The death of Herbert McLaughlin at Pearl Harbor spurred local VFW members to name their post after him — the Herbert E. McLaughlin VFW Post 2723.
Even before that, his death motivated his two older brothers to want to join the fight against the Axis powers of World War II.
Dean Seher, Herbert McLaughlin’s great-nephew, recently told their story to members of the VFW post.
Herbert McLaughlin was the youngest of three brothers.
“My grandfather, William McLaughlin, was the oldest. Horace McLaughlin was the middle brother,” Seher said.“Both of the brothers, upon Herbert being killed at Pearl Harbor, wanted to serve their country.”
Herbert McLaughlin was 31 when he was killed. His brothers were several years older.
“My grandfather … tried to enlist in the Army Air Corps, because he was a trained pilot,” Seher said. “They rejected him, because he was over the age of enlistment, and on top of it, he worked in a vital war industry – he worked in the furniture manufacturing business.”
William McLaughlin tried again.
“He went to the Navy, and the Navy turned him down,” Seher said. “He went to the Marines; the Marines turned him down. He finally went to the Naval Reserves, and the Reserves accepted him. That would have been sometime in late 1942.”
So, at the age of 42 or 43, William McLaughlin went through boot camp.
“He … ended up serving on a destroyer escort called USS Haverfield during the war,” Seher said. “He ended up serving as the executive officer, and he spent the last 2 1/2 years of the war going back and forth across the Atlantic fighting off U-Boats and helping get munitions and materials to Europe.”
Coincidentally, the USS Haverfield was named for James W. Haverfield, of Ohio. He had joined the Naval Reserve as an apprentice seaman Sept. 11, 1940.
Haverfield’s first assignment was abroad the battleship USS Arizona, stationed at Pearl Harbor. He was killed aboard the ship during the Dec. 7, 1941, attack by the Japanese, the same attack that killed Herbert McLaughlin.
“The middle brother, Horace, was in law school at the time, and joined the FBI,” Seher said. “He became a spy hunter. He was on part of the team … that tracked down the Nazi saboteurs that were landed by U-Boats on the East Coast.”
The most well-known instance of U.S. agents apprehending Nazi saboteurs during WWII is Operation Pastorius, a failed German sabotage plan in 1942.
In June 1942, two teams of German saboteurs landed on the coasts of New York and Florida via U-Boat. Their mission was to sabotage U.S. war industries, including power plants, aluminum plants, railways and bridges.
However, two of the saboteurs, George Dasch and Ernest Burger, chose to defect and alerted the FBI to the plan, providing information about the other agents. Based on their information, the FBI apprehended the remaining six saboteurs.
All eight saboteurs were tried by a military tribunal. Six were sentenced to death and executed, while Dasch and Burger received commuted sentences and were later deported to Germany.
Herbert Elton McLaughlin was born June 7, 1910, to William A. and Mary McLaughlin.
His father, born in 1875, died in 1919 and is buried in Riverside Cemetery in Appleton.
His mother was also born in 1875. She married her second husband, John Edward “Ed” Tolman, in 1953, died in 1957 and is buried next to him at Woodlawn Cemetery in Shawano.
kpasson@newmedia-wi.com
