• Melvin F. Aaron

The veteran that holds the largest space in my brain is my maternal grandfather, Melvin Aaron, a farmer turned soldier turned World War II vet, who came back from the war a changed man. The exact reasons for this change were a mystery. All we ever knew was “he saw some bad things in the war,” and these things changed him from someone who did things besides sitting in a chair reading Louis Lamour paperbacks to someone who didn’t. Eventually even the books went—whatever my grandfather saw in the war made him unwilling to see a doctor for any reason, and in his last years he lost his vision from easily operable cataracts.

“That’s grandpa!” went the story—the whole story, until a few years ago, when my Uncle Mike was going through some old boxes and found my grandfather's written account of exactly what he'd seen in the war. Along with being passed among family members, my grandpa's journal entry was published in the Clarion County Register, my grandpa and uncle's hometown paper, and it was a truly horrifying thing to read.

But it was also something we never thought we'd get: an actual answer to the question, "What broke Grandpa's brain?" I think this information was particularly valuable to my mother's younger sisters, who were born too late to know their pre-war dad. My mom was the eldest child and has memories of a dad who'd pick her up and swing her around and was a different person than the frozen man who came back from the war. My aunts and all us grandkids only knew the post-war version, and reading this account is the closest we'll ever get to knowing the earlier man.

You can read my grandfather's account of being a medic accompanying the first wave of U.S. Marines as they stormed the beaches of Iwo Jima after the jump. It's brutal, and involves historically understandable racial insensitivity ('Japs' throughout), but I am so glad it exists.

It was D-Day, Feb. 19, 1945. We boarded our tractor and started into the beach, but it was not as easy as that, as we had to make two tries at the beach before we got in. The first time we drew so much Jap fire we could not make a landing, so we had to turn back away from the beach and wait till the ships started to lay down ... then we went in under their fire. That way we drew very little Jap fire.

After we did get on the beach, the Marines wanted us to go back to our ship, for the Jap mortar fire was so heavy that they did not know if they were going to hold the couple hundred yards of beach or not. But they did - with a loss of a great many lives.

The first day they worked their way up and across the first air strip which is known as Motoma Air Field. About four o'clock on D-Day, the (Landing Ship Tank) started to pull into the beach and unload heavy artillery and rockets mounted on trucks. That is when I (saw) the sight of my life, for the beach was just laying full of dead Marines.

It was bad enough seeing them laying there, but when they started unloading the LSTs, the trucks, tanks and all the other moving equipment that was being unloaded off the ships ... were running over the Marines that laid dead there on that volcanic ash.

It didn't bother me too much to see them blown apart as it did to see them being run over with tanks and trucks.

Like one captain said, 'We don't have time to think of the dead Marines. We have to think of the live ones.'

After about a week of fighting, the quartermaster went around in a truck and gathered up the dead, and by that time (they) smelled so bad and were bloated up so big you wouldn't know your best friend.

They were stacked into the truck one on top of the other. And what I mean (is that) he really had a collection of maybe an arm or leg, or maybe a body just from the stomach up. So you can imagine what kind of a job he had.

Then they were hauled up on the side hill right below Motoma Air Field where they were lined up in a row for identification. Then they were left to lay there till the Japs were (driven) back far enough to dig trenches so they could be buried. After the trenches were dug, the dead were placed in side-by-side and covered over. Then they made little mounds of dirt on the top like in a civilian cemetery (and) put a fence around it made out of whitewashed rock. The fence was about two feet high. Then at the opening to it, they put up a flagpole and at the base of it, they had 'Fourth Division,' and right next to that they had the Marine Corps emblem that was also made out of whitewashed rock.

Then, at the head end of each mound, they had little wooden crosses with their name on it. ... If there was someone they couldn't identify, they would just put 'Unknown' in place of the name.

Then when the island was secured, ... General (Clifton B.) Cates dedicated the cemetery. It was really a nice ceremony (and) each division had their own cemetery.