He was twenty-six years old when the hometown paper back in Monticello ran his photograph.

The headline called him a submarine fighter. The ink was grainy and the halftone blurred his face a little, but the pride was sharp enough to cut steel. Russell Leroy Benjamin, electrician’s mate, second class, son of Grover and Verda Benjamin of Route 1. A Monticello boy who had already seen Pearl Harbor, Coral Sea, Midway. Now he was headed to the Submarine School in New London, Connecticut, to join what the paper called “our growing fleet of underseas fighters.”