Reprinted with permission from The Storm Lake Times Pilot and author. Second story in a series.

Del Thayer was at his general quarters station the day a Fritz X PGM gravity bomb ripped a gaping hole in the port side of the USS Savannah.

It was a bright and cloudless day, and the German Luftwaffe had used the glare of the sun as cover to score a direct hit. The bomb that hit the Savannah smashed through three decks before striking an ammunition holding room in the lower left of the ship. Explosion after explosion rocked the Brooklyn-Class cruiser and fires raged for almost an hour. The smoke from the impact could be seen from the coast of Italy, where the fighting for Salerno still raged. The date was September 11, 1943, 9:44 a.m.

Playing America’s Game

In another September, eight years earlier, Del was finishing an outstanding season with the Storm Lake White Caps. Two years before that, he was making a bid for varsity on the Buena Vista College football team. He played football all of his four years at BVC, with the 1933 yearbook calling him “one of the cleanest workers on the field.”

Del’s greatest love, though, was baseball. He pitched for the BVC intramural team and helped the White Caps to victory as first baseman in many games across his 4-season career. He was popular with the crowds for his “colorful” playing and was regarded as a hometown hero whenever he returned to play a game after leaving the White Caps. He ended his first season with a .319 batting average and had a brief stint in the Minor Leagues. According to his niece, there was even talk of him being recruited for the Major Leagues, though he never actually went.

Coach Thayer

If baseball was his first passion, then coaching was his second. Del was hired as the high school basketball and baseball coach in Dickens, Iowa, following his graduation from BVC, where he remained until 1936 when he became the coach at Everly High School. He excelled as a coach, proving to be just as talented at coaching as he was at fielding, and just as popular among his students as with his fellow Beavers. He was more than a coach, he was a friend. He was active in his players’ lives and community, and brought home numerous trophies and titles.

From Everly to Italy

Del’s dazzling career was put on hold in 1942 when he answered his Nation’s call to service and joined the United States Navy on July 1st. He was, as written by the Storm Lake Pilot-Tribune, “fighting for a world in which boys play baseball…instead of manning machine guns and bombing cities and villages.”

Del saw his first combat action off the coast of Brazil, where the cruiser hunted Nazi submarines in March 1943. In July, Del and the Savannah made the trek to Italy where they participated in the invasion of Sicily, supporting the landings of the 1st Infantry Division at the Gela Beachhead. The naval gunfire from the Savannah was credited by the 1st Infantry for “crushing three infantry attacks and silencing four artillery batteries” during the ensuing battles.

When that Fritz bomb hit the Savannah some two months later, the ship was aiding the American campaign in Salerno. It was one of over 100 vessels damaged or sunk during the campaign, but the naval gunfire unleashed upon the Germans at Salerno became the new standard for all future invasions.

The Savannah, though greatly damaged, did not sink that sunny fall day. The crew managed to fix the damage enough to get her to Malta where she was docked for emergency repairs. In December 1943, the USS Savannahreturned home. Del, however, did not.

It is unknown if it was in those first, terrifying seconds of explosions and fire or during the chaos that followed, but Del Thayer was killed in action on September 11, 1943. He was just 32 years old. Although he was initially listed as missing in action, Del’s wife, Valera, was notified in late November that her husband had been buried at sea. Even in death, Del would never again touch U.S. soil.

BVU Remembers

Though his body was never to return, his memory is always present. It is present in Everly where he made his life, in the hearts of his nieces and nephews, in the quiet corridors of Edson-Victory Hall where he played at BVU, and here, in this article.

And now it is September again, 81 years after Del’s death. Summer has come and gone, and the students have returned to the BVU campus. The war that was begun on another September 11, nearly 60 years after the bombing of the USS Savannah, has ended, and America is at peace once more. Outside, it is bright and sunny, and the trees are still green. Down the street, boys are playing baseball.