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Show transferred to Salt Lake City, and will arrive in November sometime. He will iprobably remain there until un-til his enlistment, is up in 1956.. His birthday was August 14, and he had received a box from home, and also the good news that he had a new baby daughter, born on his birthday. His wife and two daughters are in San Diego, where LaVar expects to arrive in the mid die of October. Mr. and Mrs. Leonard Broderick heard Friday from their son, Dean, also on the Boxer. Dean had no injuries, and said they were kept busy for a while fighting fire, and are now busy on ship repairs. LaVar Ellis Tells Of Narrow Escape n Fire On Ship Yeoman Joseph LaVar Ellis, son of Mr. and Mrs. Joe Ellis, of Delta wrote home Aug. 11 telling of his narrow escape from death when lire broke out Wednesday, Aug. 6, on his ship, the aircraft carrier car-rier Boxer. Following is the first word his parents have had since the disaster: "Dearest Mother and Dad: I guess you have been worried a little since our disaster aboard ship, so will write and give you a few of the details. Now that it is over and everything is all right except for the dead, I'll let you know what happened to me. To make a long story short, I darn near died ,and that is no lie. If I had had ten more feet to go to get out, I would not be writing j this letter. I was overtaken by smoke exhaustion, ex-haustion, and at one time even . went down. I even thought to my-self my-self that "Well, this is it", and , wondered if I would go to heaven I or hell. It was sure a terrible feel-1 ing and it was the will to live that forced me back up to make the last fifty feet out. . I fell unconscious through the open hatch. As I said above, it was lucky I didn't have ten more feet to go. I also got my eyes burned and couldn't see for a few days. My left eye is OK, now, but my right eye, I don't know. I just had the bandage taken off of it this morning mor-ning and can't see much out of it. I t should be all right in about two weeks. That is what the doc says. Last of all, I will bear a scar right down the middle of my forehead. fore-head. I got it laid open while running run-ning through that long narrow hatch. I don't remember getting it cut, though. It is healing fine now, too. ' Though it may not sound very good to you now, you can stop worrying about it because it is ok. I'm just thankful that I'm alive, and I even said a prayer of thanks The ship is really a mess and work is started 24 around the clock to get it back into an operating oper-ating condition. We are going to try and have it repaired enough to go back out on the line for the : last few days of our tour. The han-1 gar deck is a charred mass and the deck that our office was on was all burned up too. I was sleep ing in the office when the fire broke out." I LaVar concluded his letter with the good news that he is being |