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.

Conrad H. “Connie” Carlson

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Conrad H. “Connie” Carlson, a former math major from Harvard who sang in the Academy choir, served on a variety of cruisers and destroyers during the war, including the Astoria, sunk from under him at Savo Island, and the Douglas H. Fox, assailed by a dozen kamikazes at Okinawa. After V-J Day, he briefly commanded the USS MacDougal (DD-358), before the Navy sent him to MIT in his hometown of Cambridge, Massachusetts, to earn a graduate degree in electronics. Carlson was thrilled, gushing, “How lucky can a man be!”. Shore assignments serving in Norway as part of the Military Assistance Advisory Group (MAAG) to NATO followed. The Norway tour was “accompanied,” meaning that his wife Alice and their two daughters went with him, and again he felt lucky: “Living in Oslo,” he wrote, “was particularly nice.” He spent most of his retirement teaching math, a job he loved, before fully retiring to play golf and follow Boston sports teams. In 2005, at age 87, he attended the 65th reunion of the class of 1940. It was his last. He died in 2011 at the age of 93.

_{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.}