| On December 7, 1941, when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, our big Pacific naval base in Hawaii, I was sixteen. My older brother was in the Oklahoma National Guard, which was about to become part of Patton's Third Army in North Africa. This is the first volume of four about what it was like for an Oklahoma farm boy during World War Two.
Pinky is the first volume of four set during the World War II period and based entirely on my experiences. It is followed by The Splendid Five, about five wooden subchasers and their trip from New Caledonia to the Philippines with General MacArthur's invasion forces; Kilroy, Home from the War, the story of returning home in 1945, buying a 1935 Ford V-8, and sowing wild oats; and The Hooligan Navy, my wild adventures in the post-war Coast Guard. Here are a few reasons my WW2 experiences were not typical: Although I was healthy and physically fit in all other ways, I was 'cross-eyed'. In order to pass the physical exam, I had to fake the eye test--twice. My greatest worry, even after I was in boot camp in Farragut, Idaho, was that the war would be over before I could get there. I wanted (with 'all my heart') to be a radioman aboard a Navy man-of-war, preferably a tincan (destroyer). I had grown up on a farm in a very remote part of Oklahoma, and I had never gone out with a girl or driven an automobile. Pinky was published by The Writers Club Press in 2005. It is available at Barnes & Noble, Amazon.com, and most bookstore chains in a 6X9 paperback for $21.95. ISBN: 0-595-34320-1, 382 pages.  This is a true story that began on the day Japan bombed and strafed Pearl Harbor, propelling us into World War Two. I was sixteen and lived on a little farm a million miles from where the action was, but I knew what I had to do. My mind was already made up about joining the Navy and seeing the world well before this sneak attack on our Pacific base in Hawaii; so when President Franklin Roosevelt announced to the world on Sunday, December 7, 1941, that we were going to war with Japan, I began immediately working on my parents to 'let me join up'. I looked seventeen; and although I had never been anyplace or done anything (except farm work), I felt very strongly that I could make a real difference in the Pacific. Besides being a year too young to join a branch of the Armed Services, I had a physical defect that should have put an end to my dreaming--My right eye was 'crossed'! No one in my family believed I would be able to get past that first physical examination, but that did not discourage me for a minute. |  This photo was taken in Honolulu in October, 1945, after the war was over and I was on my way home.I had spent almost two years in the Pacific on a wooden subchaser, and for a very long time I had not believed that I would ever see the Golden Gate Bridge again.Needless to say, I was anxious to make it home by Christmas. I had not seen a 'civilized' girl during that entire time, but my mind was on home-cooked food, sleeping late on a 'feather' bed, and listening to something on the radio besides Armed Forces news broadcasts!  |
