Navy Mustang

When fifteen-year-old Edgar DeLong convinced his family to let him join the United States Navy in 1944, he didn't know what his future would bring. In Navy Mustang, DeLong details what his adventure-filled life is like from the day he enlists to when he retires twenty-six years later, including earning the designation of United States Navy Mustang. DeLong describes his experiences in the World War II battles of Iwo Jima and Okinawa. He gives a first-person account of the Bikini atomic bomb tests and never-before-revealed stories about the bomb. He tells of his travels throughout the world, including how young Germans received an American sailor riding a bike down the Rhine, why you should learn to play chess if you want to meet people from all over the world without having to speak their language, and what it was like to hang out with the priests from the Vatican during the reign of Pope Pius XII. Loaded with photographs and detailed dates, DeLong shows the pros and cons of what it was like to live as a sailor and an officer during the last quarter of the twentieth century.