Gene Moore

He was a baseball prodigy. At the age of fifteen, Gene Moore was a boy, playing like a man, in a game where men, play like boys.

Headed for baseball stardom with the Brooklyn Dodgers, his destiny was interrupted by
Pearl Harbor.
His life... and
maybe our
national
pastime...
would be
forever altered.

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I had the distinct pleasure Saturday night to speak to a reunion of the Guadalcanal Task Force 22.3. That's right! These are the men who captured the German Submarine U-505! What a thrill to be with them and share the story of what happened to their German prisoners after they captured them and dropped them off in Norfolk, VA. It was truly a wonderful experience. They seemed genuinely excited about hearing the events contained in Playing with the Enemy. What an honor it was to have the privilege to meet them and share this story.

I felt so inadequate standing in front of these heroic men. The act of capturing the U-505 and its Enigma Machine and code books saved Allied lives. I was standing in the midst of history. They looked like every day Americans. You would not pick them out as the heroic men that they are, but history proves them to be just that. Like the other men of the Greatest Generation, they went to war, did their jobs, then came home to raise their families and become your next door neighbor. The men of the Guadalcanal Task force are truly heroes.

These men, even though they do not realize it, changed the course of another man's life they had never met and never heard of. If the U-505 had not been captured, my dad would not have been injured in Louisiana and would have gone on to play professional baseball. If so, he probably would have never met my mom and I would not have been born. There would be no book, no movie and no grandson to play the role of his grandfather. It is such a strange thought for me to ponder. Do I owe the men of the Guadalcanal Task Force for my very existence?

I am one who believes that life is all part of God's perfect plan. I believe that playing baseball was not God's plan for my dad. If the U-505 had not been captured and my father's ankle not broken in the Friendship Game, I believe something else would have happened to channel my father's life into what it became. But what do I know? "What might have been" is not why I am writing this blog. I am writing to thank the men of the Guadalcanal Task Force 22.3 for their heroic efforts in boarding and capturing the first foreign vessel since the War of 1812! Your story will live on and you will never be forgotten.

Gary

gmoore@playingwiththeenemy.com