The Naval Academy Class of 1940 [slideshow]

As shocking as the Pearl Harbor attack had been for the Naval Academy Class of 1940, the sudden arrival of peace was nearly as disorienting. Most of the Forties, as they were known, were still only 27 years old, and the great adventure of their lives was now behind them. The war had dominated virtually all of their adult lives, from Hitler’s reoccupation of the Rhineland in 1936 to Japan’s surrender in 1945. For nine years, they had been directed by circumstance, authority, and a shared feeling of responsibility. They had served in different theaters, in different jobs, on different ships—or planes, or battalions. Yet all of them had been forged, tempered, and tested. Every man in the class knew someone who had been killed in the war, and the sacrifice of their classmates was etched into their hearts.

They had learned to live in the moment; now they had to think of the future. For the next two decades and longer, they served in a wide variety of assignments throughout the world. For some of them, there was another war, in Korea. For a few, there was even a third war, in Vietnam. Throughout it all, they stayed in touch with one another, attended class reunions when they could, and caught the occasional Navy football game. Eventually, they retired. Some took up a new profession; several became teachers. But none of them ever forgot their trial by fire in the Second World War, nor did they forget one another. They were always Forties.

John W. Myers Montgomery

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John W. Myers Montgomery wistfully dreamed about a dizzying number of young women all through his Academy and war years before he finally met “the one.” When he was sent by the Navy to George Washington University Law School after the war, he met and married Mary Margaret Higgs of Washington, and they had three children between 1948 and 1955. Graduating in time for the Korean War, Montgomery served on USS Borie, which participated in the evacuation of American troops from Hungnam after the Chinese intervention. Following duty on the staff of Supreme Allied Commander NATO and an XO tour on the cruiser Norfolk, he returned to Washington and the Pentagon where he was the liaison to the House and Senate Appropriations Committees. After retiring from the Navy, he became the president of an insurance company, though he retired from that as well after two years to devote himself full time to advising the Boy Scouts of America. His son, John B. Montgomery, graduated from the Naval Academy in 1970, and his grandson graduated in 1998. Myers Montgomery died on April 16, 2001, at the age of 83.

_{Feature image credit: Graduation day at Annapolis, Class of 1940. Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, photograph by Harris & Ewing, [reproduction number, e.g., LC-USZ62-12345]. Public domain.}