60 Seconds for Story Prompt Friday: My Dad’s Morse Code Work Motivated My Military Service

Episode notes

Hello to you listening in Barking, East London, England ! Coming to you from Whidbey Island, Washington this is Stories From Women Who Walk with 60 Seconds for Story Prompt Friday and your host, Diane Wyzga. Sometimes in passing he would whisper: dit, dit, dit, dah dah dah, dit dit dit . Morse Code for SOS, Save Our Ship. I’m thinking of a skinny, 18 year old inner city kid hunched over a Morse Code machine in a radio room on a warship tapping out messages somewhere in the Pacific. During World War II US Navy warships used Morse code to speak to each other while they were out at sea. My dad was a radioman. As I watched a WWII era training film to learn more I could imagine dad’s finger on that code sending device. Click HERE to watch a 1943 US Navy training film demonstrating sending Morse Code. Dad didn’t talk much about serving as a US Navy radioman on a warship in the Pacific. Like so many stories our loved ones thought were inconsequential we end up cobbling them together from memory and archives.