Robert Hagen had wanted to attend the Naval Academy and, in fact, did—for one day. After having received an appointment over 60 other applicants in 1938, he failed a routine eye exam the day he reported to Annapolis and was immediately sent home.
Fate sometimes compensates for disappointments, however. Hagen returned to Brownsville, Texas, and attended junior college, completing his studies in little more than a year. After reserve officer training at Northwestern University, he earned a commission as an ensign in 1941, three months before his would-have-been classmates at the Naval Academy, making him senior in rank—something he was not shy about pointing out whenever they crossed paths.
His first assignment was as a service school selection officer at Great Lakes, Illinois, where he helped decide where the newly graduated recruits would be assigned. While carrying out this duty, Hagen encountered five young men—all brothers named Sullivan from Waterloo, Iowa. Their recruiter had promised they could stay together by all serving in the same ship. By this time the war had begun, and Hagen thought serving together was a very bad idea. “What if that ship got sunk?” he argued to his commanding officer. “Can you imagine being the chaplain who would have to deliver the news to that mother?” His protest fell on deaf ears, and all five Sullivans were sent to a light cruiser.
Anxious to leave desk duty, where logic seemed to Hagen to be in short supply, he appealed to his father for help in getting him a sea assignment. The elder Hagen, then serving in the Bureau of Ordnance, apparently succeeded, and orders arrived for his son to report to the destroyer USS Aaron Ward (DD-483).
On 13 November 1942, during what has become known as the Naval Battle of Guadalcanal, the Aaron Ward led the rear section of destroyers in a column that included five cruisers and seven other destroyers westward through Sea-lark channel into Savo Sound. At 0140, the USS Cushing (DD-376)—leading the column—encountered at close range an approaching Japanese force of two battleships and 12 screening cruisers and destroyers. A general melee erupted that would prove to be one of the bloodiest surface battles of the war. The Japanese lost a battleship and two destroyers that night, while the Americans lost two cruisers and four destroyers. The Aaron Ward was not one of the ships lost, but she and Bob Hagen paid a serious toll.
When the battle began, Ensign Hagen was the Aaron Ward’s officer of the deck and was on the starboard bridge wing when a Japanese shell exploded in the wardroom below. He was hit by shrapnel in several places. His left bicep was torn open and likely would have cost him his life from arterial bleeding had not a pharmacist’s mate stopped the profuse flow with a tourniquet.
As the doctors were cutting a mangled artery from his arm and removing multiple shell fragments from his leg, Hagen did not consider himself lucky, but he would later come to appreciate those wounds, which were serious enough to have him medically evacuated. Five months later, Hagen learned his former ship had sunk off Tulagi in 40 fathoms of water. Fate had again compensated by sparing him from that tragedy.
But fate was less forgiving for the crew of the cruiser USS Juneau (CL-52), one of the other U.S. ships that fought at the Naval Battle of Guadalcanal. She was lost with heavy loss of life—including all five Sullivan brothers.
Fate was not yet finished with Bob Hagen. For his actions at Guadalcanal he had received a Purple Heart and a Silver Star, and when he had recovered from his injuries, he joined the USS Johnston (DD-557) in October 1943 as her gunnery officer. Two days short of a year later, the Johnston went down heroically in the Battle of Leyte Gulf, earning her captain the Medal of Honor and Hagen, the senior surviving officer, a Navy Cross.
