USS Herndon

What began as a volunteer project for a high school marching band's trip to Normandy became a search for the 300 sailors aboard the USS Herndon on D-Day.

What inspired this research?

When I volunteered to help coordinate the Herndon High School marching band's trip to Normandy for the 75th anniversary of D-Day, I didn't even know there had been a ship called the USS Herndon.

Then I held its original muster roll at a museum in Herndon, Virginia. The moment I opened its weathered pages, I knew we were no longer honoring a ship. We were honoring 300 members of the Greatest Generation.

With the help of my super sleuth sister Sue Johnson, we traced 293 of the 300 men on board—the final seven had no siblings, no children, and no one left to find.

In the News ↓

Original USS Herndon crew photograph — The original crew.

John Buchan Mitchell’s wartime journal, with his Navy portrait and handwritten account of the Normandy invasion — John Buchan Mitchell’s D-Day journal.

USS Herndon was the lead ship of the Allied armada on D-Day. Before the invasion, the sailors were told to write a letter home—and make it a good one, because it might be the last thing they ever wrote. Every sailor made it home.