On May 31, 1918, the Tribune featured an article based on the visit of Harry Livermore to Albert Lea a few days earlier.

Harry was a former resident of Albert Lea who then had Garner, Iowa, as his home address. During his years in Albert Lea he attended school with Leo Martin Carey. They were very close friends and were reunited when the U.S. Navy assigned them to be radio operators on the USS Tyler.

This ship was torpedoed and sunk by a German submarine on May 2, 1918, off the coast of France. (Other accounts say it was sunk in the Straits of Gibraltar.) Leo died at his duty station. Harry survived, was on furlough, and came back to Albert Lea for a sad visit with Leo’s relatives.

Now, here’s the rest of Harry’s narrative from the Tribune article of 85 years ago this month.

&uot;In a few seconds the boat began to sink down in the water. Everyone knew we were doomed. It was quite dark. There was no time to lower life boats -everybody was jumping into the sea, hoping to get far enough away from the boat to avoid being drawn into the whirlpool that forms when a big ship goes down.

&uot;So I jumped from the very tip end of the front of the steamship. It was a long way down. In fact I had plenty of time to go over my life from the time I was five years old up to the time I jumped. It was an awful early hour to take a bath and in such cold water too. Well I was saved, that’s all there is to it.

&uot;’Oh, don’t be so modest, tell him the rest of the story,’ said his friend Mr. Frazier, who had come up to Albert Lea from Garner, Iowa, with him.

&uot;’No, there’s nothing doing,’ replied Harry, so the following was told by Mr. Frazier:

&uot;’When he (Harry) jumped he went down several feet into the water. When he came to the surface he had two boards, one in each hand. He has no idea where he got them. They were each about a foot long. As he paddled along the ship went down and he was drawn into the whirlpool. As the high wireless wires over the boat swept down to the surface of the water one of them caught him across the back and down he went. Fortunately it didn’t catch him squarely, so he was pushed to one side and swirled over to the side of the whirlpool very near the raft occupied by several other boys (sailors). He managed, by the help of the boys, to crawl up onto the wooden float (raft) which was about twelve feet square.’

&uot;’Here the boys floated about among the wreckage until rescued by the convoy boats.’

&uot;’I will never forget the many expressions coming from the boys on the raft,’ said Harry, ‘especially when the Hun (German) submarine stuck its periscope up only a short distance front the raft. One of the boys was so mad that he got up and grabbing up a piece of board, shook it at the sub in defiance, daring it to come up closer.

&uot;’Leo was the best kid in the whole bunch. Everyone liked Leo. Gee, I thought the world of Leo, he and I grew up together, we went to school together, and played and worked together.’ And with tears in his eyes. Harry said, ‘Well, Leo was a real friend.’&uot;

I’ll close off this column with a commentary I’ve made before. For some stupid reason the members of the armed forces during World War I and for a part of World War II were referred to as boys. In reality, they were real men. Some of the &uot;boys&uot; in both wars were actually older men who were regular soldiers, sailors or marines who had been in the armed forces for many years. To call them &uot;boys&uot; doesn’t make any sense at all.

Leo Carey and Harry Livermore may have been considered as boys when they went into the armed forces in 1917. It didn’t take long for them to properly be considered as men.

Tribune feature writer Ed Shannon’s column appears Fridays in the Tribune.