Page 372 - NIXBOOK

Don Williams had been on a small escort aircraft carrier halfway between Japan and Australia when Japanese carrier-based
torpedo planes found his ship and attacked it. His carrier sank and Don spent three days floating in the ocean losing shipmates
around him to sharks before being found and rescued to continue the war on other ships.

Phil Campbell joined the Navy after the First World War and served on destroyers in an era before radios were even installed
on navy ships; back then all ship-to-ship communication was with signal flags or semaphore lights. He then saw combat action
in the Second World War, mostly around Japanese held islands in the Pacific.

Bill Ridley was a commander in the submarine service; he had worked with
Admiral Rickover, who was arguably one of the most interesting military
leaders in this country’s history. Easily in the top 5. Look him up. Very
interesting. Really.
Walt McKercher was a retired electrical engineer. He seemed completely
humorless at the interview but when he mentioned he had some experience
as a birthday party clown (back when being a clown wasn’t super creepy) I
changed my mind and let him join.

Robert Johnson was a younger volunteer who had been in combat in
Vietnam. He said he still had some PTSD issues and loud noises tended to
make him flinch but I didn’t let that disqualify him from being hired.

Sam Molnar was a career navy diver, a really nice guy. He was the one who died from the flesh eating bacterial infection that
killed him in just a few days; he was still in our program when that happened. Went from healthy to sick to dead very quickly.
Glenn Canfield was on a navy destroyer in the Pacific that got attacked by
Japanese dive bombers. One skilled pilot managed to drop a bomb pretty much
straight down the smokestack. The bomb exploded down in the engine room
killing a lot of sailors. Glenn was down there but a bulkhead saved him from
injury, aside from the concussive shock wave and noise which damaged his
hearing. Glenn told me another time a nearby battleship was shelling an enemy
island in the South Pacific; an errant round missed the island completely and
bounced over the waves before blowing a hole in a US warship behind the island.
The only injury was to a sailor who was sitting down; the projectile exploded into
shrapnel that went under his chair, destroying the chair legs and dropping him
to the deck with no injuries.
Charles Fletcher was an army soldier in the 50’s and 60’s, specializing in
explosives and demolitions. He retired with all of his fingers intact, and divulged
that one of his special assignments was training and certification to be ready to
carry and deploy with a couple other soldiers a small tactical nuclear weapon that
weighed around 70 pounds and was carried in a special big round green canvas
backpack.
There was another gentleman, I regrettably forgot his name but I remember when he told about the time when he was living as
a young man in Denmark (he was Danish, yes) when Hitler’s Nazi army blasted through and took over the whole country. In
one day. He and his family then fled to Norway, but the Germans then took over that country too.
Bruce Davis was a retired school principal and his Carolyn was also a volunteer; she had been the personal assistant to one of
the Mayors of Mexico City, which if you know your geography, is a highly populated city.