Laurence Siddall was a tall lanky high junior at Valparaiso High School in 1943. One of seven children to father William - a local postman - and mother Genivieve, Laurence was often pictured in his high school photos with moppish hair and a shy - if not sly grin. He participated in the Glee Club and Tumbling Club - maybe not the lineage one might expect for a future US Marine. The tumblers though, seemed to have some mettle. They performed at halftime of basketball games, and as the WWII raged on, they learned more physical routines that drew from combat training that servicemen were learning in the military. In fact in the fall of 1943, just as Laurence was beginning his junior year, the club disbanded as too many participants had left for active duty, including Laurence and team captain Malcom Varner. We heard Malcom's name in a previous salute to classmate Joe Long as they were both stationed together in Norman, OK. By 1945, now Private First Class in the USMC, Laurence was in the Pacific as a mortarman aboard a LVT - an amphibious landing craft. On February 19, 1945 the order to take Iwo Jima was given - we've all seen the famous flag raising that would occur three days later, but even on that date, the battle was far from over. But back on Monday, Feb 15, as dawn broke at 0640 across the south Pacific it was already a humid 68-degrees while PFC Siddall and his crewmates had a quick breakfast of bacon and eggs below deck. Overhead canons from the dozens - if not hundreds - of ships started booming as the bombardment of Iwo Jima started. A couple of hours later PFC Siddall was only 400 yards from shore in fierce fighting - bullets and rockets and grenades exploding all around. A Japanese mortar shell from high above found its mark in the LVT sinking it instantly - 8 crewmen never resurfaced, including PFC Siddall. Later that day SFC Connie Minton also of Valparaiso would be killed on LST-477 when a kamikaze pilot crashed into his ship. The US Marines would finally secure Iwo Jima 34 days later after some of the fiercest fighting in the Pacific ended.
