the Japanese called our our vehicles that took us to the beach they call them alligators because they had wheels and also tracks and so that's what we loaded up in we rallied around a circle then all of a sudden the Commodore dropped the flag and each wave went in I was in the third wave as we were going I not I I heard something and it was a a sound I never heard before it was a boom and they were blowing our landing craft out of the water with our buddies in it it was terrible
but they did not hit us we could not get up on the sand we got it was about two and a half three ft of water the boatsman said all right overboard buddy overboard we I said how am I going to get out of here so my two guys left and right got me picked me and pushed me over I went down the water they jumped over picked me up and we ran to the sand and hit face down and I heard all everything going on the screaming the yell and the rockets everything going on
out in the Water behind us and as I look to my right every vehicle every equipment that tried to get up on there was blown in half and turned upside down and Marine bodies floating in the water a terrible sight you are about to Embark upon the great crusade to meet this mounting aggression and make no mistake about it good will prevail I was born in Detroit Michigan I was born May 3rd 1925 it was the 8th of December and I remember that the three of us we were buddies we grew up together we went
off to war we came back home we got married and that seemed to break our fellowship up but we were sitting in an old car in front of my house on the 8th of December in the morning and you know that was during the time when the big bands were going good and heavy and we loved the big bands and we were listening to the big bands recordings then all of a sudden the announcer came on and he said ladies and gentlemen we interrupt this broadcast the president of the United States is going to address
the nation and we didn't know what you know we what's he going to say you know and on came the president and this is what he said and I have a habit of talking somewhat like him yesterday December 7th 1941 a date that will live in infamy I said to my two buddies I'm going to go down I'm skipping school tomorrow morning I'm going down to the Marine Corps office and I'm going to sign up they said you can't you got to be 17 you're only 16 I said I only got 6 months to go
I'll get the paper but I'm going down there next next morning I got up and I told my two sisters and brother I said don't say anything to my I'm going I told them what I was going to do they said okay so I went downtown one mile I practically ran it got into the the Federal Building went up on the fourth floor I knew every building downtown I delivered invoices there and on the fourth floor and a gunny sergeant met me in the doorway and he says what can I do for you young fell
I saysi want to sign up he said how old are you I said 16 I can't do it you've got to be 17 when will you be 17 and I said I'll be 17 in 5 and a half 6 months he said I'm going to give you some paper you take this to your mother and father when you turn 17 you have them sign that and you bring this to me and then we can do business and he said do you want to do that and I said yes sir he said go and he gave
me the paper and I ran all the way home now I was so excited I ran through the back door my mother was in the kitchen she stared at me she said what are you doing home and I went oh my gosh Ma and I told her what I did she said I'm not going through this again I went through one war already I'm not going to go through this throw that paper away I went in the dining room and I stuck it in the top drawer with papers on top 6 months later we had
a birthday day I was 17 my dad was there he wasn't always there but he was there that time and I said Dad signed this he said what is it I want to go in the Marine course give me a pen and he signed it and he said to my mother Vera come here sign this he's going in the Marine Corps and she said I'm not signing that paper I went through it with you and I'm not going to go through that again and he said Vera listen to me the boy walks out of school
school he's been doing odd jobs he'll probably turn out to be a bum and when he said that I went like this to my mother and she said give me a pen give me the pen she signed it I'm done with it I ran all the way back downtown Detroit met the gunny again he said how did you I says I'm 17 the papers were signed he said good see that door over there I said yes sir he said you're going in that door and you're going to be a Navy doctor and that doctor is
going to check you over from the top of your head to the tip of your toes and you ain't never going to forget it young man you want to go I said yes sir he said go and I went through it and I will never forget that physical I still remember it this week's story is sponsored by aura.com did you know in November researchers at Duke University published a study that identified hundreds of us-based data Brokers advertising the sale of veteran and service members info information being sold included financial situation medical condition political affiliation and
even your location this means that active duty service members veterans and their families are at risk of profiling targeting or blackmail Aura is an all-in-one safety solution that protects your data that's both simple and easy to use first Ora can identify data Brokers exposing your information and submit opt-out requests on your behalf this will secure your data and save you a ton of time but Ora also does so much more to protect you and your family from online threats you can't see it's really easy to set up so you don't have to download several different
apps to get things like antivirus VPN password management identity theft Insurance and more you get everything at one affordable price go to aura.com slavc to start your 2-e free trial and see if any of your information is currently exposed also that will be linked in the description below I went from my boot camp training to San Diego Marine Corps Base there were so many kids signing up in the Marine Corps that they had to put tents of out along the boond which is down by the water all along there were there were tents kids were
just storming in and the DI they had to they had to make more di drill instructors that parade ground was not as big as it is now I was there three weeks ago and spent five days there I couldn't believe it but it's big now and it was small in those days and we would all all the platoons would gather up and we would March in around one another we never touched we thought we were going to crash into one another but that day had us left oblique right oblique we moved right around one another
every morning the band came out and the flag was raised and they played the Stars spangle banner and I remember that every one of us kids had tears coming down our face i' have to tell you we were Americans and we were taught this in our schools in that day and we had had the national anthem every morning before classes started we used to walk out around the flag pole every grade school every Junior High School I can't speak for high school because I went off to war but every morning we went around the flag
pole we sang the national anthem as the janitor was Raising Old Glory up on the flag pole that's the kind of kids we were that's what the schools taught us in boot camp we had no idea of this but when we got in there we we were somewhat shocked they took teenage boys and made young men out of us they took every bit of nonsense out of us we completely changed of all the weapons me a flamethrower operator is entirely different it's entirely different and I thought when we trained I thought I'm going to really
really be scared with this thing but you aren't the flamethrower was 72 lbs full and you had five gallons of fuel two and 1/2 in one tank two and 1/2 in the other one pressure tank in the middle you had 15 seconds if you held the trigger back that's all you had what we did though was burst burst and we had about six or seven burst than you're out going to eima we left San Diego three divisions and it took us two and a half weeks to get there one day out they finally brought clay
models on tables and showed us what eima looked like what was underneath caves and everything we did not know at the time what the cides were when our Air Force hammered away on it very little they just went back underground let them go ahead and have their fun bombing but it did tear up their planes and things they lost their Air Force that's why it was a little bit easy for us the first time I ever had steak in the Marine Corps was on a board ship the very morning we hit the beach we could
see the battle on the island we could see our planes flying over and fighting and all of a sudden they brought Chow from down below and it was steak in eggs and I had a kid next to me and say hey buddy what's with the steak and eggs he said Graves use your head what do they do with convex before they execute them and we all kind of laugh that that's the humor we had we did not know what we were in for the Japanese called our our vehicles that took us to the beach they
call them alligators because they had wheels and also tracks and so that's what we loaded up in we rallied around the circle then all of a sudden the Commodore dropped the flag and each wave went in I was in the third wave be green beach one two three and that all three divisions and when we hit when we got up towards the shore as we were going I not I I heard something and it was a a sound I never heard before it was a w w and they were blowing our landing craft out of
the water with our buddies in it it was terrible but they did not hit us we could not get up on the sand we got it was about two and a half three fet of water and the co the the the Batson said all right overboard buddy overboard we I said how am I going to get out of here so my two guys left and right got me picked me and pushed me over I went down the water they jumped over picked me up and we ran into the sand and hit face down and I
heard all everything going on the scream of the yelling the Rockets everything going on out in the Water behind us and as I look to my right every vehicle every equipment that tried to get up on there was blown in half and turned upside down and Marine bodies floating in the water Marines lying on the ground all over the beach thick bump elbow elbow some dead some alive some terrified I've even seen a few guy I had a kid crawl back to me from the top and he was shot in the neck and he said
help me buddy help me you can't you can't help we have Corman for that and I said don't worry buddy the Corman they're com and they'll take care of you don't worry about it and he went right on by me that's what you tell them we lost our cor it took me about two maybe perhaps to three hours for a lot of us to get moving because the ones in front of us the first two waves they weren't moving we had let that this is the problem when you hit an island in the South Pacific
you've got to the first battle is the beach that's number one then you got to get across you got to take the island that's number two and if you don't get number one up there you can't have number two and that was the problem we couldn't move they wouldn't let us move so we were jammed up when we got up to the top from the beach and made a left turn those of us that were left we moved and dropped in foxholes and I I have to tell you the aore which is now the Air
Force the air cor when they dropped those bombs made a great big beautiful hole just like Taylor Made for three Marines to crawl in and you could live in that we could not dig it ourselves because it would cave in on us that bomb BW that right out of there and that's what we that's what we hid in all the way 575 ft on the third day and when we reached the base they were you could see them run back and forth behind rocks they had rocks it they had a real good fortification so we
sat there for almost a day trying to get over that thing we called for aircraft cover and they came in and pounded it and then we just went right in that was it now I didn't have a bayonet because I I I had the gun you know the purpose of a flamethrower is fire moves people and when they got in the caves there we couldn't get them out we'd fire in there we'd throw HR but they just move back they could go eight miles back they could go just a short ways across it was 8
square miles uima all underground we couldn't understand where they were during the day around supper time anytime after that till 2: 3 in the morning they would come at you with Bonsai charges that's when they did the damage during the day they fired rockets and now I I say Rockets mortars mortars would come sailing through the sky at us we had three companies in our Battalion easy company was the company that went around the left and took the patrol up to put the flag up we were fighting our way up on the right side in
the middle F company was over on the right of us we went right up to them through the middle and the Japanese come out of their caves there were caves all over and dropped hang Ries down on us we had heavy casualties heavy and we couldn't throw anything back because it won't go uphill everything rolled back at you we finally reached the crest and as we got up on the hill on on top of Mount s aachi they're raising that flag and the first thing we said was how in the world did they put a
flag up we didn't know anything about a flag we had nothing we we didn't know about putting a flag up I tell you how that happened our our Balian Commander Chandler Johnson had a flag that the captain of the transport gave him and said to him Chandler he said when you get up there try and put this up for me will you do that and he said yes I will and he gave him the flag but we had no pole we had nothing to tie a flag on well we found out that they found drain
pipe up there and they put the drain pipe together they that because they they caught rainwater Down Below in the caves and let it go down there caught it in pales they couldn't make their water we could so we had plenty of water um it was a spectacle it was a great thing to see we were shocked because they put a flag up look and when it went up you should have heard toot toot toot the horns aboard the ships the guns were going off it it was like the 4th of July in Hudson Bay
it was a great scene you know we heard so much about five or six fellas putting the flag up that's not true three divisions put it up we all did our job we all put it up and that should have been said we all fought that battle so that that flag could be up round towards 10 11:00 on the on the final day on Mount sorachi we observed we we watched the Navy get hit bad out that's where I saw the bismar and finally we got word that we're going to head on down the hill
and head for 362 number 362 a mountain on the left side of the island not too far away and so that day we moved over there we received fight but during the night it got a little dark the Japanese came out Bonsai charges they threw everything at us I was to the left you see I can't be actually on that front line without help because if they grab me I'm done and they can use it on us so I stayed right to the left off by by a cliff like and I I heard I heard
on the walkie talkers Lieutenant Johnson just got it so and so just got it the officers were all killed on hill 362a and a lot of our sergeants we were shot to Pieces we lost our Battalion there but we fought all the way for 6 weeks this was the saddest thing that happened to me and I I never forget it I tell everybody I talk to I'll never forget it I think about it I dream about it once in a while what happened was that three of us were in a cave we on the north
end and it's getting close to the end and we're sitting there just talking and I said I got to get up there and take a look see what's going on so I got up there and put my elbow on the ground my glasses looking for snapers I couldn't find a thing it was a very calm day nothing was moving I was there about 15 minutes I dropped back down I got him the horn my radio and I said grave to CP he go ahead Graves I said and I told him I said i' I've been
looking I can't see a thing well you better keep looking because our proof sergeant and took around his leg from out there I said okay I'll keep looking by the way you got a kid coming for a replacement I said good we need him so I hung the phone up 10 minutes later while he stood at the hole he said Graves I said yeah come on down he jumped in the hole he said what do you want me to do I said sit over there it' be a lot do tonight when they come I got
up and I'm looking he I was going to go look he said hey Graves let me have the glasses I'll look and I said n he gets yourself shot my one Buddy says give him the glasses that's what he's here for I threw the glasses he got up right where I had been I know that that Japanese sniper was waiting for me again about 10 minutes after we're sitting there shooting the breeze just talking he fell back he got shot in the forehead and went through his helmet his helmet flew off and landed down by
my feet we were stunned not that he got kill but I was just up there he knew I was going to go back up there he knew that and I looked at that and I looked down in that helmet and there was a beautiful girl sitting in a chair and on her lap was a beautiful baby when I saw that I lost it sad I just lost it I got up and threw everything off and I cursed iima I cursed the Marine Corps and the worst thing I did is I cursed God because he let
that kid take my place I didn't understand you know the 300 people I hit the beach with in my company 6 weeks later we were lined up the the Japanese are by the water they can go swimming and get shot by our boats or they can come at us and we'll kill them they surrendered well we got word we're going to be released by the third division they were in reserve for about 3 4 days the third division came in and led us off the off the off the line out of the 318 of us
walked down to the beach by this by our Cemetery when also where we board ship and we lined up and Lieutenant our our our Lieutenant uh Colonel livered said men I want you to line up I want you to go through that cemetery and say goodbye to your buddies and your officers come out we'll board the Higgins go out to our transport head back to hila Hawaii we'll train for Japan and saying goodbye to our buddies brought tears to her eyes it was like losing your brother we were that close we slept together we ate
together we got in trouble together we fought together that's the way the Marine Corps was
