War Stories

I kind of collect World War II stories that I run across or that people tell me about.

First, my own family's. My dad flew a TBF Grumman Avenger torpedo bomber with squadron VT-15 off the USS Essex in the Battle of Leyte Gulf, October 23-26, 1944. This battle was the largest naval battle of World War II and maybe the largest naval battle of all time.

By his actions and those of his mates, Japan "lost four aircraft carriers, three battleships, six heavy and four light cruisers, and eleven destroyers," according to the Wikipedia article, Battle of Leyte Gulf. For his actions in battle, he and his entire squadron were awarded the Navy Cross.

He shipped home soon after V-J (Victory over Japan) day, so in the case of the Navy discharging personnel, this would have to be September 2, 1945, Japan's signing of the surrender document, when World War II in the Pacific ended.

I was born about nine months later, on June 1, 1946.

My dad was a small-town boy raised in Santa Barbara and he went on to matriculate at the University of  California, Santa Barbara, and, later, Berkeley, graduating in 1942. Then he enlisted in the Navy and became a pilot, fulfilling a life-long dream. Family legend has it that, when he was a little boy, his mother had to arrange his string beans into an airplane shape before he would eat them.

In later years, he saved his Navy Cross, but felt ambivalent about it, because it was a reminder of how many people he had killed. The only other thing I know about that he saved from the war, besides a stray ribbon bar or two, was his map of the Pacific on a silk scarf, which airmen carried in case the plane went down.

But he suffered from what we now know as PTSD (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder) until he died young of a household accident in 1970.