Maurice Bell was born in Mississippi on February 17, 1925, and grew up in the northeast corner of the state. Throughout 1942, he traveled around the country with his father on a construction crew that was building army camps. While in Indiana in early 1942, he met and started dating . . .

Glenn Dowling Frazier was born December 1, 1923 and grew up in the little farming town of Fort Deposit, Alabama. In the summer of 1941, he discovered that the girl he loved was interested in someone else. Frazier was so angry and upset that when the . . .

Thomas M. Galloway an only child, was born December 14, 1923 and grew up in Mobile, Alabama. His father was in charge of the United States Lighthouse Service Supply Base located in Mobile which serviced lights and aids to navigation along the Gulf Coast. Tom entered the army in the . . .

John Gray was born in his grandparents' home in Chickasaw, Alabama on November 27, 1924, and was living in Mobile when the war began. His father had left the family and gone north to work in the steel mills in Youngstown, Ohio. His mother worked as a cook and housekeeper. . .

Herndon Inge was born March 4, 1920, and was in the same high school class as Edward Sledge, the older brother of Eugene Sledge. Inge attended the University of Alabama and then the Army's officer candidate school. He received his commission January 7, 1944 and became a 2nd Lieutenant in . . .

Dwain Luce was born April 25 1916, and grew up in Mobile. His father was in the lumber business. Luce graduated from high school in l934 and from Auburn in l938, with a reserve commission. After graduation he went to work at his family's cannery business in Mississippi. On December . . .

Clyde Odom grew up in Mobile and went to work as a mechanic at the Alabama Dry Dock Ship and Building Company in October, 1940. He became a foreman during the war and worked twelve hours a day five days a week, ten hours on Saturday, eight hours on Sunday. . .

Katharine Phillips was born on June 28, 1923 in Mobile, the older sister of Marine Sidney Phillips, and John Phillips, who was born in 1931. Their father, Sidney C. Phillips, who had been wounded in the first World War, was a teacher who became principle of Murphy High School in . . .

Sidney Phillips was born September 2, 1924, the younger brother of Katharine Phillips. His father, a teacher who became principal of Murphy High School in Mobile during the War, had been a 2nd lieutenant in the 145th Infantry in World War One, and had been wounded in the Argonne Forest. . .

Alvy Ray Pittman, the son of a veteran of World War I, was born December 5, 1922 near Columbia, Mississippi. After finishing high school Pittman moved to Mobile to work with his father in the carpentry business. In November of 1942, Pittman enlisted in the Marines. . .

Emma Belle Petcher was born March 27, 1923 in Millry, Alabama and when she graduated from high school in 1942, decided to go to Mobile in search of work. She received a high score on a mechanical aptitude test, and was put into a nine month training program for maintaining . . .

Willie Rushton was born July 14, 1920 in Nadawah, Alabama, a town so small it is not on most maps. His grandfather, who had been reared in Montgomery, was born a slave. Rushton grew up on a saw mill farm in Atmore, where his father worked as a block setter. . .

Eugene B. Sledge was born in Mobile November 4, 1923, the grandson of Confederate officers. Bookish and frail as a child, he had been taught to hunt and fish by his physician father and spent much of his free time roaming the woods on the outskirts of town with his . . .