[The following takes place in the Pacific Theater of World War II.]
Dick Best was in the ready room when he heard that Jack Doherty’s SBD did not return. “Every loss hurt, as it rightly should,” he said. Skipper Holly Hollingsworth wrote out a citation and personal letter for Doherty’s parents. The lost pilot’s roommate, Tony Schneider, added his own letter to the family describing their friendship. “I cursed, I cried a little; then I calmed down,” Schneider remembered. “If you allowed yourself to go numb over the deaths of your friends, you’d join them.” He had lost another early roommate, Manny Gonzalez, weeks earlier over Pearl Harbor, and knew their occupation came with a harsh necessity. “We said our good-byes; then we got back into the war,” Schneider said.
Source:
Moore, Stephen L. “We Lost As Much As We Gained.” Pacific Payback: The Carrier Aviators Who Avenged Pearl Harbor at the Battle of Midway. NAL Caliber, 2014. 100. Print.
Original Source(s) Listed:
“John Doherty and Bombing Six.” Accessed http://www.cv6.org/company/accounts/jdoherty/ on 8 January 2011.
Schneider to Rush correspondence.
Further Reading:
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