If there’s one event I’d love to try to get to in the Twin Cities’ this weekend, it’s the reunion of the crew of the USS Minneapolis. It’s likely to be the last one.
But Nick Coleman was there, doing one of those columns he does occasionally – a good one:
They called him “Daisy” May when he was one of 700 sailors — most of them kids — on a heavy cruiser named the USS Minneapolis (CA-36) that survived Pearl Harbor to become one of the most decorated warships in the Pacific during World War II, enduring torpedoes, typhoons and kamikaze attacks, and earning 17 battle stars in 25 engagements…This week, May and his remaining comrades will rendezvous in the city for which their ship was named, holding a final reunion and sounding Taps on the story of “The Fighting Minnie,” and themselves.
“She was the best ship in the Navy,” May said as his shipmates began to gather at the Normandy Inn for their last detail, which ends with a banquet Saturday. “As far as I know, she was the only ship in its class to take two hits from [Japanese] torpedoes and survive.”
The Minneapolis was conducting training exercises off Pearl Harbor during the Japanese attack on Dec. 7, 1941. The crew thought they were seeing smoke from Hawaiian farmers burning sugar fields until they were ordered to break out live ammo. Practice was over.
The war had begun.
The whole thing is worth a read.
“For the first time since the Minneapolis was commissioned in 1934, no ship in the U.S. Navy is named for a city in Minnesota.”
Clearly we need a write-in campaign in support of the U.S.S. Fridley.
Nikki still manages to take a swipe at GWB.
Although I can give Nick props for the decent topic, his writing still sucks. Lileks could have give this topic some pretty stellar prose.
It does. But never let anyone say that my opinions are predictable and monochromatic.
(Except Peevish. Over and over and over).
Not that big of a swipe at GWB, and actually a pretty good point.
When I was a little ‘un, there was a WWI vet living across the street. He was about 80 and in great health. He used to take his golf clubs and hit the ball around his yard.
If you were 17/18 in 1945, you’d be 80 now. The youngest of the WW2 vets are his age now. Not sure what my point is, just interesting that I knew a WW1 vet. Just as many people in retirement now knew Civil War veterans.
When I was a kid, our neighbor was a WWI vet. He was in his 80s, and still shot squirrels.
He built a model of a WWII destroyer, and gave it to me when I was 5-6 years old. I still have it.
When Angryclown was a lad, there was a Mexican American War vet next door. He was 152 years old, but he lived in an Army surplus tent on his front lawn and could still kill, dress and eat neighborhood cats. When I was 7, he gave me a human skull.