By Jan Landon
THE ERICKSON TRIBUNE

It was October 1942, and Duane Clark was aboard the light cruiser USS Boise in the South Pacific. The ship was helping to cover the landing of U.S. Marine reinforcements on Guadalcanal. During one of the battles at Cape Esperance, the Boise was hit by the Japanese and 107 of Clark’s shipmates died.

Clark recounts the vivid details of that battle 65 years ago. The cruiser was hit 17 times, with one hole so large a freight train could have come through it, he says.

He was a young man. Right out of high school in 1941, the 17-year-old Californian enlisted in the Navy.

A Navy man
The Navy was his career for 20 years, and in that time he traveled the world, fought in many battles, cheated death, and experienced both horror and joy. Clark sat in the living room of his Shawnee home talking about some of those experiences.

He and his wife Jean are on the Priority List at Tallgrass Creek. Like most men of his generation, he talks matter-of-factly of his wartime sacrifices. He  remembers his wounds, but he doesn’t complain. There is no embellishment, no self-pity, and no apologies for what he and so many other young men were expected to do.

“In those years you looked at war differently,’’ Clark says. “You didn’t worry about dying all the time. War is for the young. You get too old and you get too cautious. There were things that had to be done. We had to do it and that’s the way it was.”

Honoring independence
Memories come flooding back on the Fourth of July, Clark says. He remembers all that was given up to protect his country. And he worries about where his country is headed. He remains fiercely patriotic.

On the radar
In early 1942, Clark was sent to radar school because of his high score on the General Classification Test, a standardized exam that was given to members of the military. At 18 years old he became a third-class radar man on the first ship in the Navy to have radar.