Ships
- USS Burns (DD-588) Captain, 28 July 1944 – 4 August 1945
The Navy's own ship's history, stencilled by the Office of Public Relations on 16 March 1949, calls him Commander J. T. Bullen, Jr., and dates the command 29 July 1944 to 4 August 1945. The one-day difference is taken up below. He is not George Scruggs Bullen, his twin and classmate. He is not Gustavius Lorenzo Bullen, a radio electrician in the same registers. He is not Howard R. Bullen of the Naval Reserve, and he is not the Army's Jacob H. Thompson, Jr.
The name in the registers is Jacob Thompson Bullen, Jr. The "Jr." is printed. The registers do not name the father. File number 73333, which Hall of Valor prints as NSN 0-73333, is the number in the index of the Register of 1 July 1945, beside "BULLEN JACOB T JR," commander. The same number, printed 073333, is beside "BULLEN JACOB THOM" in the index of the Register of 1 January 1955.
Origins
He was born on 8 June 1911. That day is the birth column on his line in the Register of 1 July 1944, and again on 1 July 1945. The page of service statistics in the Register of 1 July 1938, matched to him by number in grade 905, the number on his name line on the facing page, prints the same day and adds a state: Alabama. It does not print a town. A later compilation, uboat.net, says Montgomery. Nothing opened here confirms the town, and it is not used.
The home the Naval Academy gave him in print is Shreveport, Louisiana. The Lucky Bag of 1934 sets "Shreveport, La." over the sketch of the two brothers. The Register of 1 January 1934 lists Jacob Thompson Bullen, jr., with "La." on the next line, in the midshipmen, and lists George Scruggs Bullen the same way. On the 1938 statistics page his entry state is Louisiana. Hall of Valor, decades later, still gives the home as Shreveport. Birth in Alabama and a Louisiana appointment can both be true. The registers do not say which house, or when the family moved.
He was a twin. The yearbook is the source, not a genealogy page. The sketch says the story began in sick bay in June 1930, when the medical officer thought he had already examined the boy in front of him. The boy said no, that had been George, and George was standing over there. "As like as two peas in a pod." For the better part of a year, the class was in the same fix as the doctor. One had to have the Bullen twins together to tell them apart, and if they changed places the class was fooled. The classmates say they tried to settle it by stretching and feeding one and starving the other, and that they bred a big Bullen and a little Bullen, and that they still were not sure which was which, but that they called the big one Jake and the smaller one George. That is a joke told on a fact. The fact is that the Academy class of 1934 could not reliably tell them apart, and that the one they called Jake is this officer.
The same sketch is the only portrait of temperament that turned up. It says both had a ready wit, and that Jake's was sparkling, ready, and subtle, "every present with a cheery laugh or a wicked smile," while George always had a reply and a way of turning a joke back on the joker. It says they arrived as Red Mikes, the Academy's name for men who wanted nothing to do with women, and that second-class June Week found each of them "a victim of fickle woman" after a few dances. It says they were affable, dispensers of true southern hospitality, pleasant, loyal, sincere, and quick to offer a hand, and that their one vice was great black cigars, smoked with their feet on the table while they studied. The activities under the sketch are set in two columns and the optical character tangles them. Soccer and lacrosse appear for the pair. The striped offices are not assigned here to one brother or the other. The prose is a classmate's, written to be kind. It is not a Navy report. It is also the last time, in anything read for this essay, that anyone describes the sound of him.
No source opened here names a wife, a child, or a parent beyond the "Jr." George Scruggs Bullen's middle name is Scruggs in the Register of 1 January 1934. That may be a family name. It is not proof of a mother's name, and no mother is named here.
Formation
The 1938 statistics page dittos his date of entry from the midshipman above him, James Mahan Wright's line, as 17 June 1930, and prints Louisiana as the entry state. The dagger on that ditto, on the page where the footnote was read in the same register, means commissioned ensign on 31 May 1934. The Register of 1 July 1945 dittos the same entry day, again from Wright. The Lucky Bag puts the physical examination in June 1930 and does not give the day. The day 17 June is a ditto, not a date typed on his own line. It is the best day the registers give, and it is marked as a ditto because that is what it is.
He was graduated with the class of 1934. On 28 May 1934 the Congressional Record of the Senate prints "Jacob T. Bullen, Jr." in a long column of midshipmen, with George S. Bullen farther down the same page. The heading that would say what the Senate was being asked to do with the Navy names sits on the previous page, which was not in the extract that was read. The Marine heading on the same page dates those commissions from 31 May 1934. The Navy date does not have to be borrowed from the Marines. The Register of 1 July 1935, in the ensigns, gives Jacob Thompson Bullen, Jr., signal 5787, date of rank dittoed as 31 May 1934 from the first explicit date on that page, Robert King Johnston, and present duty Borie. No special course is printed on his line. The hull number of Borie is not in the register. She is the ship the register names.
On 1 July 1937 the register lists him as a lieutenant (junior grade), signal 5236. The date of rank is dittoed down the page from an explicit 31 May 1937. Present duty is Augusta. The special-course column is blank. On 1 July 1938 he is still a lieutenant (junior grade), signal 5105, date of rank still the ditto of 31 May 1937, and present duty is Tulsa. A first reading of that page seemed to give him course numeral 2, naval aviator. The row itself, looked at again, is blank in the course column. The 2 belongs to Wright, the man above him, whose duty is a scouting squadron. Bullen's duty is Tulsa. On 1 July 1939, signal 4867, the duty is Vega. On 1 July 1940, signal 4901, the duty is Mississippi. Rank is still lieutenant (junior grade), date still dittoed from 31 May 1937, courses still blank. The registers print the names and not the hulls. Augusta, Tulsa, Vega, and Mississippi are what the pages say. What he did on each of them is not in any letter, log, or memoir opened here.
The Register of 1 July 1941 moves him into the lieutenants, signal 4701. The course column is blank. The date-of-rank column is "do. (Y)." On that page the explicit date the dittos are following is 1 July 1941, on Eugene Benjamin Hayden's line, and the mark (Y) in that year's notes means "subject to examination, and/or confirmation." The two date columns beside him read 30 June 1934 and September 1933. In that register those columns are "date of present shore duty, leave, or commencement of cruise" and "expiration of last cruise or tour of sea service." September 1933 is the end of a first-class midshipman's last summer, and 30 June 1934 is the week after he became an ensign. The page does not name a ship. It is a poor substitute for a station. If the columns mean he was still on a cruise that began on 30 June 1934, the register has not been brought up to date. Either way, the page does not say where he was in the summer of 1941.
The Register of 1 July 1945, in the commanders, gives his permanent status as lieutenant from 1 April 1941, dittoed from the head of that block. That is not the same day as the 1 July 1941 ditto. Both dates are in official registers. They are left in disagreement. Nothing read here is the letter that promoted him, or the examination the (Y) required.
From the summer of 1941 until he took Burns in late July 1944, no register page opened here names his station. The Register of 1 July 1943 lists him as a lieutenant commander, signal 4401 in the index, under the lieutenant commanders in the body, birth 8 June 1911. The temporary-rank date on that page did not survive the optical character, and the page image was not opened. The Register of 1 July 1944 still has him as a lieutenant commander, signal 4592. The Register of 1 July 1945 has him as a commander, signal 4010, and dittos his temporary rank from an explicit 1 February 1944 on Frank Allen Nusom's line. A man cannot be both a lieutenant commander on 1 July 1944 and a commander since 1 February 1944 unless the later register is dating the rank backward. The Navy did that. Which of the two books was current when he walked aboard Burns is not settled by the books themselves. The ship's history and the Silver Star citation both call him commander for the command. The citation is for October.
The ship he was given
Burns (DD-588) had already had a war before he had her. The 1949 history, and the battle stars printed at the back of it, put the Kwajalein night action, the Truk fighting, and the great carrier raids of the spring and early summer of 1944 under her first commanding officer, Commander Donald T. Eller. The history even gives Eller a sentence, the night off Kwajalein, when the officer of the deck asked whether to slip through an enemy convoy and Eller said he had been waiting for a chance like that for years. That sentence is Eller's. It is not Bullen's, and it is not used as his. The history's own list of commanding officers gives Eller the ship from commissioning on 3 April 1943 to 29 July 1944, Bullen from 29 July 1944 to 4 August 1945, and H. F. Wells from 4 August 1945. The Navy history says the 29th. No deck log of the relief was read. The 29th is followed here, and the 28th is the conflict.
He was thirty-three. He had been an officer for ten years, a lieutenant commander in the register still current that July, and a commander in the register that would be current the next July with a date pushed back to February. The history does not say where he came from, or what Eller said to him, or whether the crew noticed the change. It says that when the ship was assigned as escort commander to screen the retirement of two crippled cruisers that had taken aerial torpedoes off Formosa, she did the job well enough that her second skipper, Commander Jacob T. Bullen, Jr., was awarded the Silver Star.
The citation, as Hall of Valor prints it, is Commander, Third Fleet, serial 0112, of 26 November 1944. It is for 13 to 17 October 1944, as commanding officer of Burns, "operating in enemy Japanese-controlled waters." The ship was a screening unit of a task group protecting the withdrawal of two severely damaged ships under tow. He directed the transfer of personnel from other ships during an enemy air attack and, "despite adverse weather conditions," completed the rescue and contributed to the salvage. The citation's praise is the Navy's stock: conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity, leadership, devotion to duty. It does not quote him. It does not say he was hit, or that anyone on Burns was killed. It does not name the two ships under tow. The 1949 history says they were cruisers, hit by aerial torpedoes, off Formosa, and that Burns had the escort command. It does not name them either. A current Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships page is indexed, in a search, as naming the heavy cruiser Canberra and as mentioning four Purple Hearts on Burns that day. That page would not open. The names and the Purple Hearts are not narrated here as fact.
What can be said is smaller and firmer. For four days in the middle of October 1944 he was the commanding officer of a destroyer told to stay with ships that could not steam, while aircraft were still coming and the weather was bad enough to be written into a decoration. The transfer of men from other ships, during an air attack, is the one act the citation assigns to him rather than to the ship in general. Someone had to decide to come alongside, or to put boats in the water, while the attack was on. The citation says he directed that transfer. It does not say what he saw.
The Bronze Star, with the combat "V," is also on the Hall of Valor page, and it is not in the Register of 1 July 1945. That register's notes say distinctions are those issued and recorded through 1 May 1945. The code for a Navy Silver Star in the 1944 key, which the 1945 book still uses, is (E). His name in the 1 July 1945 commanders' list carries (E). It does not carry (G-1), the Bronze Star. Hall of Valor prints no serial and no date of the order for the Bronze Star. The period it covers is July 1944 to February 1945, commanding Burns, "operations against enemy Japanese forces in the Pacific War Area," and it names the Marianas operations, the assaults on the Philippine Islands, the Morotai landings, the Leyte operation, and the Lingayen Gulf landings. The phrases are "consistent high level of combat efficiency," "forceful leadership," "professional skill," and the combat record of the ship. Again there is no quotation, and no casualty of his own.
The Marianas name has to be cut to the dates. He did not have the ship for the Philippine Sea in June, or for the first strikes on the Bonins. The battle-star list in the 1949 history keeps the capture of Saipan open through 10 August 1944, Guam through 15 August, and a fourth Bonins raid on 4 and 5 August. If he took command on 29 July, the citation's "Marianas" can only be that tail. Morotai, in the same star list, is 15 September 1944. The Philippine assaults in the star list run 9 to 24 September. Leyte, in that list, is the Third Fleet's supporting strikes from 10 October into December, including the Formosa attacks of 11 to 14 October, which is the Silver Star's week, and the Battle of Leyte Gulf on 24 to 26 October. The star list is the ship's, not a diary of his decisions. It is used here only to show that the operations named in the Bronze Star fall, except for the early Marianas, inside the command the 1949 history gives him.
January
The 1949 history's next scene in which the ship is doing something a man would remember is early January 1945, on the way to Lingayen Gulf with the Seventh Fleet, to support the landing on Luzon. Burns was part of an escort-carrier unit. Kamikaze aircraft hit Ommaney Bay. The history says the fires got out of control and explosions rocked the bomb-laden carrier. Burns lowered both boats. Survivors were pouring over the side as soon as the abandon-ship signal was given. Burns and Bell went alongside the carrier to take off people still aboard. After the survivors were off, an explosion showered the destroyers with steel and hot debris. Neither destroyer was seriously hurt. Burns took aboard over 160 survivors, and her boats delivered others to ships nearby. Her whaleboat crew boarded the whaleboat of another ship, which was running in circles after its own crew had been killed by the same explosion. When the rescue was done and it was dark, Burns put a single torpedo into the burning hulk so the Japanese would have nothing to salvage.
The history tells that afternoon and evening without once writing Bullen's name. The commanding-officer list is what puts him there. He had had the ship since July. He would have it until August. The paragraph is the ship's. It is not a letter from him, and it does not say where he stood. A commanding officer who sends boats to a burning carrier, then puts his own ship alongside, then fires a torpedo into what is left, has made those choices or let his officers make them. The history does not say which. One hundred and sixty people came aboard his ship. That number is the history's. It was not checked against a deck log.
The Bronze Star's period runs through February 1945 and includes Lingayen. The star list dates the Lingayen Gulf landing 4 to 18 January 1945. The history says that during the landings Burns survived several kamikaze attacks and added another plane to her total, and that she then got orders home for overhaul after nineteen months in the Pacific. Those nineteen months are the ship's, not his. He had been aboard about six months. Six weeks at Seattle, the history says, gave the crew leave. Mid-May found the ship back in the Pacific, assigned again to the Seventh Fleet, for the bombardment and occupation of Borneo at Brunei Bay and Balikpapan. The star list dates Brunei Bay 7 June to 15 July 1945 and Balikpapan in a line the optical character reads as 15 June to 20 July 1945, which overlaps Brunei and may be a misread. The dates are the history's, and they were not checked against a deck log. He was still the commanding officer, by the same list, through both.
He left the ship on 4 August 1945. The history gives that day to him and the next command to Commander H. F. Wells. The news of the surrender, in the same narrative, finds Burns on escort duty east of the Philippines, and then the ship goes to the Yellow Sea, to Korea and the China coast, to mines and Tsingtao and the occupation. That is after 4 August. It is Wells's cruise, or whoever had her then. It is not narrated as Bullen's.
What it cost
Nothing read here says he was wounded. Nothing gives a dead man from Burns by name in the months he had her. The Silver Star's cost, as the citation bothers to write it, is weather, an air attack, and a salvage that had to be finished anyway. The January cost, as the history writes it, fell first on Ommaney Bay and on the whaleboat crew that was killed. His ship took the living aboard and was showered with debris and was not seriously hurt. If there is a private cost, a night he did not sleep, a man he could not get off the carrier, a letter home, it is not in the citation and it is not in the ship's history. The Navy's public language for him is entirely generic. "Conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity." "Forceful leadership and professional skill." Those sentences could be slid onto another destroyer captain without changing a word. They are not worthless. They are the Navy saying, over a signature, that the tow off Formosa and the long cruise from July to February were his to answer for, and that the answer was good enough for two decorations. They are not a portrait.
The yearbook portrait is eleven years older, and it is a boy's. The cigars, the laugh, the trick of changing places with his brother: none of that is tested against 13 October 1944, because nobody wrote it down. The gap is the man under pressure. The record shows the pressure. It does not show the face.
After
On 4 August 1945 he was off Burns, eleven days before the surrender broadcast of 15 August. Where he went next is not in the 1949 history. The Register of 1 July 1947 prints his name. The optical character of that page is a string of broken digits, and the duty column could not be read. The Register of 1 January 1952 still associates "BULLEN JACOB THOMPSON JR" with the abbreviation CDR, in a column layout that is too damaged to trust for a date of rank. The Register of 1 January 1955 indexes file 073333 beside a rank the optical character renders as "T APT," which is probably captain and was not confirmed on a page image. Hall of Valor says he retired as a captain. uboat.net says the captaincy dates from 1 December 1952 and the retirement from 1 December 1963, and that he commanded John A. Bole (DD-755) from July 1947 to September 1949. Those statements were not found in a register, a deck log, or a Navy biography that could be opened. They are not narrated as a cruise. A photographic index repeats the Bole dates and is the same kind of list.
No obituary was found. Hall of Valor gives the death as 5 February 2000 and does not give a place. uboat.net says Florida and puts a question mark on the town. The question mark is earned. No widow is named. No child is named. What he left a family cannot be said, because the family is not in the record that was opened. The Navy file number is what survived in the indexes, and the two citations, and the yearbook joke about two boys the doctor could not tell apart.
George Scruggs Bullen stayed in the Navy too. The 1 July 1945 index lists him as a commander, file 73338, signal 4091, a different number from his brother's 73333. Later secondary lists give George commands of his own. They are not this essay. The point of naming him is only that a ship, a date, or a decoration attached to "Bullen" of the class of 1934 is not automatically Jacob's.