Enemy artillery rounds and small-arms fire rained down in the water all around them as they came ashore on “Red Beach,” near the base of Mount Suribachi on Iwo Jima, with U.S. Marines. Seaman/3rd Milt Alligood manned the steel ramp in the bow of the plywood Higgins Boat. He lowered it as the “Leathernecks” charged…
John Callahan , of Punta Gorda Isles, Fla., was the coxswain of a Higgins Boat, a plywood and steel landing craft built in the New Orleans area. He and his wooden boat played a part in the Battle of Okinawa, the biggest battle in the Pacific during the Second World War.
Robert Stilson of Alameda Isles Mobile Home Park in Englewood, Fla. was a 19-year-old Marine Corps corporal who charged ashore from a Higgins Boat onto the black sandy beach at Iwo Jima on the first first day in the second wave –Feb. 19, 1945– to play his part in one of the major battles in the Pacific during the closing months of World War II.
The headline on the story in the Sun read: ‘Jack Callahan served aboard USS St. Mary’s at Okinawa.’ Rudy Ricci of Windmill Village mobile home park in Punta Gorda, Fla. couldn’t believe his eyes.
World War II was over. The Japanese had signed the surrender aboard the Battleship Missouri in Tokyo Bay a few weeks earlier when Shipfitter 2nd-Class Rudy Ricci of Windmill Village, Punta Gorda, Fla. stepped into the limelight. He served aboard the USS St. Mary’s off Okinawa Island during a typhoon in Buckner Bay that nearly…
War Tales 