 Nice collection eh? We got our share and more. More than we thought we'd get when we joined the 43rd early in 1941. What does it take to get a purple heart? General Washington said it takes valor. Our ancestors showed plenty of valor in the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, the Spanish American War, in World War I. Only they weren't called the 43rd then. There were only a few regiments of civilian soldiers, volunteers of the new England National Guard from Maine, Vermont, Connecticut and Rhode Island, the 103rd Infantry, the 169th Infantry, and the 172nd Infantry. Some of them with history dating back more than 100 years. That was long before they called us the Wing Victory Division. Let's be frank, back in 1941 it didn't look like much of a victory and we didn't look much like the division which was later called one of the finest commands in the Pacific. We used rubber balloons for guns and learned to paint the words machine gun instead of knocking one out. And speaking of Wing Victory, we didn't feel as if we had wings. Our feet hurt too much from marching, running, jumping, climbing. First in Camp Blanding, Florida, then in Camp Shelby, Mississippi. General Hester, who was the boss of our outfit then, wasn't too happy about it. But when we left the states in October 1942, they gave us plenty of everything. Remember the phrase arsenal of democracy? We must have half emptied it. Of course, we felt sort of strange when we moved through the Golden Gate. We were still just a bunch of civilians in uniform. There was also a feeling of excitement. The combat team was on the elevated President Coolidge which was sunk at Espirito Santo in the Hebrides while the rest of us were kept as strategic reserve in New Caledonia as a sort of welcoming committee for the Japs should they decide to pay us a visit. Strategic reserve, my eye, was just another word for training for crawling in the dirt. And brother, we practically ate that dirt. We were getting tough and ready. When the Japs sent word they were too busy to keep our date we moved up from New Caledonia. In February 1943 on the way to Guadalcanal we started our collection of medals. Japs sent us greetings by plane and torpedo but by and large it was only a mopping up operation putting the finishing touches on a good job started by the Marines. First medals for valor and wounds. Next we invaded the Russell Islands in 1943. It wasn't much of an invasion but it was worth the experience. It was a good rehearsal for our next job. Organized as a task force under General Hester we were supposed to land on Rendova Island together with elements of the Navy and Marine Corps. It's funny what kind of thoughts go through your head once you know there's nothing between you and that coastline but a prayer advancing under fire. Establishing a beachhead. Unloading equipment with those devils dropping hell on you. By Navy support we consolidated our position on Rendova Island and sat down for a few minutes to have some chow. Then the order came to move across the channel to Munda Airfield. Maybe I feel a little bitter about Munda Airfield but 31 days we bled for every inch we advanced moving through rain and mud fighting against heavily fortified and camouflaged positions. As Munda Airfield brings back some bitter memories we got quite a number of medals for valor and wounds. Munda was ours, repaired and enlarged as a base for our planes. And so was Rendova Island. After 50 more days of sweat and blood they took us to New Zealand to forget all about it but had a chance to relax a little in those days. Darned well it wouldn't last long when replacement started coming. It meant we were getting ready for a new mission. A red wing was now our boss. A tough soldier graduated from the Doe Flits. He was the one who gave us that name, the Winged Victory Division. The funniest name a bunch of Doe Boys ever had. We sure did that name proud when we landed at Itapi in July 1944. The landing itself was easy. There were some fireworks after we landed, plenty of fireworks. There were 80,000 Japs and only 20,000 of us. But our equipment was good and so was our morale. The Japs must have thought we were crazy but we kept going. They attacked us across the Drinamore. That's the name of a river. You had to be quite a linguist to tell where your buddy fell. Our Japanese friends learned in a hurry to understand the language of our guns. We smoked them out of their holes like rats. And we kept going, sort of a constitutionally, you might say, with a shower every day and a beauty nap after lunch, mud pack and all. Things sort of eased up when Christmas came around or so we thought. It was the third Christmas we had spent away from home. The third Christmas for many of us the last. Two years eve we were on our way to the Philippines as part of the invasion force. Yes, we made a number of New Year's resolutions. Number one was we were going to land on Lengayan Gulf Luzon. It was the kind of a campaign that sticks in your memory, the kind you keep dreaming about long after it's over. Some dreams. We'll never forget those kamikazis. Those troops landed on the morning of January 9th with orders to seize the left flank. In order to block off the Japanese in the mountains of Baguio, we had to slug it out inch by inch over mountains, rivers, swamps, jungles, and carried us south to Fort Stotzenberg, which we helped liberate. But we didn't have time to stay for the ceremony for we were doing our share at Clark Field and the rugged mountains that flanked the field on the north. The boys who keep the records will tell you we killed more Japs than all the other divisions that fought on Luzon. Everybody tell you we were the only ones who did the fighting. We would have been lost in the Sambales Mountains without the guerrillas and the native scout troops. Getting desperate, but nobody could stop us now. We moved south and tackled the famous Shimbu line at Antipola east of Manila, sweeping to a junction with the first cavalry division southeast of Laguna Dubai. Then to Ipodam, which was the main source of Manila's water supply. We blasted the Shinsu Fortress and secured Ipodam intact. We yanked out for a rest, but our biggest job lay yet ahead, the invasion of the Japanese homeland. However, before we could get going again, a little gadget called the atom bomb brought peace. We put in a stretch as occupation troops in Japan, back at swinging a stick instead of a bayonet. Finally, we started on our voyage home, back through the Golden Gate, three years older, years wiser, minus many of our buddies, plus a lot of medals. The voices that cheered us in San Francisco were the voices of America, the America we had fought for in four campaigns that won us two congressional medals of honor, one distinguished service medal, 75 distinguished service crosses, and a collection of silver stars and purple hearts. We were a happy bunch of soldiers who we had done our job in the bloodiest war of history, and we had done it well, once again a part of the National Guard. Citizen Soldiers, ready to serve our country whenever we are needed, whenever we are called.