This Military Service Page was created/owned by
Barbara Billings-Family
to remember
Heggen, Thomas, LT.
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Contact Info
Home Town Fort Dodge, Webster County, Iowa
Last Address New York (Manhattan)
Date of Passing May 19, 1949
Location of Interment Lakewood Cemetery - Minneapolis, Minnesota
Other Memories After graduating from the University of Minnesota with a degree in journalism, he moved to New York City and became an editor for Readers' Digest. He joined the US Navy immediately after the attack on Pearl Harbor and was commissioned a lieutenant in August 1942. For the duration of the war he served on supply vessels in the North Atlantic, the Caribbean, and the Pacific, the latter as assistant communications officer on the cargo ship USS Virgo (AKA-20); he skirted some major operations (Iwo Jima, Okinawa) but was seldom in harm's way and never under fire. The only "combat" he saw was a brawl with another officer, which landed him in a hospital with a broken hand. During his 14 months aboard the Virgo Heggen wrote a collection of vignettes about daily life on the ship, which he described as sailing "from Tedium to Apathy and back again, with an occasional side trip to Monotony". Like his fictional alter ego Doug Roberts, he felt "left out" of the war and butted heads with his commander, a coarse martinet who repeatedly denied his requests for transfer to a destroyer. Following his discharge in December 1945, he returned to New York and reworked the material into a loosely structured novel, adding an introductory chapter. His original title, "The Iron-Bound Bucket", was changed to "Mister Roberts" by the publisher.