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Show 'Armed Forces' Russell N. Stansfield Given Discharge MSgt. Russell N. Stansfield, former faculty member of the Springville high school, has been given an honorable discharge from the service. He as been in the Army since uJne 1942, and has spent 32 months overseas. He was recently awarded the bronze star medal and also has the Good Conduct medal and the Mediterranean Mediter-ranean Theater of Operations campaign ribbon with two bronze stars. Randall Sumsion Home From So. Pacific i Pfc. Randall Sumsion, son of Mr. and Mrs. Spender Sumsion, is home from the South Pacific where he has been stationed with the Marines for more than two years. He has been in the service over three years and following his furlough, he is to report to Washington Wash-ington where he will be given his discharge. Ted J. Martindale Given Discharge Ted J. Martindale, BM 1 c, son of Mr. and Mrs. E. H. Martindale, of this city, has been given an honorable discharge, according to word received from the personnel separation center at Shoemaker, Calif. Local Boy Writes Of Okinawa Typhoon The following letter was written writ-ten by Elrey Junior Kelsey, son of Mr. and Mrs. Elrey E. Kelsey of this city, formerly of Spanish Fork. He is 11 years of age and lias been in the Navy since last March. He received his boot training train-ing at San Diego, Calif., and was sent to the South Pacific in August. Aug-ust. He was assigned to a floating float-ing hotel at Leyte and then went to Okinawa, where he witnessed probably the worst typhoon in the history of the islands. Okinawa, Oct. 17 1945. I suppose you have already read the news of the big typhoon on this island. If you haven't, I will try to tell you what it did to our ship. We were sitting here in the harbor as peaceful as could be, when we received word that a typhoon ty-phoon was headed our way. All the larger ships, such as transports, trans-ports, moved out to sea out of the storm, only a few of the big ships dropped anchor and decided to remain, prepared for it. We had a 125-mile wind. We went sailing about through the air like a feather feath-er in a breeze. We crashed into about eigth other ships and, boy! they really did tear us up. We kept on being dashed around, crashing into other ships until we were close to a huge reef. The wind picked our ship right up and sat it square on top of the reef and when the wind was over there were five or six ships piled up against us. A typhoon hit the reef by us and tore it all to pieces. piec-es. The boys were swimming around in the water. Five of the boys were found washed upon the shore, dead. We managed to save the remainder of" the crew aboard our ship. ' , This coral reef is as sharp as glass and it just cut some of the boys to pieces. While my buddy stood watch, a body floated by, both legs, both arms were severed, sev-ered, also the head was cut off below1 the chin. It's nothing to see dead bodies floating around out here. Five of our men went" on shore to get the mail and a movie tor tnat mgnt. rney were m a jeep. The jeep rolled over and landed across one of the boy's stomach. Two others were cut up pretty bad, but the other two came back although scared nearly near-ly to death (plenty nervous). We don't know if the one boy is still alive or not. We don't know what they are going to do with us. They can't move our ship off this reef and to top that off, they haven't any food here on the island. We have been on K rations for a week now and going without water three or four days at a time. We have really had the heart scared out of us this week. The war may be over but a guy's life is in danger anyhow, especially around this island. is-land. This typhoon was the worst on in history. There were five men killed and over one hundred casualties here where I am located. locat-ed. We had liberty the other weekend week-end and I and my buddie went ashore. We visited one of the Jap tombs where there were skeletons skel-etons ofPapanese soldiers in boxes. V-J Day was signed when I was coming over, and I haven't seen real action, but I have seen all the tragedies I want to see and will be glad when I get home. Junior. |