The Battle of Guam

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"You go in by waves and you land. Bear in mind, this is the first landing with your friends. Ten of us were from Georgia, okay? One did not hardly make it out of the water. When the ramp came down on the landing craft and the machine guns opened up on the shore, you are there before God and everybody. And one man fell, and then another fella, two men fell before you got-. We had a water tower to our right. We were supposed to make it to that water tower and reassemble. Reassemble is a word because these fellas who dropped out here-. You were in teams. Each team had a part to play. Each member of that team had a part to play. If he was missing, the team was missing. And you wind up sometimes with only two members of your team there. Somebody else has to come together and re-form your unit. And so that’s what we were to do at the water tower. When we got to that water tower, it was as expected. So many were missing."