Ships
- USS Allen (DD-66) Captain from 23 November 1920 · Relieved when she was decommissioned, 22 June 1922
Percy Austin Decker was born in New York City on 4 August 1890. He entered the United States Navy as an enlisted sailor and by the spring of 1914 was a boatswain's mate second class on the battleship Florida, responsible for seamanship work and the men who carried it out.
On 21 April 1914 he went ashore at Veracruz, Mexico, during the seizure of the port. Ensign G. M. Lowry called for volunteers to enter an alley between the customhouse and an open warehouse that was pouring rifle fire into the street. Five men went forward, and Decker took a position a short distance behind them. A Mexican soldier hidden among boxes stood up and aimed at Lowry and the volunteers. Decker drew that aim onto himself and shot the soldier. For his conduct that day he received the Medal of Honor. Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels presented it on the deck of Florida at the Brooklyn Navy Yard on 6 January 1915.
Decker stayed in the service through the First World War. On 15 August 1918 he was commissioned an ensign, leaving the petty-officer ranks for duty as an officer. By the early 1920s he was a lieutenant (junior grade).
On 23 November 1920 he took command of the destroyer Allen (DD-66), relieving Robert Bruce Crichton. Allen was a Sampson-class ship built at Bath, Maine. Samuel Woods Bryant had placed her in commission in January 1917. She spent the rest of the war on convoy escort and patrol with the naval forces in European waters, then came home to the Atlantic Fleet. Her commanding officers in those years included Henry David Cooke, Jr., Louis Calott Farley, John Edwin Ostrander, Jr., and Charles Carroll Soule, Jr.
Decker kept Allen on the Atlantic Fleet's routine along the eastern seaboard. He was still her commanding officer when the Navy decommissioned her on 22 June 1922, and he was relieved that day.
He remained on active duty and rose to lieutenant. Decker died on 18 August 1936, at the age of forty-six, and was buried at Arlington National Cemetery in section 7, grave 10302.
Allen returned to service after he left her. She trained reservists from 1925 until 1928, then lay at Philadelphia until 23 August 1940, when Frederick Paul Williams recommissioned her. Based at Pearl Harbor, she was in port on 7 December 1941, came through the attack without damage or casualties, and spent the Pacific war on escort and patrol, much of it in Hawaiian waters. Later commanding officers included Daniel Byrd Miller, Parke H. Brady, Homer Howard Nielson, William James Riley, Jr., and James A. Rowe. She was decommissioned at Philadelphia in October 1945 and sold for scrap in September 1946.