The military and a private organization have brought home the remains of
36 Marines killed in one of World War II's bloodiest battles.
A group called History Flight recovered the remains from the remote Pacific atoll of Tarawa, the U.S. Marine Corps said. A ceremony was held Sunday in Pearl Harbor to mark their return.
History Flight has started identifying the remains, and the Defense
POW/MIA Accounting Agency will complete the effort, the Marines said.
The Marines plan to return the remains to their families after they've
been identified.
More than 990 U.S. Marines and 30 sailors died during the three-day
Battle of Tarawa in 1943. Japanese machine gun fire killed scores of
Marines when their boats got stuck on the reef at low tide during the
U.S. amphibious assault. Americans who made it to the beach faced brutal
hand-to-hand combat.
Story here
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Rest easy Gents and welcome home.
2 comments:
We honor the dead but tend to forget the cost to the living. When I was A kid we had an "Uncle" we called "Ross" who had been with 1/1/1 on Pellelu (spelling?) (It was tattooed on his arm) He drank whisky and smoked all day in the back my pops garage. He was foulmouthed and angry with everybody but us kids. He almost never talked to us. One day I asked him in my 10 year old way "Why are you so mean to everybody" . He just stared at me with those ice cold eyes and said: "Kid everybody I loved died on that fucking island . I just don't give a shit no more" .It was the last, and one of the only things he ever said to me. He died in 1968. We will never know the price those men paid for what we have.
Peleliu... I know exactly what you mean. I am a huge military history reader. I can't even imagine what some of our prior war fighting veterans went through to ensure an American victory. Movies and books just do not do them justice and when you see those men giving testimony to someone who was lucky enough to video them before they passed away from old age, it is something to behold. You can still see the mental scars left over from so much sacrifice that was demanded of them in their young lives. I'd imagine Uncle Ross would have cut a mofo for your Pops without question and your Pops would have done the same for him. Thanks for sharing your story. I enjoyed it.
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