My Uncle George Marion Boertlein (1926–2008) served aboard the small escort destroyer U.S.S. Bassett during the World War II. (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Bassett). His ship was the first rescue ship to reach the ill-fated U.S.S. Indianapolis (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Indianapolis_(CA-35)), a heavy cruiser that was torpedoed by a Japanese submarine on this day in 1945. The horror of rescuing sailors and recovering bodies maimed by sharks and the elements likely traumatized him for life, leaving him a quiet, virtually unemployable bachelor who I still remember sitting quietly in his chair in the corner of my grandparents’ house, smoking and betting on horses at River Downs—but only in his mind. He never placed a real bet as far as we know. He also spent his time cutting out obituaries and carefully hoarding thousands of them in carefully rubber-banded fascicles.
Posted on: Wed, 30 Jul 2014 17:59:59 +0000
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