During WW 2 my dad was the assistant G-4 in the Sixth Armored Division of Patton's Third Army; his area of expertise was logistics, an assignment he performed so well that, as a major, he was awarded the Silver Star. One issue of Stars And Stripes, the army's weekly newspaper that covered the war, featured the story of his award for heroism and a photo of him on their front page.

I know this because in the late 1950's he created a scrapbook of his service with Patton and the "Super Sixth", filling it with snapshots he'd taken with his 35mm camera; and that issue of Stars and Stripes was one of the documents he'd included. As a boy I used to pore over this album for hours, fascinated by the photos and my dad's brief handwritten descriptions beneath each one.

Included were at least two photos he'd taken of General George Patton outside a tent in conversation with General Montgomery, the British equivalent of General Eisenhower; my dad pointed out to me Patton's pair of revolvers, clearly visible in the photos, which he kept holstered on his hips, western style. I know now that this meeting with Montgomery came at a real turning point for the Allies in 1944: Patton's Third Army had trained for combat in North Africa (the Sixth Armored's Tank Corps, to which my dad was assigned in 1942, had trained at the Desert Training Center near Indio, California, before shipping out to England and, ultimately, France in '44). Montgomery informed Patton at this meeting that Patton was to take his men into France instead, which made Patton livid. As an officer my dad was privy to their discussions; the photos he took that day of Patton, he said, immediately followed Patton's meeting with Montgomery.

There were also photos of the vapor trails in the sky after aerial combat over France, looking as if someone had smeared the sky with an eraser. I asked Dad why he hadn't taken photos of the dogfights themselves; he said it was prohibited by Army regulations.

There were other photos of Russian soldiers warily eyeing Dad which he captioned "The Russians did not trust us"; and of Dad and other officers singing hymns in a French tavern while an officer played piano. Photos too of the interior of French taverns that had been decorated with paintings of naked women. Photos of Dad's tank at the Battle of the Bulge, painted white to camouflage it in the snow (Dad said that he never got warm again after the brutal winter there). There were photos of villages and of churches and cathedrals they'd passed as they crossed from France into Germany. Photos of brave soldiers everywhere.

The photo above is one that my dad had taken in France as the 6th moved into Germany; the sign adorned a captured German pillbox. I found it in a drawer at my mother's home in Charleston after her funeral. My sister Alicia--the one who we think must have had different parents and was exchanged for our real sister at birth-- has Dad's photo album, which has a copy of this photo pasted inside; sadly, she refuses to let my other sisters and me have access to it.

3768. As we near Japan we see that HMAS SHROPSHIRE's war was one fought in the company of battleships, cruisers and destroyers, the frontline ships of the 1930s. While there were also escort carriers, rocket ships and PT boats, she appears to have been not much in the company of the new capital ships, the fleet aircraft carriers maneuvring with the new fast battleships out in the wider reaches of the open ocean, striking from an aerial distance.

This is USS COLORADO, another of SHROPSHIRE's great companions, the 32,600 tons lead ship of a new class of super dreadnoughts built by the New York Ship Building Company at Camden, new Jersey, and ciommissioned on August 30, 1923.

She had come to Australia two years later, on the great US Pacific Fleet goodwill visit of 52 ships, including 10 battleships.

Based at Pearl Harbour she was fortunate to be under refit in Puget Sound when the December 6 surprise attack launching the Pacific War occurred.

Generally USS COLORADO seem to escape damage through the South West Pacific campaigns until her luck ran out while supporting troops in the landings on Tinian, where she received 22 topside hits from shore batteries of July 24, 1944. At Leyte on November 27 she was hit by two kamikaze which killed 19 of her men and wounded 72. At the melee of Lingayen Gulf on January 9, 1945, she was hit on her superstructure by friendly fire, killing 18 of her men and wounding 51.

At the end of the war she engaged in repatriations of troops from Pearl Harbour - Operation Magic Carpet- - before being placed in reserve on Jan. 7, 1947. She was sold for scrapping on July 23, 1959.

Photo: Collection of Alan Meade, RAN 1943-1946, it is from Alan's wartime HMAS SHROPSHIRE photo album. From a disc, with permission.