This article was added by John Schlatter to Fold3 on September 23, 2020. The original can be found at Together We Served.
Captain Mervyn Sharp Bennion, U.S. Navy, grew up on a cattle ranch in rural Utah, earned an appointment to the U.S. Naval Academy, served with distinction for 31 years, and died a hero while commanding the USS West Virginia during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor December 7, 1941. For his actions that day he was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor, our nation’s highest military award.
When the Japanese bombers struck Pearl Harbor just before 8 a.m. that Sunday morning, the West Virginia was hit by torpedoes and bombs. Captain Bennion was mortally wounded when hit in the stomach by shrapnel while on the command bridge. Other crew members tried to move him to a safer location, but he refused, He continued directing his crew while holding his wound closed with one hand until he died of blood loss two hours later. His Medal of Honor Citation read:
"For conspicuous devotion to duty, extraordinary courage, and complete disregard of his own life, above and beyond the call of duty, during the attack on the Fleet at Pearl Harbor, by Japanese forces on 7 December 1941. As Commanding Officer of the U.S.S. West Virginia, after being mortally wounded, Captain Bennion evidenced apparent concern only in fighting and saving his ship, and strongly protested against being carried from the bridge."
As a 54-year-old Navy Captain, he was older and of higher rank than most WWII casualties. One of the sailors who tried to convince him to get medical attention was Cook Third Class Doris “Dorie” Miller, who manned anti-aircraft guns during the attack despite having no training on them. He was awarded the Navy Cross, second only to the Medal of Honor, becoming the first African-American to earn that award. He was killed in action two years later.
Captain Bennion was born May 5, 1887 in Vernon, Utah, a small farming community in Tooele County about 60 miles southwest of Salt Lake City. His family had a long history as devout members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS). His grandfather, John Bennion, was from Wales, joined the church in Liverpool, came to America, and trekked to Utah with the LDS pioneers in 1847.
Captain Bennion’s father, Israel Bennion, was a storekeeper and cattle rancher, and was prominent in the Vernon community as both a businessman and church leader. Mervyn’s mother, Jeannette Sharp Bennion, was born in Salt Lake City and was the daughter of Scottish immigrants. Mervyn was their second child and oldest son of nine children. His mother passed away in 1938 and his father in 1944.
He went to the lower grades in a log schoolhouse in Vernon, and when he reached his teen years went to a high school operated by the LDS church in Salt Lake City, where he lived with relatives. An excellent student, he passed the entrance exams for the Naval Academy and received his admission notice while working on an uncle’s ranch. He graduated from Annapolis third in his class in 1910.
After graduating from Annapolis, he held a variety of Navy assignments, both domestic and overseas, commanded several ships and served a stint in the Ordnance Bureau at Navy Yard in Washington, DC, during World War I. He assumed command of the West Virginia on July 1, 1941.
Throughout his Navy career he remained active in the LDS church. The night before the attack on Pearl Harbor, he had dinner at the home of Ralph Woolley, president of the Oahu Stake of the church, and he had planned to attend services there the next morning.
His younger brother, Howard Sharp Bennion, went to the United States Military Academy at West Point and graduated first in the class of 1912. He served as an engineer officer during World War I and was awarded the Distinguished Service Medal. Howard wrote an extensive biographical sketch of his brother that can be found at https://www.usswestvirginia.org/stories/story.php?id=10.
Howard chronicled how Mervyn learned hard work and discipline while growing up. He wrote the following about their father giving up his store for the daunting task of developing a cattle ranch on a homestead named Ben Lomond in the dry, sagebrush land near the West Tintic Mountains:
“As the oldest son of the family, many responsibilities were loaded on Mervyn’s shoulders. The first year, when he was nine, he was driving a partly broken, three-horse team, dragging a heavy harrow with a contrivance to enable him to dump the harrow and free it of the sagebrush it gathered. These hard years developed the qualities of endurance and sustained application in the face of heavy tasks, of resourcefulness and of assuming responsibilities. Many others have faced hard work, but few in his generation labored so hard with such little equipment to wrest a home from dry, unyielding ground.”
His father also helped pioneer dry-land wheat farming in the area south of Vernon and helped start a town there named Benmore, a combination of Bennion and Skidmore.
While serving in Washington, DC, Captain Bennion met Louise Clark, eldest daughter of Mr. and Mrs. J. Reuben Clark, Jr. They were married February 5, 1920, in the home of her parents in New York. Later, when Mervyn could get leave, their marriage was sealed in the Salt Lake City Temple. They had one son, Mervyn, Jr., who was born in 1925, served a few years in the Navy beginning in 1943, had a civilian career in Salt Lake City, and died in 2003. The children and grandchildren of Mervyn, Jr., carry on the family name.
The Navy honored Captain Bennion by naming a destroyer the USS Bennion. It was commissioned July 4, 1943, and his widow christened the ship when it was launched in Boston. American Legion posts in Salt Lake City and Honolulu were named for him. On the 10th anniversary of Pearl Harbor, the post in Salt Lake held a memorial service and placed a wreath on his grave, and the post in Hawaii dropped a wreath on the site of the attack.
His memory is honored in several ways in his home state. A plaque in his honor was unveiled in October 1947 at the Navy ROTC building at the University of Utah. On the 75th anniversary of Pearl Harbor in 2016, the State of Utah named the Central Utah Veterans Home in Payson for him. The Salt Lake City unit of the United States Naval Sea Cadets Corps is named Training Ship Mervyn S. Bennion.
He was initially buried in Hawaii, and his remains were returned to the States after the war and interred at the Salt Lake City Cemetery in October 1947. At his funeral, one of his Annapolis classmates, Captain Walter E. Brown, read Captain Bennion’s Medal of Honor citation. The prayer was offered by Ezra T. Benson, an LDS apostle who went on to become President of the church from 1985 until his death in 1994.
Captain Bennion’s name is inscribed along with four other Medal of Honor recipients from Utah on a marker at the Memory Grove Memorial in Salt Lake City. His widow passed away at age 98 on September 23, 1997, and his last surviving sibling died in 1972.
After being sunk at Pearl Harbor, the USS West Virginia was raised, refurbished in 1943-44, and saw service in the Philippine Campaign and the post-war occupation of Japan. She was decommissioned in 1947 and dismantled in 1959. One of her anti-aircraft guns is on display in City Park in Parkersburg, West Virginia, and the ship's wheel and binnacle are on display at the Hampton Roads Naval Museum. The mast is displayed in a plaza outside Oglebay Hall on the campus of West Virginia University, and the ship's bell is on display at the West Virginia State Museum in Charleston. Interstate Highway 470 in West Virginia is named the USS West Virginia Memorial Highway.
His brother Howard summed up Captain Bennion’s character as follows in the preface to his book:
“This sketch of the life of Mervyn Sharp Bennion, late Captain United States Navy, who died a glorious death at Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941, in command of the battleship USS West Virginia, is written to help preserve to his family and friends the memory of the character, spirit, aims and deeds of this noble, inspiring and praiseworthy officer. . . . His own work and accomplishments seemed unimpressive to him: Even his heroic death, had he been here to tell it, would have been dismissed with scant reference to himself but full regard for the brave conduct and deeds of others. His long naval record was flawless and therefore brief and laconic - eloquent testimony of excellent conduct and splendid performance from beginning to end. His church record was one of unobtrusive, conscientious devotion to every duty.
Back of his actions in life and death was a great soul, the presence of which strongly affected those who came to know him, At Pearl Harbor it was his stout heart and cheerful spirit, as his life slowly ebbed away high up on the bridge of his stricken ship that gripped the hearts of his officers and men and thrilled and inspired the whole fleet, It is with his character and attributes that this sketch will primarily deal, For lack of knowledge I shall perforce deal sparingly with his work, I knew best his spirit and his character. He was and is my life leader, one to whom I am bound with the strongest ties of respect and affection.”
This story is part of the Stories Behind the Stars project (see www.storiesbehindthestars.org). This is a national effort of volunteers to write the stories of all 400,000+ of the US WWII fallen on Fold3 and Together We Served. Can you help write these stories? Related to this, there will be a smart phone app that will allow people to visit any war memorial or cemetery, scan the fallen's name and read his/her story.
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/91156064/mervyn-sharp-bennion
https://www.usswestvirginia.org/stories/story.php?id=10
https://www.thechurchnews.com/archives/1991-12-07/lds-captain-was-pearl-harbor-hero-145655
https://www.cmohs.org/recipients/mervyn-s-bennion
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_West_Virginia_(BB-48)#Postwar
https://tinyurl.com/y4ekwhn2