"When we heard the news everyone just went crazy." (letter to his family, August 19, 1945)

James William Simpson

Bill Simpson War: World War II, 1939-1946 Branch: Navy Service Location: Sicily, Italy; Normandy, France; Okinawa Island (Ryukyu Islands); North Africa; Iwo Jima Highest Rank: Seaman Second Class Place of Birth: Monticello, KY

As a 72nd birthday present to his father, Stuart Simpson assembled Witness to War, a scrapbook of Bill's exploits during World War II as a seaman aboard the U.S.S. Thurston, a troop transport. The ship saw service in both the Atlantic and Pacific, most meaningfully in the English Channel on June 6, 1944, as it carried troops and vehicles for the Normandy Invasion. Among the items in the Simpson scrapbook are detailed pages of instructions for the Thurston's activities for D-Day, letters Bill wrote home to his family, and an account of a rare moment when the crew of the Thurston actually fired on another vessel - nearly two months after V-J Day.