My four years aboard the USS John R. (DD-885) were coming to a close in the summer of 1955. The destroyer was safely docked in the San Diego Harbor, but we had seen action in the Siege of Wonsan Bay during the Korean War and had weathered a cyclone in the Pacific Ocean that landed us in a dry dock in Subic Bay in the Philippines for weeks. One of my last orders, however, was sure to be the most memorable.
