Lt Edward Lacy King Jr.

	This page: includes short biography.
	Includes inventory.

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Edward King and Helen Fry on their wedding day, 28 May 1942.

In December 1916 Edward Lacy King Jr was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, USA. Known as Barney, he joined the Naval Reserve in College and graduated in 1939 from Tulane University with a B.E (Batchelor of Mechanical Engineering) Degree. After University, Barney worked as a draftsman and machine designer at Higgins Industries Inc., the company which designed PT boats used as landing craft, before moving to New York as a test engineer for the Worthington Pump and Machinery Corp.

In February 1942 while still based in New York, Barney went skiing and broke his knee-cap. In Navy Hospital undergoing treatment Barney met his future wife Helen, a nurse, and by May of that year they were married. Having volunteered for active service the previous Autumn, Barney transferred to Mobile, Alabama and Helen went with him, working as a surgical nurse. Two children followed, Karen in October 1943 and her brother in July 1945. In Mobile Barney was appointed Lieutenant and assisted the Industrial Manager, before reporting for duty aboard the USS Croatan. In March 1944 he transferred to the Landing Craft School in Coronado, California, becoming officer-in-charge of E-8 Unit. In 1945, Barney was posted to Samar, Philippines and was the Boat Officer at the aircraft jetty of the Naval Air Base.

Tragically Barney did not live to see his newborn son. On 21 August 1945 he was killed in an accidental bomb explosion while fragmentation bombs were being loaded on to barges for disposal at sea.

The Second World War Experience Centre is especially grateful to Lt King's daughter, Karen, who originally contacted the Centre via our Website to tell us about the family's wartime letters. Since the initial contact, a close relationship has been built up between Karen and the Centre staff. The process of going through the correspondence has been a rewarding experience for Barney's family - an unique opportunity to 'get to know him' more intimately, despite rekindling a deep sense of regret for the loss of his presence in their lives. The hard work done by Karen and family has also, needless to say, been tremendously helpful to the Centre's cataloguing staff. The Centre counts this set of original material including extensive correspondence, photographs and associated documentation as one of its finest and most poignant collections of U.S. documentation.

Letter to Helen, May 29, 1943

Transcript

Excerpts from Lt King's Letters:

13 December 1941 to father

Dear Daddy: sorry to delay writing to you but I have been very busy since Sunday. We all had to report to the yards as soon as we heard about the war's starting. Also all building has gone on 3 shifts and we are now working from 8.00-6.30pm 6 days a week. The way the war started was quite a shock to everyone as no one could believe that those little yellow ------s would do anything like that. It gets me sore to think of all the work that is in those ships just gone like that. After seeing what goes into a ship like that I would like to kill a few Japs to help pay for a dirty trick like that....The radio is playing a song "Goodbye Mama I'm off to Yokahama". I never heard it before. Incidentally it was reported that a German sub was off the harbor today. Everybody is all excited over air raids here but I get a good laugh out of it. The Britishers are awfully bored with it as the planes only have to fly 3000 miles or else come off of a carrier traveling about 4 or 5000! So it is really quite amusing.

18 February 1942 to his mother

Have been reading a lot lately. Read several books dealing with the war. The news is sure bad lately. I have less and less respect for our friends the lousy British. It confirms my opinions of before the war. I will have even more trouble being civil to them than before. I guess we'll have to win the war in spite of them as well as the Japs. Thank goodness the Chinese and the Russians hold up their end O.K. I hope Churchill gets kicked out. I hear that Ernie has been sent to Samoa. I guess the boys are pretty well spread around. I hope too many of the boys don't get in jams before we discard all British leadership and do our own thinking.

	This page: includes short biography.
	Includes inventory.