More than 60 years after he was injured in a Nazi submarine attack, a Proctor native will receive the Purple Heart.

Albert Oberg is one of 11 men who survived the sinking of the U.S.S. Jacob Jones. Although he is 91 years old, Oberg's memory of the attack is as crisp as the waters of the Atlantic Ocean that claimed his ship.

The Proctor High School Class of 1936 graduate saw the war on the horizon when he enlisted in the Navy in 1940.

"I enlisted because I knew the war was coming to the United States, and I knew we would be in it," Oberg said. He joined the crew of the Jacob Jones in September 1940. For more than a year, the ship patrolled the waters of the Caribbean Sea and escorted ships between Iceland and Argentina.

The Jacob Jones was about 80 miles off the coast of New Jersey on Feb. 28, 1942, when a German U-boat fired the first of two torpedoes that struck the 314-foot World War I-era destroyer, piercing the ship's magazine hold and detonating much of the vessel's ammunition. The second torpedo struck near the rear of the ship near the sleeping quarters.

"I was asleep, as were the others in the sleeping quarters. I didn't hear it, but I felt a whoosh of hot air blow past my face," Oberg said, recalling the dawn attack. "The wall bent in, but my footlocker was tall enough to protect me from most of the blast."

While he was sheltered from the initial explosion, the torpedo ripped open a high-pressure steam pipe near Oberg's bunk, leaving him with third-degree burns on his back. Not knowing the full extent of his injuries, he raced to the deck and he and another sailor lowered a lifeboat into the water.

"We lost our paddles and kind of drifted in a semi-circle to the stern end, which was rising out of the water," Oberg recalled, but the torpedo attack was not the final explosion of the morning. When the ship sank to 100 feet, programmed depth charges detonated within.

"That killed a lot of people," Oberg said. Of the 142 sailors on board, only 12 survived to be rescued, and one died en route to Cape May, N.J.

Oberg spent the next week recovering from his wounds and, before he received two weeks of leave, learned the spilled diesel oil had actually helped seal the burns to his back. The sinking of the U.S.S. Jacob Jones, now a footnote in history, was big news at the time, news that shocked his sister, Laurel McMahon, who was then living in Schenectady, N.Y., with her husband.

"We went to the movies that night and there was a picture of my brother on the screen," McMahon said, recalling the newsreel that preceded the movie. "I went home and called my family and they had heard of the attack, too."

About two weeks after the attack, Oberg came to visit his sister.

"When he arrived he looked the exact same way he did when he left," McMahon recalled. "He is a fighter."

After his two-week leave, he returned to Boston for reassignment to the Pacific Theater. He spent the next four years on inter-island patrol in Australia, New Zealand, Hawaii and the Solomon Islands. In 1946, he returned to Proctor, married Mildred Lampman and moved to Elmira, N.Y., to work for Westinghouse.

Oberg now lives in Horseheads, N.Y., and today, he will travel to Wisner Park in nearby Elmira for a ceremony that will include presidential, gubernatorial and congressional proclamations, and he will receive the Purple Heart from a Navy representative.

The award is an unexpected coda to Oberg's life of service.

"I had given up any hope for it, because I didn't think I was eligible for it," he said.

josh.ogorman@rutlandherald.com