Posted 13 years ago
VikingFan82
(373 items)
My grandfather literally has saved everything. During WWII he was trained at the Great Lakes Naval Base as a signalman. From there he went to Solomon Island, Maryland for Underwater Demolition, a precursor to the SEALs, training at the (PhibTraBase) Amphibious Training Base. He was also at Ft. Pierce for the same training. Ultimately he was sent overseas as a signalman on LST 339. This is an unused liberty pass from his time on Solomon Island.
how long was he in the navy for viking
He enlisted at some point between Pearl Harbor (Dec. 7, '41) and his 17th birthday (Dec. 31, '41) with his parents' signatures. He was in the Pacific until sometime in late 1944, and returned state side briefly and then was in North Africa and the Mediterranean until the end of the war.
i would say he lived a very exciting life
Yeah, I have been listening to his stories since I was very little.
Very nice pass. And in perfect condition too. All of us that have had parents and grandparents who saved "everything" are very lucky. I've been told by more than one "older person" that the reason they saved everything was on account of a "depression mentality". During that period times then were so bad, and people literally had no money most of the time. Then you had world war two come along shortly afterward when almost everything was rationed, which contributed even more so to the fact, "nothing" was thrown away. I've known family members that saved every newspaper and every coffee can and every empty jar they came in contact with. Anyway, very fortunate for all of us that collect today. Oh, and in addition, the "stories" they could tell.
Agreed. If you take a look at my earlier posts with the newspapers, those are from him also. In the 70s he built a garage/workshop on his lakefront property and planned on making the second story into a game room and bunkhouse. He planned to use the newspapers for insulation. He never got around to building that second story, just filled it with his "junk" as other people called it. When he put the property up for sale and moved down to the cities, we cleared it out and he literally had every newspaper from about 1971 to about 1975. At that time Minneapolis had two newspapers too.