John H. Lang

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John H. Lang was a U.S., Japanese and Canadian military and naval hero of the first half of the twentieth century. Lang was born at Casselton, North Dakota in 1899 and died in 1970 in Long Beach, California.

He left home to enlist in the Canadian Army at Milwaukee, Wisconsin in 1916. After service in England and France in the Canadian Engineers, Lang transferred to the Canadian Black Watch Infantry and then was seconded to the Royal Highland Regiment (the British Black Watch) with whom he participated in the Third Battle of Ypres in 1917. He was awarded the British Distinguished Service Medal (DSM) for his actions in that engagement.

Upon his return from Europe at the end of the First World War, he enlisted in the U.S. Navy. Lang served for most of his navy career in the China Fleet in the ship's company of several gunboats as Quartermaster.

In the 1920s he was awarded the Navy Cross and the Japanese Order of the Chrysanthemum (2nd Class) for his heroism during a combined Japanese/US naval operation on the Yangtze River against warlord forces that had besieged the legations on the river.

Lang was awarded the Navy Cross for the second time in the sinking of USS Panay by Imperial Japanese forces in 1937. He was also wounded several more times in this action. Altogether Lang held fourteen awards of the Purple Heart for combat wounds.

During the Second World War Lang was a member of the commissioning crew of the battleship USS Massachusetts and participated in the naval landings in Morocco, commanded a Landing Ship Tank (LST) until she was sunk in the invasion of the Admiralty Islands and was Executive Officer of Underwater Demolition Team (UDT) Number 2. As a member of this "Frogman" unit he was working on the removal of a moored Japanese mine on a reef off Saipan when another mine nearby detonated killing several comrades and wounding Lang terribly. After two years recuperation, he was retired from the US Navy in the grade of "Commissioned Warrant Officer". After his death his ashes were scattered on the Pacific Ocean at his request.

He is the uncle of W. Patrick Lang.

[edit] References

• Icenhower, Joseph B.; The Panay Incident, December 12, 1937, Scholastic Library Publishing, 1971
• Perry, Hamilton Darby; The Panay Incident, Prelude to Pearl Harbor, Macmillan Publishers 1969