As we take time this Memorial Day weekend to remember the men and women who sacrificed their lives in defense of our nation, we should also reflect on several dozen Gloucester and Mathews merchant mariners who gave all to keep us in the fight during World War II.

At about this time 70 years ago, residents of the two counties had grown accustomed to getting bad news almost weekly; the Gazette-Journal would tell of another local son lost when his merchant ship was torpedoed by the Germans.

Good legwork by Gazette-Journal writers at that time managed to capture a number of stories from the survivors. We reprint below excerpts from just one of the stories. It illustrates well, in a firsthand manner, the terrors of the sea when unarmed merchant ships tried to deliver fuel, munitions, food and supplies to our allies and our fighting men during the scary early months of the war.

From the Gazette-Journal of April 9, 1942:

Two Mathews seamen of the hundreds from this seafaring county...