FRED PICKERING '38 NEAR RESCUE OF SAILOR BROTHER
WHILE PVT. FRED PICKERING '38 wrestled with anti-aircraft guns pointed out to sea recently, his sailor brother tossed in an open boat off this same Carolina coast. The soldier is a member of Battery F, Antiaircraft Artillery Officer Candidate School. His sailor brother is Langdon Pickering Jr.. 28, who was aboard an Orient bound freighter which was torpedoed off Cape Hatteras, N. C. some weeks ago. The elder Pickering is recovering from the effects of 16 days of exposure and hunger at Morehead City, N. C. Marine Hospital.
The seagoing Pickering was brought to the hospital Wednesday after being picked up with several companions at sea. They were in a small lifeboat, equipped with a tiny sail. Other crew members were picked up by a destroyer not long after their ship was sunk, it was learned.
Officer Candidate Fred Pickering o£ Camp Davis, N. C„ was amazed and jubilant. His family, who live at Annapolis, Md., had written him they were gravely worried about his brother. The freighter had been reported sunk, they had written, and Sailor Pickering, for the time being, was missing.
The letter had not arrived, however, early last week and a long distance telephone call apprised Candidate Pickering of the sinking of his brother's ship and his rescue, simultaneously.
Reconstructing the events, Candidate Pickering told of several days of busy instruction in the intricacies of anti-aircraft fire at a nearby beach-head. Little did he dream, he said, that as he pointed his gun to sea, that his brother was in distress beyond the horizon.
A graduate of Dartmouth in the class of 1938 Candidate Pickering is a former all American lacrosse player. He starred in the sport at Severn Prep, near Annapolis, and then in Hanover. He was a member of an All American lacrosse outfit which went to England several years ago for Anglo American competition.
The older Pickering was turned down as a volunteer for the armed forces because of poor vision. So he shipped as a deck hand on a freighter bound for a far eastern Mediterranean port, feeling that in that way he might take part in the war effort. He attended St. John's College, Annapolis, where he was an all around athlete.
The Pickerings are sons of Langdon Pickering Sr., of Annapolis, Md., vice president of the Baltimore Shipbuilding Corporation, and a former Naval officer and Annapolis graduate himself. Fred Pickering was inducted January 27, 1940 and served in the cavalry prior to assignment to Anti-aircraft Artillery School. He formerly was connected with the New York National Guard.
