Ed Walker (American veteran)

Edgar Walker (August 28, 1917 – October 28, 2011) was an American veteran of World War II, businessman, publisher and writer.

Walker was the penultimate surviving member of "Castner's Cutthroats", a regiment consisting of sixty-five men who performed reconnaissance missions in the Aleutian Islands during World War II.

[1] Walker was stationed with the Army infantry at Chilkoot Barracks (also known as Fort William H. Seward), which was the only U.S. military base in the Territory of Alaska at the time he arrived.

[3] Walker and thirty-six of the scouts were stationed in Anchorage at the time, when they received erroneous reports of a Japanese attack on the city.

He was armed with a Browning Automatic Rifle, which meant that he was among the first of the Cutthroats to make landfall at Adak and secure the surrounding beach.

I hung on to that, and of course we were at the fantail of the sub, and there's a series of welded pipes that protect the propeller and we each got a hold of one of them, and every time we went through a wave, we just stopped breathing and closed our eyes and came back up...They sent a man out, and they had to crawl because everything on the submarine was slippery.

He was interviewed by author Jim Rearden, who included Walker in his book, Castner's Cutthroats: Saga of the Alaska Scouts.

He wrote the nonfiction historical book, Twenty Women Who Made America Great, following the death of his longtime wife, Frances Walker.

[1] In 2008 and 2009, photos and quotes from Walker and other members of the regiment appeared in an exhibit, Castner's Cutthroats: Forgotten Warriors, which opened at the Anchorage Museum.

[2][3] Walker met his future wife, Frances Park, while she was employed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, who were constructing the Alaska Highway at the time.