"One of history's most heroic acts . . . an act of perfect courage" was what President Theodore Roosevelt called it when, during target practice off Pensacola in 1904, Chief Gunner's Mate Mons Monssen of the battleship Missouri* crawled into the magazine after an explosion had already killed 29 men and injured five, and with bare hands beat out a fire which would have killed 600 more had it reached the powder room. Mate Monssen got a Congressional Medal. In 1925 he retired, a lieutenant. In 1930 he died. This spring the Navy...
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