My grandfather was working in the engine room of the destroyer USS Craven, somewhere in the Pacific Ocean. The radio man put together a newsletter, and here's a scan of the front page. http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/picture.php?albumid=8246&pictureid=78820 I don't know if I can move that pic from my HAMB album to this post, so there's the link. I'm afraid to scan the other pages due to how fragile they are, and there's still a rusty staple holding them together. I don't think it would be to far fetched to think that this is the last copy of this shipboard newsletter. The back pages tell the latest baseball game scores, rationing, and stories about privateering in the United States.......store owners were scamming customers by raising prices on cigarettes to a penny each! After he died, I found this stashed away in a photo album of his war pictures. He carried a camera with him, and took many photos of the war. There were also pictures of him posing with topless hula girls in Hawaii! My grandmother really got a kick out of those! If I ever get time, I'll get those scanned in as well. Remember Memorial Day
THANK YOU! I'd take the original to a good copy center and have a few copies made so you don't have top risk damageing the original, carefully remove the staple.
Fidget, That is really a special piece of WWII history - not to be forgotten. Go to sites below for more info and contact these folks about your find. About 1200 WWII vets die each day so maintaining this history is important and a tribute to your grandfather. Right now there is only one known US WWI soldier still alive - Frank Buckles- age 108. In a few years the same will be true of WWII vets. http://www.navsource.org/archives/05/382.htm http://www.destroyersonline.com/usndd/dd382/ http://ww2db.com/ship_spec.php?ship_id=228
May 8 = VE (victory in Europe) Day. When I was a kid, newspapers used to report on how many Civil War vets there were left (only a handful), and that May 30th (Decoration Day) was originally not for all the fallen soldiers, but only for the fallen veterans of the Grand Army of the Republic - the Union.
There are about 10 of his shipmates left on the official registry, and about 10 more people looking to fill out family histories of their deceased relative. Looks like you might need 20 copies! http://www.destroyers.org/smrdd/USS_Craven.html That hotrod had 49,000 horsepower and would do 40 knots!
Thank you for that link! I didn't know that existed! I put up an offer to send anyone copies who wants them.
Some handling ideas...carefully kill the staple with end cutters and work it out. Slide a sheet of heavy typing paper under the front page and lift it off gently, continue on through the stack. Work from electronic photos of each page...no contact! To keep the original, you need to find a conservator at a university library and beg for help. Probably best will just be encapsulating it in plastic, as structure is totally gone with acidified wartime paper.
Awesome!!! If you have a GOOD digital camera and a tripod you could lay them on a clean sheet of poster paper and photograph them. Any way thanks for sharing, really priceless. Slim
Hey, thanks for posting. That's some great stuff you have and it would be great if you could scan (or photo digitize) and post more. It's a treasure for sure when you come across history like this from people who actually lived it. A year or so after my brother-in-law passed, my sister found one of his old journals from when he was a Navy Chaplain. He was at Normandy for the D Day landing and he had recorded information in his journal on every soldier he had assisted with the burial rites. There were hundreds. He even noted the grave locations for each. It was a fascinating, but a tear provoking read. After reading the journal there was no question as to why he rarely discussed the war. She later donated it to the Navy Department.
Thank you for all the good ideas! I have it pressed flat in a plastic UV sleeve in his photo album. It was folded in half when I found it. Part of me would want to donate it to somewhere it would be seen, the other part wants to hold on to it for the family history. For now, it's staying with me. I just hope that someday my daughters can understand what that little piece of paper meant to her grandfather. I need to get off my butt and get all of his war photos scanned into the computer. Luckily for me, they had all been stashed away out of the light, and out of sight, until I found them in the attic. After he died, the money grubbing relatives took everything they thought was worth a penny. Old photos weren't on their list, thankfully. What they didn't take, the estate sale people tried to take before I got in there. After a few threats, they left me alone and I was able to get a bunch of his war stuff back, including the camera he used in WWII. I looked at the scan again, and saw that it lost a lot of detail when I reduced the size for the HAMB album. Here's what the front page says. T H E S A L T Y "C"TUESDAY U. S. S. C R A V E N MAY 8th, 1945R A D I O P R E S S N E W S GERMANY SURRENDERS TO BIG "3" THIS IS OFFICIAL! "REIMS, FRANCE: GERMANY SURRENDERED UNCONDITIONALLY TO THE WESTERN POWERS AND RUSSIA AT 2:41 AM FRENCH TIME MONDAY (THIS WAS AT 8:41 P.M. EASTERN WAR TIME MONDAY). THE SURRENDER TOOK PLACE AT A LITTLE RED SCHOOL HOUSE WHICH IS THE HQS. OF GEN. EISENHOWER. THE SURRENDER, WHICH BROUGHT THE WAR IN EUROPE TO A FORMAL END AFTER FIVE YEARS, EIGHT MONTHS, AND SIX DAYS OF BLOODSHED AND DESTRUCTION WAS SIGNED FOR GERMANY FOR COL. GEN. GUSTAV JODL. JODL IS THE NEW CHIEF OF STAFF OF THE GERMAN ARMY. IT WAS SIGNED BY THE SUPREME ALLIED COMMAND BY LT. GEN. WALTER BEDELL SMITH, CHIEF OF STAFF FOR GEN. EISENHOWER. IT WAS ALSO SIGNED BY GEN. IVAN SUSLOPAROFF FOR RUSSIA AND BY GEN. FRANCOIS SEVEZ FOR FRANCE. GEN. EISENHOWER WAS NOT PRESENT AT THE SIGNING BUT IMMEDIATELY AFTERWARD JODL AND HIS FELLOW DELEGATE, GEN. ADMIRAL HANS GEORGE FRIEDEBURG WERE RECIEVED BY THE SUPREME COMMAND. THEY WERE ASKED STERNLY IF THE UNDERSTOOD THE SURRENDER TERMS IMPOSED UPON GERMANY AND IF THEY WOULD BE CARRIED OUT BY GERMANY. THEY ANSWERED "YES." GERMANY WHICH BEGAN THE WAR WITH A RUTHLESS ATTACK UPON POLAND, FOLLOWED BY SUCCESSIVE AGGRESSIONS AND BRUTALITY IN INTERNMENT CAMPS, SURRENDERED WITH AN APPEAL TO THE VICTORS FOR MERCY TOWARD THE GERMAN PEOPLE AND ARMED FORCES. AFTER SIGNING THE FULL SURRENDER JODL SAID HE WANTED TO SPEAK AND WAS GIVEN LEAVE TO DO SO. "WITH THIS SIGNATURE", HE SAID, IN SOFT SPOKEN GERMAN "THE GERMAN PEOPLE AND ARMED FORCES ARE FOR BETTER OR WORSE DELIVERED INTO THE VICTORS HANDS,-IN THIS WAR WHICH HAS LASTED MORE THAN FIVE YEARS BOTH HAVE ACHIEVED AND SUFFERED MORE THAN PERHAPS ANY OTHER PEOPLES IN THE WORLD."
that's some great history....my gradfather didn't talk about that time, so i have no idea where or on what he served (i know he was navy). i did find a book when my grandmother passed away, so i'm trying to piece together some things. in the group shots he's the one with the smoke in his mouth and the first one at the lathe. also does anyone know who the female in the pic is?
when I was a kid my uncle would show the scars on his back to us children. he was stationed at Pearl. always thought he was the coolest guy! he said he was lucky to be alive, but I always thought that it was unlucky for the Japanese that they didn't kill him at PH, because he took it out on them for the next 4 years!
The Jalopy Journal
