THE TREE OF FREEDOM

The Tree of Freedom, by Mil

The Fighting Sullivans
Reading history as I like to do can cause one to chase one rabbit after another. Something someone sent me reminded me of what Thomas Jefferson once said: "The Tree of Freedom will have to be watered periodically by the blood of its Patriots."

I thought of this story and movie which I saw as a boy in 1944 at the old Lyceum Theater in Clovis, NM. The Fighting Sullivans with Thomas Mitchell, Anne Baxter, and others.

The five brothers grew up during the depression and used to climb the old water tower in the Iowa town to wave at Thomas as he rode his train engine down the tracks each morning. The five sons joined the US Navy early in 1942, and asked to stay together.

They were on the light cruiser Juneau when it was damaged off Guadalcanal by a Jap naval shell on 13 November, 1942, and was limping to harbor when a Jap sub broke the ship in two with a torpedo. Over 800 men survived in the water but were not discovered in a timely way and only ten men survived. The five Sullivans were all lost.

In the movie, the naval officer comes to the parents door and Thomas Mitchell asks, "Which one?" The officer answers, and Thomas Mitchell says: "All....five?"

Look this story up on your computer under The Sullivans and the movie the Fighting Sullivans
and get to the film clips, TFS, 8 min. To see them enlist. And other clips. In the movie the father rides his train to work, after the terrible news, and he looks up at the old water tower, remembering his sons......but it is empty.

They estimate that that war cost the world 50 to 70 million people.

There will always be a USS Sullivans afloat in the US Navy. Anchors Aweigh.

( A similar loss of sailors occurred in 1945 east of the Philippines as the USS Indianapolis was returning to the US after delivering the first atomic bomb to Tinian. The  ship was torpedoed and sunk and thru faulty communications up and down the line, the survivors floating in the water were lost one by one and I believe only about 20% of crew survived.)

From Mil.