Walter Standish

	NAME Walter Standish Wladyslaw Stankovitch	NICKNAME —	SERVICE NUMBER 157031
	UNIT Marine Detachment USS Houston	HOME OF RECORD 3158 North Mountain View Drive San Diego, CA	NEXT OF KIN Wife, Mrs. Christina A. Standish
	DATE OF BIRTH July 17, 1901 at Vilna, Poland	ENTERED SERVICE November 13, 1919 at location unknown	DATE OF LOSS March 1, 1942 alt. February 28, 1942
	REGION Java Sea	CAMPAIGN / AREA Sunda Strait	CASUALTY TYPE Missing In Action Declared Dead December 15, 1945
CIRCUMSTANCES OF LOSS Gunnery Sergeant Walter Standish was a senior NCO of the Marine detachment aboard the cruiser USS Houston. He served as the ship’s gunnery sergeant, and as an assistant to the officer in charge of the .50 caliber anti-aircraft guns. Standish was last seen at his battle station on the night of 28 February 1942, during the battle of Sunda Strait. After relieving the last of his men, Gunny Standish took hold of one of the guns and fired away at a Japanese warship until the Houston sank beneath the waves. Standish’s body was never found, and he was officially declared dead on 15 December 1945.
INDIVIDUAL DECORATIONS Purple Heart	LAST KNOWN RANK Gunnery Sergeant	STATUS OF REMAINS Lost at sea	MEMORIALS Manila American Cemetery

Biography:
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Miller was gone. So were the other six men, their guns standing gray and ghostlike, pointing in different directions. Only Standish, the gunnery sergeant, was there….
I snapped down the plate and pulled back the cocking lever. Twice. I felt the hand gripping my shoulder. “Better go, Charlie,” Standish was saying. “It’s over – finished.”
I let go of the handlebars and looked into the wrinkled face, etched like white marble. “What about you? You going with me?”
Standish wagged his head and grinned. “I’d never make it. Go, now. Swim away before you’re pulled under.”
An old man, obese, unwilling to budge from a platform halfway up the mainmast – Standish had once said he couldn’t swim.
Edging toward the opening where the ladder ran along the mast, I looked back at the older man. Commander Maher, the gunnery officer, was with Standish now, nodding his head toward the ladder. “Go on,” he was saying to Standish, who was shaking his head.
“Come on, Sarge,” I urged. “You and me, we’ll make it.”
“No, Charlie. Go on.”
I pointed. “It isn’t very far to that island. See? There – beneath the Southern Cross.”
Again, Standish shook his head. Calmly, he said, “Goodbye, Charlie.”
An awful shudder ran through the ship. I grabbed the rungs and started down.

– H. Robert Charles, “Last Man Out.”

[Standish,] living up to Marine Corps legend, was a warrior to the end. Many years have gone by but I can still vividly recall the scene. The stars and stripes still fast on the mainmast streaming aft in the breeze. The ‘Gunny’s’ fifty-caliber machine gun still sending out a line of tracers toward the Japs as the tired old “Huey Maru” sank beneath the waters of the straits.
Not a word was uttered by anyone on the raft as they gazed at the spot where our ship had gone down.

– John Wiseup, quoted in James Hornfisher, “Ship Of Ghosts.

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