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40 Insights into the Lives of Famous War Veterans

Khalid Elhassan July 13, 2019 26 min

33. Borgnine went from vegetable seller to vet

After graduating high school in 1935, Ernest Borgnine was selling vegetables on the street when he saw a Navy recruitment poster, and decided being a sailor seemed more interesting than his current occupation. He enlisted, and ended up aboard the destroyer/ minesweeper USS Lamberton, until his honorable discharge in October of 1941. A few months later, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, and Borgnine reenlisted soon thereafter. He spent WWII patrolling the Atlantic coast aboard the USS Sylph, on antisubmarine duty, until his discharge in 1945 as a Gunner’s Mate, 1^st Class.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.