Earnal "Spud" Spurgeon Campbell (December 28, 1921 – April 13, 2020) was an honored World War II veteran of the

United States Merchant Marine United States Merchant Marines are United States civilian mariners and U.S. civilian and federally owned merchant vessels. Both the civilian mariners and the merchant vessels are managed by a combination of the government and private sectors, an ...

. His part in the rescue of 19 Norwegian

refugee A refugee, conventionally speaking, is a displaced person who has crossed national borders and who cannot or is unwilling to return home due to well-founded fear of persecution.

s was recorded in ''The Last Voyage of the

SS Henry Bacon The Liberty ship SS ''Henry Bacon'' was the last allied ship sunk by the Luftwaffe in World War II. Twenty two crew members and seven members of the United States Navy Armed Guard lost their lives in this action. The vessel was named after Henr ...

.'' This was later recognized by several governments, including

Russia Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a List of transcontinental countries, transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia, Northern Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the ...

and

Norway Norway, officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic country in Northern Europe, the mainland territory of which comprises the western and northernmost portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula. The remote Arctic island of Jan Mayen and t ...

. Campbell was born in

Eldridge, Alabama Eldridge is a town in Walker County, Alabama, United States. It incorporated in 1972. At the 2010 census the population was 130, down from 184 in 2000. History A unit of Gen. James H. Wilson's cavalry corps, under the command of Brig.-Gen. Edwa ...

in December 1921. He went on to become Vice President, Engineering and Technical Services, of Radio Free Europe. In ''Waves Astern'', his

autobiography An autobiography, sometimes informally called an autobio, is a self-written account of one's own life. It is a form of biography. Definition The word "autobiography" was first used deprecatingly by William Taylor in 1797 in the English peri ...

, he recalls eight decades of adventures to exotic and sometimes isolated destinations while serving his country. Campbell recalled the February night in a lifeboat in the Arctic filled with terrified refugees, his efforts to send

SOS is a Morse code distress signal (), used internationally, that was originally established for maritime use. In formal notation is written with an overscore line, to indicate that the Morse code equivalents for the individual letters of "SOS" ...

signals in gale-force winds, and of their miraculous rescue. Decades later, he and the survivors were reunited when he was honored by the Norwegian government. Campbell's odyssey included

Cold War The Cold War is a term commonly used to refer to a period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc. The term '' cold war'' is used because the ...

episodes in

Eniwetok Enewetak Atoll (; also spelled Eniwetok Atoll or sometimes Eniewetok; mh, Ānewetak, , or , ; known to the Japanese as Brown Atoll or Brown Island; ja, ブラウン環礁) is a large coral atoll of 40 islands in the Pacific Ocean and with it ...

and Thule,

Greenland Greenland ( kl, Kalaallit Nunaat, ; da, Grønland, ) is an island country in North America that is part of the Kingdom of Denmark. It is located between the Arctic and Atlantic oceans, east of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. Greenland is t ...

and a 20-year career with Radio Free Europe. He died in April 2020, at the age of 98.Earnal "Spud" Spurgeon Campbell
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References

1921 births 2020 deaths American sailors People from Walker County, Alabama Military personnel from Alabama United States Merchant Mariners of World War II Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty people Writers from Alabama {{US-radio-bio-stub