The 24-inch brass ship's wheel of the

The 24-inch brass ship's wheel of the USS Rogers Blood, once a destroyer and later a high-speed transport, is now above the fireplace in the College Hall lounge as a memorial to Marine Ist Lt. Rogers Blood '44, who lost his life in the bitter fighting in Eniwetok atoll in the South Pacific in February 1944.

The USS Rogers Blood was named in honor of the Marine officer and was christened by his mother on June 2, 1945. His parents, Mr. and Mrs. Robert M. Blood '06, and his sister, Elizabeth, then a WAVE officer, were present when the vessel was placed in commission on August 22, 1945 with a crew of 13 officers and 180 men. A brother, Army Air Corps Ist Lt. Nickerson Blood '41, was killed in a military plane crash on a training flight in 1943.

Learning that the USS Rogers Blood was to be decommissioned, his sister, Mrs. Thomas Ward Miles, informed the College, and a request for a relic was made to the Navy. The Navy sent the ship's wheel to Dartmouth to be in the custody of the ROTC unit. Captain Richard W. Parker, USN. the present commandant, and Marine Major George F. Tubley, Associate Professor of Naval Science, are shown viewing the wheel in the photograph above.