PT Boat Fan Salutes Heroes on Tape

The old film clips spliced with the veterans’ narratives offer a glimpse of the downtime aboard the 80-foot-long patrol torpedo boats used during World War II.

Bare-chested men are immortalized as they enjoy a few beers, pal around with their buddies, swab the decks before going out on nighttime patrols. Footage of the wooden ships cutting through the water, guns blasting, are combined with oral histories of barge attacks and invasions of Japanese installations on the Pacific.

The video diary of the PT boats and the men who served on them is the passion of Frank Andruss, who has found heroes in men twice his age.

“Some of my best friends are in their 80s,” says Andruss, a 44-year-old bus driver. “I can only imagine what it was like being a young guy on a PT boat and going against a ship 20 or 30 times your size and getting away with it.

“I’m just trying to get other people to think about that and the sacrifices these guys made.”

Four years ago, the amateur filmmaker made a 75-minute video, “PT Boat Diaries,” featuring seven veterans from western Massachusetts telling stories about their service on patrol torpedo boats.

“I think it’s a damn good idea that Frank has going,” said Walter Rogal, who talks on film about the “barge busting” he and his squad did in the Pacific from 1943 to 1946.

“A lot of kids today have no idea what . . . a PT boat is,” says Rogal, 78, of Agawam. “They need a history lesson like this.”

Andruss thumbs through his phone book as if he’s reading the obituary pages, ticking off the names of veterans he has come to call friends.

“Herb passed away . . . Ken passed away. Harry’s gone too. He was a nice guy,” he says. “They were all great guys.”

Before his list gets much longer, Andruss wants to preserve as many stories as possible in a sequel, although he admits that one hurdle he faces comes from the very men for whom he seeks recognition.

“I talk to some of these guys, and they say they’re not interested in doing the film because they think nobody cares about them anymore,” Andruss says.

Alyce Guthrie, executive vice president of PT Boats Inc., a Germantown, Tenn.-based nonprofit organization that has been collecting PT boat artifacts and memorabilia since the 1960s, says she knows of only a handful of oral histories recorded on video or audiotape.

“There may not be widespread interest in them, but historically they’re very important,” Guthrie says. “Oral histories are the best way to really explain exactly what these men experienced.”

Guthrie estimates that fewer than half of the 25,000 PT veterans of WWII are still alive. Her organization is in contact with about 8,500 of them, she says.

“We want to keep the interest and history of PT boats going,” she says.

It took Andruss about a year in his spare time to make “PT Boat Diaries,” which cost about $3,000 of his own money. Production costs were offset by a $500 grant from the Agawam Cultural Council, and Andruss sold about 50 copies, at $19.95 each, mostly to veterans groups and history buffs.

“I’m not in this for the money,” says Andruss, who is married with two children. “I just want to pass on as many of these stories as possible.”

Andruss’ interest in PT boats began when he was 10 and his father sat him down to watch “PT 109,” the movie about John F. Kennedy’s service aboard the boat that was sunk by a Japanese destroyer. He grew passionate about the stories of crews of 10 or 15 men who would sneak their PT boats up on Japanese destroyers 30 times their size and take out enemy docks in as little as 4 1/2 feet of water.

“It’s the whole David and Goliath thing,” he says. “It just fascinates me.”

Andruss has converted a room in his home into his personal PT boat museum. A boat’s radio, squadron plaques, uniforms and innumerable photos are either on display, locked in boxes or stuffed in a closet. His prized piece, a flag from PT boat maker Elco, is sealed in a glass case.

Andruss is also helping rebuild a 1,500-horsepower engine used on a PT boat. Working on it, he says, brings him closer to knowing what it must have felt like to whiz through the ocean with waves crashing over the deck.