First I'd like to say how grateful I am for your service to our country. Its an unpayable debt I can't and will never forget. I will never forget because I'm almost certain, even in the tragic circumstances, that I would not be here today with out the incident, and I'll tell you why. My Grandfather is 85 and I don't want his story to die with him. I only remember some parts of the story but will tell it to the best of my knowledge and as honestly as possible. Please forgive my lack of military vocabulary.So here it goes..

   My Grandfather enlisted in the United States Navy near the end of WWII at the age of 17. I'd imagine most of the survivors are the same age or older and wanted to clarify because the math is tight. During his boot camp is when the War in Europe ended. He was assigned to the USS Barnwell and was a landing craft driver. Again, being a little shakey with the details, he departed from San Diego toward Hawaii where the Barnwell met up with their ship group. I'm not completely sure if he boarded the Barnwell in Hawaii or San Diego. When the Barnwell was test firing their deck gun they cracked a hole in the bow. The battle group proceeded ahead of the Barnwell while the crippled ship zig zagged on their  own behind. Up until the Indianapolis he doesn't tell many details other than he cracked eggs and they played a trick on him with a dead body in the freezer. Anyways he says one evening they saw the Indianapolis and got close enough to yell where they were from. Several hours later a submarine, the same one that sank the Indianapolis, fired a torpedo and missed the Barnwell. They dropped depth charges but the submarine disappeared. He says the very next morning the captain got on the com and said that the ship they saw the night before,  the Indianapolis, was sunk. The assumption was that the sub went after the bigger ship and aborted their attack of the Barnwell. The reason they did not make a rescue effort was because the Barnwell was already crippled, at over full capacity, and there was still an enemy sub in the water. I do not know the details of any transmissions from the Barnwell after that other than the transmission was received by the Barnwell. 

He gets so mad, as do I do, when reading that no one knew of the sinking until days later. He always says the Indianapolis "saved their bacon" and I believe I would not be here without it. I don't want this to come off as a consolation but the story is a reminder to me that delicacy of life and death, and that God works in mysterious ways. I'm here today because of the fateful events that night and you will not be forgotten.