William Geroux

In THE MATHEWS MEN, Geroux tells the story of the extraordinary Hodges family (which sent seven sons to the Merchant Marines) and their neighbors and friends in Mathews. When America entered the war, hundreds of Mathews men were walking the decks of cargo ships, where they were prey for U-boats in the Atlantic, the Caribbean, the Gulf of Mexico, the Mediterranean and the frigid Barents Sea. From disastrous run-ins with U-Boat “wolf packs” in American waters, to the D-Day invasion, to the delivery of the Enola Gay crew to Tinian, Mathews men were at the heart of the action. U.S. Merchant Mariners, caricatured unfairly as drunks and draft dodgers during the war, waded through dangerous conditions to fuel the great Allied amphibious invasions that liberated Europe from the Nazis, only to be forgotten afterward by their nation. THE MATHEWS MEN is a rich, fascinating account of their behind-the-scenes sea battles that in many ways determined the outcome of the war. It chronicles the still-unrecognized sacrifices made by thousands of men and women at sea and on the home front. While covering a town forum in 1991, reporter William Geroux was astonished to hear people’s memories of merchant boats being torpedoed right off shore in Virginia during World War II, when German U-Boats would lie in wait just off the U.S. coast for these unarmed ships that were responsible for the transport of virtually all the fuel, food and munitions that sustained the Allies in Europe. Nearly a decade later, Geroux came across the story of Mathews County, Virginia, a rural strip of land along the Chesapeake that sent one of the largest concentrations of sea captains and merchant mariners of any community in America to fight in World War II, and he knew he had a story. Inspired and informed by interviews conducted with many Mathews County WWII merchant mariners and their relatives, THE MATHEWS MEN: Seven Brothers and the War Against Hitler’s U-boats finally brings to light the heroic but unacknowledged role of the mariners from Mathews, VA, and of the U.S. Merchant Marine.