Chief

This is a novel of service to the Country. Chief is the first of a trilogy that

describes three generations of a family’s service in the nation’s wars. Chief

brings accurate first hand descriptions of life aboard ship during the depression

years and World War II, affording a view of naval operations from the

deckplates of the engineering spaces and gun turrets up and reaching all the

way to CinCPac’s headquarters in Makalapa, Pearl Harbor and MacArthur

in the Philippines, Australia and Japan. We follow a farm boy from Texas hill

country through each ship in his career; and along the way the extraordinary

contributions of the Navy bluejacket make the case for the Chief Petty Officer

as the backbone of the Fleet.