George H. Tyner "Pappy" 113th Headquarters 30th Infantry Division

email from Lane Zatopek,6/08: "Pappy" Tyner was killed when the LST struck the mine on 15 June '44. My dad's notes on page 16 of the Hewitt book read, "The mine was struck by the ship's prop and it blew the fantail clean off, over the pilot house, and onto the cargo deck. It fell on my friend 'Pappy' Tyner, almost cutting him in two, between hip and rib cage." My dad's verbal account relates the efforts of the men to lift the fantail from Tyner's trapped body; they managed to pull him from beneath the prop, but he died shortly thereafter. I assume his death was within the hours of 15 June, because the ship struck the mine at early breakfast mess and he could not have lived long. There were twelve men lost from the 113/Hq in the LST disaster, and beyond Tyner and Srp, I'm not sure which were my dad's. He has always said the hardest thing was writing letters to the families of the missing (most of the men lost from LST 133 were vaporized) and then having to write the same families when the men were declared KIA. A sailor who served on LST 133 contacted my dad in the last couple of years to tell him that he had kept up with the ship as it went through the war. He told my dad that LST 133 was towed back to port and repaired, then was sent through the Panama Canal to the Pacific where she participated in some of the Pacific landings. Following the war, LST 133 was scrapped for testing at Bikini Atoll, where she lies at the bottom of the sea. Just a little trivia.

Page last revised 07/04/2008