Early Life
Graham Carly Mahan grew up in Los Angeles, California. He was born in 1922, the first child of Henry Mahan and Isabel Childs Mahan. He had two younger brothers: John and William.
When Graham was a small child, his father, a lawyer and former naval corpsman, left his family. Graham and his brothers lived with their mother and her family during the Great Depression. His mother, the only employed member in the household, worked as a secretary, providing for her parents, brother, aunt, and three young sons. She put all three of her children through high school, and her devotion to her family was well recognized by Graham, who made her his prime beneficiary during his time in the navy.
When Graham was a young man, he worked in the Glendora Civilian Conservation Corps while finishing high school. In 1939, at the age of 18, Graham enlisted in the Naval Medical Corps for career reasons. His mother signed his release before she and her sons moved to Oregon, where she worked as a seamstress and was later remarried, while Graham trained in San Diego.
Military Career
Graham spent two years in California completing his medical training in the Hospital Corps School in San Diego before being deployed to Guadalcanal in 1941 on the USS President Hayes as part of the Headquarters Company, 1st Battalion. There, he served for a number of months before being sent back to California to recover from Malaria. With the exception of his months in Guadalcanal, and the time he spent deployed in Iceland, Graham spent most of his time as part of the Second Marine Brigade of the Fleet Marine Forces in the United States, taking part in more training and working on the bases. It was during one of these periods at home that he married his wife, Virginia Claire. She accompanied him to many of his posts, which included Quantico, Virginia. However, in 1944, she had to leave her husband and return to their permanent home in Van Nuys, California.
This was necessary because Graham had been chosen to be a part of Foxy 29, the medical component of the D-Day invasion. In February of 1944, he was relocated to Lido Beach in New York, where he and other medical corpsmen underwent intense training in secret. They were later moved to a base in England, where the men learned how to transform their LSTs, or Landing Ship Tanks, into floating hospitals for the invasion.
Graham Mahan was stationed to the LST 314, which went between the shores of England and Normandy transporting men and materials, while treating the wounded. However, on June 9th, on its second journey, the LST 314 was sunk by a German E-Boat. Many of her crew, including her commanding officer, Lieutenant Tutt, were rescued by nearby ships, but many more perished. Graham Mahan was working in the part of the ship that was hit by the torpedo, and was later declared Missing: Presumed Dead.