In 1943, Robert Loyd was a sixteen-year-old without a driver's license or a car who had just moved to St. Louis from the countryside. The Uncle Sam Wants You posters hanging in every public building enticed him to lie about his age and join the fight. After graduating from the program at Farragut Naval Training Station, he was assigned to overhauling the USS Dewey, a destroyer, in Bremerton, Washington. When the Dewey was deemed seaworthy, his group received orders to join the Third Fleet in the Pacific and arrived in Honolulu in October 1943.
The next months were spent in and...