Joyce's Father 191125

      From the time Joyce and I were married I was overseas or too far away to have much time to speak with her father and he died at 45 years old, so by the time I would have had to converse with him it never happened. The third picture below was taken of Joyce's father and mother after his ship the USS Brownson was sunk in the battle of New Britain in the south pacific during WW-2.



      This ship shown above is the USS Johnston a ship of the same class as Joyce's father's ship.
      This is an article in the newspaper about the sinking of the Brownson.

      He was a wonderful father to Joyce and a husband to her mother. In our few conversations before my marriage to Joyce, her father never mentioned anything about his WW-2 experience. Had he lived and I heard the story about his navy time and the ship sinking by a 500 pound bomb dropped by a Japanese bomber, I would have been very interested to hear what he was thinking as the ship went down and he was in shark-infested waters of the south pacific ocean.

      It was pure luck that he was in the auxiliary diesel steering room during the Japanese attack. He had gone to diesel mechanic's school earlier, so his battle station assignment was in the diesel steering room. His normal duty station was in the fire room of the ship and with what I know now he would have died with the rest of the men down there had he been there when the ship sunk.

      Again I have to think, had he died, there would be no Joyce, no daughter Annie no granddaughter in my life and the thought of that is too horrible to dwell upon.

Copyright Bill Weber 2006-2019 and beyond.