Roy G. Cordell

I don't remember a lot - I was so young when Papa told his stories. The older he got, the less he talked about the war. I guess I wasn't really interested at the time, either. Youngsters should listen to their grandparents more often.

I remember that Papa's general quarters station was as a spotter for one of the antiaircraft batteries on the DEFENSE. There weren't very many, so he could have only been in one of maybe four locations. He once told me of the gunner that he spotted for - how he hated the Japanese, and, as I remember it, he continued firing at the body of a Japanese pilot as it flew over the ship. The gun was set so that you couldn't accidentally shoot your own ship, and that was the only thing that kept him from perforating his own boat

I also remember a story of how, a couple of days after an attack, they began to smell something awful. The captain came over the intercom and said "You all know what it is. Let's go find it." After searching the ship, they found a jawbone of an unfortunate Japanese pilot behind one of the intercom speakers somewhere on the ship. (It was probably the April 6, 1945 attack - that's the only one I know about where enemy aircraft got close enough to deposit pieces aboard the DEFENSE)

I play the guitar a little, and so did Papa. When I started learning the instrument in junior high school, Papa showed me how to play "Under The Double Eagle." I still have one of his guitar picks.