GLENNEY, WILLIAM G.

We record with sorrow the death of William Gregg Glenney, Ph. M. 2/c U.S.N. at Newport, R.I., on May 4, 1947. Gregg was the great-grandson of the Reverend William Henry Green, president of Princeton Theological Seminary, grandson of Professor William Libbey of Princeton and son of Mr. and Mrs. Walter Lester Glenney of Plainfield, N.J. He was born May 13, 1917. He came to Princeton from Lawrenceville School. While in college Gregg was active in R.O.T.C. and was a member of Court Club; he took a keen interest in working with young boys and used to teach Sunday school at the state reformatory at Jamesburg.

After graduatrion he studied law at New York Law School and St. John’s University. On October 13, 1941, early in his senior year in Law School, he enlisted in the U.S. Navy. He elected to serve in the Hospital Corps and, soon after the completion of his training in February 1942 he was sent to the South Pacific, where, as a member of the Marine First Raider Battalion, he took part in the New Georgia campaign. On September 24, 1943, he was assigned to the U.S.S. “Relief,” the first Navy hospital ship, on which he took part in eight major engagements, including those at Apamana, Kwajalein, Saipan, Peleliu, Okinawa and Tarawa. His ship was twice under direct bomb attack, despite its markings. During the naval engagements, the hospital ships sttod in close to shore, taking wounded from the beachheads, and each night sailed out into the open sea with all lights ablaze, in accordance with international convention—to which, incidentally, Japan was not a signatory.

In 1944, while returning to California to rejoin his ship after a Christmas furlough, Gregg was in the train wreck in Utah in which so many were killed. The car in which he was riding was thrown on top of the car ahead, but he escaped uninjured, and was able to minister to those less fortunate.

Though deeply interested in his work in the Navy, Gregg, at the time of his death, was planning to continue his law studies.

To his parents and his brother, Walter Lester GlenneyJr. ’43, the class extends its most sincere sympathy.