Spurred by the fact we finally got to see Tom Hank's "Greyhound" (which we liked a lot), we're accelerating the completion of "Torpedo Junction," a screenplay and / or novel about the war for the Atlantic in WWII started with a co-writer who made 40 trips across as Master or Exec, including 10 into Murmansk in the Winter, and who was in the English Channel on D-Day refueling landing craft.

Who was that man? Dad.

This effort bolstered by the receipt of his Merchant Marine and U. S. Navy records (200 pages, including all the ships he served on) from the Coast Guard.

Advising the effort is older brother John Forest Musser III, who retired as CWO-4 in the U. S. Coast Guard, after a distinguished 28 year career.

And Brother Mike, when a U. S. Navy photographer, shot some of the defining images of the fall of Saigon, including CU's from the top of the embassy as the Viet Cong closed in, and pictures from the lower decks of aircraft carriers of U. S. Navy and Coast Guard pilots ditching their helos in the sea, because there was no more room on deck to land them.

Dad was the youngest Merchant Marine Captain in history when he graduated from the Pennsylvania Schoolship Academy (26, Summer of 1940, a period Admiral Doernitz termed "The Happy Time") during the accelerated buildup to the United States entry into World War II, although he was beat a year later by his younger brother, Jimmy, who got to command his own tanker at 25, and after the war became port captain of New York for 30 years for Sinclair Refineries.

They were proud oil men, and American oil won the Battle of the Atlantic, and therefore WWII.

New: Here's a scan of a picture of Uncle Jimmy, brother Michael and me, standing behind his desk on the ? floor of the ? building around 19?? (we're checking) when we flew back east to visit relatives and old friends.

Uncle Jim had a helicopter pad above his office for whenever he felt the need to fly out and verify the security of a vessel trying to enter port.

And he owned 20 acres or so way out on Long Island which was his primary residence.

There was a helo pad there, too--that's how he got home at night.

When Dad was converted from a Merchant Marine Skipper in 1944 by action of the War Department into a United States Naval Reserve Officer, he became the oldest (and most experienced) Lieutenant in the Navy at 30-years-old.

He's gone now, but this is another story I promised to finish, and like it or not, Tom, we were first!

And although I had imagined a story about the skipper of a destroyer, like "Greyhound," my father advised that the war for the Atlantic was the story of the Canadian Navy's Flower-Class Corvette and the U. S. Naval Armed Guard.

So, here is as far as we got, although I have extensive notes from a man who refused a Bronze Star for ramming a U- boat with his T2 tanker.

40% of the time in World War II that sent the tanker to the bottom, too.

Oh yeah. I once asked him what was the toughest order he ever got in World War II.

After a short hesitation, he said in the early morning of D-Day, a mile off Normandy he was the Executive Officer of a refeuling tanker getting ready to refuel and repair landing craft coming back from the beaches, so they could pick up more men.

And his Captain told him, "When you refuel the boats and wash them out with the sea hoses after removing the dead and wounded, I don't want one drop of blood left inside before it goes over to pick up more of our boys."

Knowing Dad, he climbed down the debarkation nets into every single one to check.

RIP, Dad.