Ray Thompson
Seaman - Brigadier General

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Raymond Thompson, a Hartford County novelist and retired brigadier general whose World War II experiences became the subject of several novels and a memoir, died on December 13, 1997, following complication from surgery at Fallston General Hospital. He was 71.

Born and raised in Thornwood, New York, he moved to Oregon where he graduated from high school in Tigard in 1943. At age 17, he was too young for the draft, so he joined the merchant marine.

For three years, he served on board tankers and Liberty ships in the Atlantic and Pacific War Zones. He was a crewman on board the S.S. LEONIDAS MERRITT at Leyte Gulf when on November 12, 1944, she became the first merchant vessel struck by kamikazes. The first plane hit the foredeck, causing numerous casualties and a fire.

Then at 5:15, while the crew was still fighting the original fire, another suicide plane came in strafing. It snagged a cargo boom, causing the plane's 550 lb. bomb to explode. The aircraft engine tore through the bridge and three steel bulkheads, ending in the ship's engine room. Of the vessel's 85 crew, 55 men were killed in these two attacks.

On November 28, 1944, the MERRITT left Leyte for Portland, Oregon, arriving there January 5, 1945.

In 1951, he enlisted in the United States Air Force as a basic airman, was given a direct commission as a first lieutenant in 1955, remained in the Air Force Reserve and retired in 1983 as a brigadier general.

He worked as a reporter and feature writer for the Baltimore Evening Sun for ten years and then operated his own advertising/public relations agency for more than 35 years. He was the author of four books, three of them on the history of veterinary medicine and one of them, a best-selling novel, The Watery Hell, based on his World War II experiences in the merchant marine.

In 1996, after a five-year search, he located eleven surviving crewmates from the MERRITT. He flew them to Baltimore for a reunion and a cruise on the BROWN. During the reunion, his presented the ship's museum with a piece of the Japanese plane. He had picked up the fragment after the attack and saved it for 52 years.

He is survived by his wife Nancy.