 Yesterday, December 7th, 1941, a date which will live in infamy. Recording engineer and I are speaking to you now from the Morigami Airport, number one on the island of Iwo Jima, the software island, to the 4th and 5th divisions of the United States Marines, landed a restless island from the Japanese and give Uncle Sam another base, only 660 miles from the Japanese mainland itself. The fighting is going on now, on a ridge just in front of us. You can probably hear the noise of the shelling in the planes overhead as they drop their bombs and once in a while you'll hear them scrape and send rockets down. As we look over on this ridge, the Marines have had paths cut off the side of it to the top with a javelin trance. You'll probably hear the sound of that rocket barrage went off just then, over on the ridge. And there's a scene of violent activity there as these Marines are... The thing that stuck really most about my time on Iwo Jima was the first dead Marine I saw. He happened to be the oldest man in our platoon. At that time I was 21 and he was 24. He was the oldest of the 45 men. And he was the only one that had a kid. He was married and had a kid. And that's something I'll never forget. I had excellent NCOs who had been in three operations. Both of my platoon sergeants, staff sergeant, and all three squad leaders had all been through the three operations before Iwo. I just thought I was very fortunate to have to go with an experienced group like that. And I was also very fortunate that I was assigned to a unit before Iwo. I felt very fortunate that I was leading a troop instead of coming in as a replacement officer. The first morning, which was D plus 1, I was checking my Marines, checking my lines and see how it was doing and a barrage came off. I jumped into a hole and the Marine came by with a war dog. I didn't even know that we were going to have war dogs. So he and his dog jumped in there and it turned out that he was a sergeant that had been at my DI when I was at Parris Island. So we had a reunion. We remembered each other and he had a dopamine. And the main thing I remember is that the dopamine probably almost as scared as I was. Before he was really scared. Everyone was so, not only so used to doing a good job, but they all seemed to love each other. That really made me feel good. We had a really, really good outfit. I was only on three days. I was very fortunate. I got hit on the third day. Well, I was hit by a, I presume it was a mortar. Not an artillery shovel. I really don't know that. But I was again, I was out checking the troops and I didn't recall hearing the thing, but I got hit and all I remember is diving into a crater and I didn't wake up until I was on a stretcher going to the beach. I got hit, I got hit with a piece of shrapnel in my heart. The shrapnel was still there. I thought it would be safer to stay in the heart muscle rather than try to open it up and get rid of the shrapnel. And then we went down to the beach and the house lined up and stretchers waiting to be taken out. And while I was waiting there, I got hit in the knee with a piece of shrapnel and actually the thing in the knee that bothered me more gave me more problems for a few months than it did. This heart thing never really bothered me.