More Than 36 Days

More Than 36 Days

Four Ordinary Men Face Extraordinary Circumstances

By Carron Barrella

Copyright © 2011 Carron Barrella All rights reserved.

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Published by

Carron Barrella

www.MoreThan36Days.com

[email protected]

Cover and Book Design: Nick Zelinger, www.NZGraphics.com

To my husband Tommy for lovingly being the constant victim of my shenanigans. YRMW

To my children Joey and Serena; my sun and moon.

To my parents who didn’t pause when their only daughter expressed her desire to throw grenades!

Acknowledgements

My many thanks to Don, Joe, Max and Jim for having the courage once again to dredge up their past and all the emotions, feelings and pain that entails to relive those experiences and to share them with me. I wish you all peace.

Thank you to my dearest friends Lisa MacKenzie and Rick McCoy for their unwavering support and guidance.

I am grateful to my editor, Sue Hamilton, the lighthouse, always keeping me on course and directing me home. And to Nick Zelinger, who was so generous with his time, talent – and has an obvious fear of standing still.

I am so fortunate. Thank you all for always pushing me forward.

Author’s Note:

The four men in this book are an inspiration to me and truly a treasure to have in my life. It occurred to me that I could share them with anyone destined to pick up this book.

I had two objectives in writing this book; one to bring these men to life to those not privileged to know them in person. My friends are now your friends.

The second is to preserve their stories. Too many accounts, experi- ences and legends are laid to rest without the opportunity to breathe life once again passing from those solitary lips to the ears of the next cycle of life.

Isn’t that the beauty of a book? To be places you have never been, meet people you have never met. To live through the power and imagination limited only by you and your mind’s capabilities. A book allows an author to pilot your mind, drive you there yet still you have the freedom of your own interpretation. Your imagination is ultimately still in control. The beauty of books!

This book is dedicated to all veterans everywhere who have made the dedicated pledge to blindly serve the country they love. ALL veterans pay the ultimate sacrifice for their life-changing duty in one way or another. Their commitment to a calling greater than themselves is forever respected by a grateful nation.

And to those who have experienced war all the while praying that no future generation has to suffer the same fate only to watch mankind continue to fail to learn from the past.

Foreword

The veterans meet every two weeks at a little coffee shop. This is their comfort zone. There is security in their camaraderie. As they gather around the small, wrought iron table on the patio with the smell of coffee hovering around them they glance at the familiar lined faces collected here. It isn’t long before the stories and experiences begin to flow as easily and smoothly as a good bottle of wine between friends. It was a beautiful typical spring morning, the sun penetrating the thin Denver air bringing its warming rays to shine upon these men.

I consider myself just a tag-a-long. I feel like I have been given a secret gift. I am somehow allowed into this sacred assembly without feeling like an intruder. Maybe it is because I am a former Marine also and there is an unbreakable bond between Marines, a brotherhood that lasts forever. The saying goes, Once a Marine, always a Marine. There are no ex-Marines, only Marines. The motto of the United States Marine Corps is Semper Fidelis which is Latin for Always Faithful. It is the loving greeting echoed from Marine to Marine shortened to Semper Fi. Becoming a Marine is a transformation that is never undone. Marines live by the Corps’ values and ethics their entire lives.

Maybe it is because I am a woman. They have no male pretenses. No tough image to uphold around me. They can shed tears and just be themselves. I am also a mother and the wife of a Marine. I cover all the angles. It is most likely a combination of these traits that makes our relationship unique. Or maybe it is just because they can feel and sense the respect I have for them. Some part of them is aware of how I am ever in awe of each and every one of them. Perhaps they are just happy that someone cares to listen.

Most of them have never spoken about their war experiences until recently. However, there are still elements of their stories that will remain hidden deep within them and will never pass through their lips to another. But for now they are ready to talk and there is actually some- one ready to listen. These stories need to be told. The future needs to hear the sacrifices these men made for us, for the world. They all had to fight their fears and personal demons to get to the other side. They knew and hated the battle, but did what needed to be done. They don't see themselves as heroic yet define courage. It is the kind of story that will make people believe, in the end, that doing the right thing does matter, because it is these guys who make us believe and keep trying.

I have always felt that people come into our lives for a reason, that we attract the teachers and mentors we need when we need them and are truly ready to learn. The universe, through the grace of its mysterious plan, brought four gentlemen; Don Whipple, Joe Weinmeier, Max Brown and Jim Blane, into my life and my heart. And, in some incredible way the relationships are reciprocal. They need to tell me exactly what I need to hear.

Learning from the past is valuable because it saves the time and the pain of learning the same lesson the hard way through mistakes and consequences. I cherish these men and the education I have received (for free) listening to their stories and their truth. It is almost like living backwards, something we all dream about, being young and vigorous with decades of possibility still ahead AND the benefit of a lifetime’s wisdom to appreciate the truly important things and navigate the rocky bottom of the river of life. How ironic that the knowledge you gain from life experience, the knowing that guides your decisions, isn’t understandable until you make the wrong choice the first time.

Isn’t life grand? By the time you start to figure it out it’s almost over. It’s like putting together the pieces of a giant puzzle without knowing what the result will look like. When you have just a few pieces left it all starts to make sense, all the pain and all the joy and how they fit together to create the whole of a life. So you try to make the secret of the completed puzzle tangible and lasting by explaining it to the young who don’t have the time or the patience to listen and don’t recognize that your puzzle is their puzzle too. Too late they wish they had paid attention.

The never ending cycle of living and learning is never boring precisely because we don’t have all the answers. Yet, I want to be smart enough to listen, as best I can, to the lessons of the past and apply this wisdom to my future. I want to glean some nugget of truth that I can hold in my heart as my inner compass.

I consider myself a sponge around these four gentlemen. Not because they are scholars or visionaries, but because they are men I admire just simply for the lives they have led. They are ordinary men who have done extraordinary things in my opinion. Now, in their opinion, they were just doing what needed to be done at the time. But because of their decisions and actions they affected not only my life, but all our lives and the world. Not a small task by any means, unless of course you ask them. But since I am writing this book and not them, I will tell you from my point of view what heroes they truly are.

All four of these men are considered part of The Greatest Gen- eration. They took the initiative to be the driving force of their own destiny, rather than sit around and wait to be drafted. Each of them had the ingenuity as young, adolescent boys to want to make a differ- ence and they also possessed the resourcefulness to know they could. They made the conscious choice to become elite members of the finest fighting force in the world. They were United States Marines. Fate challenged their decision and delivered them directly into one of the worst battles in U.S. history; the battle for Iwo Jima Island in the Pacific