When I was about five years old I developed an ear infection which resulted in mastoiditis and I can remember when the specialist who was recommended by our family doctor came to our home at 603 Garfield Avenue in Jersey City, New Jersey to examine me, and my mother's tearful reaction when he told her that I would have to be hospitalized and operated on to drain the abscessed ear. … I agreed and was sent to the U.S. Naval training station in Newport, Rhode Island for boot camp then to Bedford Springs, Pennsylvania for radio school and then to Noroton Heights, Connecticut for special advanced communication school. I was finally assigned to the United States Navy armed guard service facility at the Brooklyn Naval Armory in late November of 1942. The armed guard service of the Navy provided gunners and communication personnel for allied shipping which moved in convoys under naval protection against German planes and submarines. My first ship, the James Iredell, was in the invasion of Casablanca in December, 1942 and in the invasion of Sicily in 1943. During my almost three years of sea duty I was on many ships and went to Cuba, Trinidad, Jamaica, England, Ireland, Scotland, France and Algeria as well, to some of these countries many times. I was discharged from the Navy at the Lido Beach Separation Center in Long Island in late 1945.
Wikidata