Maybe he was nineteen until Leyete...

Run across by my sister in Dad's papers, saved from house fire and several moves and life changes The Ancient Order of the Deep. Hmm, Dad was in the Power Squadron, maybe this had to do with that. I mean he knew Coast Guard guys from that.

Wrong! So looking up the USS Arthur Middleton
by the time I get done reading that, I continue to have greater appreciation for the floating storage units that had to accompany all these great invasion fleets. And from the log, for my father to have been there on 2 October 1944, he would have been going to Manus Island. Maybe? Never got that story either, but they did a lot of loading and unloading and practicing beach landings and such.

One story shared with the family by my mother, was because of censoring of letters my father couldn't write that they were going to land on the Philippines. So he mentioned the band that had played, and maybe marched in Albert Lea, Minnesota sometime before he left home. The band had been from the Philippines.