Quote Originally Posted by jgcunningham View Post
It's amazing to me that so many of these men went to the other side of the world and committed such acts of heroism but don't brag about them. I had an uncle who recently died and, although I talked to him quite a few times and knew he was a Marine, I never knew until after he died what he did in the Pacific. He was on a little island called Midway when it was attacked by the Japanese. Even though he was telephone man, he manned an anti-aircraft gun and brought down 3 planes. After that he went to Hawaii for a while and then had to help establish communication lines whenever the Marines invaded an island. So he was on a little rock called Iwo Jima and saw the flag go up. But he never told any of us family because he had a job to do and he did it. He didn't want any extra recognition for what he did.
As I mentioned earlier & in this previous thread, my cousin (a 3 war vet, starting with Merrill's Marauders), told me very little of his time in combat.
His favourite saying, when asked, was "whomever said war is hell, only scratched the surface."

I do know that the last ten years of his life he spent in Florida, he'd get together a couple times a week for breakfast with other former WWII vets who also served in Merrill's Marauders & the Rangers, where they recounted tales of combat etc.
Oh, to have been a fly on the wall!!