Letter to the Editor: Following in footsteps of special veteran

Steven Moen Minot The veteran I would like to honor is my dad, George Moen, a WWII vet. He grew up south of Minot during the dirty ‘30s, one of 12 kids. He graduated from the 8th grade in a rural school, never stepped foot outside of North Dakota until he joined the Navy. In January 1943 he left for Farragut, Idaho, for boot camp, then off to Norfolk, VA, where he was trained to be a radar operator on a subchaser ship. He said he wasn’t very good at fixing the radar so he became a Motor Machinist Mate and worked on diesel engines instead. This little ship was 12-feet’ long 17-feet wide, had a total of 28 crew members and off to North Africa and the Mediterranean Sea they went. Can you imagine crossing the Atlantic in a ship so small? Dad said you had to stick your head out of the forward hatch to see how big the waves were and gauge when the ship rolled and then get out and run on the high side to get into the aft hatch before it rolled back or you could be up to your knees in water.

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