|
|
Article: A well-traveled class ring comes home. (From the Archives).
- Article from:
- Parameters
- Article date:
- March 22, 2003
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2003 U.S. Army War College. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
|
While US Army Technical Sergeant James Gordon Deaton was suffering frostbite and German shelling in surrounded Bastogne, Belgium, his high school class ring was in the tropical Pacific Theater with the Marines. Deaton had loaned the ring, from Tennessee's Carter High School, class of 1940, to the man who would become his brother-in-law, Lee Burnette. Before the United States entered World War II, Deaton and Bumette had gone together to enlist in the Navy, but Deaton was turned down because of colorblindness. Burnett was assigned to the battleship Oklahoma. Sometime in 1941 he lost the ring in a shipboard dice game.
After the attack on Pearl Harbor and sinking of ...