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| Lloyd has been a member of Joseph P. Chaisson Post 41 for fifty eight years. In the year 2007 he was honored, along with wife Gertrude, as the Memorial Day Parade Marshal.
Lloyd was born in Toronto, Canada and naturalized an American citizen in the State of New Jersey. He joined the United States Army Air Force January 19, 1943. Upon completion of basic training he was assigned to radio repair training at Camp Murphy, Florida.
Sharing some of his memories of the Second World War with Germany, on February 1st, 1943, he boarded a Liberty Troop ship destined to Naples, Italy where he was assigned to 1078 Signal Company, 62 Service Group. The Liberty ship traveled in a convoy protected by smaller anti-sub ships. The men were housed in the ship’s hold for twenty seven days across the Atlantic, with hammock-type beds six tiers high, two meals a day and some very rough seas. The anti-sub ships would alert the larger ships of German sub sightings, placing the larger ships on alert. Lloyd waited with the other men down in the hold for the sound of a torpedo or the all clear. Talk about feeling trapped and helpless.
From Naples he traveled to Manduria, Italy, by a freight train at night to avoid detection. The box car was known as forty and eight. (Italians moved a lot of their supplies with donkeys. The box car would hold forty men or eight donkeys. The donkey dung had to be cleaned out when the men used it.) From Manduria, Italy Lloyd’s job was changed to anti-radar and he installed secret radar jamming devises in B-24 bombers at the nearby air bases. He returned to the United States having earned the American Theater Campaign and Good conduct medal.
Lloyd was honorably discharged December 15, 1945. | |
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- LLOYD G. JOHNSTON
