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In the war’s Pacific Theater, the battle in November 1943 to take the island of Tarawa from the Japanese illustrated just how difficult a fight the U.S. would have for the next 20 months. Treacherous landing conditions, inhospitable terrain, and an enemy determined not to surrender combined to make each island invasion seem more daunting than the last.
In Italy, the fight went on at the heavily fortified Monte Cassino monastery and on the beach at Anzio as the drive to liberate Rome continued. Civilian ambulance drivers from the American Field Service worked the battlefields to transport the wounded to safety.
"I went in the second day ... the morning of the second day..."
"I had feedback from Saipan afterwards… You know, nightmares and stuff... "
"As a kid, it’s just excitement, not a feeling of foreboding or anything like that..."
"I doubt if anyone ever gets used to combat."
"I always wondered what kind of a feeling it would be to think you are a goner..."
"...some new recruit would come in and we would tell him, don’t be so particular; wait until dark..."
"One day we lost six of our thirty patients and I was pretty depressed..."
"We were just down in that [foxhole], and we stayed for almost four months."
"...just a few hundred yards more in a different direction it could very well have been me that would have been hit ..."
"And then they gave me orders to report back to headquarters for desk duty for a year, and I tore those up..."