A Soldiers Story

My grandfather, who died almost exactly two years ago, fought on Tarawa with the 2nd Marine Division. It's interesting that he never said anything negative about the decision to storm the island, although it's pretty obvious in retrospect that the battle wasn't all that necessary. He was never depressed about it, in fact, I still find it hard to reconcile his cheerful nature with what I know about the battles he took part in.

Tarawa definitely left its mark on him, though, because I believe it burned the capacity for real fear out of him. When he was 74 and living in Alexandria, VA, a 28 year-old man tried to carjack him with a .38 which, it later turned out, was unloaded. My grandfather "counterattacked", in his words, and broke his hand by repeatedly punching the carjacker in the face. After disarming the guy, Gamp even managed to force him into the car and tried to lock him in, but the guy unlocked the other side and ran off.

I was doing martial arts pretty heavily at the time with a fairly hard-core dojo, but we were all completely blown away by this, even our sensei. I was very proud of him, but I was furious too, because of the risk he'd taken. But he just laughed at me, and said that if I'd ever tried wading across coral into heavy machine gun fire, I wouldn't worry much about a little popgun either. He was just mad that the guy didn't stay down once he'd hit him a few times.

Now that I think about it, I do remember that the thing that bothered him most about Tarawa was the way that some of the Navy drivers didn't drive their LVTs in far enough, and some of the Marines drowned because the water was too deep for wading. It bothered him that those who died this way never even had a chance.

He remembered Tarawa to his dying day. I'm sure of this because he dictated his last message to me, and in it he told the family that he was not afraid to die because he'd looked death in the face before, that he'd had fifty extra years which a lot of his friends never did, and, he added, it was so much better to die surrounded by your loved ones than by a bunch of screaming Japs. He always had a good sense of humor, and I can still remember that last remark making me laugh out loud although I was finding it hard to see what I was typing because I was crying so hard.

He liked ASL too, because he saw how it kept younger people from forgetting what had happened in W.W.II. When he was dying at my parent's house, my friend and I would go over in the afternoon, set up a game and play it on a table where he could watch us. I know he'd be delighted with the release of BRT, and I'm looking forward to playing a CG or two in his memory.

Regards to all,
Theo