CALAIS – Men were crying with “blood just pouring out of some of them,” Danny Dineen wrote in his letter to his wife.

It was Oct. 24, 1944. Dineen’s ship, a Landing Craft Infantry, the LCI 1065, was part of an invasion force trying to capture Leyte Island, part of the Philippine Islands.

“It was when MacArthur had gone back to the Philippines,” Dineen’s son Norm said last week. Forced out of the Philippines by the Japanese, Gen. Douglas MacArthur had promised to return.

But for Danny Dineen, it was the day his ship and most of its crew went down.

A Japanese pilot, flying a flaming Betty Bomber with a full load of bombs and a crew of five, plowed into Dineen’s ship in a kamikazelike dive.

Out of 39 men, only eight survived. Danny Dineen was one of them.

As Mainers prepare for another Memorial Day on Monday, Dineen’s son, a U.S. Navy veteran himself, talked about his father, who died in 1973, and about the battle and the true meaning of the holiday.

He also talked about his father’s fierce patriotism and love of the flag.

Danny Dineen was 32 years old and a Canadian when he joined the U.S. Navy. He and his wife, Marge, had been living just outside of St. Stephen, New Brunswick, when he decided to enlist. It was Marge’s uncle, Fred Young, who convinced Danny that “America was the place to be,” Norm Dineen said quietly.

Marge, 86, said that after her husband shipped out to sea, she would anxiously wait for each letter he sent. “It was when I didn’t hear, that I got upset,” she said. A letter from the Red Cross, shortly after the sinking, told her that her husband was in the hospital.

It wasn’t until Dec. 5, 1944, that Dineen was able to write to his wife from his hospital bed in Oakland, Calif. He described that day.

They had arrived in the Leyte Gulf on Oct. 22. Dineen noted it was the same day as Marge’s birthday. “Everything was quiet except some gunfire over on the shore and we all thought the excitement was all over,” he said.

Two days later, around 10 a.m., all hell broke loose.

“There was all kinds of Jap[anese] bombers came after us dropping bombs everywhere in the water and on ship. I was in the engine room at the throttles. We were out about two miles from land and I could hear our guns firing for about 15 minutes. Then all of a sudden it felt as if we hit something. It knocked me over against the railing around the engine and then came this awful explosion, it jumped me about four feet off of the deck,” Danny wrote in his letter. “I thought I was done for.”

He cut the motors and grabbed a life jacket and ran. “The water was just rushing in so I made a run, and it had blown the deck plates out and I couldn’t see in the dark and I fell down in the bilge and I got up out of there and run up topside,” he wrote.

He tried to make it to the ship’s galley, but it was on fire. “So I couldn’t get out that way so I run out on the fantail and, gosh honey, it was terrible. Some guys was crying and blood just pouring out of some of them and others was burned and some had their legs broke and the ship was all afire on the outside and the water was all afire on one side of the ship,” he wrote. “And the ship was all twisted. It was an awful sight. So I threw life jackets out to some guys that was blown out in the water and then I went overboard myself.”

The sailor said he was in the water about a half-hour when his ship began to sink. “I had to swim real fast away from the ship as it was sinking real fast and I thought it would drag us down with it.”

Six hours later, the survivors were pulled from the water.

Danny’s right arm was injured. “Infection set in and it swelled up clear to the shoulder and I got a guy to write that last letter to you and I put the kisses on it with my left hand and I also got my hip hurt pretty bad,” he wrote. Marge said Danny was unable to raise his arm above his shoulder.

Although the elder Dineen lost most of his personal effects in the sinking, his son cherishes the wallet his father carried in his back pocket. The salt water faded the family pictures, but they remain inside.

About his dad’s patriotism, Norm said: “He was so Irish, so Democrat. He was a Roosevelt Democrat, different now today,” he said.

It was that patriotism that Danny Dineen instilled in his five sons. “We were brought up that we were going to go in the Navy,” he said.

Norm said he remembers past Memorial Days when everyone participated. “Memorial Day was a giant parade of people so pleased for those who did survive and, of course, sad for those who didn’t,” he said. “But it was a big, big deal.”

Not today, he said. Memorial Day now is backyard barbecues and picnics.

But not for Norm. He plans to march with two of his brothers in the Calais Memorial Day parade. “I want to show support for people who did what Dad did,” he said.