Today in World War II History—September 27, 1942: During the withdrawal from Matanikau on Guadalcanal, Signalman 1C Douglas Munro uses his Higgins Boat to shield Marines at the cost of his life;.
So notes Sarah Sundin on her blog.
Douglas Munro.
Munro had dropped out of college to enter the Coast Guard in 1939 as he saw the threat of war looming, doing so as its primary mission was saving lives. He's been born to a Canadian mother and American father, in Canada, but his father had relocated the family to the United States as a child. Munro was very slight of build, as the photograph above shows, and had to eat heavily to meet the Coast Guard enlistment weight.
Sundin also notes that today saw the last performance by Glenn Miller before he entered the service. At the time he was making $15,000 to $20,000 per week, which seems like a lot now, but which was the equivalent of $250,000 to $333,000 per week in today's' dollars, a vast sum indeed.
