US Marines

I gave all I had

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Exhausted, dehydrated, and weak from hunger and loss of blood due to multiple leg wounds, 20 year old Franklin Pomroy, a member of H Company, 2nd Battalion, 1st Marine Division clasps his head in his hands immediately following his rescue by fellow Marines during the Battle of Peleliu in September 1944. He had been fighting on the island for six days, part of that time on his own after he became separated from what remained of his unit during their fight for Hill 200. Armed with weapons he had collected but unable to walk, he was suffering from a bayonet wound to his left knee as well as three machinegun bullets in his right leg, and had been without sleep, food, or water for quite some time. The photo was taken by news correspondent Stanley Troutman, who happened to be with the Marines who found Frank, just before they loaded him onto their amphibious tank and took him back to the beach for medical treatment. He was evacuated from Peleliu to the hospital ship USS Comfort where he was operated on and received treatment for his wounds and the gangrene that had developed in his leg. Frank was then sent to the Admiralty Islands to an Army hospital for further treatment. _ Franklin "Frank" Pierce Pomroy was born in Boston, Massachusetts on October 13, 1923. He was the son of Carl and Olive Lurvey Pomroy and had two sisters and two brothers. His parents died when he was young and he was raised by a foster family. He grew up on a farm near Danvers and attended school there. At the age of only 17, before he had even graduated high school, Frank enlisted in the United States Marine Corps shortly after the attack on Pearl Harbor, getting a stranger off the street to pose as his father and sign the consent forms. He fought throughout the Pacific, in the Guadalcanal and New Britain Campaigns as well as in the Battle of Peleliu. He survived a ship sinking, was wounded multiple times and lost many friends, but made it through to the end of the war. Frank met his wife-to-be, Corrine Anderson, on a blind date following the war and they married in 1947. They had two daughters, Cathy and Karen. Frank loved being a family man, his family was the center of his world. He worked as a regional sales manager for Liberty Mutual Insurance Company, worked in the oil business, owned a gas station, and also worked in the construction industry building homes, including two of his own. His experiences during the war in the Pacific led him to become a consultant for the making of the HBO miniseries, The Pacific. Frank also loved to travel and visited a number of places around the world, even returning to many of the locations where he had served during the war. Suffering from congestive heart failure, he passed away on June 11, 2011 at the age of 87. A good friend of his remembered Frank as "a man of great courage who had absorbed all that the horrors of war could throw at a very young man and had come through without bitterness, deep emotional wounding or heavy remorse. There was no hatred of the men he had fought, only a pride in the 1st Marine Division and the inner sense that he had served his country to the very best of his ability." taken from fb/ Christina Boody