Adrenaline and fear kept me alive as I dragged my best friend to shore. One of the rounds went through him and hit me in the hip. He was hit several times, killing him almost instantly. Six of my squad didn’t make it, including my best friend standing in front of me. The moment our ramp hit the beach we were hit with a hail of bullets that wiped out nearly everyone on our boat. If there is hell on earth, we surely found it. A couple of guys went down before the ramp opened and their screams mixed with the roar of the diesel engine and the chatter of our guns. There were eight marines in my rifle squad, each counting on me to get them home, including my best friend.Īs we approached, the air came alive with ordinance, hypersonic rounds whistling all around us.
We could see fellow marines getting hammered as we roared in on high tide. Our boat was part of the forward task force needed to secure the beach head hard-earned the day before. We had heard that fighting had been awful the day before.
For some of us, it was our first real action but everyone was nervous. The boat stank of sweat, fear and diesel fumes. February 20, 1945, my squad loaded into a landing vehicle headed to Iwo Jima. “I was a rifle squad leader in WWII in the Pacific. I told him I had all the time in the world at which point he leaned back in his rocker and laid his soul bare. I could tell my presentation caught him off guard as he firmly gripped my hand, looked me directly in the eye and asked me if I had time for a story. He was in a recliner so I kneeled down to thank him for his service while awarding him with a medal. He lovingly spoke about her as we chatted and I could tell she was the love of his life. Her dementia had taken a turn for the worse the past year. She entertained his wife who “Dan” was caring for. The clinical liaison left me to talk to the husband. They could have walked straight out of a Norman Rockwell painting. The couple we met with in apartment 39 had been married for more than 70 years and had known each other before World War II. I met many colorful characters that day, but it wasn’t until I stepped into apartment 39 that Veterans Day became clear. On Veterans Day several years ago, I went out with a clinical liaison to personally recognize veterans residing in assisted living. My awareness changed after joining hospice. National Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day is December 7 Thanking Veterans for Their Service Parts of ‘Platoon’ and ‘Saving Private Ryan’ still haunt me on occasion. Luckily, my generation was not asked to serve and my life went on without much thought to the military other than to watch the latest war movies as portrayed on the big screen. I couldn’t legally drink a beer, but I could kill and be killed in defense of our country. It was a scary moment for me and my twin brother and the odd paradigm it presented. I remember when I turned 18 and had to sign up for the draft. They both succumbed to cirrhosis of the liver after returning from action. My parents each had an uncle who served, but they passed away before I was born. Both put in two years of service and returned bulked up, but no wiser in their choices. I didn’t grow up in a military family, but I did have a couple of cousins who joined the military as they couldn’t stay out of trouble as youths. National Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day is one of the days I’m ashamed to say I used to take for granted. By Paul Weddle, COO, Kansas City Hospice & Palliative Care