 |
| Electrician's Mate Earl Martin served on the heavy cruiser USS Astoria until the Battle of Savo Island. https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/56768162/earl-francis-martin https://www.pinterest.com/pin/274438171015102676/ |
Earl Francis Martin never had a chance to reach 100 years old today. Instead, he sacrificed his life for our freedom.
He was born on June 2, 1920 in New Castle, Pennsylvania. His parents Allison and Jessie were also both born in Pennsylvania. His father worked as a railroad brakeman, soft drink company deliveryman, and farmer. Earl had three older brothers, three older sisters, one younger brother, and one younger sister.
He enlisted in the US Navy in 1939. He reached the rank of electrician's mate first class and was assigned to the heavy cruiser USS Astoria. I am not sure if he was with the Astoria in the spring of 1939 when it was tasked with returning the ashes of the Japanese ambassador from Washington DC to Yokohama, Japan. By October 1939, Astoria was made part of the Hawaiian Department.
In the months leading up to the war Astoria was engaged in escort duties on assignments to Midway, the Philippines, Guam, and Wake Island. Astoria was 700 miles away when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. In the first part of 1942 Astoria was part of task forces surrounding first the carrier Saratoga, and then Lexington, and then Yorktown. In May it took part in the Battle of Coral Sea and in June it took part in the Battle of Midway. EM Martin was certainly with Astoria for these wartime engagements.
In August 1942 Astoria was part of a task force supporting the August 7 Marine landing at Tulagi and Guadalcanal. Two days later it took part in the disastrous Battle of Savo Island. During that battle a group of eight Japanese warships sunk three American heavy cruisers, including Astoria. Astoria suffered at least 65 hits in the night action. Fire teams were unable to extinguish fires ablaze throughout the ship and it sank at 1216 hours on August 9, 1942. EM Martin was one of 219 mean lost on Astoria.
His cenotaph memorial is at Manila American Cemetery and Memorial in Manila, Philippines.
TEX SCHRAMM
The future first general manager of the Dallas Cowboys football team, Tex Schramm, was born on the exact same date at Earl Martin. He was born in California but moved to Texas were his parents first met. He was an officer in the Army Air Forces during World War II.
 |
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tex_Schramm |
After the war Schramm worked with the Los Angeles Rams before starting the Dallas Cowboys. He stayed on through 1989. His team went to five Super Bowls, winning two. He died in 2003.
This is one of the final 100 stories (93) to be written as part of this project which ends on September 2, 2020, the 75 anniversary of the end of World War II. At that time more than 1,370 men and women will have been profiled. The project will live on in an expanded program to write the stories of all 400,000+ US World War II fallen. Visit www.storiesbehindthestars.org to learn more. We welcome your continued support and interest and encourage you to help write some of these stories.
Last year on this date I profiled Robert Hart, 90th Infantry Division. You can read about Robert here.
On behalf of the fallen, if you would like to see more people become aware of this project to honor the WW2 fallen, be sure to share with others on Twitter, Facebook, etc. Thanks for your interest!
I created this video to explain why I started this project: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXt8QA481lY.
Please consider joining the public Facebook group to increase the exposure of this project. Go to: WW2 Fallen 100
No comments:
Post a Comment