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2-23-18 Garand Picture of the Day - Tarawa
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He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose
There are no great men, only great challenges that ordinary men are forced by circumstances to meet.
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02-14-2018 10:38 AM
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Long time after the initial landing!
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(M1 Garand/M14/M1A Rifles)
A friend went ashore on Tarawa. He was a broadcaster in civilian life who'd rub shoulders with some fairly well-known people. He joined the Marines on Dec. 8th, 1941 and they put him in communications. It turned that out someone, somewhere had marked his file to prevent him from being expended in the first wave. High-level leadership pulled him out of his unit , which went in the first wave, at the last moment. They held him aboard ship until the third day. Virtually all of his friends died.
Living with survivors guilt got him into alcohol. After the war, he worked with the Voice of America in France
and lived it up on European alcohol. One day he woke up in West Berlin with no money, no luggage, no wallet, and no idea how he'd gotten there because entry into West Berlin required ID papers. About all he could figure was that he'd made a new friend because he woke up in the apartment of a stewardess's he didn't know. A short while later, while driving drunk on a German highway, he tried to poke his Messershmitt car between a couple of trucks, one oncoming, and belatedly discovered that the tiny car, and one of his legs, wouldn't fit.
He said the German doctors, and nurses, were great. He got sober, got a prosthetic leg, got in touch with God, and made something of his life. When I worked with him in the '80s he was still working successfully in broadcasting and learning new things. He died rather suddenly, but a happy man.
Bob
"It is said, 'Go not to the elves for counsel for they will say both no and yes.' "
Frodo Baggins to Gildor Inglorion, The Fellowship of the Ring
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