When Captain Burton H. Green came aboard Naval Ammunition Depot Earle in October 1943, he brought with him a distinguished reputation as a Naval leader in other areas before assuming the position as the first commanding officer of the newly constructed ammunition depot whose property spanned from Leonardo in Middletown to Colts Neck.
A graduate of the Class of 1905 from the Naval Academy at Annapolis, Green was a classmate of many other distinguished leaders, among them Admiral Chester Nimitz, the Navy’s leading authority on submarines during World War I.
Captain Green had been in and around the new depot before assuming command. He took up a temporary headquarters in Red Bank during the construction and watched the development of early planning.
Prior to coming to New Jersey, the Wisconsin-born naval officer served on the USS Tacoma, in Cuban waters during the 1907 uprising; served in China during the Manchu uprising that saw the overthrow of the Qing dynasty and created a republic, and commanded the USS Bainbridge, as well as the USS Decatur. He also had command of a division of destroyers, including the USS Tallahassee, the USS Milwaukee, the USS Lamson and the USS Toanoah. He was the Executive officer aboard the Battleship Michigan during World War I and was promoted to Captain in 1928.
His last sea duty was as commanding officer of the USS Vincennes when the ship was commissioned in 1937.
Beginning land duty Captain Green was stationed in the Canal Zone where he was commanding office of Naval Ammunition Depot Balboa.
While the Captain retired in 1940 after 35 years in active-duty service, he was recalled the following year six months before Pearl Harbor brought the United States into World War II. He came to Monmouth County when plans for NAD Earle were underway, and he and his family lived in Rumson during the planning stages at Leonardo and Colts Neck.
In official reports filed about Captain Green, his contemporaries described him as a remarkable man continually on the job. “He considered his chief work to be getting the ammunition loaded, and with all his might and main, with insufficient funds, with inadequate tools, with far too few personnel, he struggled.” Sailors said his motto was “Our primary purpose is to furnish ammunition to the fleet; all else is secondary.” A motto that became the tradition of the depot.
Described as short, slim and wiry, Captain Green was a pipe smoker who was quiet and pleasant when his men were doing their jobs adequately, a vision of “most sudden and picturesque profanity at any who displayed ether ignorance, bard judgment or bad faith.”
By November of 1944, 403 Navy combat ships were serviced at NAD Earle in temporary storage, initial outfitting, or replenishing ammunition.
Captain Green is credited with leadership and vision that enabled him to see through the mud and muck, ice and sleet as well as disappointments and round-the-clock efforts to convert swamp and forest into an ammunition depot built during the world’s most awful war. Yet he claimed no credit for himself, hid his past accomplishments and continued to lead until he eventually relinquished his leadership of the nation’s newest and most formidable depot to Captain Hoover on March 15, 1945.
NAD Earle in Monmouth County, New Jersey, was doing its share in defending America during World War II.
