Fifty-six seventeen-year-old volunteers gathered in Bangor, Maine, and enlisted together in the United States Navy. Their collective enlistment created what became known as the Bangor Victory Platoon, a local wartime formation whose members represented Bangor and communities across northern and eastern Maine. The surviving memorial to the group records that these fifty-six teenagers constituted the largest single group from Maine to enlist in the Navy during World War II. Their enlistment occurred during a period when the United States was expanding its armed forces for campaigns across Europe, the Mediterranean, and the Pacific, making the Bangor ceremony a local expression of the immense national mobilization that defined American life during the war.
The location of the enlistment carried particular historical meaning. The volunteers assembled at Davenport Park near the intersection of Main and Cedar streets, where Bangor's Spanish-American War memorial incorporates decorative material associated with the battleship USS Maine. The Maine had exploded in Havana Harbor on February 15, 1898, an event closely associated with the outbreak of the Spanish-American War. Forty-five years later, another generation of Maine youths entered naval service beside a monument linked to an earlier American conflict. Contemporary commemorative accounts record that the fifty-six volunteers took their enlistment oath together before departing for naval training.
Their age makes the episode especially notable. Every member of the Bangor Victory Platoon was seventeen. Navy enlistment at that age required parental or guardian consent under wartime recruiting regulations. These men therefore entered military service before reaching eighteen and while many Americans of the same age were still completing secondary school. One member, James S. Adams, later recalled through family records that he left high school in 1943 to join the Navy. His subsequent life illustrates the interruption that wartime service could impose on ordinary education and employment. After returning to Maine in 1946, Adams attended Husson College and later entered the automobile business in the Bangor-Brewer area.
Local historical accounts record that the members of the Victory Platoon served together aboard the aircraft carrier USS Wasp (CV-18). The timing connected their enlistment with the creation of one of the Navy's major new Essex-class carriers. Wasp had been launched at Quincy, Massachusetts, on August 17, 1943, only five days before the Bangor enlistment ceremony. Originally laid down as Oriskany, the carrier was renamed Wasp after the earlier USS Wasp (CV-7) was lost during the Guadalcanal campaign. The new carrier was commissioned on November 24, 1943, and entered Pacific combat operations in 1944.
USS Wasp subsequently participated in the fast-carrier offensive that carried American naval aviation across the Central and Western Pacific. Its wartime operations included actions in the Marshall Islands, Marianas, Philippines, and waters near the Japanese home islands. The ship received eight battle stars for World War II service. For the young Maine sailors who had enlisted together in Bangor, assignment to the carrier placed them within one of the most powerful components of the United States Pacific Fleet.
The platoon's wartime record also contained a direct loss. Seaman First Class Gilbert J. Soucy, a member from Portage, Maine, was killed in action on March 19, 1945. On that date, a Japanese aircraft attacked Wasp during operations near Japan. A bomb penetrated the carrier and exploded inside the ship, producing severe casualties. Naval historical records document 102 men dead or missing and approximately 200 wounded from the attack. Despite the damage, the carrier remained operational and resumed flight operations within hours. Bangor commemorative accounts identify Soucy as the only member of the fifty-six-man Victory Platoon who failed to return home from the war.
The enduring significance of the Bangor Victory Platoon lies in the unusually clear connection it provides between Maine community history and the global scale of World War II. The episode began with fifty-six teenagers standing together in a Bangor park and continued through one of the largest naval campaigns in American history. Their collective service remained part of Bangor's public memory long after 1945. On August 22, 1998, exactly fifty-five years after the enlistment ceremony, a memorial honoring the platoon was dedicated at Davenport Park. The plaque records the event, names the members and their communities, and specifically commemorates Gilbert Soucy. Through that memorial, the August 22, 1943 enlistment remains a documented example of how wartime mobilization reached directly into Maine families, schools, towns, and individual lives.
References / More Knowledge:
Bangor Daily News. “Bangor’s War Memorials Can Teach Us About Those Who Died in the Line of Duty.” May 25, 2025. https://www.bangordailynews.com/2025/05/25/bangor/memorial-day-monuments-to-visit-bangor-joam40zk0w/
Historical Marker Database. “Bangor Victory Platoon.” https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=110563
Maine Department of the Secretary of State. “Norman Palmer.” Maine Veterans Tribute. https://www.maine.gov/sos/node/3953
Naval History and Heritage Command. “Wasp IX (CV-18), 1943–1972.” Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships. https://www.history.navy.mil/research/histories/ship-histories/danfs/w/wasp-ix.html
Naval History and Heritage Command. “80-G-261763 USS Wasp (CV-18).” National Archives photograph, March 19, 1945. https://www.history.navy.mil/our-collections/photography/numerical-list-of-images/nhhc-series/nh-series/80-G-261000/80-G-261763.html
WABI-TV. “Bangor Junior ROTC Commemorates 127th Anniversary of U.S.S. Maine Explosion, Bangor Victory Platoon.” February 15, 2025. https://www.wabi.tv/2025/02/15/bangor-junior-rotc-commemorates-127th-anniversary-uss-maine-explosion-bangor-victory-platoon/