William Brackett Snow III: King's Chapel's Only WWII Casualty

By Kiera Breitenbach, Memorial Project Researcher and History Program Educator

In September 1944, Bostonians began to batten down the hatches in preparation for what promised to be a massive hurricane. A storm that started as an atmospheric disturbance in the Caribbean on September 8th was threatening landfall in New England just five days later. New Englanders, scarred by the memory of a 1938 storm that killed hundreds and destroyed homes across the region, nervously prepared for the coming gale. The Boston Globe breathlessly reported the predictions of the Weather Service forecasters, who were headquartered at the airport. Thousands of people across Boston boarded up their windows in preparation. Fishing boats up and down the Cape sailed back into harbor at full speed. By September 15th, the Great Atlantic Hurricane of 1944 had passed through Massachusetts with few reported casualties and comparatively little damage: sailboats blown ashore in Dorchester, homes without power in Newburyport, trees uprooted in Nantucket. The loss of life, thankfully, seemed “negligible.” But, unbeknownst to family and friends in Boston, the Great Atlantic Hurricane had just killed King’s Chapel’s only known WWII casualty - Naval recruit William Brackett Snow III.

​William Brackett Snow III was born in 1924 in Cambridge and raised in Brookline. He was the second child of a Harvard-educated banker and a Boston socialite who sent their children to private school and kept live-in servants. Snow’s father was a Unitarian, his parents married at King’s Chapel in 1921, and Snow almost certainly attended weekly services with his family as a boy. William, who friends called Bill, had blue eyes, brown hair, and a scar on his stomach from a childhood operation. He graduated high school in 1942 and went straight to Harvard, like his father, where he majored in mathematics and played JV football. 

William Brackett Snow III in his Navy uniform, via Harvard Album.

​The United States had entered World War II when Snow was a senior in high school, and like many young men, Bill Snow wanted to do his part. He enlisted in the Navy Reserves in October of 1942 during his first semester at Harvard. A college degree could make a young man a shoo-in as an officer candidate, which came with higher pay, command responsibilities, and prestige. Many of Snow’s Harvard classmates entered officer training, and he likely joined them while at school. But Snow decided not to wait for an officer’s posting. In March 1943, not yet nineteen years old, he opted for active service and left school to begin Basic Training as an enlisted man. In December of 1943, Snow joined the crew of the USS Warrington in the South Pacific as a Quartermaster, 3rd class. 

Snow’s ship, the Warrington, was a destroyer escorting convoys of other warships and troop carriers around the Pacific. As a Quartermaster, Bill helped plot courses, read charts, and crunch navigational numbers. This was an important role on any warship, but especially crucial in the South Pacific as Navy vessels tried to safely deliver troops to tiny archipelagoes while avoiding the Japanese fleet. The Warrington saw active combat twice while Bill was aboard. She earned two battle stars in the landings at Wakde and Biak islands, supporting American troops with artillery bombardment from her decks.

USS Warrington in 1943, via Wikimedia

In the summer of 1944, Bill Snow and the Warrington left the Pacific behind forever. The ship crossed through the Panama Canal and sailed up the Eastern Seaboard, docking for repairs in New York City. In August, Snow visited his family on shore leave. He may have attended a Sunday service at King’s Chapel while he was home. After that brief summer visit, Snow would never return to the family home in Brookline.

​The Warrington, fresh off a summer in a dry dock and a series of testing maneuvers, was assigned to patrol the Atlantic. The crew had traded targeting Japanese bombers for tracking German U-boats. On September 10th, 1944, the Warrington joined a convoy traveling from Norfolk, Virginia to Trinidad. The same day, meteorologists in Boston spotted a potential storm forming off the coast of Antigua. On September 12th, the Warrington hit rough waters off the coast of Florida. In the open ocean, the Great Atlantic Hurricane of 1944 had ballooned into a Category 5 storm with winds exceeding 150 miles per hour. On September 13th, the Warrington became separated from the rest of the ships in the convoy, lost power, and began taking on water. Between the wind, the waves, and a series of mechanical failures, there was no hope for the Warrington. The officers gave the order to abandon ship, and she sank quickly. 

Headline, Boston Evening Globe, 14 Sep. 1944

Only 73 individuals of the Warrington’s 321-person crew survived. Bill Snow was not among the survivors. A friend on board later told Snow’s parents that their son had made it to a lifeboat, but died of exposure while waiting for rescue. Snow had just turned twenty that summer.

Snow’s funeral was held at King’s Chapel just over a week after his death. His grandfather and father, William Brackett Snow I and II, both outlived him by years.

​Of the 10,033 Massachusetts soldiers who died during WWII, only William Brackett Snow III is memorialized at King’s Chapel. His body, like the bodies of many naval casualties lost at sea during the war, was never recovered. His name is one of thousands on the East Coast Memorial in New York City, a grand gray slab of stone in Manhattan engraved with the names of American soldiers and sailors who died in Atlantic waters during WWII. There is another memorial, a small marble and gold plaque at the back of King’s Chapel’s sanctuary, with only one name: 

World War II
William Brackett Snow III
Quartermaster 2nd Class – USNR
Lost with the USS Warrington
September 13, 1944

Works Cited

“Anna Wheeler Bride of William B. Snow” The Boston Globe, 9 Sep 1921, pg 14

Clark, William H., “Four Days Ago, Hurricane Born As Tiny Whirlpool” The Boston Evening Globe, 14 Sep 1944, pg 8 .

The Harvard Album, (Harvard Class of 1946: 1949), vol LVII, 239.
 
“Hurricane Goes Out To Sea Off Maine; 20 Dead” The Boston Globe, 15 Sep 1944, pg 13.
William Brackett Snow III draft card, US World War II Draft Cards Young Men 1940-1947, via Ancestry.com
 
“Hurricane Heading for U.S. East Coast” The Boston Globe, 12 Sep 1944, pg 17.
 
“Hurricane May Hit N.E.” The Boston Evening Globe, 14 Sep 1944, pg 1
 
“Six Years, Less Week, Ago Hurricane of ‘38 Struck N.E.” The Boston Evening Globe, 14 Sep 1944, pg 8
 
“Summary of Ranks and Rates of the US Navy” (Bureau of Naval Personnel: May 1943) via iBiblio.org
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US, World War II Navy Muster Rolls, 1938-1949, USS Warrington, 31 Dec 1943, pg 7, via Ancestry.com
 
“Warrington II (DD-383)” Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, Naval History and Heritage Command, via history.navy.mil

William B Snow household, 1940 US Federal Census, Massachusetts, Norfolk, Brookline, Enumeration District 11-68, Household 31, via Ancestry.com

William Brackett Snow funeral announcement, Boston Globe, 24 Sep 1944, pg 22

"World War II, Korea and Vietnam Casualties Listed by State” US Army Center of Military History, via history.army.mil