Marine Private First Class James Samuel “Sam” Smith comes home

19-year-old Marine Private First Class James Samuel “Sam” Smith arrived at his hometown in Mississippi after 73 years on Betio Island on Saturday, acording to the Clarion-Ledger.

In the early days of the war, Smith saw action with a special weapons battalion. He was then sent to New Zealand and then into the Solomon Island campaign.

Smith wrote to his family on Oct. 10, 1943, and told them he was going back to the front. It would be his last letter home.

He was assigned to Company C, 2nd Amphibious Tractor Battalion, 2nd Marine Division, which landed on the island of Betio in the Tarawa Atoll of the Gilbert Island, where friendly forces were met by a strong Japanese resistance. Smith went ashore on Beach Red 2 with the first wave of the invasion and “held the beachhead against impossible assaults until their reinforcements finally landed,” his obituary said…Historical accounts say Smith was killed sometime the first day of that battle.

The article reports that fmily, friends, Patriot Guard Riders and servicemen and women met his plane when he landed in Mississippi on Saturday. He will finally be laid to rest today at the memorial that was constructed soon after his death in anticipation of his eventual return home.

Category: We Remember