Freedom Fighters: Eugene Allen - KLTV.com-Tyler, Longview, Jacksonville, Texas | ETX News

By Joan Hallmark

Soon after Gene Allen boarded the destroyer, the U.S.S. Coney, he was assigned to be a radar operator.

Allen found out that the newly invented radar was "the ear of the ship", but his job on the Coney was something he never was able to tell his family.

Nor was he able to tell them where he was, because the Coney was right in the middle of some of the biggest battles of World War Two in the Pacific.

Allen's very first battle on the Coney, the invasion of the Solomon Islands, was almost his last.

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