THEODORE EDSON CHANDLER

Theodore Edson Chandler was born at Annapolis on 26 December 1894 into a distinguished Navy family.  His father, the future RADM Lloyd H. Chandler, attended the Naval Academy at the time.  Young Chandler followed in his father’s footsteps, entering the Naval Academy in 1911.  After a combat tour on the WWI destroyer CONNER (DD-72) he assumed the position of executive officer aboard the newly launched destroyer CHANDLER (DD-206).  That ship had been named in honor of Chandler’s late grandfather, William Eaton Chandler, President Chester Arthur’s Secretary of the Navy.  Theodore served between the Wars aboard several battleships and destroyers, even aspiring to a brief tour with the office of the Chief of Naval Operations.

In the months before the still neutral US entered WWII, (now) CAPT T.E. Chandler commanded OMAHA (CL-4) in the Atlantic Fleet’s Neutrality Patrol.  One task in this employ was to enforce international laws governing ships of combatant nations who might call on American ports.  In the wee hours of 6 November 1941 OMAHA came across a curiously darkened ship out of Philadelphia showing the name Willmoto.  A suspicious Chandler stopped the freighter, who proved in truth to be the German blockade runner Odenwald, illegally running rubber to the Weimar Republic.  “Willmoto” was taken into custody.  Soon-to-be-changed Navy regs required that Chandler supervise her sale at public auction, the last instance in our Navy’s history when a warship’s crew shared “prize money.”  Chandler was promoted to RADM in May of 1943 and transferred to the Pacific in October 1944.  He served under VADM Jesse B. Oldendorf as commander BatDiv 2 during the battle of Leyte Gulf and the liberation of the Philippines.

Then at 1730 on 6 January 1945 a Japanese kamikaze crashed the starboard bridge of USS LOUISVILLE (CA-28), flagship of Commander PacFlt Cruiser Division 4, RADM T.E. Chandler, operating in the Lingayen Gulf in support of the Allied invasion of Luzon.  Chandler was thrown to the deck and doused with flaming gasoline.  Heedless of his severe burns however, he pitched in with his enlisted rates, manhandling fire hoses and supervising damage control.  He patiently waited for medical aid, allowing those more seriously injured to be attended.  Only when he had been satisfied that the needs his sailors had been met did he allow himself to be treated.  But by then the effects of his pulmonary burns were too severe to reverse.  He died this following day.  For his gallant sacrifice he is a recipient of the Navy Cross.  The WWII Gearing-class destroyer THEODORE E. CHANDLER (DD-717) bore his name, as does our former Kidd-class guided missile destroyer DDG-996.

Watch for more “Today in Naval History”  11 JAN 26

CAPT James Bloom, Ret.

Department of the Navy, Naval History Division.  Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, Vol 7 “T-V”.  Washington, DC: GPO, 1981, pp. 127-28.

 Morison, Samuel Eliot.  History of United States Naval Operations in World War II, Vol 13  The Liberation of the Philippines: Luzon, Mindinao, the Visayas.  Boston, MA: Little Brown and Co., 1959, pp. xii, 109.

Theodore E. Chandler

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                                                “LIVE” PATIENT

Dr. James H. Chandler completed his residency at Columbia University, then under one of a series of Vietnam-era physician recruitment plans, reported for duty with the US Navy.  He received orders to the Marine Corps’ Field Medical Service School at Camp Pendleton.  After graduating on this date, he was posted to “C” Medical Company, 3rd Battalion of the 3rd Marine Division in one of the field units around Da Nang, South Vietnam.  Before that year was out, LCDR Chandler was to earn inadvertent fame for which he continues to be remembered today.

Late in 1966, Chandler began what seemed to be another routine day in the field hospital’s OR.  His third case of that day was a 20-year-old Marine who had received a neck wound while on patrol east of Dai Loc.  Chandler was working from a disadvantage on this case as the pre-op X-ray was obscured by a large metal artifact apparently left on the stretcher under the patient’s neck.  But as he explored the entrance wound, past the fractured jaw to the displaced larynx, Chandler’s instrument contacted a foreign body lodged under the posterior tongue.  The object proved too slippery to grasp on several attempts with forceps, but using his fingers, Chandler was able to pop it loose.  The proud surgeon held the strange cylindrical object up for all to see.  The words, “What’s this?” were hardly out of his mouth when knowledgeable corpsmen in the OR broke scrub and hit the deck.  Chandler had delivered a live M-79 grenade!

Reasoning it downright immoral to pass a live explosive to a corpsman, Chandler tendered the grenade himself on a gingerly stroll out of the OR.  Employing a surgeon’s foresight that probably would have proven worthless, Chandler cradled the grenade in his non-dominant hand.  The 200-yard walk to the far side of the chopper pad must have seemed eternal.  After gently placing the device in a ditch Chandler, “…took about four steps calmly, and then ran like Hell!”  The Ordnance Platoon of the 1^st MarDiv harmlessly destroyed the grenade.  It had apparently traveled only 10 feet prior to striking the Marine.  M-79 grenades arm at 14 feet.

Chandler re-scrubbed and returned for five more hours of surgery on the same Marine.  The neck wound proved surprisingly less serious than a second injury, a badly mangled leg.  This case was the third to date in Vietnam in which a military surgeon removed a live explosive from a patient.  In one of the most celebrated, on 1 October 1966 Navy CAPT Harry Dinsmore and EOD EN1 John J. Lyons jointly removed an intact mortar round from the chest of a South Vietnamese soldier at the Naval Hospital in Da Nang.

Watch for more “Today in Naval History”  8 JAN 25

CAPT James Bloom, Ret.

Dinsmore, Harry H.  “Dr. Dinsmore’s Souvenir.”  Navy Medicine, Vol 80 (6), Nov-Dec 1989, p. 6.

“Navy Doctor Removes Live Shell from Soldier’s Body.”  The Pendleton Scout, 21 October 1966, p. 5.

Site visit, Field Medical Service School, Camp Pendleton, California, 12 March 1990.

“Surgeon Removes Grenade Lodged in Marine’s Throat.”  The Pendleton Scout, 13 January 1967, p. 5.

ADDITIONAL NOTES:  LCDR Chandler is remembered today with a photo and press release posted in the passageway of the Field Medical Service School at Camp Pendleton.

CAPT Dinsmore’s case got better press than did Chandler’s.  The x-ray of the South Vietnamese soldier’s chest bearing an obvious mortar round, complete with tail fins, was widely published in medical journals of the day, including the Navy Medical Department’s journal, Navy Medicine. 

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