Publisher's Synopsis
This is a story of the experiences of a young man named Raymond F. O'Neill, born in 1896, who enlisted in the U.S. Navy at the outset of World War One. He had taken an interest in radios and radio technology at age 14, which had been invented only a few years before. In the Navy he trained as a radioman and was assigned to a submarine-spotting ship in the English Channel.
When the Navy formed the Naval Air Corps, he volunteered for the new service. He spent the remainder of the war as a first-class radioman and nose-gunner in seaplanes that were used to spot German submarines when they surfaced and shoot holes in their exposed hull so they could not submerge. He then radioed their location to surface destroyers who came in for the kill.
He survived three plane crashes and returned home at the end of the war where he started Boston Fire Extinguisher Company, hired a young, pretty secretary, Mary Croak, whom he soon married. They had a daughter and three sons. This remembrance of their father was recalled by his two youngest sons, John and James, and written and put together by Rayanne and Kelly, James' daughters.
