McCoy Reynolds was born to Tilden and Rosabelle Reynolds September 23, 1916 in Pippa Passes, Kentucky, the sixth of eight children. The family moved to Branhams Creek in March 1931. He attended a one room school on Troublesome Creek and Hindman High School.

McCoy had a good sense of humor and loved music. He played the harmonica and was an excellent guitar player. In the mid-30's he bought a cheap guitar for Mom (his sister Elizabeth) and taught her some chords so he would have someone to play rhythm while he played the lead parts. Sometime about 1940 he got a letter from a band in Tennessee asking him to join the group. I believe he had played with them a couple of times when they had come through Eastern Kentucky. I just can't remember the name of the group, but they made it to the Grand Old Opry in Nashville a few years later. I have never heard why he turned them down.

The economic conditions for those times were bad for the country in general, and Eastern Kentucky in particular. He worked at whatever was available, including road building, laying a gas pipeline, and driving a taxi in Harlan.

And then December 7, 1941, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, and America was in WW II. It was apparent that all able-bodied men were going to be drafted, it was just question of when. McCoy started talking about enlisting soon after Pearl Harbor, but Grandma tried to talk him into waiting until he was drafted. He thought if he waited it would probably be the Army, and he wanted to be a Marine. I don't know all of the circumstances about when he made the final decision to enlist, and Mom doesn't either. Mom and Dad lived about eight miles away, at the head of Willerd (Willerd is for the locals), and Mom didn't know he had decided to enlist, or was leaving until after he was gone.

This is how I remember Grandma telling the story (and keep in mind, I barely remember this morning), and 1966 was probably the last time we talked about it. She looked as sad then talking about McCoy then as she did the first time I heard the story.

The cold January day McCoy was to leave they got up early and had breakfast as usual. He seemed like always and would talk and smile like any other day. After breakfast he got his things together and they put their coats on and went out on the porch. He gave Grandma a long hug, and then Grandpa, and then Grandma again. He then went slowly down the steps and through the gate and turned right down Branhams Creek. He took a few steps and then stopped, Grandma said it must have been for at least five minutes. McCoy looked at them on the porch and at the house, and slowly looked all around at everything in site in every direction. Grandma said she thought then that deep-down they both thought he would never see the mountains again. He looked back at them, waved and said bye, and continued on down the creek. Grandma and Grandpa were still standing on the end of the porch, watching until he turned around the hill and disappeared. They would now have three sons in service. Their oldest son, Canton, had been in the army since about 1920, and was stationed in Texas . Their youngest son, Raynor, enlisted in the army in 1939, and was stationed in Iceland, the last they knew.

There is a touch of irony in that on his way to war, McCoy would walk by the Reynolds Cemetery at the head of Branhams Creek, where he would later be buried. He walked on up the road toward Mallie and stopped to see his sister Mandy (Amanda) Slone, husband Estill, and their year and a half old son, Dempsey Adrian. They lived in a cabin on the old Hard Slone farm. Mom said McCoy loved Dempsey no end. He played with Dempsey for a while and hugged them both, then left. Oddly, neither Mom never heard what he did from there. Mom thought he probably went to see his girlfriend, Anna B. Moore. Her parents, Marson and Minnie Moore, had a small general store that was also the Mallie Post Office. Mom thinks Anna B. probably took him to Hindman to catch the bus, or he may have caught a ride to Hindman and saw her there. She taught school in Hindman. We think he took the bus from Hindman to Louisville where he enlisted, and then went to San Diego, most likely Camp Pendleton, for training. After McCoy completed training and was assigned duty, they no longer knew where he was. Because of security, after they were assigned offshore, they weren't allowed to say where they were, where they were going, or how things were going. All letters home were censored by military censors and any references to locations were cut or blacked out. They guessed that he was somewhere in the Pacific Campaign because he had a military APO address of San Francisco.

A very little history: Guadalcanal is an Island of the British Solomon Islands about 90 miles long and 30 miles wide, 1300 miles NE of Australia. It has a hilly to mountainous terrain, rising to 8,000 ft. in the central regions. The climate is wet and hot, with over 120 inches of rain annually. The island was mostly jungle, with rampant malaria, dysentery, and other tropical diseases. The Japanese started building an air base there in summer of 1942. With an air base on Guadalcanal and their existing air and naval bases in Rabaul, New Brittany, the Japanese would be able to endanger US shipping over a large area of the South Pacific. For this reason, Guadalcanal was to become the first major American offensive action in the Pacific, and the longest single campaign. The airbase was on the Northwest corner of the island, near the beach.

The re-enforced 1st Marine Division landed on Guadalcanal August 7,1942 with almost no opposition and took control of the airport that would be named Henderson Field. The Japanese were caught totally by surprise and only had about 3,000 people on the island, mostly workers building the airport. The Marines set up a defensive perimeter a couple of miles around the base. The Japanese retreated into the jungle, and basically became snipers until they could be reinforced, which was quick in coming. Although the Japanese were eventually able to land another 33,000 men, they were not able to land a concentrated force large enough to retake the base. Guadalcanal came to be called "Death Island" by the Japanese.

Late on the night of August 8, seven Japanese cruisers attacked and wrecked havoc. Torpedoes and gunfire sank four of five Allied cruisers and badly damaged another and two destroyers, then sailed away. The grave risk posed by enemy air and naval attacks prompted Admiral Turner to withdraw the transports and cargo vessels standing off the beaches late on August 9. Still on board the ships that left was a good part of the rations and ammunition, and nearly 1,400 Marines. The Marines were never completely out of supplies, and had captured some food stores after the landing, but from the landing until the 1st Division was relieved in the middle of December, the average Marine lost close to 25 pounds. The Japanese had much worse supply problems.

Bombing attacks on Henderson Field started shortly after the landing and were an almost daily occurrence. The base was frequently shelled at night by everything from submarines to battleships. Some of the attacks were just for psychological affect. There would be sporadic artillery fire and bombers flying over at night just to drop a few bombs or flares to disrupt sleep. The base was constantly fired at by snipers and machine guns from the jungle. At night enemy soldiers would sneak through the lines and some combat was in the Marine's foxholes. Several Marines were killed or wounded by bayonets in hand to hand combat. The Japanese would attack in waves and try to unnerve the defenders by over running them, a tactic that had worked in China and Burma, and led to a high casualty rate.

The Japanese mentality preparing for battle: This Sunday night the famous Sendai Regiment, one of the most respected in the Imperial Japanese Army, was determined to finish the task other, lesser formations had failed to do. Each soldier had been told by their officers, "If there is no victory over the American's, no member of the regiment should plan on returning home. All will die on Guadalcanal -- including officers." The Marines were driven back to the edge of Henderson Field but were able to hold there. They then started the tedious task of pushing the Japanese back into the jungle.

Near midnight on October 13, 1942, the Japanese navy positioned two battleships, Kongo and Haruna, each with eight 14" guns, within range of the air base. After their aircraft had dropped high-intensity flares to mark the target, the two ships' sixteen guns began zeroing in on Henderson Field and soon found the range. For more than an hour the huge guns propelled an estimated 973 fourteen-inch shells, some high-explosive and some armor-piercing, into the area of the airfield. The unimaginable terror this great bombardment caused to the men in their foxholes was matched by the actual destruction. Henderson Field was knocked out temporarily and only 42 aircraft were left operational, and aviation fuel was down to critical levels. This was the worst shelling the Marines endured during World War II.

Specs for Japanese battleship 14" guns: Bore 14.0 inches, Weight 84.6 tons, Length OA 648.4 inches, Weight Projectile 1485 lbs., Muzzle Velocity 2543 ft/second, Max. Range 38,770 yards (22 miles), Max Rate of Fire 2/min.

The 1st Marine Division was relieved in December 1942 with 774 killed, 1,154 wounded, and 5,400 cases of malaria. Of the 36,000 Japanese on Guadalcanal from August 1942 to February 1943, 14,000 were killed in combat, 9,000 died from disease and starvation, and 13,000 were withdrawn.

In early January 1943 Mom and Dad had gone to stay at Grandma and Grandpa's because Mom was due to deliver a "bundle of joy" (That would be me) in mid-January, and the mid-wife lived close by. Late in the day on January 9th, a military information officer stationed in Hazard received a telegram for Tilden Reynolds. It was his job to contact families of servicemen with any information from the government. He took a taxi from Hazard to Mallie and at about 10 or 10:30 PM he stopped at the first house he saw with lights on to ask directions. He was at the home of Rod Jones, I believe an uncle of McCoy's girlfriend, Anna B. Moore. Rod told the Officer that he was a close friend of the family and would deliver the telegram that night. After some discussion, the Officer reluctantly agreed and went back to Hazard. Rod stopped at Anna B.'s and got her father Marson, and Marson and Rod went to Grandpa's with lanterns, arriving about 11:00 PM. Marson stayed by the gate and Rod went up on the porch and Grandpa got out of bed and went outside. Rod told Grandpa about the military officer and handed the telegram to him. Grandpa held it for a moment, and then handed it back to Rod and asked him to read it to him. Grandpa could read quite well, but I guess didn't want to read what he knew would be bad news.

By lantern light (they didn't have electricity) Rod opened the telegram and read the short message "The War Department regrets to inform you that your son McCoy Reynolds was killed in action 25 November 1942", and gave the telegram back to Grandpa. Rod and Marson left, and after a moment, Grandpa went back inside. By then Grandma and Mom were up, sitting in the front room. Grandma asked simply, "Which one is it?" When Marson got back home, his wife Minnie used exactly the same words. For many days after that Grandpa would go out and walk from one end of the long front porch to the other, sometimes for hours.

Mom can't remember if this was from Captain LaBlanc or another letter: "The unit was in battle and was pinned down by a Japanese machine gun and could not move in any direction, and was in danger of being over run by Japanese infantry. The unit leader told them they had to get rid of the machine gun nest, and asked for a volunteer. He told them that whoever tried to get to the machine gun would probably not survive. McCoy volunteered without hesitation and started off. He crawled through the underbrush to within 20 feet of the machine nest, and destroyed it with a hand grenade. He was then killed him with grenade by a sniper in a tree. He died instantly and suffered no pain."

From the commanding officer: "My condolences to you and your family on the loss of your son. The loss of Pvt. Reynolds provoked much sorrow among the members of my command. He was respected by all his fellow Marines as an inspiring example of bravery, fortitude, and soldierly virtue." Osborne K. LaBlank Captain, USMCR

McCoy was posthumously awarded the Silver Star for conspicuous gallantry in action, without regard for personal safety, the Purple heart, Presidential Unit Citation, and Asiatic-Pacific Campaign Medal.

The Destroyer Escort DE-440 was named in his honor, the USS McCoy Reynolds, and christened by Rosabelle Reynolds February 22, 1944, in Newark, NJ. The ship was commissioned May 2, 1944 and began war time service in July 1944. The ship was in service until the end of the war and was decommissioned in May 1946 and entered the Pacific Reserve Fleet. The USS McCoy Reynolds was re-commissioned 29 March 1951 for the Korean War and remained in service until February 1957. In February 1957 the ship was transferred to Portugal and renamed CORTE REAL. The Portuguese scrapped the ship in October 1968. One of the 5 inch guns from the USS McCoy Reynolds (CORTE REAL) is on display in the Naval Park in Lisbon, Portugal.

McCoy's remains were returned from Guadalcanal, and as was the mountain tradition, the coffin was taken to Tilden and Rosabelle's home, where people paid their respects. Canton made the funeral arrangements and decided to have a military funeral. I don't know about Grandpa, Grandma probably had no idea what a military funeral was. I heard her say several years later that she didn't like that part of it. People's perspectives are interesting. Canton, being career Army, saw a military funeral as a last tribute to someone who had served their country. Grandma thought McCoy had already been around too much shooting. I don't know if she thought that at the funeral, or came to believe it over time.

McCoy Reynolds was inducted into the Knott County Hall of Fame in 1990. For details on the USS McCoy, click here.

These histories are taken from Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships (US Naval Historical Center, 1959-1991).

Naming: Destroyer escorts were named for Naval heroes and other notable persons.

Numbering: All destroyer escorts were numbered in a single series, designated "DE". Surviving ships became Frigates (designated FF) 30 June 1975.

"From the "Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships," (1969) Vol. 4, p.295. McCOY REYNOLDS

McCoy Reynolds, born 23 September 1916 in Pippapasses, Ky., enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps Reserve at Louisville, Ky., 23 January 1942. He was killed in action on Guadalcanal 25 November 1942 after boldly exposing himself to destroy a Japanese machine gun nest in fighting to defend Henderson Field. Private Reynolds was posthumously awarded the Silver Star for the conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity without regard for personal safety.

• DE-440
• Displacement: 1,350 t.
• Length: 306'
• Beam: 36'8"
• Draft: 9'5"
• Speed: 24 k.
• Complement: 186
• Armament: 2 5"; 4 40mm; 10 20mm; 3 21" torpedo tubes
• 8 depth charge projectors
• 2 depth charge tracks
• 1 hedge hog
• Class: JOHN C. BUTLER

McCOY REYNOLDS (DE-440) was laid down by Federal Shipbuilding & Dry Dock Co., Newark, N.J., 18 November 1943; launched 22 February 1944; sponsored by Mrs. Tilden Reynolds; and commissioned at Brooklyn Navy Yard 2 May 1944, Lt. Comdr. Edwin K. Winn in command.

After shakedown off Bermuda, McCOY REYNOLDS departed Norfolk 11 July to escort aircraft carrier RANGER (CV-4) to the Canal Zone, arriving 16 July. She transited the canal 26 July; reached San Diego 6 August; and, between 13 and 19 August, screened transports and supply ships to the Hawaiian Islands.

Sailing 3 September, McCOY REYNOLDS escorted ships via the Admiralties to the Palaus. From 20 to 24 September, she screened shore bombardment ships aiding in the conquest of Peleliu by U.S. Marines. On 25 September, en route to join TF 57 out of Guam, McCOY REYNOLDS made underwater contact with a suspected submarine, and for 2 hours launched four depth charge attacks without results. At 02:03 26 September, she picked up a contact on surface radar at about 9,000 yards. Five minutes later it disappeared; however, at 02:13 her sonar regained contact at a range of 2,500 yards. At 02:19 she launched the first of seven vigorous, intensive attacks with hedgehogs and depth charges on the target, probably Japanese submarine RO-47. Four hours later, a violent underwater explosion was felt, and her lookouts spotted an oil slick which by noon covered an area of 2 square miles.

Arriving Guam 28 September, McCOY REYNOLDS served on convoy and escort duty; 25 and 26 October she screened ships of TG 30.8 east of Luzon as they refueled hard-hitting carriers of the Fast Carrier Task Force. She escorted two merchant troopships to Leyte Gulf 11 to 14 November, sailed in convoy 15 November and arrived at Kossol, Palaus, the 18th. With sister ship CONKLIN (DE-439), she began a sonar search at 10:55 19 November for a submarine that had been spotted in the western entrance to Kossol Roads. Four hours later, she made contact and closed to attack with hedgehogs and depth charges. McCOY REYNOLDS and CONKLIN made a total of eight attacks until an underwater explosion occurred and oil and debris gushed to the surface at about 17:45, marking the sinking of Japanese submarine I-37.

Through March 1945, McCOY REYNOLDS escorted convoys in the Marianas and Marshalls and conducted antisubmarine patrols out of Ulithi and Manus. She departed Ulithi 26 March to screen the Logistics Support Group of the Fifth Fleet's Fast Carrier Task Force during the Okinawa campaign. During her third escort mission on 12 May, McCOY REYNOLDS went to the aid of aircraft carrier BUNKER HILL (CV-17), struck by two kamikazes the day before with heavy losses and serious damage. McCOY REYNOLDS guarded the carrier to Ulithi, arriving 14 May, then returned to the Logistics Support Group, with whom she experienced the typhoon of 5 June which severely damaged more than 20 ships of the fleet.

After a convoy run to and from Ulithi, McCOY REYNOLDS carried out antisubmarine and anti-air patrols off Okinawa during the closing weeks of the Pacific war. On 12 July she captured two enemy soldiers attempting to escape from the island in a dugout canoe. On 9 September she rescued two survivors of an Army fighter which had flamed out off Hagushi. She made passenger, freight, and mail runs from Okinawa to Nagasaki and Sasebo until 15 October, when she sailed for Saipan, Pearl Harbor, and San Diego.

Arriving San Diego 5 November, she decommissioned there 31 May 1946 and entered the Pacific Reserve Fleet. She recommissioned 29 March 1951, Lt. Comdr. Peter S. Smith in command.

Following shakedown, she departed San Diego 8 July and arrived Pearl Harbor the 14th. She operated out of Pearl Harbor until 3 May 1952 when she deployed for the Far East. Sailing via Midway and Yokosuka, Japan, she arrived off the eastern coast of Korea 17 May. The next day she began shore bombardment at Songjin, and on 21 May she destroyed a North Korean railroad train. She alternated duty off Korea with escort runs from Japan to Okinawa and with Formosa Patrol duty until departing 20 August for Pearl Harbor, arriving the 29th.

McCOY REYNOLDS operated out of Pearl Harbor during the next 16 months and deployed to the Far East 4 January 1954. She reached Manila Bay 18 January and, after exercises with the Royal Thai Navy, carried out training operations in the South China Sea. After serving as station ship at Hong Kong 20 March to 12 May, she exercised in the South China Sea and Gulf of Siam until making passage to Pearl Harbor, 29 June to 11 July.

McCOY REYNOLDS sailed 31 May 1955 for surveillance patrols off the Carolines and service as a search and rescue ship in the mid-Pacific, returning to Pearl Harbor 22 October. She participated in antisubmarine warfare, escort and other training until sailing for the west coast 24 A ugust 1956. She arrived San Francisco 31 August, underwent overhaul at Hunter's Point and decommissioned at Treasure Island 7 February 1957. Under the Military Assistance Program, she was loaned to the Government of Portugal, with whom she served as frigate CORTE REAL (F-334). Struck from the U.S. Naval Register 1 November 1968, she was sold to Portugal the next month.

McCOY REYNOLDS received four battle stars for World War II service and one battle star for Korean service.

[Transferred to Portugal on 7 February 1957, CORTE REAL was discarded by the Portuguese on 21 October 1968. "Conway's All The World's Fighting Ships, 1947-1995," p.318. "Jane's Fighting Ships, 1969-70," p.254.] Transcribed by Michael Hansen

For more pictures of McCoy Reynolds, the USMC at Guadalcanal, and the USS McCoy visit the picture gallery.

Respectfully submitted by:

Earl M. Venters