Playing for Time

Merriam Press Military Monograph 93. Third Edition (March 2012). The author's memoir of his service as an officer on board the destroyer USS Stewart (DD-224) of the Asiatic Fleet from before the war through its abandonment in a dry dock in Java in February 1942, also serving as a history of the ship's wartime service, including as a patrol boat in the Japanese Navy. The author also provides a history of the Asiatic Fleet during that time period when it was part of the naval forces that stopped the Japanese juggernaut on their southward expansion in the Pacific. Contents: * Pearl Harbor Attacked * The Asiatic Fleet: USS Stewart (DD-224) * War * Playing for Time * Saga of the USS Peary (DD-226) * Japanese Juggernaut Rolls South * Destroyers Win One * Impending Disaster * The Beginning of the End * Baptism of Fire: USS Stewart * Abandon Ship * Allied Defeat * The Enemy Mops Up * Escape From the Java Sea * Ordeal of Edsall and Whipple * Isabel Runs Gauntlet * "Titivate Ship" * Born Again-Under the Rising Sun * Homeward Bound * Remaining Destroyers and Other Ships * Personae * Recognitions, Decorations and Awards * Ship's Company Personnel of USS Stewart (DD-224) at Time of Battle of Badoeng Strait, 20 February, and Abandonment, 22 February 1942 * Bibliography * Brief Biography of Lodwick H. Alford * 37 B&W photos. Review by Vic Campbell: Capt. Alford describes with vivid texture the life of a young officer aboard a four piper in the Asiatic Fleet. It surprises me, finding myself, a destroyer veteran and officer of Vietnam, experiencing my own life over again through his descriptions in a time 30 years before mine. The wardroom-the staterooms-the watches... One feels the salt air sting the eyes and the protocol stiffen the spine. It all comes back. There is so much tradition in the Navy. It lives from generation to generation.