This is one of the saddest stories of the war. These men risked all the same things that Navy personnel did, but they can not get the recognition they so deserve.
From the May 17, 2014, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette "Merchant Marines have fought for recognition as veterans since World War II" by Len Barcousky.
Gerard Driscoll, 85, tried to join the U.S. Navy at age 16 by changing the date on his birth certificate, but was turned down because of his age and told to come back later.
He left his boyhood home in Versailles, now part of White Oak and became a crew man on Great Lakes freighters and earned his seaman's papers in a few months. He was then assigned to a C-1 cargo ship on the West Coast and later during the war faced Japanese submarines and kamikazes delivering supplies to U.S. troops attacking the Philippines, Iwo Jima and Okinawa.
He and fellow World War II Merchant Marines were talking to students at Elizabeth Forward High School. They belong top the Mon Valley Chapter of the American Merchant Marine Veterans of World War II.
--GreGen
The USS North Carolina (BB-55) My all-time favorite warship. As an elementary school student in North Carolina, I donated nickels and dimes to save this ship back in the early sixties.
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