FEATURE
The division officer hounded Crumpton for two weeks. Crumpton wouldn’t budge. Then came a decisive blow. “He eventually said to me, ‘I know why you don’t want to go. You don’t think
CAPT John R. Crumpton ’48, USN (Ret.), initially did not want to attend the Naval Academy. He originally wanted to finish fighting in World War II and return to Mississippi to raise Jersey cows.
you could make it,’” Crumpton said. “When he said that, I got mad at him and, ‘I said I’ll show you and I did.’ He was successful, I guess. He did some reverse psychology.” The two nominees interviewed before a board of three officers and both received recommendations. They were shipped to Norfolk where they were to take the Academy’s entrance exam. However, they had missed the exam date by a week. Washington brass decreed they, along with six other late arrivals, could take the test. Only one of those eight passed the test to enter the Academy with the Class of 1947. Crumpton was assigned to fleet laundry until he was sent to the Naval Academy Preparatory School which had moved to Bainbridge, MD, in 1943. In the spring of 1944, Crumpton realized he really did want to go to the Academy. He boosted his chances of acceptance by reenlisting for another six years. All he had to do was pass the entrance exam and he had a guaranteed spot in Annapolis. The Academy would
SOLE SUSPECT By Captain John R. Crumpton ’48, USN (Ret.) I enjoyed plebe year. That was the best year of all of them. Easter Sunday, six or eight of us decided we were going to have an Easter egg hunt. We planned to go into the youngsters’ rooms and steal all their shoes, every shoe we could find. Bedroom slippers, drill shoes, parade shoes, anything that had a sole on it from their rooms. When it came time to put the plan into action, only one other plebe showed up, a fellow southerner, from Georgia. We got every shoe from every youngster room that we could find. While he was stealing shoes, he got caught. A fellow looked over the edge of his bunk and down at him on his hands and knees underneath the bunk. He asked, ‘what are you doing down there?’ He was trying to get a shoe from way back under the bunk and he said, ‘well sir, I dropped my pencil as I was going to close the windows and it’s under your bunk’ and he got the
accept 75 enlisted and 75 Reservists out of a pool of about 300. When his test results came in, he stood at 153rd. The administrator said he would not be among the Class of 1948. However, Crumpton knew the administrator was missing a critical piece of information. “I was on the reserve list, and I said, ‘oh you got me on the wrong list,’” he said. “They argued, and I said, ‘go and check my record.’ They found out I was on the wrong list. I was a regular Navy fellow. All I had to do was pass and so I went right away.” Crumpton reported for Plebe Summer and because he was pre-enlisted, didn’t find the experience overly taxing. He would go on to serve on a minesweeper during the Korean War and was on staff of the U.S. Military Assistance Command, Vietnam prior to combat operations. He met his wife, Eve, during a post-war assignment in Japan. She was teaching the children of American military personnel. They were married for 61 years.
shoe and he left. Plebes were charged with closing windows in the morning as the room was starting to get warm. We put the shoes in a big pile in the middle of Bancroft’s main passageway. We dropped one shoe on this side of the pile and one shoe on the other side of the pile. They were all mixed up. No two shoes from any one room were anywhere near each another. We were smart. We only did the third class shoes. We didn’t do the first class shoes. The third class came out with nothing. Some of them were barefooted, they didn’t have even socks. I think they would have killed us. One fellow that was half asleep and lost his shoe remembered it was one of those southerners who lost his pencil and so the southerners were really getting interrogated. I don’t know how I escaped. I did get accused, ‘you took my shoe!’ ‘No, I did not take your shoe.’ Of course, he asked the wrong (guy). I didn’t lie. A better question would have been did you take any shoes? a
LEGACY OF VALOR: Korean War, Vietnam War and Cold War The U.S. Naval Academy Alumni Association & Foundation is beginning to gather stories from alumni who served in the Korean, Vietnam, and Cold wars. To share your story, please contact Shipmate Editor Jimmy DeButts at jimmy.debutts@usna.com.
20 SHIPMATE • JULY-AUGUST 2024