[sawyer1]

Originally Posted by sevenmalards

My Grandpa was in the 1st. Marine Division on Midway when the Japanese attacked it, and stormed the beaches of Peleliu and Iwo Jima. The book I read was his. After seeing the series "the war" on PBS I asked my grandma if she heard of the book "with the old breed" and she said that grandpa has it, told me to be very careful with it and let me take it home to read. Grandpa passed in 2004. I asked her what he thought of the book and all she told me was he said "he got it right"

And he never ever talked about the war except one time when I was about 14 I gave him a book called "Paradise in the pacific" and it was a pictorial about the pacific islands and there were some WWII aerial photos of Peleliu and when he got to a page he stopped and stared at it for about half an hour. Finally I asked him what was wrong and he pointed to a path that led from the beach and said "this is the route I took to get off the beach, I took cover in this impact crater, moved up and set up under this tower, and this is where my best friend was killed"
When he passed in 2004 my grandma made the trip to the island of Peleliu and scattered his ashes in the crater under the tower. Since then she has been back 5 more times. Searching for war relics (nothing has been removed from the island) it is a national battlefield park.

That gave me the chills awesome story .