US Navy Fireman 2c Siver Criss Varazo was born on July 26, 1921 in Lula, Mississippi, the son of Cress J. Varazo (1893-1987) and Mahi S. Varazo (1893-1977). His parents and older brother were all born in Greece with the remaining children born in Mississippi. His parents supported their children in the restaurant field in such places as Grenada and Tupelo, MS, as well as Pensacola. Siver was a first-generation Greek along with his brothers John (1920), Nick (1923), Gussie (1925), and Charles (1927). Following Pearl Harbor, all five of the Varazo brothers would answer the call to arms when their country needed them the most. Siver enlisted in the Navy on December 28, 1941 in Little Rock, Arkansas and after an abbreviated boot camp was sent to a destroyer tender called the USS Whitney (AD-4). Within several weeks, Siver was transferred to the warship USS Monaghan, a Farragut class destroyer and veteran of Pearl Harbor. Here he performed the duties of a fireman and here he would take part in the coming Battle of the Coral Sea.
On May 8th, the last day of the Coral Sea battle, Varazo and his ship were sent away from the fleet to act as a “red herring.” This meant that when his ship was a sufficient distance away from the task force, they began to transmit messages back and forth to Pearl Harbor. This was to confuse the enemy “snoopers” who were still looking for the American fleet at this critical juncture of the battle. Having performed their assigned duty, the Monagham was finally recalled to the task force as they limped away to lick its wounds following the battle. During the battle of Midway, Varazo's ship helped protect the USS Yorktown then attacked and damaged the submarine after it sunk the carrier.
After fighting in most of the major naval battles of the South Pacific, Varazo and his ship found themselves in the path of a gigantic storm called Typhoon Cobra on December 17, 1944. Because the Monaghan was short of fuel, they reduced their ballast to counter the weight of the expected fuel. However, the storm struck too quickly and they were forced to drop their fuel lines and ride it out. By December 18, the seas were monstrous, and the winds were at 120-mph sustained with gusts up to 140-mph. Without the proper ballast, the ship was taking rolls of up to 70-degrees. Waves and rain flooded their smokestacks causing their boilers to fail and then lose all power. It was only a matter of time before the ship capsized taking Varazo and 255 of his shipmates to the bottom. Only six men survived. Around them, two other destroyers were facing the same disaster for the same reasons. The USS Spence went down with 317 sailors, one of them a Pensacola man (born Flomaton) by the name Joe Earl Purvis. The USS Hull also went down with 202 men aboard.
Siver's parents were notified that their son was missing but there was almost no hope of his survival. Before long, his parents would receive another telegram sometime after April 1945 that their son Charles had been grievously wounded with the Marines on Okinawa. He had enlisted in 1942 and had already survived Saipan and Tinian. However, on Okinawa he had been so severely wounded by a blast of a landmine that his commander ordered his retreating men to leave him. However, his men refused. They hefted him up and carried poor Charlie out with them. He was in a coma for over a month and when he came out of it, he found himself on a ship off Japan, just before the dropping of the atomic bomb. Charlie returned to his family in Pensacola following his discharge. Upon arrival, he went to work at the family-owned restaurant called the “Robert E. Lee” in downtown Pensacola. After several years, the business moved to another location in Warrington where they opened another restaurant called “The Halfway House” at 23 Barrancas Avenue. For the next thirty years he and his family worked together to have a highly successful business. The remaining three brothers enlisted as well: Nick with the US Navy on a carrier in the Solomons and John and Gus in the US Army.
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