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In August 2014 the World will mark the 100th Anniversary of the outbreak of the First World War.
The power unleashed by modern war resulted in previously unimagined losses. Over 9 million soldiers died as a result of the fighting. Food shortages, sometimes deliberately inflicted by blockade and sometimes resulting from failed harvests, weakened the people who remained on the home fronts. Nearly 6 million civilians died from disease or starvation. Almost 1 million more were killed as a direct result of military operations. In all, the estimate of dead resulting from the war stands at over 16 million.
Millions of people across the world still feel a connection with the Great War for Civilisation. They knew the people whose lives were changed by it. They remain moved by the enduring works of art that were created as a response to it. They live with its unresolved political legacies. The First World War created a common sense of history that, decades later, still links people from many disparate nations.
Photo Caption: Two Australian soldiers visiting their mate’s grave in Dartmoor Cemetery at Bécordel-Bécourt on the Somme.
Remember Those Who Served
The Greatest Generations Foundation
Return to Tarawa - PFC Wendell V. Perkins, a World War II veteran of the 2nd Marine Division served in Company A, 1st Battalion, 6th Marine Regiment during the battles on Tarawa, Saipan and Tinian.
Born in Waco, Texas, Perkins went to Marine Corps Recruit Depot San Diego in December 1942. After eight weeks of rigorous training, he went on to tank training school where he qualified as a light tank driver and gunner. From there he joined a group of 300 tankers and traveled overseas to New Zealand, where only three tankers where selected for duty. The rest went into the infantry and Perkins ended up as a machine gunner with Weapons platoon, Company A, 1st Battalion, 6th Marine Regiment, 2nd Marine Division.
After Tinian, Perkins returned to the United States to attend Navy V-12 program, than was soon discharged at the end of the war. Perkins spent 36 years with the Pacific Telephone Company before retiring to spend time with his family.
Next week, Perkins and a group of World War II veterans from the Second Marine Division will journey to the small Pacific Island to help with the search for the lost marines of Tarawa sponsored by The Greatest Generations Foundation.
Best wishes for a safe, happy, healthy journey!
Remember Those Who Served
The Greatest Generations Foundation
Return to Tarawa - Seventy years after three of the bloodiest days in modern American history, the battle continues to bring the missing 500 men back home from Tarawa. Next week, a group of World War II veterans from the Second Marine Division will journey to the small Pacific Island to help with the search for the lost marines of Tarawa sponsored by The Greatest Generations Foundation.
One of those returning veterans will be Corporal James Morrow. Corporal Morrow came ashore on the morning of day two. His boat swamped at the reefs edge requiring his platoon to get ashore as best they could. His first job ashore was that of runner. His next assignment was feeding shells into a 60mm mortar, before helping unload boats coming ashore with supplies. Corporal Morrow’s final assignment was to trek up the entire length of the Atoll looking for any remaining Japanese.
After their victory, the Marines set about burying the dead. They wrapped the bodies in ponchos and folded them into shallow graves. Then they moved on, and military construction crews came in to raze the island flat. They expanded the airfield and built a network of roads and offices. By the time an excavation team arrived in 1946 to exhume and identify the dead — part of a global campaign to recognize the fallen — no one could remember where they were. Investigators spent three months searching, but they found only half the Marines.
Today, 471 of the Tarawa Marines are buried by name in American cemeteries. Another 104 have been laid to rest in “unknown” graves at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Hawaii. And the rest — perhaps as many as 520 Marines — are still on, or near, Tarawa.
Best wishes for a safe, happy, healthy journey!
Remember Those Who Served
The Greatest Generations Foundation
