 1953.
Named a company commander at Annapolis, Holden graduated early with his Class of 1917 in order to be available for U.S. service in World War I, and was promoted from ensign to lieutenant the next year.
When he came home in August 1918 to visit his parents, William and Mary Ellen Holden of Parkview Avenue, the Commercial reported he had spent 14 months on a destroyer, "in constant service in English and French waters," chasing submarines. Later in 1918, his ship, the Lansdale, was torpedoed.
By 1924, having earned a master's degree in electrical engineering from Harvard, Holden was chief radio officer on the Concord, and aide to Adm. George A. Williams, commanding officer of the Atlantic destroyer squadron.
Later, he was communications officer of the USS Arizona, and then district communications officer in Hawaii. He became navigator of the USS Idaho, then commanding officer of the USS Ramapocq. In 1938, he went on to direct radio shore activities in the Office of Naval Communications.
In 1940, Capt. Carl F. Holden was named executive officernot commander of the USS Pennsylvania, still second in command on that ship when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941. In drydock during the attack, the Pennsylvania received less damage than other U.S. ships. Even so, two officers and 16 enlisted men were killed.
The next month, he became communications officer for the U.S. fleet, and later in 1942 took over as director of Naval Communications.
On the first anniversary of Pearl Harbor, the Army and Navy Journal came out with a special issue, "United States at War," with articles by a variety of military and governmental leaders, including President Franklin D. Roosevelt. As director of Naval Communications, Holden contributed "Naval Communications in Wartime."
"No one who can visualize the immense distances of this global war will minimize the difficulties of such communications," Holden wrote. "Had the Naval Communications system broken down during the Battles of Coral Sea and Midway, the story of triumph would have been much different."
A former chief radio officer himself, Holden wrote, "Now whole fleets of ships, submarines and planes operating at great distances from each other move as one synchronized body with the help of radio. The flexibility of movement which such communication speed permits has changed the strategy of modern war."
In 1943, Holden was given command of the brand-new USS New Jersey, taking the battleship to the Pacific in January 1944. The New Jersey, part of the famous Task Force 38, participated in campaigns in the Marshall Islands, Guam and the Philippines, where it was Bull Halsey's flagship.
Holden was promoted to rear admiral in January 1945, and given command of a Cleveland class of cruisers, seeing action at Okinawa and participating in the first stages of the occupation of Japan.
After the war, he spent almost three years as commander of Training Command for the U.S. Atlantic Fleet with headquarters in Norfolk, Va. Holden succeeded another Bangor man in that post, Rear Adm. Carl F. Bryant, who retired after 36 years in the Navy.
During those years, Holden twice came to Bangor to speak. In November 1945, more than 100 Rotarians, guests and dignitaries were present at the Bangor House to greet "the first high-ranking naval officer heard here since Pearl Harbor," as the NEWS put it.
Gov. Horace Hildreth traveled through a snowstorm to attend the gathering."I'm here," Hildreth told the assemblage, "like the rest of you, just to pay tribute and listen. I do want to pay the state's respects and compliments. We're proud of Adm. Holden - proud of his record in these historic times."
Speaking of the weeks just before Japan surrendered, Holden told the Rotary Club, "We have steamed, in these last months, within a stone's throw of the Japanese coast, bombarding, without a shot being returned and with nothing coming out to meet us. - Can you imagine an enemy fleet steaming, unchallenged, off the coast of Maine? Good Lord, we would at least throw potatoes at it!"
And yet, he said, "Had our invasion come, I believe the Japanese would have thrown at us, in one grand wave, everything they had - ships, men, planes; all their dwindling resources. It wouldn't have done them any good, but the slaughter would have been terrific."
He also spoke in favor of a year of military training for all men, speaking of benefits to the individual as well as to the armed services.
In 1947, Holden returned to Bangor for a Navy Day observance sponsored by area service clubs. He urged everyone to support Navy recruiting, saying, "If we are to support our present foreign policy - whether we agree with it or not, it is our policy - we must have forces that will command respect and will put teeth into it."
The next year, the admiral was named commander of the U.S. Naval Base in New York, a post he held until 1951, when he received command of the U.S. Naval Forces in Germany - the fleet arm of the occupation forces. He also was a member of the Inter-Allied Advisory Council.
After his retirement in 1952, Holden was president of the research unit of International Telephone and Telegraph. He died May 18, 1953, after a brief illness.
Holden's widow, Cordelia (Carlisle) Holden, died last July in New Hampshire, where she had made her home for many years with her daughter, Jean Holden. Holden's son, Carl Jr., also attended the U.S. Naval Academy.Several relatives still live in Maine.
Holden's ship, the New Jersey, was decommissioned in February this year, having been recommissioned four times since 1943. The ship saw service during Korea, Vietnam and, in 1983, near Lebanon.
Jean Holden remembers her father's special feelings for the New Jersey. "My father's first battleship command was the New Jersey - and he was her first captain," she recalled. "My father loved her dearly - he was so proud of her, and so happy to sail her out to the Pacific during the war. He called her "The Lovely Lady" - and teased my mother about her only rival."
Vice Adm. Carl F. Holden was buried at Arlington National Cemetery. His honorary pallbearers were men with whom he had served in World War II, men who knew firsthand the "brilliant career" the newspapers wrote about.
They were Holden's fellow officers in 1942 when he wrote in "United States at War:"
"When victory is ours, and peace comes again, then, and then only, will it be time to say whether the job has been well-done."
|
