HEROES: Beached

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From Independence, Iowa, on the Wapsipinicon River, Harry Ervin Yarnell went to Annapolis in 1893, and started his career in the U. S. Navy. It was his luck, good or bad, to be assigned to the Orient. He saw the Philippine Insurrection, the Boxer Rebellion, subsequently much of the world from the deck of U. S. warships.

In 1936, active, wiry Harry Yarnell became Commander in Chief of the Asiatic Fleet with the rank of Admiral. He had no hobby but his assignment, of which he made a deep and unremitting study. In his hot spot in the Far East he sat coolly, made the U. S. fist in Asia something to be reckoned with. Last summer the Japanese Navy warned a U. S. destroyer out of China's port of Swatow. "We're staying at Swatow," radioed Admiral Yarnell, said further that he would hold Japan responsible for U. S. lives lost. The State Department backed him. The Japanese Navy respectfully thanked him for his "sympathetic attitude." The U. S. destroyer, unmolested, stayed at Swatow.

To Admiral Yarnell last week Acting Secretary of the Navy Charles Edison said, "You were awarded the Distinguished Service Medal [Aug. 28, 1939] for exceptional ability, courage, tact. . . in . . . handling with the greatest skill . . . the many delicate situations that arose during the continued emergency in China. . . . The Secretary of the Navy regrets. . . ."

For, as it comes to all Navy men at 64, often as cruelly and as indiscriminately as Death, retirement last week beached the old Admiral. Hobbyless, Harry Yarnell settled down to read books on the Orient, twiddle his brown thumbs, watch the sailboats off Newport, R. I.