"This is the engineer soldier at his best," said Douglas MacArthur in 1945 when he pinned a Distinguished Service Cross on Major General Leif John Sverdrup, his acting Chief Engineer for the Pacific Theater. The D.S.C. was lean Jack Sverdrup's reward for leading the reconnaissance and capture of Lingayen airfield on Luzon. But he had long since won greater fame for his methodically frenzied hacking of airstrips, almost overnight, out of South Pacific jungles. At war's end Jack Sverdrup went back to his St. Louis engineering firm of Sverdrup & Parcel.
Last week the...
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