Jocko Noone

Veterans Day: Meet 101-year-old Petty Officer 2nd Class Edward “Eddie” D. Desmond, who served at Okinawa. I met Eddie on November 10. He turned 101 and shares the same birthday as the Marine Corps, the day before Veterans Day. On November 11, Desmond is being honored at the Veterans Day Wreath Laying Ceremony at the United States Navy Memorial. TRUE STORY: Eddie served at Okinawa because he hated cold weather and liked cooking. Veterans advocate Christopher M. Lehman shared Eddie’s story. "When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, Eddie was just 16 years old—too young to serve in the armed forces. He enlisted in the Navy in early 1944 at age 17. After boot camp, he was given the choice to serve either as an armed guard (gunner) on a merchant supply ship doing convoy duty in the cold North Atlantic or as a ship’s cook on a ship in the Pacific. Since he didn’t like cold weather and he did like to cook, the choice was easy. Within months, he found himself as a cook on a small ship heading across the Pacific and was destined to participate in what became the bloodiest and one of the longest and hardest campaigns in the history of U.S. naval warfare—the Battle of Okinawa. By early May 1945, 20-year-old Petty Officer 2nd Class Desmond had already been exposed to heavy combat. He had also discovered that the ship’s cook on these small ships had additional duties when the ship was engaged in combat or the crew was at Battle Stations. His battle station was at a 20-millimeter anti-aircraft gun on the starboard side of his ship. He also witnessed the devastating effects of Japanese kamikaze suicide planes hitting other ships—many much larger than his—with some sinking in minutes and with tremendous loss of life. As one of the last (and likely the final) surviving sailors from the roughly 10,000 men who served on the 130 Landing Craft Support ships known as LCSs during World War II, Eddie has helped preserve their history. After the jump, a GoFundMe page has been set up to help keep the historic USS LCS-102 operating as a museum ship in California.👇