Inside Northside's June/July 2005 issue

Fathers and Sons

by Stephen Faure

With Memorial Day and the dedication of the St. Tammany Parish Veterans Memorial having passed just before publication, and the Father’s Day and Independence Day holidays coming up, Inside Northside would like to honor all of the area’s veterans and those currently serving by spotlighting fathers and sons bound by family, duty and honor in service to our country.

We found in the Carson family three generations who have served our country from World War II to Vietnam and through to today, and present their story in honor of every one of the brave men and women from our area who have fought and fallen in our country’s service.

Virgil Carson, a World War II naval veteran; his son Lane, who served in the U.S. Army in Vietnam; and Lane’s son Chris, a graduate of Mandeville High School and the U.S. Naval Academy’s Class of 2004 have maintained a tradition of military and civilian public service since 1943.

The Carson legacy of service to our country is not only represented in the stories that trace their history. It is a material legacy in the form of a small government-issued Bible that has traveled with each man through his respective tour of duty. This “Roosevelt Bible,” as it was called, covered with steel and inscribed with the phrase “May God be with You” was issued to Virgil Carson upon his enlistment. It was passed down to the following generations of Carsons, albeit with a long detour along the way.

Virgil Carson joined the Navy in 1943 and served through the war as a ship fitter, first class. After completing basic training in San Diego, he was assigned to the USS Willoughby, a motor torpedo boat (PT boat) tender. A 310-foot-long vessel manned by a crew of 340, the Willoughby was responsible for supplying a complement of 24 PT boats with fuel, food, water and the mechanical parts necessary for their operation.

In August 1944, the Willoughby was sent to war against the Japanese in the Pacific, where she and this young man from Iuka, Mississippi witnessed one of the greatest naval battles in history—at Leyte Gulf in the Philippines—which began October 20 of that year.

After traveling from New Guinea to the Philippine Islands and their anchorage in San Pedro Bay in the Leyte Gulf, Carson remembers, “When dawn broke that morning, there were ships as far as the eye could see.” He had become part of the largest naval operation in history, which took place to support the first landings in the invasion of the Philippines and to cut the Japanese supply lines in the western Pacific.

Fierce fighting ensued for days; the PT boats escorted and supplied by Carson’s ship played a vital part in the battle, locating and harassing the Japanese battle force. The Japanese sea forces were defeated by October 24, but the Willoughby remained in the area.

Unfortunately, they were still subject to aerial attacks, and the Willoughby’s crew is credited with shooting down one Japanese plane. Kamikaze attacks became frequent. “One night a plane flew right between the ship’s antennas and clipped the smokestack. He was aiming for us, you see, but missed and crashed into a PT boat moored off our side. Completely destroyed it and killed nearly everyone on board. We had to pick up the pieces the next day,” Mr. Carson painfully recalls. In the ensuing weeks, the Willoughby’s crew witnessed several more suicide attacks, and, although they were not hit, two other ships close to them suffered direct hits. The Willoughby again participated in rescue operations, taking many wounded men aboard.

The Willoughby continued to see action throughout the Pacific until the end of the war in August 1945. It was a tough tour of duty. “It wasn’t like the movies, with sailors going on shore leave having a good time. We were on that ship 365 days a year and didn’t go anywhere.”

War’s end found the Willoughby off the northern coast of Borneo, where she assisted in the liberation of a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp. The horrors of war were evident. “Most of those men had been there over three years. Their legs were no bigger than your wrist, from malnutrition. There were a lot of British, Australians, some Dutch and a few Americans. There had been over 3,000 prisoners, and when we got there, only about 600 were left.”

After the war, Virgil settled in New Orleans and raised his family in Gentilly.

The legacy continues

Virgil Carson’s government-issued Bible was constantly at his side, providing great comfort for him on many occasions. He saved it after the war, and passed it on to his son Lane, a young officer in the Army’s 5th Mechanized Infantry Division, as he headed for Vietnam.

On March 21, 1971, Lt. Lane Carson was leading his platoon in support of allied South Vietnamese troops attempting to break the Ho Chi Minh Trail near the border with Laos when he heard an artillery barrage coming in their direction. After he ordered his men to take cover and did so himself, the North Vietnamese artillery struck a direct hit on the platoon, injuring Lane and killing many of his men.

“I was in a foxhole, with a steel sheet over the top,” Lane says. “But a direct hit like that, so close, it just blew shrapnel all into the left side of my body, from my arm down all the way down my leg.”

“You should see that X-ray,” his father Virgil observes, with a sense of awe, “It was just white pieces of metal up and down his side.”

Lane had kept his father’s Bible in the breast pocket of his fatigues, but it was lost in the field hospital after the medics cut off his shirt to begin treating his wounds. Eventually recovering enough to realize the Bible was missing, Lane could not remember where he lost it.

A journalist for the New York Times, Gloria Emerson, had found the Bible in the medical unit where Lane was first treated. She found the words “Virgil Carson, Iuka, Mississippi, 1943,” with “Lt. Lane Carson” written alongside. She could find no one in any hospital who recalled that name. When she returned to the United States a year and a half later, she wrote the postmaster in Iuka, asking whether any Carsons still lived there. She received a letter from Lane saying how much meaning that Bible had to his family, and offering to pay her expenses to New Orleans. She gladly flew down on her own and returned the Bible to the Carson family. Later, she told the story of this Bible in a book she wrote chronicling the war, “Winners and Losers.”

Lane went on to get his law degree from Tulane University. In the 1970s, was the first Vietnam veteran elected to the Louisiana Legislature. Among many accomplishments, he has served on the Veterans Administration Committee on Veteran Readjustment and was appointed by Governor Foster to the Louisiana Veterans Affairs Commission and by President Bush to the Board of Directors of the National Institute of Building Sciences. He has also been a leader in planning and raising funds for the St. Tammany Parish Veterans Memorial.

Completing the circle

Now in possession of the family Bible is Ensign Chris Carson, a graduate of Mandeville High and the U.S. Naval Academy, where he excelled as a member of the Navy offshore sailing team. After graduating from the academy in 2004, Ensign Carson was assigned to USS Lake Erie.

Completing the Carson legacy full-circle, Ensign Carson and the USS Lake Erie sailed to the Leyte Gulf in October 2004, where he took part in the ceremonies commemorating the 60th anniversary of the battle his grandfather participated in. He also had the experience of scuba diving in the area, and observed the wreckage of some of the Japanese planes that had attacked his grandfather’s fleet.