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Armstrong John USN

Posted on 30 July, 2021 by in ,

27 August 2019

This bio is being written by Larry Martin by notes and memory. I never met John Armstrong of Kirtland Ohio. I only talked to him by phone in March of 2014. John was born is 1922.

John enlisted in the Navy in 1942. Went to corpsman school at the completion of school he took a train across country with several Doctor’s.

The two battles that he was involved in were Tarawa on November 20th 1943 and Siapan in the Marianas Islands in June of 1944.

At Tarawa he missed the first day but was in the battle on the second day. He saw two “kids” of sixteen who were so scared that they were of no use at all, he said they were like four year olds. He sat with the two sixteen year olds and watched some meteor showers to sooth the young boys. He had a code in his letter writing to his family to get around the censors. He tried to treat a Marine at Tarawa who had been shot through the stomach but nothing could help him.

I have been told this by other Tarawa veterans that since Tarawa was only two degrees above the equator the smell could be detected from four miles away. There were about 6,000 dead between the Japanese and Americans. He went to another Marine who was just setting to see if he needed anything and his helmet fell of exposing that the top of his skull was blown off.

John said the water that they had to drink tasted like “kerosene” Also that the native’s of Siapan had nice houses.

 

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