There have been a lot of posthumous service medals bestowed in recent years, which maybe isn’t a bad thing, but the Navy has made it pretty dishearteningly clear one of them will absolutely not be the Navy Cross for chaplain Lt. Thomas Conway. According to survivors, he tirelessly swam through shark-infested waters administering spiritual comfort and last rites to the men of the USS Indianapolis.
However, the bureaucrats were able to reject a recent petition on technical grounds, allowing them to add further insult to the injury of the 880 fatalities, many of whom possibly could have survived were it not for procedural snafus. The horrific, heroic stories of the heavy cruiser’s captain and crew are told in Mario Van Peebles’s “USS Indianapolis: Men of Courage,” which opens this Veteran’s Day, Nov. 11, in New York.
