Life & Duty: An American Adventure

By Xlibris US

The fact of being a citizen of the United States of America offers the opportunitynot the guarantee, but the opportunityto live an extraordinary life, Les Joslin writes in the introduction to Life & Duty, an autobiography in which he proves his thesis as the relives the first seventy years of his American adventure. He shares these years in twenty chapters that comprise this three-part volume. Part I covers his family heritage and early years from 1943 to 1967, Part II his U.S. Navy career from 1967 to 1988, and Part III his life in Oregon from 1988.

From Part I, Chapter 5, Summer 1965 on the Toiyabe National Forest

That wasnt the first time Id dealt with an armed citizen, and it wouldnt be the last. Some of the challenges of my fire prevention job had nothing to do with wildfire prevention but everything to do with the fact I was sometimes the only public servant around to handle a situation. It had to do with that sometimes gray area between official duty and moral obligation.
The previous summer, on my way to Twin Lakes, I detoured to check the dump Id burned a few days before. Suddenly, I heard shots, just as the Lone Ranger and Tonto did in the opening scene of almost every episode, and what I saw as I neared the dump scared me. A big, beefy, fortyish man standing next to a late-model Cadillac sedan was firing a high-powerd rifle.
Hed heard me coming, and turned as I stopped the patrol truck. He didnt look particularly threatening. But there were serious unknowns. I didnt know him. I didnt know what he might shoot at. I didnt know he wouldnt shoot at me.

From Part II, Chapter 10, November 1979 aboard USS Kitty Hawk

On November 28, I got up, showered and shaved, put on clean khakis as usual, and started toward the wardroom for breakfast. The usual scent of salt and jet fuel was in the air, and I had a lot on my mind. I descended two ladders to the hangar bay, only to be brought up short by bumping my head on a helicopter that wasnt supposed to be there.
A quick look around revealed seven more RH-53D Sea Stallion helicopters that their HM-16 markings told me belonged to Helicopter Mine Countermeasures Squadron Sixteen, not part of the ships air wing. So thats why the swing south to Diego Garcia! Theyd been flown there, probably in C-5As, and had flown aboard last night. Had I actually slept through flight quarters? I forgot about breakfast, climbed the ladders back to the 02 level, and knocked on the door of the flag N-2s office.
This isnt going to work, I said as he opened the door. We cant fly those helicopters into a city of five million hostiles and rescue fifty hostages.
They dont want to hear that, he replied, and closed the door.

From Part III, Chapter 15, Summer 1992 on the Deschutes National Forest

As I walked toward the fire, I began to think. Am I doing the right thing? After all, Im just a contract wilderness information specialist, not part of the fire organization. I hadnt been to the Deschutes National Forests fire school. I didnt have fire clothing. I didnt have a fire shelter. Except for a canteen, I didnt have any water. And Id turned in my last red cardthe fire qualification card that rated me as a crew bossin 1966 when Id left the Toiyabe National Forest to go on active duty in the Navy. That was twenty-six years ago! Should I be doing this?
Sure, I answered my own question. Id started out in the old Forest Service where everybody did everything. Id done this many times before, in the days before fire shirts and Nomex britches and fire shelters. Id had five fire seasons on the Toiyabe, been on a couple big fires. I knew this business. I knew how to keep out of trouble.
About the time I resolved that little issue, I was at the fire.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jun 5, 2014
• ISBN: 9781499007688

Book preview

Copyright © 2014 by Les Joslin.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Rev. date: 06/03/2014

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Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Part I: My Early Years: 1943 to 1967

Chapter 1: My Parents

Chapter 2: My Childhood Years

Chapter 3: My Adolescent Years

Chapter 4: My College Years

Chapter 5: My Interlude Year

Part II: My Naval Years, 1967 to 1988

Chapter 6: An Officer Candidate and a Student Officer

Chapter 7: An Intelligence Officer in Attack Squadron Seventy-Five

Chapter 8: An Intelligence Instructor and a Graduate Student

Chapter 9: An Intelligence Analyst in the Defense Intelligence Agency

Chapter 10: An Intelligence Officer in USS Kitty Hawk

Chapter 11: An Intelligence Officer in London

Chapter 12: An Intelligence Officer in Washington, D.C.

Part III: My Oregon Years, 1988 to Now

Chapter 13: A New Home in Central Oregon

Chapter 14: A Central Oregon Community College Instructor

Chapter 15: A Wilderness Ranger and Wilderness Educator

Chapter 16: A Writer and Publisher

Chapter 17: An Oregon State University Advisor and Instructor

Chapter 18: A U.S. Forest Service Officer

Chapter 19: An Active Citizen

Chapter 20: A Septuagenarian

To the memory of Mom and Dad,

who gave me life and a sense of duty.

"The majority of men are subjective towards themselves and objective towards others, terribly objective sometimes. But the real task is to be objective towards oneself and subjective towards all others.

—Jose Ortega

Acknowledgments

I am indebted for any success this autobiography may enjoy to others who helped make it possible.

In the case of Part I, I thank Ellen H. Brisendine, editor, The Cattleman, for her January 3, 2012, letter of permission to quote Myrtle Murry’s article about my maternal ancestors in the September 1940 issue of that magazine. I have made fair use of brief passages in two books that documented my dad’s service during the Korean War: Captain Walter Karig, USNR; Commander Malcolm W. Cagle, USN; and Lieutenantieut Commander Frank A. Manson, USN, authored Battle Report: The War in Korea, published by Rinehart in 1952; and Commander Malcolm W. Cagle, USN and Lieutenant Commander Frank A. Manson, USN, authored The Sea War in Korea, published by the United States Naval Institute in 1957. I thank my late mom for making my late dad’s letters to her available. Her letters to him were not available. Mom also gave me a few of her parents’ letters.

In the case of Part II, I thank Captain Frank A. Bausch, USN, Ret., for permission to quote a brief passage from Cold War: A Military Memoir, his 2011 memoir of his naval career. Special thanks are due the Office of Security Review, U.S. Department of Defense, the Pentagon, Washington, D.C., for prompt review of and April 9, 2013, written approval of my manuscript as amended for public release. Other sources and works quoted are acknowledged in the text.

Throughout this autobiography, several other acknowledged works are briefly quoted.

I thank my wife Pat and daughter Wendy for technical support, and all others who have helped me write this autobiography and who have provided photographs that illustrate it.

Introduction

The fact of being a citizen of the United States of America offers the opportunity—not the guarantee, but the opportunity—to live an extraordinary life. Millions of native-born and naturalized Americans have availed themselves of this opportunity. It’s not that other nations and other cultures have not offered and do not offer such opportunity, and that their citizens and subjects have not lived and cannot live such lives; many have within both the world’s more enlightened reigns and more repressive regimes. It’s just that, in the long run, such opportunity has been more abundant and available within American society—in which individuals have been free to seize it or squander it at will—than in any other.

I know this at least in part, because almost as long as I have been able to read I have read autobiographies and biographies. There are, of course, more autobiographies and biographies than I can and ever will read. But I have read enough—even edited and published two—to know that many born to the opportunity and many come to the opportunity have lived extraordinary lives. The examples of Theodore Roosevelt, born a wealthy New Yorker, and Jacob Riis, arrived a penniless Danish immigrant whom Roosevelt later called one of my truest and closest friends and the most useful citizen of New York, prove the point. There are many more.

I learned early from reading of others’ lives that what could become of the gift of life my parents gave me was largely up to me. I could waste or make the most of my American opportunity. I resolved early—and I believe, have made an honest effort—to do the latter. The degree to which I have succeeded may be judged by the reader of this autobiography. I don’t claim mine to have been an extraordinary life, but as I pass the three-score and ten-year mark I believe it’s been a good life. I have decided to share that life with any who may wish to know of it, learn from it, or even judge it.

And so I somewhat ignore Mark Twain’s Write what you know admonition to offer this autobiography—which began as an effort to explain myself to myself and to document myself for myself, and which I hope adds up to more than an attempt to pass my life off as one of merit and substance to the few likely to read it—because one’s life is always a mystery to oneself. But it’s worth a try. Most who write autobiographies or about whom others write biographies are persons of some celebrity, worthy or not. Celebrity—be it four star or pop star or whatever—is popular these days. Character is not. At the same time that the number of books emphasizing character has declined, one scholar has observed, the number emphasizing personality has soared. That may be. Nevertheless, I believe everyone has a story, and encourage everyone to share that story.

I share my story in three parts of several chapters each: the first addresses my family heritage and my early years from 1943 to 1967, the second my U.S. Navy years from 1967 to 1988, and the third the many aspects of my Oregon years from 1988 to now.

In sharing my story, I recognize poet John Donne’s truth that No man is an island. My story is also the story of my heritage and my legacy embodied in my ancestors, parents, wife and daughters, friends and colleagues, students and others—and I perforce incorporate them. My narrative relies heavily on anecdotes of both important and trivial experiences that may illuminate my character and add interest to my story.

And in sharing my story, I mention names, including persons with whom I enjoyed satisfactory personal and professional relationships and persons with whom I did not. In the cases of the latter, I strive to portray the less-than-satisfactory relationships without vilification, realizing full well that I may have been the person in the wrong even though I have always striven to be and do right. In certain more personal or less positive instances, I use first names or position references only.

Because of the nature of my U.S. Navy career, Part II of my story was reviewed by the Office of Security Review, U.S. Department of Defense, and approved as amended for public release in an April 9, 2013, letter.

A title is always hard to discover. I considered many. An Officer and a Gentleman might have worked, but the 1982 film co-opted that title forever. I Led Three Lives would reflect the three parts of the book, but had already been used by Herbert W. Philbrick. All I Could Do was a possibility, except I know, had I tried harder, I might have done more. The first runner-up, Ranger, Sailor, Teacher, Spy—with no apologies to John le Carré—seemed pretentious and even a bit dishonest. Why? My pre- and post-naval career work in the U.S. Forest Service did not include service as a district ranger, my U.S. Navy career was not as a ship driver but as an intelligence officer, and my intelligence officer career never included an assignment as a spy. My story is good enough to be told without embellishment—even by a title.

And so I offer my American adventure under the simpler title Life & Duty. The ampersand—a logogram representing the conjunction and in this title—reflects the intrinsic relationship of life and duty in my life.

Part I:

My Early Years:

1943 to 1967

Chapter 1:

My Parents

My parents hailed from different parts of the United States, but had much in common. They were poor, Protestant, and persistent. Their persistence enabled them to rise above their poverty, and their faith—both were Baptists—lit their way. I admire them for what they did with their lives, and love them for giving me mine.

Dad: A Poor Boy from Mississippi Joins the Navy

Leslie Hugh Joslin was born on September 25, 1912, on a small farm outside Batesville, Panola County, Mississippi, to Claude Hunt and Sidney Bruce (Wilkerson) Joslin. The second of his parents’ three children, Dad had an older sister Claudia and a younger brother Kyle.

Dad’s family on his father’s side can be traced to early nineteenth-century South Carolina. There, the record shows, John Joslin and Rebecca Hendricks married on November 25, 1809, and later moved to Mississippi. Fourteen children, ten sons and four daughters, were born of this marriage between 1811 and 1837. The eighth, Samuel Joslin, born on January 20, 1826, was my paternal great-great-grandfather. Samuel married Desadavia Jackson, said to be related to President Andrew Jackson, though Old Hickory and Rachel had no children, and they lived in Panola County, Mississippi, where in 1852 their son Andrew Jackson Joslin, my paternal great-grandfather, was born. At some time after he fathered Andrew, Samuel was shot to death during an altercation over a bale of cotton. Andrew married Fannie Ida Harris, who on December 26, 1885, gave birth to Claude Hunt Joslin, my paternal grandfather. Claude married Sidney Bruce Wilkerson, my paternal grandmother, born on March 14, 1890, to John Meredith Wilkerson and Martha Emily Adair, and about whose ancestry little is known other than she was of Norwegian descent on her father’s side and her maternal grandmother was a Choctaw Indian.

Dad’s family was dirt poor, honest, and proud. Claude supported his wife and three children through subsistence farming and occasional jobs. At four, Dad picked cotton in the hot sun and survived being run over by a horse and buggy. In 1917, he started school and did well. He began to become aware of the world beyond Panola County from overhearing such country store conversations during World War I as the possibly apocryphal: What they fightin’ ’bout over thar, anyhow? Followed by, Well, I don’ rightly know. Hear tell it’s over some gal named Alice-Lorraine.

Dad and the rest of his family survived malaria and the 1918 influenza pandemic. He had no toys, and the orange each Christmas was a luxury. At ten, he plowed fields behind a mule. Despite privation, he was bright and happy. In the eighth grade he went to school with the measles—concealed by his turned-up coat collar—to see the first electrically-lighted Christmas tree in his neck of the woods.

By the time Dad entered Batesville High School in the fall of 1925—the high school was just that, on the second floor of the town’s school building—he was known as a very intelligent boy. An old lawyer in town talked of sending him to the University of Mississippi, thirty miles east in Oxford, but died before Dad graduated in 1929. He received a good education in that small-town high school: four years of English, four years of Latin, four years of mathematics. A more prominent citizen’s daughter was named class valedictorian; Dad, the dirt farmer’s son with higher grades, was allowed to be salutatorian.

Undaunted, Dad enrolled in Northwest Mississippi Agricultural High School and Junior College in Senatobia as a college freshman. To support himself, he cared for the college’s livestock and tutored a blind student. He played on the basketball team. It was a successful year. He completed two semesters each of agriculture, economics, English, history, mathematics, and Spanish—twelve three-credit courses in which he earned seven As and five Bs. It would have been an even more successful year had his request to take examinations for credit in the courses he tutored the blind student been granted. He could have completed two years of college in one year. But his request was denied. College policy protected students from such heavy course loads.

Onset of the Great Depression prevented Dad from returning to college in the fall of 1930. Instead, to help support his family, he worked at any job he could get. At eighteen, he became a schoolteacher as well as a school janitor. He played pass-the-hat semipro baseball. He once worked several months digging wells; his employer failed to pay him, and all he got for his labor was muscular arms. Conditions worsened. Dad struggled. Starvation threatened.

Then, in March 1933, newly elected President Franklin D. Roosevelt began the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), a New Deal program to provide useful employment to unemployed young men. Dad enrolled and was sent south to Camp Greek C. Rice on the Homochitto National Forest near Bude, Mississippi. There he built roads and fought forest fires for $30 per month. All but five of those dollars were sent home to his parents. This, plus the pay his father Claude earned on the Sardis Dam construction project near Batesville, kept the family alive.

A CCC enlistment lasted six months. After exploring his options, Dad decided to join the Navy and see the world. He excelled on the qualification test, and was notified to report to the Navy Recruiting Station in New Orleans. With fifty cents in his pocket, he hopped a southbound Illinois Central freight, only to be rousted off the train by railroad police who shot at him and others as they fled across cotton fields. After a night in a hobo jungle, he hopped another train and eventually arrived in New Orleans. There, on April 10, 1934, he enlisted as a seaman apprentice in the U.S. Navy for the first six years of what would prove a forty-year career. A recruit in 1934 was paid $18.90 per month.

Limited in size by public opinion and international agreement, the Navy in 1934 was a small service of about eight thousand officers and 82,500 men. It was hard to join. Despite nationwide unemployment, Congress had refused to increase its personnel strength. But things were beginning to look up. The 1931 appointment of Carl Vinson of Georgia—a congressman well disposed toward the Navy, who understood its mission and needs and the politics necessary to get Congress to savvy and support both—as chairman of the Naval Affairs Committee of the U.S. House of Representative was a major step in the right direction. The March 4, 1933, inauguration of the former Assistant Secretary of the Navy during World War I as president of the United States was another. President Franklin D. Roosevelt brought a New Deal for the nation, for the Navy, and for Dad. Roosevelt’s CCC provided Dad an opportunity to survive. His buildup of the Navy would provide Dad an opportunity to thrive.

Apprentice Seaman Leslie Hugh Joslin reported to the U.S. Naval Training Station, Norfolk, Virginia, on May 3, 1934, and completed boot camp as a seaman second class on July 6. Next, at the U.S. Navy Hospital Corps School, Portsmouth, Virginia, where his rate and rating changed to hospital apprentice second class on October 25, he completed the four-month hospital apprentice first-class course on December 15 as an honor student. Dad then found himself aboard the battleship USS Texas (BB-35) en route to his first duty station at the U.S. Naval Hospital, Puget Sound, in Bremerton, Washington, where he was destined to meet Mom.

Mom: A Poor Girl in Washington State Meets a Sailor

Emma Lorieta Mogford was born on January 3, 1917, in the family home at 1938 Fourth Street in Bremerton, Kitsap County, Washington, to Allen Thurman and Lillian Ruth (Jones) Mogford. Mom was her parents’ first child, and the first child born in Bremerton in 1917. A brother, Allen, was born in 1919, and a sister, Helen, in 1921.

Mom’s family heritage, at least on her father’s side, is better documented than Dad’s. That story began, for all practical purposes, with my maternal great-great-grandfather, William Mogford, born in Devonshire, England, in 1812, and educated at Oxford to be a teacher. As he wanted to be the very best teacher possible, according to Chapter 33 of Home Life on Early Ranches of Southwest Texas by Myrtle Murray, published in the September 1940 issue of The Cattleman, he grasped every opportunity to enrich and broaden his mind.

Great-great-grandfather Mogford’s life story is the stuff of novels and movies, and Murray told well how his quest led him to Texas and to founding one of the two families from which Mom descended.

During a visit to London, he went to the House of Lords while it was in session. A member noticed the alert young man, and approached him.

You are a stranger in the city? he inquired. I will be glad to direct you so you may see everything.

He was introduced to many prominent people. William Mogford appreciated that courtesy very much, for he knew that men of distinction did not usually give much time to strange young men.

Realizing the limited opportunities for advancement in his profession in hidebound traditional England, he decided to go to Canada and enter the teaching profession there. The Canadians were really Englishmen, so he would feel at home, and his opportunities would be greater. But all his life he was to realize that while man proposes, God disposes. His plans for teaching did not materialize, so he became a bookkeeper in a hardware store. Then he married and he thought he was established happily. But his young wife and baby died when the baby was born, just eight years after he arrived in Canada.

William Mogford thought that he had lost everything that made life worth living. He drifted down through the United States to Seguin, Texas, in 1840, and there he taught school for a few terms.

He went to Fredericksburg about 1846 as a salesman for a hardware company.

The new country appealed to him. It needed educated leaders.

In the meantime, Mrs. H.C. Keyser, her three children, Henry, Christian and Louisa, had arrived in Fredericksburg from Germany. Population was so congested and times were so hard in Germany that the Keysers thought there would be better opportunities in Texas . . . . They were told there was plenty of land in Texas . . . . Mr. Keyser was ill during the several weeks’ voyage and [arrival in Texas proved] the end of the journey for him. Mrs. Keyser was left alone in a frontier country with a language she could not speak. After burying her husband, she [moved on] to Fredericksburg with an ox-drawn caravan. During the next several years her suffering and struggles were beyond description. Disease was rampant. She and her children were often hungry, as were the other colonists . . . .

William Mogford had a contract to carry the mail from San Antonio to Fort McKavett, Fort Mason and Fort Concho. One day he stopped at a place near noon and saw a beautiful black-eyed German girl looking at him from around a corner of the house. He inquired about her. He could not speak German and she could not speak English at that time. The old saying love recognizes no obstacles was true in their case, for before long William Mogford and Louisa Keyser were married. They moved immediately to William Mogford’s 900-acre ranch on the Pedernales [River] . . . one of the first three ranches to be established in Gillespie county.

Louisa was only fifteen years old when she married William Mogford and he was thirty-five.

I married mostly for a place to stay, Mrs. Mogford would say in later years.

Yet theirs was a happy marriage. William Mogford became a prominent central Texas rancher, and he and Louisa raised and educated a large family. Will—William James Mogford—one of my two maternal great-grandfathers and the second of William and Louisa’s thirteen children, was born in 1855. He and the family survived the hard times of the Civil War and Indian raids. William Mogford’s ranching enterprise grew to include several flocks of sheep as well as a large herd of cattle and more land on a few ranches.

William and Louisa’s children grew up, married, and had families of their own. Born on April 5, 1888, Allen Thurman Mogford, my maternal grandfather, was the fourth of Will and Emma Rose (Miller) Mogford’s eight children. But the ranches weren’t big enough to support this next generation, and Allen eventually left Texas. He enlisted in the U.S. Navy and became a ship’s barber. He met Lillian Ruth Jones in Bremerton, Washington, where USS West Virginia (ARC-5), the armored cruiser in which he served, was part of the Pacific Reserve Fleet.

Born on a farm near Harrison, Boone County, Arkansas, on July 26, 1894, Lillian Ruth was the last of nine children born to Alfred Hines and Martha Elizabeth (Moulder) Jones. Her father, born on April 22, 1842, in Calhoun County, Georgia, served the Confederate States of America from 1862 to 1865 as a lieutenant in the Fourth Georgia Cavalry. He lost everything as a result of the Civil War, and moved to Arkansas to be a farmer. There, at age thirty-six, Hines—he was called by his middle name—married Martha, age twenty-seven, in 1879. Martha died when Lillian Ruth was an infant, and Ruthie was raised by an older sister. In March 1912, Hines and several of his children, including seventeen-year-old Lillian Ruth, moved to Bremerton. He was active in city affairs and served three years as judge of the Charleston Police Court there. He died at age eighty of pneumonia.

Lillian Ruth Jones and Allen Thurman Mogford married in Bremerton on July 7, 1914. Allen was at sea in USS West Virginia off Mexico when Mom was born about two and one-half years later. Lillian Ruth and her daughter were soon on the road, visiting Allen’s family in Texas while following his ship to New York City, where they lived during World War I as the ship escorted troopship convoys across the Atlantic Ocean.

A letter Allen wrote to Lillian Ruth on November 8, 1918, when his ship, USS Huntington (CA-5), was in Plymouth, England, related a sailor’s view of transporting senior U.S. officials across the Atlantic to a war strategy conference in London. Allen reported a grand trip over from New York via Halifax, Nova Scotia, where they embarked the dignitaries.

On the way over here the St. Louis and one torpedo boat, No. 50, was with us and we had Colonel House, Admiral Benson, and General Bliss aboard, and also Mr. McCormick (Mr. Wilson’s campaign manager) and a bunch of other folks, all high ups.

Edward M. House, of course, was President Woodrow Wilson’s envoy. The title colonel was honorific; a brilliant foreign policy expert and diplomat, he had no military experience. Admiram William S. Benson was the first Chief of Naval Operations, and General Tasker H. Bliss was Army Chief of Staff. As the ship’s barber, Allen had closer access to these worthies than most.

I had the honor of cutting Admiral Benson’s hair. Also General Bliss’. They were nice old fellows. Benson is the senior admiral in the Navy and General Bliss is the head of the Army. Colonel House is President Wilson’s right hand man, his personal advisor and confidential man in general.

The rest of the letter anticipated a two-day liberty in London, asked Lillian Ruth to send a picture of our daughter, and reflected a sailor’s uncertainties about his future.

The executive officer told me today that I might as well ship over for the other two years and get my big discharge money and probably a furlough. I have not decided what to do but am afraid if they pay me off that I may have to go to the Army. Suppose I will extend for the other two years.

Allen extended his enlistment for those two years. He served in the Navy until January 1920.

On August 1, 1919, Seaman Second Class Allen T. Mogford was awarded the Mexican Service Medal in recognition of his services in USS West Virginia during her 1916 special duty off the west coast of Mexico to protect American lives and property and back up U.S. diplomacy.

The two ships in which Grandfather Mogford served, West Virginia and Huntington, were really one. The name change occurred during those 1916 operations off Mexico when on November 11 West Virginia was renamed Huntington to permit a newly-authorized battleship to be named for the state.

By the time Mom began school, her father had been out of the Navy for a couple of years and had opened his own barbershop in Bremerton on Naval Avenue near the main gate of Puget Sound Naval Shipyard. Allen and Lillian Ruth lived in a small frame house outside town on Phinney Bay with Mom, a son Allen Jr., and a daughter Helen. Mom was her mother’s little helper and enjoyed playing in the surrounding forest.

Allen moved his family to Mason, Texas, in 1929, to try returning to his Texas roots to manage one of the family’s ranches. The trip was made in a seven-passenger Chandler. Mom, having finished the sixth grade in Bremerton, completed the seventh grade—the highest elementary school grade in Texas at the time—and learned to drive her father’s new 1930 Model A Ford at age thirteen. She enjoyed driving schoolmates around town in the car. After a year in Mason, Allen decided Texas wasn’t for him and moved his family back to Bremerton to resume barbering there.

Having completed grade school in Mason, Mom was registered to enter the ninth grade at Bremerton High School without attending the eighth grade. On August 15, 1930, Allen was killed in a tree-felling accident. The tree barber-chaired, hitting him on the head. He fell on his ax. Mom, who witnessed the accident, ran to a neighbor’s house crying that her father had been killed. She realized that day her plans to go to college—Washington State College in Pullman—could not be realized. She would have to complete high school and go to work as soon as possible to help support the family.

After graduating from Bremerton High School in June 1934, Mom enrolled in the Metropolitan Business College in Seattle, to which she commuted daily across Puget Sound by ferry. Good high school preparation enabled her to complete the two-year course in one year. According to her May 1935 diploma, she satisfactorily completed the full course of study in the Business Executive Department. Soon employed at the Kerr Ford automobile dealership in Bremerton as a secretary and bookkeeper, she continued to live with her mother, sister, and brother at 1938 Fourth Street in Bremerton. A pretty, five foot three brunette, she attracted several beaus. All were kept at arm’s length.

Then she met a young hospital apprentice first class stationed at the U.S. Naval Hospital in Bremerton.

A Long and Long-Distance Courtship and a Marriage

Mom and Dad first saw each other in the First Baptist Church of Bremerton, Washington, on Easter Sunday 1936. Dad was sitting in a pew when Mom walked into the sanctuary from her Sunday school class. That’s for me! Mom told herself when she first saw Dad. Dad was attracted to Mom too. They didn’t actually meet until several months later when a mutual friend set up a blind date.

But it wasn’t that easy.

Within a month of their meeting, Dad was transferred to sea duty in the aircraft carrier USS Lexington (CV-2)—at sea in the Pacific Ocean—as operating room technician. On May 20, 1936, Lexington crossed the Equator, and Dad along with other pollywogs in the ship’s company was initiated into the solemn mysteries of the Ancient Order of the Deep and became a shellback. Among the ship’s assignments was the July1937 search for lost aviatrix Amelia Earhart. Throughout this year-plus sea tour, the young hospital apprentice first class and the young bookkeeper wrote to each other. Still, because at nineteen and twenty she thought herself too young to settle down, Mom went out with other young men.

Dad’s next duty assignment at the U.S. Naval Hospital, Washington, D.C., in September 1937, by which time he was a petty officer—a third class pharmacist’s mate with orders to the four-month x-ray technician course there—didn’t promote their courtship. He completed the course, and in February transferred to the hospital staff. Their correspondence continued. And his love for her grew. On April 18, 1938, while on leave in Batesville, he wrote to My Dearest Lorieta of this love. I well remember when I went to church on Easter Sunday two years ago. I saw a certain little girl there that I was very interested in . . . . I could write this whole tablet but I won’t do it as it only takes three words to tell you what I have to say. They are: I want you. If you don’t like for me to say that just tell me so.

Mom was noncommittal, but replied she was no longer going with a fellow named Willard Allen. Dad wrote from Washington, D.C., on May 25, . . . you are the only girl I’ve ever really wanted. If you object to me writing like this, just say so. Mom didn’t object, continued to write—apparently still noncommittally, and in another letter reported that Willard was getting married. On July 26, Dad wrote, I practically live for the time when I can see you. I’d like to be able to claim you as my girlfriend again.

Their correspondence continued. On September 20, he wrote of the war prospects in Europe and opined probably nothing will ever come of it before he got down to brass tacks about their situation.

I know I care for you but won’t give in meekly again and should you ever prefer to give your love to someone else it would be necessary for me to try to forget permanently. Please understand that I don’t mean that I don’t want you to have dates and go to dances and have fun because I try to have good times as much as possible myself. We can only preserve that which exists (and I truly believe that something does) between us by fair play and sincerity by each of us to the other. That’s the reason I appreciate you telling me things about your personal affairs. Every day I dream of being with you again and live for the day when that dream can become a reality.

On December 28, Dad wrote to the one girl in my life who has been my ideal from the time I have known her to thank her for the camera she had sent him for Christmas.

They made good use of that camera the following spring of 1939 when Mom took the train to Washington, D.C., to visit Dad. As soon as he’d arrived in Washington, Dad had begun a small sandwich business—he kept the makings in the x-ray film refrigerator—to supplement his pay, and had saved enough to purchase a 1937 Chevrolet sedan. They made good use of that Chevy too. The young couple toured the new Skyline Drive in Shenandoah National Park and went to the World’s Fair in New York—and barely resisted the temptation to get married in Elkton, Maryland. Mom returned to Bremerton.

Dad was promoted to pharmacist’s mate second class on August 16, 1939. He and Mom continued to write. On a dreary Thanksgiving Day 1939, he wrote to her, I had the duty last night and got three calls. One was Senator Vandenberg’s wife and another was an old lady who had fallen down some stairs. The third was a baby that had swallowed a nickel. I soon began to wonder what they would bring in next. The rest of the letter was about how much he loved and wished he were married to her. His conclusion that he would count only upon a feeling of deep friendship with you because otherwise I might be disappointed again reflected the uncertainty that characterized their courtship.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt and First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt were among the more distinguished patients he x-rayed.

The next spring, as his tour in Washington, D.C., drew to a close, so did his six-year enlistment in the Navy. Two days before he left the Navy on April 9, 1940, Dad wrote to Mom of his—and he hoped, their—future.

I am probably leaving the best Navy job I’ll ever have but am sticking to my plan to stay out for a while. I have enjoyed my tour of duty here, and by coming in daily contact with many people of different rank and station I have thrown off an inferiority complex that seemed to have taken hold on me at other stations of duty.

But, at the same time, there has been something missing. You know what I mean, perhaps. Regardless of what I did or whom I was with I failed to find the necessary satisfaction and companionship, with the exception of the little while that you were over here with me—so now, somewhere and somehow, I am ready to try life a different way.

I will probably go back into the Navy. Even with all its bad points I can think of lots of worse things. I can’t see that it’s done me any harm so far. If this war [which the United States would not enter for another twenty-two months] holds out long enough for me to make a couple more ratings I will be on the down-grade.

He had three months in which to reenlist before he would lose his second class petty officer rating and have to start at the bottom and work his way up again. But he wasn’t ruling out other occupations, and had taken and passed a U.S. Civil Service examination.

I made the civil service register for a job in the medical department of some federal prison, but it will be September before they start taking anyone from the register. That’s quite a while to wait and, besides, I don’t know how I would like working in a jail—though I don’t guess there’s so much difference between a jail and a battleship out in the middle of the ocean.

Out of the Navy, Dad drove to Mississippi to visit his family. He wrote to Mom about the times and the future.

Sweetheart,

Old Mississippi isn’t so bad after one gets used to it. It seems that during the last week or two the general topic of discussion by the bearded philosophers who sit on the benches in front of the stores to whittle, chew tobacco, and talk, has shifted from agriculture to the war in Europe. My brother says that if we should go to war he thinks he would prefer the Army to the Navy because he can run faster than he can swim.

I am planning to go back into the Navy about July 1. I believe that with the expansion program promotions are going to come much easier and faster.

Darling, this leads up to the important thing that I wanted to write to you about. If I should come over there soon would you marry me right away? If you didn’t end your letters the way you do I wouldn’t have the nerve to ask you that. I would appreciate your answer as soon as possible by air mail. Should it be in the negative or uncertain I would have to plan things out quite differently. Should it be the way my heart wants it to be I would plan to arrive there not later than June 15, and possibly before.

Of course, I don’t know where the Navy will send me for duty. That is very important but right now it is of secondary importance.

Regarding the Navy married life you probably already know most of the answers . . . . I think its success or failure depends chiefly upon the individuals concerned.

My address remains the same as I await a long letter from you.

Exactly what that long letter said is not known. Certain references to and details about the event scheduled for June 21 seemed to trouble Dad. His reply was sent on May 25.

Dearest Rita,

I received your letter yesterday afternoon and it did tend to scare me a little. Unless something happens between now and then, I intend to start tomorrow morning. My brother may go as far as California with me as I have decided to take the southern route.

I’m sure I can be there at least two weeks before June 21.

He seemed concerned about certain unsettled things about the future that we are unable to write about and about which he needed reassurance. Still he would make the trip.

As for your plans as to how and when the event is carried out I won’t raise any objections. However, being Exhibit A at a church wedding in a strange community is not my idea of the greatest comfort a man can feel, but if you wish it that way I will make it all right with myself.

I feel that after five years we should know our own minds if we ever are going to. I have enough confidence to come and you have enough to say that you’re sure it will be all right.

Kyle did go as far as San Francisco with Dad. It was his younger brother’s first time away from home, and he was particularly impressed with the Golden Gate International Exposition on artificial Treasure Island—soon to become a naval base—in San Francisco Bay. On the way, they were kicked out of Mexico when in Tijuana they were accosted by youngsters demanding money. We were thrashin’ kids all over the place, Dad recalled years later with a grin.

Mom and Dad were married in the First Baptist Church of Bremerton, Washington, on June 21, 1940. They honeymooned on the Olympic Peninsula where they acquired painful sunburns.

Dad reenlisted in the U.S. Navy on July 8, 1940, as a pharmacist’s mate second class. After several months of general duty at the Receiving Station at Puget Sound Naval Shipyard—a short time during which he and Mom began their married life together—he was ordered to duty in the hospital ship USS Relief (AH-1), which he joined in Pearl Harbor. Within months Relief passed through the Panama Canal for operations in the Atlantic Ocean out of Norfolk, Virginia, where Dad was promoted to pharmacist’s mate first class, and Placentia Bay, Newfoundland.

Relief was operating in North Atlantic waters when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, and the United States declared war on Japan and Germany the following day. Do not be afraid now that war has come, Dad wrote to Mom. It would be a long war.

We have been married almost two years and have spent so little time together, Dad wrote in a May 20, 1942, letter to Mom. Then in June 1942, Relief began operating out of Portland, Maine, and Mom moved there just as her mother and she had followed her father’s ship to New York during World War I. A couple of months later, when Dad was promoted and transferred to the U.S. Naval Hospital, Chelsea, Massachusetts, Chief Pharmacist and Mrs. Joslin set up housekeeping in Boston.

Chapter 2:

My Childhood Years

Chief Pharmacist Joslin’s transfer to shore duty afforded Mom and Dad sufficient time together to plan a future and start a family.

A First-Born Child and a War Baby

I was born on April 15, 1943, at the U.S. Naval Hospital, Chelsea, Massachusetts. Mom remained in Boston when Dad was transferred in February from that hospital to duty at the dispensary at the U.S. Navy Construction Training Center, Davisville, Rhode Island. Grandma Joslin came from Mississippi to help care for me.

One month after I was born, on May 15, 1943, Dad was appointed to the warrant rank of pharmacist, USN, for temporary duty. Dad was able to make at least one visit to see his new son. This was some sixteen months after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, when few perceived the tide of World War II might be changing. The battles in North Africa, Stalingrad, and Guadalcanal had gone to the Allies. It was, in Winston Churchill’s words, perhaps not the beginning of the end but the end of the beginning. In another two and one-half years, an Allied victory would usher in the Cold War era that defined the hopes and fears of my generation and proved the sum and substance of the naval career Dad likely planned for me even then.

When on May 31, 1943, Dad was transferred to duty with the Eighty-Second Naval Construction Battalion at Port Hueneme, California, Mom packed her six-week-old son aboard a train full of troops to join him there. The good news was Dad didn’t deploy with the SeaBee battalion, but was ordered to temporary duty in San Diego. Well, here I am at Balboa Park—a new addition to the zoo, I guess, he quipped in a June 9 letter to Mom, penned at the BOQ, U.S. Naval Receiving Station, Balboa Park. I reported to District H.Q. this afternoon and they sent me to temporary duty at the San Diego Naval Hospital pending orders from Washington. Then, in what decades later proved an unwarranted question, he added, How is our little future admiral coming along?

Our family life gained some short stability when February 1944 brought Dad orders to U.S. Naval Hospital, San Diego, California, to run the office that reviewed patients for return to duty, limited duty, continued treatment, or discharge from the service. Dad enjoyed six months with Mom and me before he was ordered to the new attack personnel transport USS Pickens (APA-190) in which he served the rest the war in the Pacific. Mom and I went to live with Grandma Mogford at 1938 Fourth Street in Bremerton.

Dad was a plank owner in Pickens, laid down on April 22, 1944, launched on July 21, 1944, at Kaiser Shipyards in Vancouver, Washington, and commissioned on September 18 at U.S. Naval Station, Astoria, Oregon—one of forty-four officers and 457 enlisted men of the ship’s original crew. Commander John V. McElduff, a playboy with Hollywood connections, was commanding officer. Dad was administrative officer of the ship’s medical department and division officer for the department’s enlisted personnel. The senior of the six Naval Reserve medical officers was department head.

After shakedown and loading stores and equipment in Seattle, San Francisco, and San Pedro, Pickens arrived in Pearl Harbor on October 29 for amphibious training operations in which the ship and embarked marines practiced the roles they would play in the 1945 assaults on Iwo Jima and Okinawa.

A Brother

On January 23, 1945, the immediate future on his mind, Dad wrote to Mom—and to his sons, then too young to understand, although they would someday—about life and duty. Tell my boys that their daddy won’t come back to them and you until he has done the job that he was assigned to do the best he can no matter how tough it might be. That’s the way you are, darling, and that’s the way I want to be and that’s the way I want our boys to be.

Pickens left Pearl Harbor on January 27, 1945, for the western Pacific with elements of the Fourth Marine Division embarked. The destination was Iwo Jima.

Dad had not seen one of his two boys, and didn’t until the war was almost ended. On November 14, 1944, while Pickens exercised in Hawaiian waters, Mom gave birth to their second son, David Bruce Joslin, at the U.S. Naval Hospital in Bremerton.

In a letter mailed from Pickens on November 8, Dad expressed his hope the letter would reach her before she gave birth. He reassured her of his love, anticipated another sweet honeymoon when this hell of war is over and I can see you again, and anxiously awaited word from you about the impending birth. Communications being what they were, he didn’t learn of Dave’s birth until November 29.

A Final Push

On February 6, a day less than two weeks before the assault on Iwo Jima, Dad wrote to Mom about life in Pickens’ medical department.

The doctors on the ship are a good bunch of fellows—a little lazy sometimes I feel. Four of them are younger than I and two are older. A new one reported today—an obstetrician. I don’t know what we can do with him out here.

The chess board and the checker board you sent are very busy every night. I let some of the corpsmen use my office in the evenings to write letters and play games. They get lots of enjoyment from it. I haven’t had any trouble getting work from any of them.

A unit of Transport Division Forty-Five, Pickens arrived off Iwo Jima on the morning of February 19. Despite cold weather and high seas, she spent the daylight hours landing troops and equipment. Retiring at night, she returned daily to continue offloading cargo and to take on casualties. On February 28 she got underway for Saipan, thence to Guam to disembark casualties.

For the next month, as a unit of Transport Division Forty-Four with Second Marine Division troops embarked, Pickens rehearsed for the coming assault on Okinawa. Dad’s experiences caring for casualties during the bloody February assault on Iwo Jima and the bloody April assault on Okinawa—during which, on April 13, President Roosevelt died in Washington, D.C., and on April 15, Mom and I celebrated my second birthday in Bremerton—moved him years later to recommend to his sons that they not enlist in the Marine Corps.

The April 1 fate of the division’s flagship, USS Hinsdale (APA-120), put out of action by a kamikaze plane as it led Pickens and other transports during the Okinawa assault, resulted in the flag transferring to Pickens as column leader and her rescuing Hinsdale’s and two LST’s survivors—and didn’t elicit the same caution about serving in the Navy. The enemy didn’t lay a glove on Pickens, and Dad came through both invasions unscathed.

By April 14, Pickens was at anchor off Saipan, and on April 17 Dad wrote to Mom of a quick trip ashore there. I saw an unusual sight this afternoon—two women. There were two Army nurses at the officer’s club. I stopped by there for a couple of quick ones. I also saw Henry Fonda there. He is a Lt. (jg). The actor was serving as an air combat intelligence officer. And in the same letter, he wrote: I don’t see how the war in Europe can go on much longer but they seem to persist in holding out. It seems that the only way to beat the Nips is to kill them all. I’m hoping that Russia will come in with us against Japan pretty soon.

Germany surrendered on May 8, 1945, and Dad wrote to Mom on that date.

From what I hear out here the end of the war in Germany is here. In fact, I think they are supposed to surrender formally in about 30 minutes which will be at 11 p.m. I want to go down to the wardroom then and see what we can get on the radio. Sometimes we can get news from San Francisco by short wave, but not often. Most of our news is rebroadcast from the Philippines.

It must be a wonderful feeling for the people who have been fighting in Europe [to know] that their war is over. I know I would be very excited if it were Japan surrendering instead of Germany . . . . Although we have had the initiative and advantage for some time now it is still a tough war. If the Japanese could get some people in the government who would realize the hopelessness of their situation and surrender without our having to destroy the place completely and dig them out of their holes and kill them, it would be better for all concerned. Regardless of that, I feel that another year will finish the war out here and I’m expecting to be back home in at least twelve months.

Dad finished the letter with hopes for a better family life in the peacetime Navy.

On May 16 Dad was able to write in a hurried note: I can tell you now that I was in the operations at Okinawa, although you probably guessed as much . . . . Everything for us came out all right though. To date I have two engagements to my credit in this war.

He knew his Okinawa news was old news. Two months earlier, on March 13, he had written: It seems odd that newspaper reporters can write about things that censorship regulations prohibit us to write about. However, I’m on the censor board and I’m a pretty tough customer. Sometimes I find it necessary to make paper dolls out of some of the letters.

On June 4 Pickens sailed for Noumea, whence she transported cargo back to the Marianas before heading back to California, available for orders.

Okinawa was secured on June 21, and the United States had the advance base it needed for the planned invasion of Japan. American troops were spared that invasion by the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6 and 9.

A War Ends and a Family Reunites

Mom had moved in June to Uncle Albert Jones’ house in Long Beach—driving from Bremerton in the 1937 Chevy with her two little boys—in anticipation of Pickens arriving there or in San Pedro sometime in the future. Their guess was about four hundred miles off. Pickens put into San Francisco on August 3. The sight of the Golden Gate was good after eleven months in the Pacific. Dad caught the train to Long Beach for a happy reunion with Mom and me and a first look at nine-month-old Dave. Impressed by the huffing and puffing of the steam locomotive, I vaguely remember meeting that train.

After a quick visit, Dad returned to San Francisco. The bay was jammed with aircraft carriers, battleships, cruisers, destroyers, and transports; the city was packed with Army, Navy, and Marine Corps personnel on a final fling before the last and greatest invasion—an invasion of Japan then thought imminent and inevitable. Pickens was in dry dock for last-minute repairs before sailing for that invasion. But rumors were flying. Japan is ready to surrender!

Then, on August 15, President Harry S. Truman announced, Japan has surrendered.

THE WAR IS OVER I LOVE YOU read the Western Union telegram Dad sent Mom on V-J Day.

Dad wrote to Mom on August 20.

I am very busy these days trying to [discharge or transfer] patients we don’t want to take [back to Japan] and trying to get everything in readiness for sea. The air chipping hammers that they’re chipping rust off the steel deck with are ringing in my ears . . . and it is terrible to try to do anything with that going on. I’ve only seen my senior medical officer once for a few minutes since I’ve been back [from the visit to Long Beach]. I don’t think he’s hardly been aboard at all toward helping to make preparations for our next trip. I have [had] some port holes installed in my department, of which I’m very glad. Perhaps it will be cooler down there.

It doesn’t seem that the war being over is going to affect this ship very much very soon.

He was right. Just a few days after V-J Day and that telegram and letter, Pickens sailed from San Francisco carrying as passengers seventy-six officers and 1,175 men from various regiments and special troop detachments of the U.S. Army Eighty-Sixth Infantry Division only recently returned from Europe. The gigantic task of transporting occupation troops to their areas of duty and bringing home hundreds of thousands of troops for discharge had begun.

Underway, Dad had time to reflect on and write to Mom about his recent visit to Long Beach.

Darling, when I got there on my leave and saw you and the boys it just didn’t seem possible that so much could be mine.

I want you to know how fortunate I feel that I, a country hick who didn’t know anything about nothing, could win a girl like you away from several other fellows I have in mind who would have jumped through hoops for you . . . . And tell the boys Daddy is coming home some day.

World War II officially ended on September 2, 1945, with Japan’s formal surrender aboard USS Missouri (BB-63) in Tokyo Bay. Dad had survived a year at sea that included the bloody assaults on Iwo Jima and Okinawa at which USS Pickens landed marines and cared for casualties. After those battles, and not quite two months before the surrender, Dad was commissioned an ensign in the Hospital Corps of the U.S. Navy on July 15, 1945.

As in all wars, the declared enemy was not the only enemy. There were also the enemies within. These almost always include fear and boredom. Dad coped well with both. He had a wife and two sons waiting for him at home—wherever that might be next.

Sometimes the enemy within has to be confronted. Sometimes that enemy is someone with whom one serves. That was Dad’s case with his boss, Pickens’ senior medical officer, so preoccupied with getting out of the Navy that he shirked his duties and set the tone for his colleagues. Dad had to confide his frustration at keeping the ship’s medical department functioning, and naturally turned to Mom in an October 28 letter.

Being an officer has its disadvantages in that respect. I find myself in a very unfortunate position in regard to the reserve medical officers who are going to be leaving the Navy very shortly and who don’t care what happens afterward. I can handle the men, but this situation with the doctors has me stumped—but definitely. How people can be like that and why I should get stuck with them, I don’t know. I’ll be very happy when the Navy gets rid of all these damned reserves.

He also shared his adventures in immediate post-war Japan in his letters. After disembarking the Eighty-Sixth Infantry Division personnel in the Philippines, Pickens transported elements of the Twenty-Fifth Infantry Division to Nagoya, Honshu, Japan. For almost a month, while minesweepers cleared the approaches to and the port of Nagoya, the ship anchored in the harbor of small, quaint Wakanoura Wan, where officers and men were able to acquaint themselves with the people and customs of a small Japanese town, part of the nation so recently their deadly enemies. The medium of exchange [here] seems to be cigarettes, candy bars, and soap. You can’t spend U.S. money [here] and Japanese yen are not worth anything, Dad wrote on October 8.

And then, on October 15, he wrote of those so recently deadly enemies:

Two days ago I went over to the town, a Japanese fishing village. The place was typically picturesque and antiquated and the standard of living extremely low. There were lots of Jap soldiers walking around there still in their uniforms. I was surprised to see how much they resemble the cartoons depicting them with buck teeth and glasses. The soldiers were sullen but the civilians were very friendly and trying to peddle their cheap junk . . . . Some of the little kids are very cute. It was quite interesting, but one trip over there is enough.

In his October 22 letter he suspected he hadn’t received letters recently because the mail had been blown away when the post office at Okinawa was destroyed in the typhoon early this month that had made their transit to Nagoya a rough one. Then he expressed hope: It’s only about two months until Christmas again. How glad I would be if I were lucky enough to spend Christmas with you this year!

And in an October 28 letter he wrote of his visit to Nagoya.

I took a walk around . . . the docks and saw what a thoroughly bombed city and a thoroughly defeated people look like. There are hundreds of tall smoke stacks but no smoke coming from them. Everything looks literally dead—something like it looked around Mississippi during the Depression. However, of course, that is no fair comparison. I can’t imagine an American city looking like this.

About twenty years later, when I graduated from San Jose State College, Dad told me of an impressive Japanese traffic policeman in Nagoya who stopped traffic so he could cross the street. You speak very good English, Dad commented as he thanked the policeman. I should, the policeman replied. I am a graduate of San Jose State College.

On November 4, on the shuttle run hauling men back to the States for demobilization, Dad wrote again about his senior medical officer.

I finally clashed with my senior medical officer. I came to the point where I couldn’t stand by any longer without voicing a protest which, of course, he didn’t like. He might be able to make it uncomfortable for me . . . but I don’t care . . . as long as I am in the right—and he knows it. The only advantage he has is his rank, which is lieutenant commander.

A Move to Seattle

After the ship returned to the United States, Dad left USS Pickens on November 30, 1945, on orders to the U.S. Naval Hospital, Seattle, where he reported for duty on December 20 and would serve on the staff for not quite two years. For the first time our family of four was really together as a family. We spent a rainy Christmas 1945 in a Seattle motel, where I remember seeing Dave take his first steps.

My earliest clear memories are of our family’s move to the Shearwater housing project built at the end of the war in northeastern Seattle primarily for Navy personnel at U.S. Naval Air Station, Seattle, and their families. I can remember Mom and