Anthony Petrovich

Anthony Petrovich was born in December 1927 in Hoboken, New Jersey. He dropped out of high school at sixteen and decided to become an electrician. Petrovich went to an electrician school in Chicago; and, soon after he got a job in an ice-packing factory. When he was close to getting a promotion at work, he was drafted at the age of eighteen in 1946. Given a choice between the Army and the Merchant Marine, Petrovich decided to go with the latter. He trained for the Merchant Marine service in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, New York. Petrovich described his training as less intensive than it would have been for someone in the Army or the Navy.

Since Petrovich served in the Merchant Marines in 1946, he was later considered a World War II veteran for his service during that year. He explained how dangerous the oceans were after World War II, due to the leftover mines in the water. The chains they were attached to would sometimes rust and break, and the mines would float around randomly. There were also magnetic mines that were attracted to ship hulls. Some ships used cables to create a counter field of electricity to keep them away. Petrovich recalled seeing remains of blown up ships during his later trips in Korea and Vietnam.

During his time in the Merchant Marine, Petrovich and his crew were never armed. If they were transporting troops or military equipment, then an extra armed Navy detachment would be aboard the ship. As the years passed, more troops began to be transported by air. Petrovich worked on freighters and other types of ships that also carried paying passengers. One time while working on a freighter, he met a teacher who was going to see the world at a discounted price. She paid the owners for three months of travel, yet was out seeing the world for about four or five months.

Petrovich served during the Korean and Vietnam wars, operating mostly out of New York. During a docking in South Korea, he and a friend snuck into a weapons carrier truck and decided to drive it out of the ship! When the door from the ship came down, it missed the shore, and they drove out into the water and nearly drowned, but landed safely. They headed into Inchon, and his friend stopped somewhere. While waiting for his friend, Petrovich turned around to see a navy shore patrol sailor pointing a gun in his face. He was able to show his ID, and the sailor left him alone.

Suddenly it was almost nine PM — curfew time in South Korea. Petrovich and his friend frantically looked for somewhere to stay, and ended up in a hotel where the Shore Patrol was staying. He recalled that “we had a butler; we were in a palace with first class breakfast.” The next morning, Petrovich and his friend started hitchhiking, and he found a gun in a woodlot. They reached an army camp and were told to hike back to where they came from. When they arrived back in Inchon, several jeeps full of Military Police surrounded them, because they had been reported missing. Petrovich snuck onto his ship with the gun and did not get in much trouble.

One of Petrovich’s pastimes was photography. He learned how to take and develop his own pictures in his free time, and even taught troops and members of his crew the skill. When on a troop transport, Petrovich would sell photos of soldiers and crew members to them for twenty-five cents each. He recalled selling a few hundred pictures a day on some occasions. Petrovich and his friends also distributed alcohol and ran card games, where the men on the ship would drink and gamble. Even though this was against the rules, it happened a lot and was, he felt, a harmless way for the men to be entertained. Petrovich bought the liquor during his shore leave in various countries.

Ships with over twelve passengers would have their own medical team. Petrovich recalled crew members or troops occasionally dying on a ship. “They used to be buried at sea in the early days,” he recalled. One day on a return from Panama, Petrovich replaced an officer who ran the ship’s radio and had passed away during the night. A “loop antennae” helped guide him into the Los Angeles dock. He also had to help prepare the officer’s body for transport off the ship, stuffing openings with cotton so it would not leak.

Petrovich also recalled helping a man who got caught on a crank, and whose arm was ripped off and leg severely injured. Petrovich helped him onto a stretcher; he remembered that the man asked for a cigarette to be placed in the hand of his working arm. Petrovich recalled being shocked and sick when the injured man was off the ship, and said, “It was unbelievable, but I knew what I was supposed to do, and I did it.”

Petrovich never saw combat, and recalled having a lot of fun during most of his time as a Merchant Marine, where he served from 1946 to 2001. He was awarded the Korean Service Medal, United Nations Service Medal, and the Vietnam Service Medal. Anthony Petrovich believed that it was important to educate our children as well as possible on the true history of our nation, to insure a bright future. 

Anthony Petrovich passed away at the age of 94 on January 23, 2022.

Additional Resource:

• Veterans Legacy Memorial