Nbc-The Veterans Advisor-14212-27-47

Time for your 142nd weekly visit with NBC's Veterans Advisor Commander Ty Crum, retired Naval Officer, veteran of both World Wars and nationally known authority on veterans' rights, privileges and benefits. Brought to you as a coast-to-coast public service of the National Broadcasting Company.

Thank you, Stuart Finley, and I have a good day to all of you. Today I want to relate to you a little tale of an event of the recent war which now can be told.

On the day that the European War broke out in September 1939, the then-chief of Naval Operations Admiral Stark phoned a young naval officer, Captain Louis Denfeld, in Newport, where he was commanding a destroyer squadron based there.

Captain Denfeld, Admiral Stark, said in a troubled voice, We have heard the German submarines are lying off the Grand Banks, waiting to destroy merchant ships, flying between the United States and England. How long will it take to get a patrol out to protect them?

and then Feld responded mechanically. Admiral Serr, we're on our way right now. And so it was that the famed Grand Banks Patrol came into being. And such was the spirit of that fast-moving naval officer who won a claim in the Second World War as one of our Navy's top administrative officers.

After the United States was plunged into the war, he made his number as Rear Admiral while serving as Assistant Chief in a Bureau of Personnel which brought into the Naval Service the millions of officers and blue jackets that fought and won the Second World War.

During the closing days of the Battle of Japan, Admiral Denfeld led battleship to Vision 9 right to the very gates of Japan, where for days the big guns of the Navy played havoc with Japanese shore installations.