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(This story was submitted to the People's War site by a volunteer from ´óÏó´«Ã½ Radio Suffolk on behalf of Ted Vandegrift and has been added to the site with his permission. Mr Vandegrift fully understands the site's terms and conditions).

My Uncle Putt was on the American battleship, USS Massachusetts BA59, otherwise known as ‘Big Mamie’, that fired the first 16 inch shell when America entered WWII. It was fired at Casablanca in November 1942 at the Vichy French battleship, ‘Jean Bart’. His role was as a loader on the 16 inch guns. That was the first shot fired.

The last shot fired was in Japan in 1945. Still on the USS Massachusetts, he’d been in all the major campaigns in the Pacific theatre of war. The last shot was fired in July 1945 whilst returning to Kamaishi after bombarding a factory at Hamamatsu. He went ashore with the first landing party at Yokosuka naval base in Tokyo Bay. He said the Japanese still had unused Red Cross medical supplies that had been donated by the Americans for a major earthquake disaster in Japan in the 1920s.

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