 When I hit the beach we had 335 in dog company. When we walked down from our positions we wound up with 18 with no officers, no sergeants. Just a bunch of PFC corporals and privates and that's how we fought. And we went down and our regimental commander, Harry the horse Colonel Liversedge met us and he said men he said before we go aboard the Higgins and join our transport and go back to Hawaii. I want you all to line up and go through our fifth Marine Division cemetery and I want you to say goodbye to your buddies. And we lined up and we headed for the gate. It's at the foot of Surabachi it's not there now. But one by one we went through the gate but I noticed ahead of me it took a long time for them to get through the gate. When I finally reached it I looked over on the left pole of the arch and there was a K ration turned inside out and it was tacked. And on that I read fellas when you go home tell the folks we did our best that they may have many more tomorrows. Every Marine that read that broke down. We walked through the cemetery we filed through. I saw three buddies that I went to school with. We all quit. We joined the Corps back in 42. I saw our officers our lieutenants our platoon commanders. I saw our Colonel that took a hundred and five hours a short round and blew the CP up. This all just sort of broke us down. We marched off formed together got joined our USS Missoula APA ship went back to Hawaii and trained to fight Japan.