had served with the 32nd Infantry Division during World War I and was looking forward to reporting its operations in World War II. He was based near Port Moresby and his reporting included his characteristic wit through amusing anecdotes related by servicemen, and discussed the mood of the troops on the ground and their thoughts regarding the war and its future. On October 18, 1942, Darnton was aboard the King John, a seventy-foot wooden trawler of the Small Ships Section of U.S. Army Services of Supply SWPA that was also carrying 102 troops of the 128th Infantry, off the coast of Pongani in New Guinea when a B-25 mistook the ships for Japanese vessels and bombed and strafed them. Darnton, suffering a shrapnel head wound, died in a boat on the way to shore and Lt. Adam Bruce Fahnestock, prewar South Seas explorer and then head of the Small Ships Section, hit in the spine, died in the arms of the King John's severely wounded Australian Chief Engineer moments after reaching shore. His notebook, which was taken from his body by a fellow correspondent and returned to his son, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist John Darnton in 1976, ended with a question about the bomber that would end his life: “Jap or ours?” Darnton's passing was marked by many other journalists and officials, including General Douglas MacArthur, who wired to The Times that “He served with gallantry and devotion at the front and fulfilled the important duties of war correspondent with distinction to himself and The New York Times and with value to his country.” Major General Edwin F. Harding of the 32nd Infantry Division wrote that, "Everyone hereabouts is distressed over the death of Darnton and [Lt. A. B.] Fahnestock. I knew Darnton quite well... and considered him one damn good correspondent and swell guy. He was hot to be on the spot for the first contact of American Army ground troops with the Japs. I told him that this would probably be it and gave him permission to go." Darnton was buried with full military honors at an Australian-American cemetery outside Port Moresby. Darnton and Fahnestock were buried side by side with British, Australian and American war correspondents acting as pall bearers. The Byron Darnton In 1943, a 10,500-ton Liberty ship was christened with Darnton's name in Baltimore, Maryland. The ship was launched by his widow Eleanor and her sons,