(August 6, 2016 at 12:48 am)SteelCurtain Wrote: My grandad was eager to talk about it. He got blew up by mines in a Navy ship twice, he was on the ground as a amphib crewman and got stuck on Betio with his landing craft and fought with the Marines for the last push in the Battle of Tarawa.
My mother has compiled his stories and medals and is writing a book about it.
You just reminded of a funny story.
In the late 70's while I was with the IRS I accompanied another officer to Fire Island. He was an older guy, joined the NYPD after the war and when he did his 20 years at that he went to work for the IRS.
Now Fire Island is not strictly gay. There are straight communities as well and they are not contiguous. There are wilderness areas between the communities and we were walking along the beach from one to another. As we walked through the sand he said "I'm getting too old for this. This reminds me of hitting the beach at Tarawa."
Not ten seconds later we came up a dune and practically stumbled across two broads sunning themselves au naturel. They were both sound asleep so we walked by quietly. After we passed them I asked "did the Japs have anything like that on Tarawa?"
After a pause he said "if they did I would have surrendered."
