It was only five or six years ago that I discovered the surprising coincidence related to my father's military service. He was a US Navy pilot, and he died in a low-level bombing training exercise when I was just seven years old, so we never got the chance to share this. I saw the connection when I was going through his service records and came across the following detail. It was pretty startling.
In October 1944 he was aboard the USS Manila Bay (CVE-61) in the Leyte Gulf. For any of you who have read histories of the Pacific War, you're likely familiar with the belief that were it not for the heroic, and suicidal, action of two Navy destroyers, the Johnston and the Samuel B. Roberts, the crew of the Manila Bay and many other members of the military might not have survived that day. MacArthur's "return" could have played out very differently if not for the action of those two ships.
So, jump forward twenty-four years when I get the assignment for my first NROTC cruise, and I end up aboard... the Samuel B. Roberts. Of course, I was on the second Roberts DD-823. It was commissioned after the first one DE-413 was sunk in the Leyte Gulf. But I think it's safe to say that without the sacrifice of the first Roberts in 1944, I probably wouldn't have been around to board the second Roberts in 1986.
It would have been pretty special to share this with him.
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