Here's looking at you: Roy and Pat Taylor

Navarre Press salutes long time Gulf Breeze resident, Roy Taylor, Lt. Col., U.S. Army, Retired, a veteran of three wars – World War II, Korea, and Vietnam.

Between Roy, his scrapbooks, his daughter Tracy and his son Troy we put this two-part mini-bio together by reliving events and memories enveloped within the past 67 plus years.

Soon after graduating from home town Baton Rouge High School in 1943, Roy spent a  semester at Louisiana State University before enlisting in the Navy in 1944; he completed basic training and Signalman/Quartermaster School in San Diego.

Transferred to Pearl Harbor, Roy was assigned as quarter master aboard the USS Harcourt, a former Merchant Marine Liberty ship. “She had been sunk … er, run aground,” he corrected himself, “in the Philippines, and then they moved her to Pearl Harbor, refitted her, and took her into the Navy.”

Hauling cargo throughout the Pacific Theatre of Operations, including the Marshall Islands, Harcourt docked at Enewetak Atoll to take on cargo before sailing for Tokyo Bay. “We were going into Tokyo Bay when the fleet was coming out after the Japanese surrender,” Roy recalled.

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For more on this story, see the September 8 issue of the Navarre Press or subscribe online.

Editor’s note:
This story will appear in two parts. The second will print in the Sept. 15 edition of the Navarre Press.