A time to remember sacrifices in wartime

As a Marine Corps sergeant during World War II, Alan E. Macauley went into the battle of Iwo Jima with a battalion of 917 enlisted men and 37 officers. After four weeks of fighting over a terrain of black volcanic ash that looked "like the surface of the moon," 902 of the enlisted Marines and most of the officers had been killed or wounded.

"I was very fortunate," Macauley said. He won't soon forget those who weren't.

The retired court reporter from the Holmes section of Ridley Township was among dozens of World War II veterans who visited the Pennsylvania Veterans Museum in Media Saturday morning.

They were there, on Memorial Day weekend, to promote the Veterans History Project, run by the U.S. government, which seeks to collect reminiscences from the veterans of any period.

For Macauley, who spent 11 months in Navy hospitals after a machine-gun round shattered his humerus, war on the grand scale of Iwo Jima had one advantage over what today's generation of Marines and soldiers faces in Iraq and Afghanistan.

At least you knew who the enemy was: He was straight ahead, popping up like a gopher from his island tunnels and caves.

"In Iraq, the difference, as I see it, is, they have to be careful who they shoot," Macauley said. The car coming your way at dusk at a checkpoint could be a family hurrying home before a curfew. Or it could be packed with a hundred pounds of explosives and have a suicide bomber at the wheel.

"We shot anything in front of us," Macauley said. "In Iraq, it's tougher."

Information kits can be printed out from the project Web site at www.loc.gov/vets.

U.S. Rep. Joe Sestak (D., Pa.) said his office would take calls from anywhere in the region: 610-892-8623.

EndText