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Around 15 years ago I had occasion to be dining at the Naval Academy here in Annapolis. Someone announced "Wake Island Marine on deck" as a gaunt old gentleman in a wheelchair was ushered into the Hall. Everybody stood up, and those in uniform maintained a stiff salute until he was at his dining table. I still get goose bumps when thinking about it.
As a kid, one of our neighbors in a neighborhood we had recently moved into was a Bataan survivor. He spent most of his war in a POW camp on Mindanao, after a stopover in Cabanatuan. Started the war as a ground crewman at Clark Field, and became an infantryman in short order. He carried a .30 machine gun salvaged from a wrecked plane and claimed to have been a part of a ragtag outfit that disrupted a small Japanese landing behind our lines. Being on total disability, he had nothing better to do than sit on the porch and drink beer all day, after enough of which he would tell a vague story or two to us kids, usually the same one over and over. Imagine my surprise when I found a copy of "The Dyess Story", by Capt. Ed Dyess, in my dad's stuff and then when old Bill said "yeah, I knew him. Heckuva guy. He was my boss for a while." As a ten year old addicted to "Combat" on TV, I sort of lost interest in those dramatized stories after my first encounter with "the Real McCoy". He died by the time I was in Junior High. He couldn't have been older than mid-late 40's but he looked to be 70.
At that time when my passion for WWII history was awakened, I asked my dad what he did in the war. He laughed and said "mostly scrap drives with the Boy Scouts. I was 11 when the Japs bombed Pearl Harbor."
As a kid, one of our neighbors in a neighborhood we had recently moved into was a Bataan survivor. He spent most of his war in a POW camp on Mindanao, after a stopover in Cabanatuan. Started the war as a ground crewman at Clark Field, and became an infantryman in short order. He carried a .30 machine gun salvaged from a wrecked plane and claimed to have been a part of a ragtag outfit that disrupted a small Japanese landing behind our lines. Being on total disability, he had nothing better to do than sit on the porch and drink beer all day, after enough of which he would tell a vague story or two to us kids, usually the same one over and over. Imagine my surprise when I found a copy of "The Dyess Story", by Capt. Ed Dyess, in my dad's stuff and then when old Bill said "yeah, I knew him. Heckuva guy. He was my boss for a while." As a ten year old addicted to "Combat" on TV, I sort of lost interest in those dramatized stories after my first encounter with "the Real McCoy". He died by the time I was in Junior High. He couldn't have been older than mid-late 40's but he looked to be 70.
At that time when my passion for WWII history was awakened, I asked my dad what he did in the war. He laughed and said "mostly scrap drives with the Boy Scouts. I was 11 when the Japs bombed Pearl Harbor."
). It wasn't until the tough Philippine Scouts arrived that the "Points" were eliminated. Dyess led an attack by boat on the Japanese positions that should have merited the DSC if not the Medal of Honor.
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