Marine Veteran Recalls WWII
By: Liz Gonzales
Updated: November 11, 2012
"I made the initial landing on Okinawa and that was Easter Sunday morning, April the first 1945," he explains.
The next few months would test Mr. Thompson on a daily basis.
"It rained and rained and rained, " he recalls. "You know, people don't think about, we spent over 3 months out there digging a fox hole, 2 men in a foxhole every night and sleeping in the mud and water every night. "
It was in these hills where he slept that the enemy attacked and the battle erupted. Mr. Thompson's first five attempts to destroy the Japanese failed, so he changed his weapon.
"I lit the dynamite and went back down there and threw it in there. All those hills were dug out from under them so when that dynamite went it, it just blew everything up and it caved it and that stopped it right there," he says.
It was these actions that awarded Mr. Thompson the prestigious honor of a silver star.
"You don't know whether you're crazy or brave. They might be a pretty close facsimile there, but you do those things to protect your friends."
The good and the bad are forever a part of his memory.
"You were raised at home on a farm and all of a sudden you wind up in the marine corp they tell you to do things this way, and that's the way you did it. You didn't know anything else in reality. That's what you were trained to do and that's what you did, you bet. So I'm sure I'd do it again, yes."
It's extraordinary men like Mr.Thompson that remind us why we celebrate Veteran's Day.
